Superman.

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by TheFrogger, Jul 3, 2018.

  1. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Hi there. My question is this...if Superman came from Krypton, given the time to traverse the space involved, would he have aged?
     
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  3. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    You just, like...

    Totally blew my mind.
     
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  5. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Good possibility of Kal-El being dust by then. The planet located 27.1 light-years from Earth, and the escape vessel not necessarily displaying any sign of exploiting fabulist shortcuts or fantasy FTL space-drives. (Certainly not in the earlier depictions of the voyage, anyway -- where a tiny, ordinary rocket was recruited.)

    Far more challenging, however, is how the remains of the exploded world made it across interstellar space in good time to serve as the Achilles' heel of kryptonite.

    Given the enduring embarrassment of being named after a chemical element, it's still remarkable how no version of the comic book legend has ever attempted to retcon a re-spelling of the planet as "Crypton". The etymology of that change then suggesting "enigmatic or mysterious" attributes which could only enhance Superman's origin all the more in that kind of genre.

    ~
     
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  7. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    How did all that junk get into our system?
     
  8. Unending Final Reminder Registered Member

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    They could say he was sent in a spaceship equipped with a temporal stasis pod, but have they? I don't know
     
  9. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    The obvious "solution" would be time-dilation by travelling at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light. If a ship accelerates at 1g to the half-way point and then decelerates at 1g the rest of the way, it would take about 6.6 years from the perspective of the occupant to travel the 27 light years, and only 28.9 years from a stationary external observer.
    So he could have entered the ship as a baby and arrived on earth aged under 7 by travelling at just 1g acceleration. At 2g he would have aged just under 4 years by the time he arrived etc.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    It was a really big and directional explosion. But then it slowed down.
     
  11. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Similar to the response I got in 1963.
     
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  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Isn't Krypton the Earth word for the planet?

    What do Kryptonioans call it in their language?


    (Similar question to: why does the Wookie planet have a name that Wookies can't even pronounce? )
     
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  13. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    It's happening again!
     
  14. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Yah, would probably work for one of the many background scenarios (if ignoring how kryptonite got here at a normal crawl). But in terms of the inconsistency of the canon over the whole spectrum of comic books, movies, radio & tv programs, and goodness knows what else... Wouldn't fit for the time interval of all the origin stories (the duration of the trip supposedly varying in range from days, weeks, months, 2 or 3 years, to as great as 20,000 years).

    In some, Krypton was even a resident of Earth's solar system (thus apparently skewering the tradition of the red sun). The ridiculous little chemical-combustion type rocket featured in the early illustrated stories (and I guess the '50s tv show pilot), certainly wouldn't approach relativistic-effect speeds or achieve the home planet's escape velocity. Maybe my memory is playing tricks, but in Smallville, I occasionally felt I heard Krypton as actually being referenced in another galaxy. A vastly more mind-boggling fantasy challenge for the debris to reach Earth as kryptonite, regardless of how Kal-El's vessel got here.

    But in the end... Considering the physics-defying magic of Superman's powers (and the nonsense of a yellow sun providing them)... The internal coherence of the scattered canon and the commensurability with rules of this non-fictional cosmos hardly matters. Anymore than in a dream or fairy tale.

    ~
     
  15. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not sure what Krypton is called to Kryptonians. Reminds me of, "Greetings." Not, "Hello." "Hello," in whatever language you speak. Isn't Superman's heat-vision the result if drugs in his system???
     
  16. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Is Clark Kent able to fly or does the cap and leotard provide the powers?
     
  17. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Siegel and Shuster named it after the element krypton. In various movies and tv shows of recent times, one or more of them might or might not have posited that the native language called it something else. But that goes back to the overall inconsistency of the canon scattered across various formats and eras.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton_(comics)

    ~
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I know, but that's still in Earth language. i.e. is there anything to say it was called Krypton before Earthlings needed a name for it?
     
  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    As the creators, Siegel and Shuster were prior-in-rank to the Earthlings in the story. They could thereby assign "Krypton" to being the actual native name of the planet, with Superman eventually passing that on to humans as he learns about his origins via whatever means. There's no indication that this was not the case.

    In the #238th issue of the *Superman* comic book in 1971, a Kryptonian school instructor supposedly provided a source for the name. Although it's doubtless a fable in their culture (like a combination of the Adam & Eve tale and Romulus / Remus founding Rome), it indicates that Krypton was the indigenous name. This also makes it a speech coincidence that it sounded like the Terran utterance for an element. Though there's no way of getting around Jerry Siegel (largely) deriving it from the latter, in our world that's hierarchically anterior to the fictional work.

    Once upon a time, two humanoid space explorers wearing armored suits -- each visiting from a different planet -- just happened to land, simultaneously, on a previously unexplored wilderness planet. After some initial misunderstandings, they ended up saving each other from nasty lifeforms, but also lost their spaceships to local conditions. They finally took off their helmets and introduced themselves. One was a man who called himself "Kryp." The other was a woman who called herself "Tonn." Ergo, to this very day the world inhabited by that couple's descendants was called, in their honor, "Krypton!"
     
  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    A̶h̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶i̶c̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶p̶l̶a̶y̶e̶d̶ ̶"̶'̶!̶|̶|̶/̶!̶'̶|̶\̶\̶"̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶r̶u̶c̶t̶o̶r̶'̶s̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶E̶n̶g̶l̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶e̶n̶j̶o̶y̶m̶e̶n̶t̶.̶

    [ EDIT ] Never mind. The origin story unambiguously makes the case.

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    Last edited: Jul 4, 2018
  21. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    It's a dark part in American history. Telling, how at the heart of it, that all Americans - even New Yorker's - are prejudiced.

    "Speak English you Kryptofuck or get out of my country!"

    Fortunately, for Superman, he is such a womanizer he fits in to a male dominated society:
     
  22. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    Is Superman in this country legally?
     
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  23. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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