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"Deconstructing Barry "
by Quentin Long
Let's get this out of the way: I don't share Unca Cheeks' opinion on the bestest superhero of all time.
Although we can (and do) agree that the Batman is definitely a worthy character, my own personal favorite member of the spandexed clan has a bit more red in his costume.
It's Barry "Flash" Allen, baby. Word up.
To my mind, the Flash has always been "the thinking man's Superman".
Let me explain: Superman can do pretty much anything he likes because he's got a list of powers as long as your arm, and every last one of 'em goes to 11.
As for the Flash, well, all he does is, he can move real fast.
However, the thing about Ultimate Speed is that it allows you to perform quite a range of different feats... after you've figured out how to accomplish said feats.
From this point of view, you could say that the difference between these two heroes is the difference between Vast Cosmic Power with a detailed user's manual (i.e. Supes), on the one hand, and without (i.e. Barry), on the other.
But for all that I love the character, I gotta admit that the Flash does put a fair amount of strain on a body's suspension of disbelief, perhaps more so than your average superhero.
Which physical laws does Barry violate, and how does he manage to get away with it? That's the topic of this week's sermon. Turn to page 255 in your HANDBOOK OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS, please...
To get a better notion of what makes the Flash so incredible, let's look at Barry in a 100-meter dash. He's poised at the starting line... the referee's pistol signals the start of the race... and some unGodly small fraction of a second later, he reaches the finish line.
Okay, that's simple enough; what could be so unbelievable about that?
Lots of things, actually.
"Hey, Barry! How fast were you going?"
"I didn't feel like a workout, so I kept it down to 30,000 kilometers per second -- roughly a tenth of lightspeed."
"Thanks for the Flash Fact, Barry."
"My pleasure."
So: What we've got here is an adult male human, mass 81 kilograms plus change, moving at 30,000 kps. And to see how remarkable this truly is, we're going to have to work through some numbers...
An object in motion carries a certain amount of kinetic energy, how much being determined by the object's mass and speed. Energy is measured in units called "ergs", and an erg is a laughably small quantity of energy -- if a 1-gram mass (about 1/30 oz) moves at a speed of 1 centimeter (about half an inch) per second, that's 1 erg. Still, enough ergs can add up; as an example, the Sun radiates 3.86*10^33 (i.e. "three-point- eight-six times ten to the 33rd power") ergs into space every second.
When Barry's moving at 30,000 kilometers per second, he's carrying 3.65*10^23 ergs of kinetic energy, which is enough to move a 16-ton weight from the Earth to the Sun (about 160 million miles).
In physics, the term "horsepower" is one of the more common units of measurement, and yes, it's a unit of power (in the physics sense). If you do 33,000 foot-pounds of work in 1 minute, that's 1 (one) horsepower. The human body ordinarily doesn't generate that kind of power: the best human athletes are good for half a horsepower in short spurts, or a quarter of a horsepower over extended periods of time.
In our example, Barry had to generate more than three million (3.2*10^6) horsepower.
At this point, we could go on to calculate how many gravities of acceleration it would take for Barry to go from zero to 30,000 kps within a distance of no more than 100 meters... but why bother? Let's just say that it would take Barry more than one full second to reach that speed at a constant acceleration of 30 kilogravities, and leave it at that, shall we?
The more astute among you have noticed that we've been ignoring air resistance in the above calculations. This is not an error; rather, it's a reflection of the Flash's "friction-shielding aura", a highly convenient energy field which does exactly what its name says.
Sadly, it's not at all clear if this aura covers Barry's feet.
On the one hand, it damn well better cover his feet, lest friction-heat broil the poor man from the toes up; on the other hand, it equally damn well better not cover his feet, since it would be flatly impossible for Barry to run at all (let alone at relativistic speeds) on frictionless, hence traction-free, boots.
Traction is another point against the Flash. Traction between two touching objects is determined by how their surfaces interact with each other; if one object is made of some material with little structural strength, that object is liable to have bits of its substance worn away by the contact.
Given the astronomically high accelerations that Barry must employ when doing his Flash-y thing, he should logically etch boot-wide trenches deep into every one of the surfaces he runs on, be those surfaces asphalt, concrete, sheet rock, or whatever else. Curiously, no such trenches have ever been seen in Central City!
So: Now that we know why it ought to be flatly impossible for the Flash to do all the things he does, let's see if we can't figure out how he manages to get away with it anyway. Looking at the comics, the current theory is that the Flash taps into the "Speed Force", which is basically a cosmic Eveready in some other dimension. Well, this Speed Force concept is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. While the Speed Force neatly answers any and all questions pertaining to the Flash's true source of energy, it's a far poorer explanation for the Flash's immunity to the harmful effects of acceleration; his friction-shielding aura; the inconsistencies in the observed behavior of said aura; and the absence of harmful effect on any surface the Flash runs on.
Clearly, a better explanation is needed.
The Flash's
true power is not super-speed; rather, it's the ability to manipulate
the flow of Time.
..
For normal humans, Time moves along at the fixed rate of 1 second per second; for Barry Allen, Time moves along at whatever rate he damn well wants it to.
As an example, let's say Barry sets his own Time-flow to 1,000 seconds per second. At that point, he's existing 1,000 times faster than a normal human; what Barry would regard as a brisk 4-mph walk, would be seen by anyone else as superfast motion at a speed of 4,000 mph. From Barry's point of view, all the negative aspects of super-speed are irrelevant; as far as he's concerned, there ain't so such animal as super-intense acceleration, nor does his body have to generate an impossibly high amount of energy in an impossibly short time.
The celebrated "friction-shielding aura" is, in truth, nothing but an indication of where Barry's Time-control stops. Under normal conditions, Barry's power is active only within a region best defined as "all points within a couple of inches of Barry's skin", but he can, with concentration, expand the boundary of his Time-control to encompass a somewhat larger volume of space. From Barry's point of view, there isn't any significant velocity difference between his body and the air he moves through, therefore air friction isn't a problem.
Since the surfaces touched by Barry's feet are also affected by his Time-control, it follows that the impact of Barry's footfalls can never do an abnormally high amount of damage to any surface. If it can withstand Barry moving across it at a Time-rate of 1 second per second, it can withstand Barry moving across it at any Time-rate whatsoever.
Other consequences and ramifications of the Flash's Time-control power are left as an exercise for the reader.
Th' Perfesser can (and should) be e-mailed with questions; comments; suggestions; and expressions of fawning adoration at:
Cubist@aol.com.
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