How Much Power Would Superman Actually Consume?

[Spacescifi]

 

Sounds absurd I know...and this is not for scifi.

It's just fun deconstructing tropes with a bit of reality.

So he says he is powered by the sun.

OK...solar panels don't do what he does.

But what if he literally absorbed ALL the sunlight radiation within a light hour's radius of the sun? For just a few seconds...as everyone else will notice the black out?

What then?

How much energy is in a light hour's radius of solar radiation from the sun packed into say..three seconds?

 

I am betting that the power level will be generous enough to run several of our powerplants, but it won't probably be enough power to do everything superman already does.

Realistically?

He would probably have to absorb all the solar radiation around Earth at a few light hours for at least a month or two to really be Superman.

But a month without sunlight for Earth because Superman is powering up would be bad.

So yeah.

 

What do you think?

Edited December 12, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

  

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So he says he is powered by the sun.

He is powered with

Spoiler

When he reads it, he feels it hurts and blows.

 

Edited December 12, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Scotius]

One light hour worth of radiation consumed in three seconds? Superman eats stuff faster than light?

Anyway - one hour of solar radiation. I would think it would be easily enough to glass the surface of Earth, if not outright vaporize our planet. I think you have to dial it down quite a bit.

[K^2]

Superman once went FTL, so according to modern physics, he had to have consumed all the power. Things like flying and eye-lasers aren't even worth mentioning on this scale, honestly.

[KSK]

According to this website, the sun puts out about 385 x 10²⁴ W or Js^-1

The volume of Earth's ocean's is (apparently) 1.4x10¹⁸ m³

Amount of energy required to raise 1kg of water from 20 degrees to its boiling point is approximately  335 KJ, so for a cubic metre (1000 kg) that becomes 335 MJ or 335 x10⁶ J

So, assuming that I haven't made a mess of my units, the sun puts out approximately enough energy per second to bring all the oceans on Earth to their boiling point.

I draw two conclusions from this:  1)  It's probably a good thing that we only receive a small fraction of total solar flux. 2) If Superman can absorb one hours worth of total solar flux, he can pretty much do what he wants.  

Edited December 12, 2020 by KSK

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Amount of energy required to raise 1kg of water from 20 degrees to its boiling point is approximately  335 KJ, so for a cubic metre (1000 kg) that becomes 335 MJ or 335 x10⁶ J

And 10 times more to evaporate (enthalpy of vaporization), ~3 MJ/kg for water to turn it into steam.

[lajoswinkler]

Power or energy?

I've noticed US Americans usually don't understand the distinction, courtesy of the wonky language they speak, and the bad public education giving them laissez faire approach to various topics. As usual, vast majority of the world uses proper word, but USA does not. Energy and power are not the same thing. Energy can be relatively pathetic, but if the time in it's applied is very short, power can be impressive. One example of it is lightning - total oxidation of bucket of gasoline worth of energy crammed in microseconds.

[KSK]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

And 10 times more to evaporate (enthalpy of vaporization), ~3 MJ/kg for water to turn it into steam.

Ahh - thank you! I was being deliberately precise with my 'raising to boiling point' because I couldn't be bothered to look up enthalpy of vaporization.

So - 11 seconds of total solar flux to boil off the world's oceans?  I think @Scotiuswas in the right ballpark for an hour of same.

Edited December 12, 2020 by KSK

[Scotius]

Honestly, it's best not to delve into comic book "pHYsiCkS". Only madness waits there LOL

Though i admit - I had lots of fun in role-playing thread on one of comic book forums. Every time I was making a new character to play, i tried to come with ingenious and cunning ways to abuse comic "reality" with real science. My fellow players quickly realized that "weak and unoptimized" characters i tended to create could really throw  curveballs into any quest.

My all time favorite creation was a gardener. Humble, unassuming guy tending to lawns and rose bushes around our superhero group headquarters. His power of creating small sub-space portals to connect two different places was used mainly to water the plants (by connecting to nearest body of freshwater) and to shove trash and debris... somewhere else. While i posted detailed power sheet for my toon, i worded it in a way to... muddle the finer points of how i intended to make full use of them. I even told our GM straight out those portals could lead to anywhere in the Universe, though i made a point to explicitly highlight their limitations - mainly size, biggest portal could be maximum 10 centimeters across. I asked him to not tell other players, and he agreed (being curious where i will take it). There was some grumbling that i was weakening the group by filling the slot with an useless character, but i responded by pointing out that i was pulling my weight as a reconnaissance guy (Yes, i could see and hear through my portals too. Heh, i even stole some mission-critical documents by opening a portal inside a safe and sticking my arm through it).

But the true vindication cane at the end of the quest, when our GM decided to stop pulling his punches and made main bad guy send a group of twelve meters tall robots to invade our HQ - think Sentinels from X-Men universum. Just as nasty and impervious to attacks as originals. There was fighting. There was barely contained panic when the lack of results sank in. There began the frantic discussion about abandoning the base and escaping retreating somewhere else. It was exactly the moment i was waiting for for weeks worth of posting.

