Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Heat Vision

Let's say I'm sitting next to Superman on the bus. And, say that for some reason-- maybe because his coffee is cold-- he uses his heat vision.

Could I see it? I mean, have we established that I could see little red darts shoot into his cup? Or, like on Smallville, would his eyes turn red just before he reheated? Or...would I see nothing?

Is heat vision, when applied by our superhero, visible or invisible? I mean, say Clark Kent wanted to use it on the bus next to me, without me knowing. Could he do that? Or would I point and say, "Hey, you just shot red beams out of your eyes...say! You're Superman!"

Just really, sincerely curious. Any ideas? Are you out there, Paul?

CC

I don't think a bystander can actually see red beams -- any more than they can see blue "cold air" when he blows it. Tightly focused beams of light are not generally visible en route, unless the air is very dusty/dirty. For example, a laser cannot be seen along its path -- only when it hits something, or passes through something translucent.

Ditto Rivka. I think she is exactly right.
(I did learn something in Physical Optics ).
- Laura

Okay, my belief is that if he reheated his coffee while sitting next to you, the only thing you'd be able to see would be the steam rising as the coffee got hotter. I've been under the impression for quite some time that the red beams are just for our benefit so we know what's going on...kind of like when ABC marks the first down line with that yellow strip during a football game.


JD
Edit: Whoops, we all replied at the same time, haha. But I was rather proud of my football analogy.

Yeah, I'm here, and... I've got nothing much to add.

The way it was on the show, no one noticed when Clark was using his heat vision. The red lines were just there for the audience. He just lowered his glasses and no one noticed a thing. Except the crazy lady who thought (or was that pretended to think?) he was General Grant.

Other times, his eyes have glowed red. It's been used as a cool effect in the comics (when the artists feel it would be useful). Usually, it goes something like this: Someone ticks Superman off. Superman, as it happens, is hovering over that person, and backlit (which puts his face in shadow and forms a glowing aura around him). He looks down at the human who was so foolish as to get him angry, and his eyes glow red. He's got power, and he's just barely holding it in check. It's chilling.

They used the same effect on the 90's cartoon, too. His eyes glowed red whenever he used heat vision.

So, if you want it to happen, you could have it happen.

If you don't want it to happen, you're probably better off. Most FoLCs aren't used to Clark's eyes glowing. I'm pretty sure it never happened in the series, and that's the important thing. If you don't want it to be noticable, I don't think it would be a problem for anyone.

Rivka already covered lasers, but I'll mention that they do become visible in smoke or fog. The light reflects off the particles in the air. Pretty handy if you're studying optics, or if you're MacGuyver and you need to get past a laser secruity net with nothing more than a can of hairspray.

Just remember, as others have mentioned, that there may well be secondary effects. Steaming coffee, melting metal, smoking holes, small brush fires, etc.

Paul, who remembers being very confused by light sabers... "But, Dad, if it focuses all the light in one direction, how come I can see it from the side?"

Nope, it definitely did happen in the series, but as with all these things, they weren't consistent about it. There's a scene, for example, where Clark has swapped bodies with someone else (Woody someone). Woody Somebody threatens Lois, and we get a close-up of his eyes glowing red. There may have been other occasions, but I can't think of any more specifics right now.

Anyway, the beauty of the series' lack of consistency is that you can pretty much choose the option which suits your story <g>. Oh, and I'm with the others on the heat vision being invisible to the naked eye - no red rays or other special effects.

Yvonne

Yeah, I think the red beams were only for the viewer and no one else was meant to be able to see them.

Having said that, I made a booboo in Caped Fear when someone did and didn't notice it till later and couldn't be bothered fixing it and no one ever mentioned it <g>

Plus, I think Yvonne is right with the inconsistencies.

So, I'm in the 'pretty much do what you like' camp.

LabRat (another CC story in the works - Yay!)

Can you tell I was asleep during Red Beam Optic Laser Science class that day? Or, actually, I might have just skipped it and gone to the pool. It happened...

