Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Just how far does Clark's super hearing reach?

Yeah, another. Looks like I'm working on a story... *lol*

How well does Superman hear?

If he's oooooh, let's say in Chicago - is it likely he could hear someone scream for help if they're all the way back in Metropolis?

Thanks!

He likely would if they were yelling his name, he's tuned to hear that, although it might be faint, but he'd also take a few seconds to get there.

Depends on how you want to write it.

On the show, I don't think he ever had to hear anything that was more than a few miles away, but I don't think it was explicitly stated that he couldn't.

Superman Returns showed him (as he has been seen more than once in the comics, too) hovering in the upper atmosphere, hearing "everything" on Earth.

His power level has varied quite a bit over the years, and often from writer to writer or even story to story.

So... it's up to you.

There's some precedent for his ability to hear something that far away, but he'd have to have a reason to pick that sound out to concentrate on. He'd either have to be listening for it or it would have to be a familiar and important voice (Lois's, for example). Otherwise, he'd have no reason to distinguish that call from all the other people across the city and beyond who are probably constantly calling for help.

On the other hand, if you wanted to say that it was well outside his hearing range, you could easily get away with that.

Thanks guys! Much appreciated!

As a matter of fact, it's that scene in SR that you mention which threw me off about this. Because I never thought he could hear THAT well.

Sounds logical that he'd hear someone calling his name specifically even if he's in another city - especially if it's Lois. But more than that seems a bit excessive, doesn't it?

Well, we're talking about a guy who, in one of the earlier movies, flew out into space and pushed the moon to a different point in its orbit. (Thus disrupting the entire Jewish calendar. Bad Supes!) "Excessive" is a relative term...

As for hearing his name called from across the country... Even that could be considered excessive. The intensity of a sound decreases exponentially as you move away from the source. Plus you have other sounds mixing in, high and low pressure zones, etc.

So, like I said... if you want him to, he can. But if you don't want him to, it wouldn't be hard to say that he can't.

If he concentrates, he can pick up a specific sound within a few miles. Like when he flew over the city, trying to tune in to the sound of Lois's pager. (Though how he knew Lois's pager from every other pager in the city, I'll never know.) Anything beyond that is entirely up to you.

One of those WTF moments on L&C, right up there with the charades scene in SLV . Also, you gotta wonder why she didn't just yell for help - it's not like she was gagged, after all.

If Lois yells, 'Help, Superman!!!' in Metropolis, surely Clark would hear it in Chicago, wouldn't he?

But then, if... oh, if a Mr. Geoffery Bethnialkowitz was the person yelling, and Clark had never heard his voice before, how likely is it that he would pick up the sound of it from Metropolis, when he himself was in Chicago?

Ann

Isn't there an episode where he can't? Now, it's been a while since I've watched an episode, so bear with me , but I'm pretty sure that in one episode the villains sent Superman to Philidelphia so that he couldn't hear Lois calling for help. IIRC, he failed to hear her until he was back in Metropolis. Think it was Philly - there was some crisis at a nuclear plant? Something like that. This could have been the time when Lois's exercise mat was booby-trapped with a bomb. Superman failed to hear her calling for help, which meant Lois had to keep going on the mat for a while?

I only remember that because I'm pretty sure it was this canon that I used as the basis for my Clark not hearing Lois calling for help/being in trouble when he was out of town at a conference in Caped Fear.

OTOH, my memory isn't that reliable given how long it's been since I watched the show, so maybe you should doublecheck those details, Lara.

LabRat (who can't even remember which ep that was...)

yup
in "We have a lot to talk about"
and yes it was Philadelphia

Ooooh! This is such a fascinating topic... because as everyone has pointed out, on the one hand you have WHALTTA where Superman doesn't hear Lois when he is in Philadelphia... Although, given the circumstances, would he had been listening for her? They were fighting, after all, and he had been looking for an excuse to be needed. He had been happy to get out of town and away from her.