"Hey, GM - i believe my character did not take his turn attacking the robots."

"Well, yes? What you're going to do?"

"Question first: Those robots are heavily armored from the outside, as we found out. But what about their insides? Are they protected from attacks?"

"Sure they are. Electrically insulated, shockproof, waterproof. The works."

"What about the temperature?"

Cue 'uh-oh' moment from GM.

"Uhhh... they have cooling systems? You will not overheat them with fire."

"Oh, no problem. I wasn't going to use a flamethrower. I'm opening four portals: Three inside the chests of all robots. And main one, connected to those three - located inside of magma chamber under the Yellowstone caldera. For about 10 seconds. Think it will be enough."

...

"You think correctly, you cheeks. All robots fall over, molten rock pouring out from every opening in their chassis. Quest completed."

Because you can cover your excessively large war machines with slabs of titanium, but no one managed to build a CPU able to withstand direct contact with 2000 degrees Celsius hot magma.

Then there was the moment, when the same character KO'ed Big Bads lieutenant by dropping a random piece of rubble into one portal, letting it out from another portal... fifteen kilometers higher...  then letting it fall down ten kilometers or so, gathering a lot of speed and kinetic energy in the process, then catching it in another portal... and finally releasing this technically still falling rock from yet another portal placed ten centimeters above said minion's head.

Sometimes i wish comic book writers would "work smarter, not harder" on their characters and scenarios. Nowadays, at best, we'll get Flying Brick # 348 going SMASH PUNY ENEMY WITH THE POWER OF TEN THOUSANDS SUNS!!!

[YNM]

idk, to be really honest Superman would be barely comparable to pulp sci-fi at best. Discussing the reality of how one would do so is difficult.

[Kerbart]

There is so much off with the physics of Superman (or superheroes movies in general) that the laws of physics don't apply; hence talking about what the power consumption would be if the laws of physics would apply are simply pointless.

[wumpus]

I'd recommend sifting through Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for the physics of Superman.  The comic I was looking for :https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2305

Presumably the "Fortress of Solitude" is orbiting inside of Mecury's orbit, and can focus sunlight onto Superman powering him up far greater than mere sunlight out at Earth's orbit.  This allowed his parents (and the rest of Smallville) to survive his childhood/adolescence with less than full superpower (presumably he also had to save enough to get to orbit/sun-synchronous orbit/Mercury orbit and build the fortress).  And while presumably Metropolis is a city that doesn't sleep, he can find times when he can leave to top off his power level.

[Scotius]

56 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'd recommend sifting through Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for the physics of Superman.  The comic I was looking for :https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2305

Presumably the "Fortress of Solitude" is orbiting inside of Mecury's orbit, and can focus sunlight onto Superman powering him up far greater than mere sunlight out at Earth's orbit.  This allowed his parents (and the rest of Smallville) to survive his childhood/adolescence with less than full superpower (presumably he also had to save enough to get to orbit/sun-synchronous orbit/Mercury orbit and build the fortress).  And while presumably Metropolis is a city that doesn't sleep, he can find times when he can leave to top off his power level.

Uh-huh. Which opens just another can of worms - how exactly this technology\magic\condensed handwavium could keep such unreal level of coherency of the beam across millions of kilometers? Or how it avoided turning atmosphere between the point of ingress of the beam and Superman's body into a howling pillar of overheated plasma?

Madness.

It waits.

Quietly.

[Gargamel]

Moved to the Lounge.

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

Madness.

It waits.

Quietly.

 

I nearly laughed, had to fight it here.

12 hours ago, KSK said:

According to this website, the sun puts out about 385 x 10²⁴ W or Js^-1

The volume of Earth's ocean's is (apparently) 1.4x10¹⁸ m³

Amount of energy required to raise 1kg of water from 20 degrees to its boiling point is approximately  335 KJ, so for a cubic metre (1000 kg) that becomes 335 MJ or 335 x10⁶ J

So, assuming that I haven't made a mess of my units, the sun puts out approximately enough energy per second to bring all the oceans on Earth to their boiling point.

I draw two conclusions from this:  1)  It's probably a good thing that we only receive a small fraction of total solar flux. 2) If Superman can absorb one hours worth of total solar flux, he can pretty much do what he wants.  

 

Wow.

So absorbing all the energy from the sun and converting it into other forms of power is all you need to be super.

Thanks.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So absorbing all the energy from the sun and converting it into other forms of power is all you need to be super.

Yes.

Spoiler

 

[Scotius]

Sun, glaring at Earth:

"Bunch of freeloaders!"

[KSK]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Yes.

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I. AM . CACTUS MAN!

(Prickly disposition. Not a team player. Has tendency to brood in the desert)