I was watching the Keep me a Secret music video (my favorite), and I noticed that the crazy lady appeared to 'see' the beam. Which got me to wondering. Started to think how on Smallville, Clark's eyes do glow red before he heats up. And have seen that effect in the comics, too. And my Science of Superman book didn't cover it...heh...so I just wanted to know.

To sum up: If, while I'm seated next to Superman on that bus, a heavy fog rolls through, THEN I can see the beams?? Because that could easily happen, you know. The windows might be down and we might be travelling through...someplace extremely foggy.

Thanks all for answering. And, no, this has nothing whatsoever to do with a story. I realize that by placing it in fanfic related, I might have given that impression. Honest. I just have too much time on my hands...now I can get to pondering the light saber question. However, if anyone else would like to use this fascinating knowledge for their own fanfic, please feel free.

Consider this a service I am happy to provide.

CC

I think that depends on what kind of light/radiation his eyes emit. Has it ever been determined what kind of radiation he gives when he is heating x-raying? I know his x-ray vision *can not* be x-rays. To heat in some situations and see through things in other situations he has to have a certain sensor/regulator built into his eyes or something that changes the focus of the light/radiation/whatever depending on if he just wants to see, wants to use heat vision, or wants to see through something. To quote a professor of mine, "It is very tricky question!" I wonder if anyone who came up with the idea of Superman actually thought that through.

The heating could be one of many types of light. I keep thinking of the different things we learn about in different medical applications -- RF ablation of tumors, Ultrasound ablation of tumors, etc, all which use a heatnig of sorts to a very high temperature to burn away rogue cancer cells. However, I can't see Clark's eyes emitting ultrasound waves. I can't think of anything that would allow him to see through objects. And he seems to be able to selectively see through things. If I can figure this all out, I am going to write that fic about Dr. Klein I have been thinking about and have him discover this!

Off to fish out the physical optics book . . . oh wait, I sold that back as soon as I took the final exam. Hmm, what about medical imaging? Shoot, gave that book away as quickly as possible (optics and imaging are not my friends . In fact, they are my enemies. My mortal enemies.). Any other takers?

- Laura

I read somewhere many moons ago that his x-ray vision was partly made up of gamma rays, and gamma rays won't go through lead. Any confirmation, oh wise ones?


JD

Well, heat vision could simply be intense infrared rays. That is the portion of the e-m spectrum most closely associated with heat. IR is, of course, invisible to the human eye, but there are IR goggles.

It doesn't have to be IR. How hot something is is simply a measure of how fast the particles that make it up are moving. Anything that can get them moving faster will heat them up. Air friction, sound waves, intense light, physical contact with a hotter material... there are plenty of options. Specific materials respond to certain frequencies. Water molecules, for example, naturally move at a certain frequency. If you hit them with electromagnetic waves tuned to the same frequency, they start moving a lot faster. That's how microwave ovens work.

As for lasers, the reason you can see them in fog is that they're generally tuned to some visible portion of the spectrum. Move the frequency out of the visible range, and you probably won't see much, fog or no.

Of course, water does have a strong tendency to refract and scatter electromagnetic waves (which not only includes x-rays and other types of what we normally think of as radiation, but also visible light). That's why subs have to use sonar. A thick enough fog, and heat vision won't have much of a range. Even x-ray vision will probably be more limited than usual.

Assuming it is something like infrared radiation, it'll do to lead what it'll do to just about any other metal -- hit the surface and start heating it. Lead, as it happens, has a relatively low melting point (for metal, anyway). While it is impenitrable as far as x-ray vision is concerned, heat vision should have no trouble simply melting it away or burning a hole in it.