So maybe that's the key. Superman probably has to fine tune his hearing a lot - otherwise he'd hear everything, all the time. So he probably has to concentrate on his hearing - reach out, so to speak - if he decides to hear anything very far away -- like in Superman Returns. He goes up into the Earth's atmosphere and then proceeds to "concentrate" and he hears *everything*.

So I think it depends on what you want Lara, and whether Clark *wants* to hear it and whether he is *concentrating* or not.

But I find this so fascinating because I was approaching this very subject myself in a fic I'm writing where Lois is in Paris. Clark wonders if he'll hear her if she screams - if she's in trouble. He thinks it would be possible, if he's tuned in enough, but would he be "tuned in" all the time? What if something's happening and he's not listening for her... The thought worries him.

Anyway, fun topic!

-- DJ

Oooh! Wow, what a debate I've started.

You guys are going to be disappointed once you realize what I needed the info for.

I had a bit of a plot hole to... fill? *lol*

The beginning of my story suddenly made no sense because I was forcing Superman to stay in Metropolis instead of going to Gotham to do... um... something... (ETA: yeah, yeah, Gotham... it was never really Chicago, but I didn't want to spoil the punch... guess I have now... *sigh*)

Anyway, so, I figured I might get away with explaining that he needed to stay "within earshot of Metropolis" in case something came up. Which, you know, something *does* come up, actually.

I'm glad there are some references to that in the series - because in comic books and movies they have him do things that defy all logic (like rotating the Earth backwards to go back in time... riiiiiiiiight!!) - at least, within the limits of L&C, I can pretty much safely assume that it makes sense he wouldn't be able to pick up on something going on at home while he's all the way in Gotham.

Meaning I don't have to rewrite the really amusing dialog I had at the beginning of this story. So... you know... *yay*!!!

Thanks guys! It's always wonderful to see how eager people are to help out answer even the strangest questions. This poor, lost and generally consufed little author is soooo grateful for that!!

LOL. I figured.

DJ, I'll give you the fine tuning. An excuse I've used before now, myself.

LabRat

Man, I hate it when I get consufed. Except for maybe that one time, on the cruise ship...

oi.. I must be too sleepy to get the cruise ship joke... (or is that a fish joke? oooh! is it?) The only thing that comes to my mind when I think of cruise ships is the insanely funny issue #1 of Superman/Batman Annual where Clark and Bruce are on a cruise ship and... for some reason... end up in bed together. That is SOOOOO worth reading, you just have NO idea. I still laugh when I think about it, and I read that in December!

As for 'consufed' - it's 'cause it's so much funnier than 'confused'. (read: it's one of my "I did that on purpose" typo things...)

hehehe!

Interesting discussion. Here is my nerdism of the day;

What he can hear depends upon what kind of sound it is. He can’t hear everything at once, he essentially have to cycle through different frequencies for it not to be garbled, I base this on Dead Lois Walking where he says he can’t listen at a distance when Lois is babbling in his ear, in fact he describes it as having a knife twisted in his head. So when he is in the bustle of the newsroom he won't automatically detect everything, but when he his actively listening for a particular sound his hearing apparently has a range of miles, I also imagine that the range increases when he is flying high and can ignore the backroom noise.

L&C Clark is based of Byrnes vision of Superman’s power level so what he did in SR is hardly applicable, unless that’s how you want it to work. But if he really can hear and process everything you make him virtually omniscient.

I could imagine that being very familiar with the sound he could pick out minute differences that separated it from other beepers when actively listening for it. It still doesn't explain why Lois didn’t cry for help, but Clark couldn’t know that she wasn’t gagged of course.

