Countdown #48: How Fast is Jimmy’s Signal Watch?
Filed under: Comics
There’s panic in Metropolis! Jimmy signals Superman with his watch, has some adventures, and then a short time later, Superman arrives.
Superman: Sorry I’m late — I was out near Vega when I got your…
Vega is a star that is 25.3 light years from Earth. Just how fast is the signal from Jimmy’s watch traveling to be able to reach Superman in that span of time? Generally speaking, electromagnetic waves (including radio waves) travel at the speed of light and sound waves travel even slower
Vega is 1.49 × 1014 miles from Earth. Assuming it took the signal 15 minutes to reach Superman, that means that the signal traveled at 5.96 × 1014 miles per hour, or 1.65 × 1011 miles per second. In other words, the signal from Jimmy’s watch traveled nearly 900,000 times faster than the speed of light (and nearly 150 million times faster than the speed of sound).
That’s quite a signal on that watch (especially when you consider that historically, Jimmy’s watch couldn’t reach through space).
Look at it the other way too: How fast was Superman flying? And can he see where he’s going if he’s moving that much faster than light?
June 1st, 2007 at 12:00 am
I haven’t read the issue yet, but are you sure he meant the star? Maybe Metropolis has a Vega Boulevard.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:06 am
Heh, I thought the same thing. Maybe he was just out near Vega, Norway or something.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:55 am
Great minds think alike!
June 1st, 2007 at 4:34 am
I think Superman’s just lying.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:41 am
Supes recently added a pocket starship to his collection of equipment based out of the Fortress(which might explain his visit to Vega if he was actually on interstellar business). Perhaps the ship’s remotely tapped into Earth’s communications networks and keeps an “ear” open for Jimmy’s watch signal?
June 1st, 2007 at 5:50 am
Perhaps Superman has some sort of Hyperspace Transmitter in orbit around earth and the matching remote earpiece allways with him. And if he really flew that fast, he wouldn’t be able to see where he’s going. Besides, he’d need a lot of time speeding up and slowing down. Then again, it isn’t possible to go as fast as or faster than light anyway. Maybe he has the ability to fold space-time…
June 1st, 2007 at 5:53 am
It’s not the weirdest thing Jimmy’s signal watch has ever done. I discovered over at Superdickery that it once managed to send a signal through time! Check it out:
http://www.superdickery.com/science/81.html
And who knows? Maybe Superman was hanging out with Suzanne Vega.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:47 am
I’d say he used a wormhole.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:25 am
Wow! This was a great catch. http://www.badastronomy.com should have caught it first, though…
June 1st, 2007 at 7:26 am
If we assume that Superman can time travel, then the signal actually did take 25 years and then he just went back and showed up in the nick of time. Very conveniant if you ask me. We might also assume that if the Enterprise could get up to Warp 9, which I believe was a logarithmic scale, than Superman should at least be able to achieve that speed, which would be 1,000,000,000 times the speed of light. That should have got him there in plenty of time.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:37 am
Isn’t Vega a blue star, and therefore not as good for his powers as a good ol’ yellow one? (I seem to remember that from the Last Son of Krypton novel.) That might go along with the spaceship theory — he also had one in LSOK. I like the wormhole idea too.
Otherwise, I’m inclined to think that “out past Vega” is a euphemism for having to use the restroom….
June 1st, 2007 at 10:35 am
Jimmy’s watch uses Quantum Teleportation to instantaneously send the signal to Sup no matter where he is in the universe.
Duh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation
:)
June 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
The signal watch actually signals the flash, who hand-delivers the message.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I thought they left the S off. He was at the slots.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:30 pm
This reminds me of the time Lois got shot in Iraq - sorry, Qurac - and Superman heard it from Metropolis in time to fly all the waythere and catch her before she hit the ground.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
“This reminds me of the time Lois got shot in Iraq - sorry, Qurac - and Superman heard it from Metropolis in time to fly all the waythere and catch her before she hit the ground.”
How does the sound of Lois being shot differ from the sounds of all the other people being shot around the world and in not!Iraq at any given time?
June 1st, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Actually, I just assumed Supes was on his way back to Earth when he intercepted Jimmy’s signal, though there’s actually nothing in the story to suggest this.
It’s curious why Jimmy would need a signal device that doesn’t operate through space. I believe it’s been shown that Superman’s hearing is sensitive enough to pick out a familiar voice from anywhere on Earth, so Jimmy could just call out.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I have no idea. I was more impressed that he was able to somehow hear the shot in time to catch her despite the fact that the sound could in no way have possibly reached Metropolis.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
it’s probably a typo. Maybe it was Vegas. haha…
June 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 am
Jimmy’s ears were damaged by the blast. Superman actually says, “Sorry, Lois and I were out for vegan. I got tandoori…Great Rao! Is that Lightwave?”
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Supes actually said “I was playing my old Sega”.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Does Jimmy responod “Vega, please.”
June 4th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
wait, isn’t Superman out with the JLA dealing with the Amazons when Kansas blows up? i could have sworn i read that in one of the Amazons Attack books…
June 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I think that was just code he and Jimmy use when in public. It means, “I was in the bathroom; #2.”
Or threre’s the obvious explanation–this Adam Beechen character? Not very good. And DC doesn’t have time to edit this thing, since it’s weekly.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:07 am
It’s a typo, he meant VEGAS.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:12 am
I vote for a Metropolis suburb called Vega.
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