Silver Age Flash

February 12th, 2008

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

While sitting in the ER waiting room and exam room last night, I managed to read through the entire Showcase Presents The Flash. (This is not an indictment of the ER — it’s flu season and there is a nasty flu bug going around town so the ER was packed. My injury was relatively minor and I knew there’d be a wait. Scott’s First Rule of the ER: Bring the thickest book you can find — quickly — to read while you wait).

Silver Age Flash stories are always a great read, but there were more than a few stories inside that sent my medical and scientific senses a-twitching:

Flash

You do realize the mirror reflections are also light, right?The Flash being able to run that fast is a post for another day

First, Flash #105 (by John Broome and Carmine Infantino).

I’m sorry Mirror Master, but the speed of thought is not faster than the Flash. “Thought” is a biochemical process and as such is subject to the laws of science. Nerve conduction along and between neurons is not faster than the speed of light, in fact according to this neuroscience page (mainly about transmission of pain and touch sensations, but the same principles apply), nerve conduction tops out at a few hundred miles per hour, much slower than the speed of light (roughly 186,000 miles per second hour). Flash, on the other hand, can run faster than the speed of light — much faster than any nerve or thought.

Now if you want to get all philosophical in your definition of “thought” and claim that it is not subject to the laws of science, remember that thought must be put into action, and muscles do obey the laws of science.

Flash

cover, Flash 115Next, let’s take a look at Flash #115, particularly the story “The Day the Flash Weighed 1,000 Pounds” (again by John Broome and Carmine Infantino):

Barry Allen, who is 6′1″ according the statistics I could find, weighs 195 pounds. This gives him a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25.7 (which on a side note, technically makes him overweight, and other than this issue of the Flash, Barry has never been drawn as anything but skinny).

Now how about this 1,000 pound Flash? He has a BMI of 131.9. Remember that anything over 30 is considered obese and over 40 morbidly obese. Personally, I’ve never seen anyone this heavy. Superhero or not, I don’t think he’d be able to move with that much weight on his frame. (According to a quick Google search, the world’s heaviest man weights 1234 pounds and is barely able to move).

How did the Flash lose all this weight by the end of the story? He climbed into a commercial-sized potato dehydrator and sweated out all that extra weight. Seriously. File this under “do not try this at home” (it’s dangerous and anyway, it wouldn’t work).

Flash

Finally, here’s some technobabble from Captain Cold:

I don't light refraction works that way

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7 Responses to “ Silver Age Flash ”

  1. Maxime
    February 13th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

    Actually, light is much faster than that. It can travel up to 1 000 000 000 km/h, wich is 300 000 000 per second. I doubt there is something faster than that in our head.

  2. Josh
    February 13th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Modern BMI calculations mystify me.

    I am 5′7″ tall. When I was 16, and pretty thin, without an ounce of fat in evidence anywhere on my body, I weighed about 160. I ran track - didn’t lift weights. I wouldn’t have been described as “muscular” by any means. Note that under current standards my BMI would have been 25.1 - just inside the “overweight” range.

    During my 20s I weighed about 170. Again, with no evidence of excess fat, in good shape - but definitely “overweight” from looking at my BMI.

    Now I weigh 190. You can see my gut, but it’s very minor. But add two more pounds and I’d be “obese”. Yeah, whatever.

    I’m looking at the calculator here: http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

  3. Seth Finkelstein
    February 13th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    I’d assume all Barry Allen’s running around means he’s in good athletic shape, so the weight is muscle, not fat. Thus his 1,000 pound form likely had a lot more muscle than the typical person of that weight.

    Actually, Captain Cold’s statement is not *too* far off from reality. Cold-air (”arctic”) mirages are real and well-known. And if his cold-gun shoots liquid helium, that’s not far from absolute zero. What he thinks is more like a “this goes to 11″ for his cold-gun.

    Absolute zero is −459.67 F.

    If his cold-gun does a physically possible -459.66 F, he could even be excused for rounding off.

  4. Maire Smith
    February 13th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    Barry Allen, skinny? Which pictures are you looking at? He looks pretty muscular to me compared with real human men (as opposed to Superman, Batman, and so on, who would all definitely score as obese, because of their huge muscles).

  5. OptimusShr
    February 14th, 2008 at 7:02 am

    We take a picture of your head, add the Spider-sense lines and write: “Medical and scientific senses tingling!”

  6. Jonathan Hohensee
    February 14th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    “I am 5′7″ tall. When I was 16, and pretty thin, without an ounce of fat in evidence anywhere on my body, I weighed about 160. I ran track - didn’t lift weights. I wouldn’t have been described as “muscular” by any means. Note that under current standards my BMI would have been 25.1 - just inside the “overweight” range.

    During my 20s I weighed about 170. Again, with no evidence of excess fat, in good shape - but definitely “overweight” from looking at my BMI.

    Now I weigh 190. You can see my gut, but it’s very minor. But add two more pounds and I’d be “obese”. Yeah, whatever.”

    The vague and inflexible nature of the BMI is main reason behind the “obesity” epidemic. If you had two people who where 6′2 and weighed 200 pounds, but one had a lot of muscle and the other had a lot of flab, both of them would be considered “overweight.”

  7. ArekExcelsior
    May 31st, 2008 at 2:16 am

    “The vague and inflexible nature of the BMI is main reason behind the “obesity” epidemic. If you had two people who where 6′2 and weighed 200 pounds, but one had a lot of muscle and the other had a lot of flab, both of them would be considered “overweight.””

    The problem is that the BMI and similar indices have been just as vague and inflexible for decades now yet the problem’s getting worse. Americans ARE getting fatter on average.

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