As for what x-ray vision is, I haven't heard a single good explanation. Someone did tell me, however, that the further you go along the spectrum, the more likely it is that a given type of radiation will pass right through an object. Visible light will bounce off most things, but x-rays will go through just about anything less dense than lead. Go even further down the spectrum, and you find nutrinos, which tend to go through entire planets without stopping. ("Nutrino traps" are designed to slow them down enough to study. Basically, they take extremely sensitive equipment and put it in a chamber with extremely thick concrete walls surrounded by thick lead walls surrounded by ... all of which is located underneath a mountain. Every once in a while, a single nutrino, passing by with tens of thousands of others, will have been slowed enough by all this that the sensor will be able to detect it.)

So, x-ray vision could basically work along those lines. He shifts his perception so that he's detecting a different portion of the spectrum. The further he goes, the further he'll see. This wavelength will pass through the first layer and bounce off the second. This one will go through the second but not the third. And so on.

He wouldn't even have to emit x-rays or whatever. He'd just have to be able to detect the background radiation that's already there, the same way we detect visible light without emitting anything.

I don't know how much that really works, but that was the theory I heard proposed. I think it was a physics major/comic book geek friend of mine, but I'm not certain.

That doesn't really explain why he can still see color. If he was looking at a different portion of the spectrum, he'd be leaving normal visible light behind. Red paint, blue paint... it'd all be more or less the same.

I don't know if there is an actual answer to it. While looking for explanations is fun, not everything Clark can do is physically possible (in our universe, anyway). That's part of the fun of imagination.

Paul

Just a little after the fact stuff:


Paul said:
Yvonne mentioned one I hadn't remembered, but there's another one as well. In Super Mann (sp?...the one with the Nazis) at the end before Superman burns the Nazi flag, his eyes flash red, I'm assuming in order to terrify Chip.

Laura said:
I know it's been used a couple times in fic that Clark always resists the temptation to sneak a peek at a pregnant Lois (to find out the sex or something) because they fear there might be radiation because it *is* x-ray vision and all.

Yikes! Gamma rays would be far more dangerous than x-rays -- but are also commonly blocked using lead.
Linky

That's the general problem with WHATEVER the x-ray vision is. If it's high-energy enough to go through most substances, it's also high energy enough to cause significant damage, especially with frequent exposure. (Poor Lois!)

Well . . .

And neutrinos aren't on the E-M spectrum. They have mass ( probably ). Hence they can be slowed down.

Here's a sort of explanation given by Elliott S! Maggin one of the major Superman comic writers in his book "Miracle Monday".

I'm sure its pseudoscience at its best, but it sounded impressive considering the fact that we have to remember that Clark isn't human and probably does have quite a few internal differences.

-Michael (who has come to consider the possibility that he read waaaayyyy too many comics as a kid)

Weird. I was just thinking about that at work today. I needed a flash light, but I only had a red lazer pointer...or whatever it is called.
I was wondering about the 'Keep Me A Secret' shot that was covered before too. I loved science class. The whole light sabre thing bugs me. OH well. Science oopsies in the movies are fun to pick out.
Thanks for the fun thread!
Me a nerd.

Yes, that is absolutely pseodoscience. Your optic nerve actually is not passive at all.

(remember, I work in the Neural Engineering Center, and I did my Master's research in a part of the lab that worked on the eye -- my thesis was 'Development of the Full Model of the Rod Photoreceptor Cell', so this might be horribly boring.)


Here is a schematic picture of vision:



The eye kind of acts as a camera -- the pupil acts as the variable aperature, deciding how much light to let in to the eye, and it travels through the eye to the retina at the back of the eye where the information is processed and relayed to higher centers of the brain. It is almost like the retina acts as the film in a camera. (this is way oversimplified).

