Tuesday, February 05, 2008 More Plausible Explanations of Some Superpowers
In this entry, I shall discuss some common superpowers portrayed in comic books and TV and propose alternate mechanisms for how these powers work.
Phasing, defined as a person's ability to move through another solid object.
The usual explanation is that the person who possesses this ability can somehow change the nature of the material that makes up his body such that it can pass through typical solid matter. There are many problems with this mechanism. For example,why doesn't the person fall through the floor? Why doesn't his clothes fall off when he phase? A better explanation would be that it is not the man who becomes ethereal but rather, he can temporarily change the nature of other objects so that he may pass through them.
Invisibility. Once again, to explain invisibility by attributing it to the matter that makes up the person creates all sorts of problems. How does he see if light goes right through his eyes without getting focused by his lens or detected by his retina? What happens when he eats? At what point does food become part of the person and turns invisible? (And what about the food that is not absorbed?)
It would be better to ascribe invisibility to light being forced to travel around a person rather than through him, perhaps by means of some light bending force. There is still the problem of being blind to a certain extent but at least one is spared the hassle of walking around naked.
