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so has no-one wondered why Superman does not make a supersonic boom at that high a speed???

illiad wrote:so has no-one wondered why Superman does not make a supersonic boom at that high a speed???

Because the cartoonists (Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster) who drew the first comics knew nothing about supersonic flight when they established the particulars of the character.

Sgt. Howard wrote:

illiad wrote:so has no-one wondered why Superman does not make a supersonic boom at that high a speed???

Because the cartoonists (Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster) who drew the first comics knew nothing about supersonic flight when they established the particulars of the character.

Nor, really, did anyone else in 1938.

OTOH, it wasn't Siegel and Schuster who gave him the ability to fly - that came after the Fleischers began doing cartoons and everybody realised how ridiculous he looked leaping tall buildings at a single bound like a red and blue kangaroo. (The first - really only originally titled Superman, sometime referred to as The Death Ray or The Mad Scientist, shows signs of having been partially re-worked to make him fly rather than bound, but the opening "Faster than a speeding bullet..." sequence shows him leaping a tall building at a single bound, and it DOES look silly.)

Actually, there have been stories over the years in which there was a sonic boom, when it was a useful plot device.

There's some who posit that folks like the Flash (who runs really, really fast) and Superman (who can do that too but can also Fly!) create a warp of any atmosphere around them as they travel; pointy on both ends, reducing friction and avoiding superheating of the close-by surrounding environment.

Envision Superman hauling butt, big time, in order to get to the scene of the disaster in time and as he decelerates on a dime, he brings with him a meteor's worth of thermal death and destruction in his wake...

In a flyer like Atsali I can at least see her swooping in and those on the ground being blasted with a gust of 'jetwash'. so to speak... (feel free to use that imagery.)

Anything with mass accelerating to any significant fraction of c will bring far more than a meteors' worth of death and destruction.
And going faster than that would probably create a scenario likethis.

GlytchMeister wrote: And going faster than that would probably create a scenario likethis.

you will either have to LINK to that article, or explain the picture.....

BUT, you do realise that comics have a *licence* for it....

Physics?? nah, too fast fer that!!!

PS- Anybody interested in more 'Where did Superman Come From?" type sources should investigate

Gladiator by Philip Wylie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator_%28novel%29

Free for download from the Gutenberg Press

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

Sgt. Howard wrote:

illiad wrote:so has no-one wondered why Superman does not make a supersonic boom at that high a speed???

Because the cartoonists (Jerry Seigel and Joe Schuster) who drew the first comics knew nothing about supersonic flight when they established the particulars of the character.

Nor, really, did anyone else in 1938.. . .

Not quite true . . . the existence of sonic booms were well known in ballistics since the creation of effectual suppressors ("silencers") in the 1890s had allowed the eradication of muzzle blast as the primary noise source of a gunshot, but the "crack" still persisted . . . sometimes.

That investigation lead to the discovery that bullets exceeding approximately 1100-1200 feet per second were trailing what we now know as a miniature sonic boom.

The details of how that worked and how to deal with it were still being developed at that time, however.

--FreeFlier

TazManiac wrote:There's some who posit that folks like the Flash (who runs really, really fast) and Superman (who can do that too but can also Fly!) create a warp of any atmosphere around them as they travel; pointy on both ends, reducing friction and avoiding superheating of the close-by surrounding environment.

So that explains why their super-suits didn't wind up bunched up around their ankles due to atmospheric friction... a cape should generate a little bit of drag I would think.

The latest explanation for the speedsters at DC is that they are connected to the "speed force" - whatever that is.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The latest explanation for the speedsters at DC is that they are connected to the "speed force" - whatever that is.

Amphetamines?

Catawampus wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The latest explanation for the speedsters at DC is that they are connected to the "speed force" - whatever that is.

Amphetamines?

That might explain Impulse, anyway.

Catawampus wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The latest explanation for the speedsters at DC is that they are connected to the "speed force" - whatever that is.

Amphetamines?

Kryptonian caffeine.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:

Catawampus wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The latest explanation for the speedsters at DC is that they are connected to the "speed force" - whatever that is.

Amphetamines?

Kryptonian caffeine.

--FreeFlier

"Sorry, Mr. Kent, but I don't serve that here," Tina said with a frown.

Glytch:
"Doesn't that stuff have a Material Safety Data Sheet? I'm sure I've seen it in my lab at some point. Lemme check with our suppliers, I might be able to get you some."

Well, there's light roast, medium roast, dark roast, and glowing-green roast...

GlytchMeister wrote:Glytch:
"Doesn't that stuff have a Material Safety Data Sheet? I'm sure I've seen it in my lab at some point. Lemme check with our suppliers, I might be able to get you some."

do you mean this??
https://matt.simerson.net/humor/women_hazmat.shtml

"The Science of Superheroes" by James Kakalios devotes a whole chapter(Chapter 5, 'Flash Facts - Friction, Drag and Sound') to such problems with the Flash...

I just dipped back into Marion Harmon's second "Capes" book, and Astra (who is the classic "flying brick' type - super strength, flight, near-invulnerability, etc., mentions that when she's in a hurry to get to the scene of the action, the overpressure wave that she produces sets off car alarms all along her flight path.

{Astra is capable of Mach 3; she' about five-foot-nothibg, weighs less than a hundred pounds, looks about fourteen without her padded costume and mask/wig - and can pick up a city bus and hit you with it.}