Flash #240: “Speed of Light” versus “Speed of Thought”
Flash #240 “Fast Money, part three: Broken News”
Tom Peyer, writer
Freddie Williams II, penciler
In the recent Flash #240, Flash rushes across town to battle the villainous gorilla Grodd (and for those of you not up on your Flash lore, Grodd is an super-intelligent gorilla with mind control powers).
Flash (monologue): Please Please Please. Let me see Grodd first — because if his force of mind kicked in — well, I’m faster than light but a helluva lot slower than thought. If he saw me first, I’m dead.
Just like the Mirror Master, Flash seems very confused by the difference between the speed of thought and the speed of light.
The speed of light is roughly 670 million miles per hour. Thought is a process involving neurons in the brain, and is thus subject to the speed at which impulses can travel along nerves. Depending on which nerves are involved, transmission speed can vary; regardless, nerve conduction tops out at around 250 miles per hour — six orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light (plus Flash is faster than the speed of light).
Even if you want to get metaphysical and claim that the “speed of thought” refers to something abstract which does not obey the rules of physics, remember that Flash is concerned that Grodd may see him first. Eyesight relies on light reaching the eyes and is thus dependent on the speed of light. Since Flash is moving faster than the speed of light, he should reach Grodd well before he can be seen.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I don’t comment often, but I appreciate your breakdowns. This sort of thing really interests me and more often than not I don’t know enough to figure it out.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
You accept that Flash can be faster than light, but quibble about the speed of thought? Picky picky picky. Personally I’d just assume that Grodd can think faster than light, i.e. backwards.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:15 am
A fine example of the speed of plot.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:17 am
If he’s moving faster than light, how does the Flash SEE anything? Technically, all he should see is a fatally hot point of blue radiation, which would probably kill him instantly. Also, his apparent mass should be enormous - hitting anything at that speed should kill him, his enemy, and probably everyone in the city where they are fighting. After the tidal effect ripped apart the Earth, that is.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:40 am
BJZA: ha!
Funny, I’ll suspend my disbelief that a guy can run faster than the speed of sound, but get miffed that he can supposedly go faster than light. NOTHING is faster than light, it’s the universal speed limit.
Of course, if he could go at LEAST as fast as light, what would the physiological effects be of a living being traveling at that speed without a vessel? Or the temporal effects? Or the mental effects?
May 28th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Since the Flash moves faster than the speed of light, he would actually reach Grodd before he made his move, since he would be traveling back in time.
It’s interesting to note that Special relativity doesn’t prevent something from traveling faster than light, only from traveling at the speed of light, which would be necessary to transition through from sub-light velocity. Faster than light particles are allowed by special relativity, but lead to physical absurdities like speed increasing as energy decreases, leading to infinite velocity.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Wait, is this Barry or Wally? Barry would know all about the speed of light and such, because Barry actually had a brain. Wally is a little lighter in the mental department.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
> Funny, I’ll suspend my disbelief that a guy can run faster than
> the speed of sound, but get miffed that he can supposedly
> go faster than light. NOTHING is faster than light, it’s the
> universal speed limit.
Tachyons do.
Maybe.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
It takes four years to get to Alpha Centauri traveling at the speed of light. How long does it take to think about being at Alpha Centauri? Under a second. Case closed.
Of course, narrow-minded critics will whine that when traveling by thought, you don’t actually go anyplace. Well, boo-hoo, but as Bill Gates would say, that’s a feature, not a bug. If you prefer to travel WITHOUT thought go right ahead, but you won’t be able to tell anyone what you saw when you get back so what’s the point?
;-)
May 28th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
arkonbey
May 28th, 2008 at 7:40 am
> Funny, I’ll suspend my disbelief that a guy can run faster than
> the speed of sound, but get miffed that he can supposedly
> go faster than light. NOTHING is faster than light, it’s the
> universal speed limit.
———————————————————-
Dr Archeville
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Tachyons do.
Maybe.
——————————————————–
Mr. B
I was about to post tachyons theortically surpas light speed, but Dr Archeville beat me to the punch. I recall that tachyons go so fast, that they can get in front of themselves. That just blows my mind! I like to think of tachyons as the Dunkin’ Donuts guy-(guy that makes the donuts commercial). Somehow they travel so fast, they will exist in two different spaces at the exact same moment.
(Dunkin’ Donuts commercial)
It’s Time to Make the Donuts (Classic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY0Ecn393qI
May 28th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
But are either of these faster than the speed of night? I ask only because once upon a time there was light in my life, but now there’s only love in the dark.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Official Comment
mike.
Could be worse. You could be living in a powder keg and giving off sparks
May 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Woo! Credited!
I like the fact that all of the nay-sayers can be silenced with two simple words: Speed Force. The SF helps all speedsters go fast and not cause themselves any harm. In the DCU. Quicksilver in the Marvel U, however, is something entirely different…
May 28th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I was about to say that I was under the impression that the Speed Force meant that the Flash was, to some degree, dimensionally shifted. Just like the Star Trek explanation, at high speeds, he shifts into a parallel dimension where either the speed of light is higher or relativity doesn’t apply (I can’t remember which it is). Supposedly, the classic Starfleet symbol is actually a depiction of this, with the upper part of the arc representing how, as speed increases, so does mass and therefore it bottoms out. The lower arc represents the “warp universe” where the rules work differently. Or maybe it’s the other way around… it was in one of the books.
And darn you, mike… not only do I have the song going through my head, I have various versions from karaoke running through my head. The only song which attracts more off-key singing is American Pie. Curse my near-perfect aural recall…
May 28th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
For the story-conceit, I’d accept Flash can go at light speed without major collateral relativistic effects. Maybe he turns himself into something like photons, as has been suggested in some stories. But once that rule has been established, he should be near-unbeatable. Even at 1/10th the speed of light, he’s moving faster than any non-speedster can react.
I think the only way to save this would be to say that Grodd can set up something that works as soon as the Flash comes within range, so it doesn’t matter how fast the Flash is moving, IF Grodd is devoting his attention to that mental capture-field (and Grodd can’t just do it all the time because it takes too much attention to maintain that sort of mental force field continuously).
How far is Grodd’s mental range anyway? Couldn’t a good rifle-shot take him out?
May 29th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Just because Flash CAN run past light speed doesn’t mean that he always DOES run past light speed. Even with the Speed Force, it was my understanding that Flash surpassing the sound barrier still caused a sonic boom and disruptions to the physical environment around him. (The Speed Force protects Flash from friction, etc., but does not protect the world from the Flash.) Therefore, in especially densly poulated areas, Flash has to be careful about when and where he maximized his speed. (As with all great power, yada, yada, yada.) Perhaps as Flash “runs across town,” he is regulating his own speed in order to prevent damage to the urban development and population? Two hundred-fifty mph is still pretty darn fast on a city street.
Not to mention the fact that if Flash were moving at the functionally invisible speed of light when he hits Grodd as pictured, there would be very little Grodd left. After all, if a 40g rifle bullet can be so fatal travelling at speeds around 1900 mph, consider the damage of a fist weighing 400g traveling at speeds exceeding 670,00,000 mph.
May 31st, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Thanks for this excellent post. People often jump to the conclusion that the speed of thought is much faster than it really is. Heck, it’s basically one-third the speed of sound. BTW: I’ve added you to my blogroll at http://defendersfan.blogspot.com
June 1st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hypothetical speed of thought (psionic energy) is irrelevant to the problem, Grodd’s reaction time is limited by the speed of neural signaling. Flash just has to see Grodd before Grodd has a chance to react.
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