Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Can Superman be seen...

on radar? Say, at an airport?

Or would he be too small a target?

If he can be seen - what about large airports vs. small airports? More chance of being detected on one type of radar over another?

If he can be seen - can he outwit it, so to speak? By moving staight up, or very fast? Or flying very low? (Which isn't really an option, I suppose, if he's trying NOT to be seen, huh?)

I might be working on those dragons for you, Terry. Or I might not. Maybe I'm just idly curious.



~Toc

There do exist bird echoes on flight radar, yes. But don't ask if this is a usual ocurrence or not. What I do know though is the existence of a bird strike sensor in some military fighter jets - a tool which probably uses data gathered from the board radar.

So if a bird or a group of those can be located, Superman will too.

As we saw in the movie 'Superman Returns' he can indeed be seen on radar.

I would assume in a world that knows that Superman exists, a small radar echo that moves really fast wouldn't necessarily freak out any operators. Especially those who work around Metropolis.

Tank (who would think that Superman could avoid radar detection by flying too high, or too fast for the radar to lock onto him)

There is a fic which broaches this topic. It´s "The Good Samaritan" by Aria. The main person in her fic is an air traffic controller, who finds Superman after a plane rescue in very bad condition... The story is written from his point of view and it´s very interesting also regarding his view of Superman on his radar screens.

I would assume, in the Lois and Clark world, that Superman can be picked up on radar. In Dead Lois Walking, after he's broken Lois out of prison and they're escaping by car, they listen to the radio and hear Jefferson Cole telling the public to look out for the 'mad dog killer' and that Superman is also under suspicion. There's this exchange:

That says to me that radar would detect him.


Wendy

Radars can detect him. In 'All Shook Up' The coordinator of the mission sees him collide with nightfall and we can clearly see it as well..


MDL.

Hmmm. So if you had TWO super people...




(Thank you, everyone! I appreciate the help.)

~Toc

But what if Superman were flying so fast that he couldn't be seen. Would he still be picked up by radar?

I would presume he wouldnt be seen when flying that fast
as light is two orders of magnitude faster than sound (30km/s vs 0.3km/s) I presume that anything travelling at a speed so fast it cant be seen would also be invisible to radar...

this would depend on the sampling rates of the detector though...
ie we dont see supes at those speeds due to the speed of information processing in our retinas and our brains, not because he is actually travelling faster than light...

in L&C he cannot travel at supersnic speeds with a passenger... but he can "move his molecules" so they are permiable to light (3.06 Don't step on Supes cape)

I dont know the intricasies of radar which would make a difference here, but I presume you could make him invisible to radar solong as he didnot have a passenger...

NOTE: dont harrass me if i got the speed of light wrong...

all i know is there is a big/huge difference between light and sound... and whatever it is it is fitting for your queries... and makes no difference to the message of my post

ie big differences so possible to "outrun" radar detectors
:rolleyes: :p :p :p

Radar waves travel at the speed of light. Supes may not be able to. We don't know how fast he could go in the L&C universe. Clearly supersonic, but who can say how much faster than sound? As you say, there's a big gap between the speed of light (300,000,000 m/s) and the speed of sound (340 m/s, depending on air pressure and such).

In any case, unless he was flying directly away from the radar tower, the system would be able to see him. He might be somewhat blurry. He might be moving fast enough that his position on the screen would be unreliable (i.e. by the time the radar wave bounces back to the dish and the echo is processed, he'd be somewhere else), but he'd still be seen.

The question is what they'd make of him.

The difference between a large bird and a human being is very small compared to the difference between a human being and even a small airplane. Going supersonic would be a dead giveaway that he's not actually a bird, but it's possible that a human being wouldn't stop to notice that one tiny bird-sized blip was moving faster than it should.

It's also possible that he might be dismissed as several birds. The dish circles around. It spots him. Screen tells the operator that there's a bird-sized blip over there. Supes moves super fast, and is in another location when the dish's next sweep picks him up. Oh, there's another bird. The first one is gone again. Must have dropped below detectable altitude...

Paul

Okay... So say I had two people with super powers. In a world that only knows about one of those two people.

One arrives at the airport after the other (but they will leave together).

The second individual, concerned also about being seen by people - pilots, passengers - in circling or landing planes, comes in fast. From above the clouds, down to the airport grounds.

What does our air traffic controller see?

A bird? A weird blip that isn't repeated?

Something falling off an airplane?

A bomb!?

Or doesn't even see it at all because of all the airplane traffic, and because it was so fast?

How about leaving? If they leave together, simultaneously or arm in arm (or one could be carried ) they'll look like a bird or birds to our ATC? Especially if they move relatively slowly?

But don't forget all those circling and landing and taking-off airplanes... They'll be just as concerned about being seen by actual people... (This is where the one-carries-the-other idea might work. Then they can move slowly - to human eyes it would look like a superhero carrying a passenger.)

~Toc

It depends.

It would be possible, I think, to slip in undetected.

Fly over the radar. Which would mean the upper atmosphere, but Clark can do that.

Then you come straight down at high speed. If you time it so that the radar dish(es) is/are looking in the other direction, you could zoom in without being spotted.

Leaving, you could do the reverse. Zoom straight up, then go over and out of range.

Or yeah. Might be able to get away as a strange possibly bird-like blip, I'd think.

Paul

Well, being invisible for the eye doesn't mean being invisible for the radar, altough it's an entirely different matter if a rapidly flying Superman could be picked up because of some blip. Imagine the speed of radar waves being about 300000 km/s or ~ 180000 miles/second - there's no way Superman will be able to travel at the speed of light or electromagnetic waves.

In order to avoid being picked up on radar means being able to outfly radar waves which is hardly possible (one of Wendy's stories pictures Superman flying superluminal in outer space).

There do exist different types of radar technologies whereas impulse-radar is the way to go for flight and weather radar. Instead of those alternatives which send a constant stream of radar waves, impulse-radar sends single pulses in a certain cycle which can be used by Superman to slip in undetected.

I did some reading up on radar technology And I imagine that the most difficult part about avoiding being tracked will be the way to detect radar waves and ranges of several installations. But in the end, a human controlled and observed radar station will not detect a rapidly flying superman simply because of its limited range.