The retina is composed of 5 layers of cells. The photoreceptors (rods and cones) absorb the light and undergo a process called phototransduction. Simply, light is absorbed by a special memebrane spanning molecule, rhodopsin in rods, opsin in cones, and it undergoes a conformational change to opsin and retinol. This causes a cascade in events (which are described in my MS thesis ), eventually causing cGMP-gated cation channels to close, causing the cells to hyperpolarize (this is a passive decrease in membrane voltage). This hyperpolarization causes the rods or cones to release a neurotransmitter (glutamate) and activate the bipolar cells (a type of interneuron), and these cells in turn have a passive change in membrane potential, causing the release of glutamate at their synapses with ganglion cells. The axons of these ganglion cells form the optic nerve. (the other two cell layers are amacrine cells and horizontal cells which further modify the signal at each of the synapses above). The ganglion cells depolarize passively until the depolarization gets high enough so that at the trigger zone (axon hillock) of the ganglion cell axon the passive depolarizations' sum is greater than the axon's firing threshold, and the ganglion cell axon (optic nerve) fires an action potential (which is an active neural signal).

Thus, your optic nerve is not passive. It is an active signalling element.

To understand how neurons work, I referred my students in EBME 201 to this elementary neuroscience page . It's presented in a very well explained manner.

One way I can see that theory working is if instead of active/passive, he sort of meant that his visual system worked in reverse. If the higher centers of his brain gave some sort of signal that caused some light that he recieves in to be converted to a different type of light, producing heat / the ability to see through things. However, I can't think of how that works, because neurons are generally unidirectional (i.e. an action potential can only propogate one way). However, passive membrane changes are bidirectional.

Speaking of membrante potential changes, I wonder if somehow produces some kind of extra electricity -- like if he is somehow able to harvest the electric potentials created through his neuronal signalling, and convert this electric energy into heat energy.

I also wonder if his retina has some kind of special cell that is able to reflect the heat of the sun's rays off his retina and through his eye, allowing heat to emerge from his eye. That doesn't seem likely, though.

- Laura


[edited to resize image]

Hi FoLCs,

I don´t think anyone could see the rays... on the Premier Clark destroyed a machine "i dont know how you call that in english" that was supposed to put down the old theater. He did it in the middle of the crowd and he was supposed to be very careful those days... so, I guess the answer is no. no one could see that.

On the other hand, I can remember that in the episode lethal weapon, when Clark was heating the steak in the kitchen, Lois got down on her knees when she saw his heat vision was coming to both sides... (I´m contradicting myself here... but honestly the show didn´t gives much data to believe people could see it or not).. Maybe Lois just went on her knees because of the explosion of popcorn though i´m not so sure...

MDL.

Hmmmmm...interesting thought, remember, he's supposedly a walking, talking solar collector/reactor. In the newer comics the explanation of heat vision is that it is simply the venting of solar energy. Maybe we could theorize that he can channel that existing energy along his optic nerve or perhaps another type of nerve that he may have in his alien biology (we're not stuck wondering how it could work with our physiology because as an alien he could have all sorts of little "extras" that have evolved in Kryptonians )

I think the solar energy thing could even explain x-ray vision because I seem to remember reading somewhere (I may need to be corrected on this) that the sun gives off gamma rays, x-rays, etc. because of the massive amount of heat the nuclear reaction of the sun produces (the same thing being true with nuclear bombs)

The "weird optic nerve" explanation may also explain his other vision powers (telescopic, microscopic, infrared, etc.) because maybe Kryptonians could always see better than humans thanks to evolving in a red sunlit atmosphere where visibility would be a lot poorer than a yellow sunlit atmosphere (maybe explaining the evolution of "extra stuff" in his optic systems) and now that he is super-energized his vision "extras" translate into "super-extras".

(It's how early on a Sunday morning??!!)

As for the original question about visibility of heat vision, it has been established in the comics that in normal usage it is invisible to the naked eye, but that this all depends on it's intensity. The more powerful the burst the more visible it is. I'm not sure how scientifically this would be explained, but perhaps it would have to do with why stars are different colors depending on how hot they burn (that is why they're different colors, right?)

-Michael

Yes, stars appear to be different colors depending on their temps. Red is cool and blue is hot. If you're interested in more info, I found this handy link.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/stars.html