Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Challenge Respect for the speed of sound

I was reading a tale, HappyGirl\'s "The Man Under the Suit, Part 31/31", recently and Lois & Clark were trying to come up with an explanation for why Superman did not respond to a hostage crisis.
In the tale Clark is one of the hostages, so of course Superman can't show up and save the day.


In the L&C fanfiction 'verse bad guys are forever setting things up where they expect an instant response from Superman.

I'd love to see some short takes on events where Superman doesn't show up because by the time he hears of the problem it is all over.

Some of the routine things where Metropolis does not really need Superman, where the Police and Fire Department do a fine job.


I think it would be so much fun for a Superman interview to point out that while he has Super hearing the speed of sound is only about 768 miles per hour and if he is on the other side of the globe it could be hours before he hears the cry of "Help Superman".


Even more fun would be if Lois were repeatedly held hostage by thugs thinking she's Superman's girl friend and forced to shout "Help Superman" with no response.

Superman is doing sometime minor on the other side of the globe, say visiting sick kids at a hospital in Paris or Rome, or simply having coffee at a public place.

Of course Lois gets out of whatever crisis she's in prior to Superman's arrival, indeed it could take her an hour, and shortly her value as a hostage drops to nil.

I can picture a groups of bad guys planning foul deeds and someone suggests taking Lois hostage to insure Superman's non participation. The other bad guys shoot it down at once, pointing out that Superman never rescues her anymore, and that she, Mad Dog Lane, is more likely to disrupt their plans on her own.

This brings up a related question: just how far can Clark hear? I assume that he can hear Lois (Lois especially, because he is tuned in to her voice at a subconscious level) from anywhere in the city, but not from the other side of the world. Whenever I need him to hear of a disaster somewhere else in the world, I have him hear a news report on someone's radio or television. If he really could hear everything in the world a la Superman Returns, he'd have to do some very serious subconscious tuning out.

Given that Kryptonians are telepathic (BGDF), Clark could be tuned to Lois on that level - but then the shout from Lois 'Help Superman' could easily be overridden by Lois's subconscious failure to recognize the danger she's in. (Heart rate up, palms sweating? - that's not fear, that's Lois revving up to make the bad guys wish they'd never seen her.)

And if Clark's dealing with a major crisis elsewhere, he may not pick up on a telepathic shout unless it's really 'loud'.

As for SR - he may 'hear' everything, but the speed of sound really is only so fast and he obviously is able to filter things out on a subconscious or semi-conscious level.

My gripe with treatment of the speed of sound (and physics in general) in L&C was in Wall of Sound - Okay, the bad guy has a barrier using sound energy to 'solidify' the air (or some such nonsense). But sounds go through it and so does light. So Clark goes supersonic to break the barrier? HE HAS HEAT VISION!

Modest cough - from my story The Return, which is movieverse rather than L&C but presumably uses the same speed of sound:

I think I was assuming Metropolis was about 300 miles from Washington.

Well, we know from WHALTTA that he can't hear from Metropolis to Philadelphia, at least when he's busy with a nuclear power plant emergency.

Marcus, link, or it didn't happen

"The return" is not on lcfanfic.com, is it somewhere I can download a nice .txt to read offline?

The Return by Marcus Rowland.

You can save it as a .txt (I've been copying out of PDF's all week so 'choose all', copy and paste is on the brain.

If you open it on Twisting the Hellmouth

http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-21558/MarcusRowland+The+Return.htm

you can hit the "whole story" link then download it in a variety of formats:

Standard View
Printable HTML
Offline HTML (no images)
Plain Text (no images)
EPUB Ebook (no images)
Mobipocket/Kindle (no images)

I should maybe mention that it's a multiple crossover - Superman, Supergirl, NCIS, Batman, the West Wing and Bones are the main ones, with passing mention of others.

Thank you! I love crossovers

Well, Twisting the Hellmouth is about the biggest crossover site there is - primarily Buffy crossovers, but there's a lot of other stuff there too.