Wait! Does that mean I can't have him rotate the Earth backwards to have him go back in time? Oh, darn. Well... off to fix that plot hole (Just kidding)

ML

Nah! I guess since he's done it once (or twice, if you've seen the Donner cut) that counts as canon... At least, it can if you want it to. But you can totally ignore it, too, you know... I mean... Bryan Singer chose to ignore the fact that there were actually 4 movies made before his, so I'm guessing this means we can probably get away with anything at this point! *lol*

Now see, I never looked at it that way. I just thought that he flew fast enough around the earth to cause himself to go backward in time. And then when he overshot and had to fly 'forward' to catch up with were he wanted to go.

James

See, even Wikipedia agreas with me...

"Overcome with grief and fury, Superman flies into the upper atmosphere of Earth, where he hears Jor El's voice forbidding him to interfere in human history. Disobeying his father, Superman flies around the Earth until he is moving faster than the speed of light, thus travelling back in time. This is visually represented by the Earth appearing to spin backwards."

Well, I'll be damned! I thought it was the entire planet that had gone back in time...

huh... childhood fantasies are completely shot, now.

*lol*

And yet, we *saw* the dam mending itself, the earthquake un-happening, Lois un-dying... How does that work? As for the present and future versions of him - Superman can't be in two places at once!

It makes my head hurt to think about it. I was nine when I saw the movie and you'll never convince me that he didn't literally reverse the spin of the planet. Old habits, you know? <g>

It's based on relativity, which states that the faster you go, the slower time moves for you. As you approach the speed of light, time for you slows to a crawl.

Theoretically, if you managed to move faster than light (this would take an infinite amount of energy), you would (sort of) find yourself moving backwards in time. In fact, it's theoretically possible that there is another half of the universe coexisting with ours which is kind of mirror imaged with ours. That is, it would be made up of particles (named tachyons) which always moved faster than light, and which would require an infinite amount of energy to slow down. We wouldn't be able to detect them, however, because we wouldn't be able to interact with them.

Anyway... Silver Age comic books took this little tidbit and applied it to people like Superman and the Flash. It was not uncommon for them to move so fast that they broke though "the time barrier" and could thus travel through time. It was a well-established bit of comic book pseudo-science, which even showed up in the old Superfriends cartoons. The Chris Reeve movies were based on the Silver Age comics, so they basically took it for granted that he could do that.

So, yeah... He moves faster and faster. Time slows down, which appears to him as the Earth slowing. Then time begins to move backwards, which appears as the Earth moving backwards. We see the dam "mend" itself because time is "rewinding" for him. He's flying back in time to a point before the dam burst.

And yes, this means that, for a while, I believe that means that he was in two places at once. He stopped the missile, saved the people from the burst dam, etc. Then he went back in time, saved Lois, too, and relived the intervening span. He took the thread of his life and looped it back so that it was doubled for a brief span. Which is dangerous for a variety of reasons (including dramatic ones - if he can go back in time to fix any mistakes he makes, how do you present a credible plot challenge?), which is why we hear Jor-El telling him that what he's attempting is forbidden.

Paul

Don't forget, though, that sound has a limit to how fast it travels. Even if Clark *Can* hear al the way from Smallville to metropolis, sound travels at 769 miles per hour at sea level. If he's flying high, it's even worse. At heights commercial airlines fly, sound travels at 660 miles per hour.

So if Clark is in Smallville, it will take a couple of hours for the sounds to reach him.

Metropolis is supposedly in southeastern Delaware.
The driving distance from Lewes Deleware (also in that pert of the state) and Philadelphia is 117 miles, according to yahoo.

That means that Lois's cries would have reached Clark about 10 minutes after she made them. How long had she been exercising?

If it was more than ten minutes, then that suggests that Clark didn't hear her. So his hearing doesn't extend for more than 100 miles at most, and maybe much less.

Yet he can hear anywhere in Metropolis. Metropolis is similar to New York, which is 468 square miles. That's a little more than a 20 by 20 mile area.

So Clark can probably hear more than 20 and less than 100 miles.

That's my guess anyway.

*lol* This thread is giving me such a headache.


Paul - you just blew me away with all that technical explanation!