Very true. The part that slayed me in that ep was that everyone was acting like the speed of sound was some incredible speed. Even an old-fashioned, heavy handgun like the one Clark used on Lex in NB has a muzzle velocity of nearly 1000 feet persecond, and the speed of sound is only a little over 1125 fps. And in that ep, Clark shot the gun, whipped over to Lex, and plucked the bullet out of the air. He had to be moving at--or just below--the speed of sound to beat it there, and it was no big deal. No long windup to get up to such "unbelievable" speed.

I find a similar problem with most eps that deal with guns. Superman can't wait to hear a gun fire and then take off to catch the bullet, certainly not if the shooter is using a rifle. Ordinary hunting rifles have muzzle velocities above 2000 fps, which means that the bullet has already smashed into the victim before the sound of the shot ever arrives. Even if Supes is standing right there, he can't prevent an assassination unless he is watching for a bullet.

The speed of sound is a much more limiting factor than we normally think.

I've never thought at the speed he was moving when he shot at Lex Luthor. Interesting, I am always learning something on this board !

Unfortunately, there's many flaws in Lois & Clark.
What I often found irritating, it is the slowness of Clark's reaction. He is faster than a speeding bullet but sometimes we really wonder.
Example in the episode with Patrick, the Irish, I think it's the fourth episode on season 3. Lois wants to follow Superman at the museum and so she puts herself in danger. Trying to protect her, he lets escape the thief. But why didn't he run after him !! He is faster than any human, he has X ray vision and a super-hearing to know where he runs away ! There is too many clumsiness of this kind.

bump

I always assumed that the Nuclear issues needed to be delat with first.

However, if Clark is limited by the speed of sound ins responding to Lois, this would make sense.

On another note, I have to say that it really does not make sense why Superman did not use his heat vision to destroy the sound barrier in "Wall of Sound".

All I really have to say is if Clark had responded instantaneously to the threats things would have been boring. On that note, I am not sure why Clark stops to talk with the Prankster in "Reutrn of the Prankster" when he hears Lois' cries and heads to the Power Plant instead of going straight to rescue her from the boiler that is about to burst.

Actually come to think of it I think the original idea would be intriguing. In fact I am surprised no bad guys ever really tried that. I guess maybe the attempt on Lois' life with the mat while Clark was in Philly was such, but I am surprised an international crime syndicate like Intergang did not try it more often.

My issue with the speed of sound and L&C is, "Where are the sonic booms?" Clark often moves too fast to be seen. The generous assumption is that the room has fluorescent lighting and he moves during the dark phase of the flicker. In that case, he could move about 18 feet (6 m) before breaking the speed of sound. I don't remember the episode but Clark moves way farther than that when he catches the coffee pot, rescues the maintenance man and returns while Lois is talking to him.

So, Clark must be making sonic booms. So what? Almost all of the damage caused by the Russian meteorite this month was due to the sonic boom rather than the impact. Tornadoes cause most of their damage by rapid changes in air pressure and they're only moving 3-400 MPH (6-800 KmPH). Imagine one inside a building. There would be a lot more going on than papers thrown into the air.

I have seen a story on the Archive that addresses the issue, but just one. The author had Superman wave his arms like an eggbeater while flying to minimize the changes in air pressure when he wanted to avoid sonic booms.

The only way to minimise sonic booms I'm aware of is to have a long needle-like shape which tapers to a point at both ends with a minimum of protuberances. Clark obviously doesn't meet that description, but maybe there's some sort of force field around him that does.

I often wondered fthe is why he's shown flying with one arm out from time to time.

Agreed that this is the case for static structures. As far as I know, though, no object capable of altering its shape (dynamically) has ever gone supersonic.

I think this might be Veritas by Shayne Terry. A very good fic, don't miss it.

In The Return of Ultra Woman, I presented a theory that many of Superman's powers - including super speed - are based on a Higgs field manipulation effect that neutralizes the mass of Clark and everything near him. If his biofield creates a small zone of massless air around him, then it should allow him to move through it and have the air pass around him in a perfect laminar flow. No compression => No shock wave.

I actually wrote a micro-short story, set in my LnC universe, where Bernie explains this to Clark, but right now I don't have enough story to make it viable. Maybe some day that lecture will see the light of day as part of a larger work.

Edit: Credit where credit is due. My ideas about the potential for mass reduction and neutralization were inspired by the Lensman books by EE Smith

Bob