Thoughts on implied super-speed due to super-strength alone

[MarkPalenik]

@ Captain Kal

I wasn't thinking of the entanglement nervous system from the point of it being another power (speed based or otherwise), just an organic evolutionary enhancement to allow muscles powerful enough to go beyond 1/12 lightspeed to attain their potential. But yes, barring special enhancements like that, I agree with your calculations Captain, pretty cool . Oh yeah, I've just been thinking on a possible organic reason for heat vision and all I can come up with off the top of my head is bio luminescence in his irises (due to the whole color thing, infrared is a "color" afterall ) or retinas, any thoughts?

Entanglement doesn't allow for information to be transmitted faster than the speed of light.  You're still dealing with particles moving at sub light speeds, which simply don't chose a state until there's already some distance between them.  Although measuring one makes the other pick a state, for all practical purposes, this is no different from the two particles chosing a state before they're separated, since the measurer isn't capable of picking the state that he wants the particle to be in.

[MarkPalenik]

What if yellow sunlight changes the quantum phase of a kryptonian body or kryptonian matter, to mimic the wave function phase of so called "neutronium" or other potentially indestructable materials, thereby making flesh and bone as tough as indestructible matter, but without the weight or other characteristics? This durablility would also allow for ultra strenght and speed potentials (I say potential because they'd be useless without the juice to run them) due to the correlation between muscle strength and speed being higher with durability.

Another thing about durability is that the protein structures that make up kryptonian bone and muscle could be based on carbon nano tubes, which are pound for pound 600 times stronger than steel.

Cool thoughts re: quantum phases.  I suppose you're suggesting something like in-phase virtual particle fields in the EM, grav, etc. virtual fields surrounding all matter here.

Virtual particles arise from a particular formalism of quantum field theory which uses a perturbative expansion of path integrals, whereby the terms in the series can be described as "virtual particles" - however, "virtual particles" cease to "exist" after renormalization.

To sum things up, they're called virtual particles because there's a way of doing a series expansion where the terms kind of look like particle interactions, but even that metaphor fails to hold for physically meaningful fields.

So, I'd be hesitant to say that "in phase virtual particle fields" are responsible for anything.

A simpler picture of chemical bonding might just be to use regular old electrostatics.  Since we're dealing in QM with particles bound by potentials, we can just use coulumbs law to get a nice approximation of the energy required to break a bond.

Increasing that energy would require something like increasing the charge on the electron (impossible), moving the particles closer together (impossible, since dp*dx >= hbar), increasing the mass of the electron (also impossible, although we have things like muons - but I doubt increasing the mass would make a significant difference anyway), or adding some new kind of force (probably impossible, but I'd say there's the most room to play around here).

I say adding a new force is your best bet, because there already is a force that basically allows for indestructability - the color force, which is the force between quarks.

The color force actually increases with distance, rather than decreasing - so the harder you try to separate quarks, the harder they'll pull back together, and the more you succeed, the stronger their bond will become.  That's why you never see single quarks by themselves.

  Given that infinite virtual particle density, making them act in phase would render them pretty much indestructible to anything phased like that.

Infinite virtual particle densities always disappear during renormalization, because that's the point of renormalization.  Without it, we'd be seeing infinitely dense fields of virtual particles everywhere.

Another angle that could augment the above is negative mass/positive mass interactions in those same fields.  Negative mass repels positive mass but due to its negative inertial properties is still attracted to the positive mass.

But alas, most of quantum field theory says that negative mass can't exist.

  The net result is the neg object scoots away while the pos one chases after it in a smoothly accelerating manner.  Properly constructed and balanced, a pos/neg mass construct would be truly immovable since a force acting on one aspect would be countered by the reaction of the other aspect.

Not so - at best, it would only provide a finite force in the opposite direction of the accelleration.  The only way for it to be immovable would be if the force of gravity were infinity between the two objects, and even then, it would only be immoveable in one direction (actually, it would be flying away infinitely quickly in that direction).

As for the carbon nanotubes, that is a good idea and probably one implemented by the bioengineers back home on Krypton or Daxam.  Be aware that contrary to popular notions, the covalent bonds in biomatter are actually the strongest ones in nature, not the metallic ones commonly used in our machines.  If the covalent bonds in butter were properly aligned and utilized, it would be several orders of magnitude stronger than the steel knife used to cut it.  Similarly, rubber if so coherently aligned would be stronger than steel (think of a rubber band that actually tended to get stronger as it was stretched instead of the individual molecular fibres getting broken one at a time).  IOW, even without invoking nanotubes, better organization of existing molecular structures would give some pretty impressive material strengths.

That sounds interesting, but I'm too tired right now to think about it.

BTW, that was one of my objections to Wolverton's book The Science of Superman.  He supposed heavy metal deposition to augment Kryptonian flesh when metals are actually weaker than the existing bonds so better organization of bonds makes more sense and requires no extra 'metallic absorption/deposition' concept which makes Wolverton's idea a bit ad hoc.

[Captain Kal]

Good comments, Mark.

Renormalization is a mathematical slight of hand that simply substitutes the real world measured values for the theoretically predicted ones of QM.  And renormalization completely fails for gravity as it refuses to be so easily addressed.  Said virtual particle field is responsible for the inverse-square law of EM and grav forces so they can become near-infinite as a particle gets closer to another one.  Given how normal matter can be much stronger if molecular bonds are properly aligned, it's just an extrapolation that the essentially random virtual particle fields could similarly benefit from a reorganization.

Additionally, according to QM, even a piece of wet tissue paper has a vanishingly small but still non-zero probability of deflecting a cannonball.  Probability manipulation of QM effects is one way of achieving super matter effects esp. since one interpretation of QM suggests observer triggered effects (QM wave collapse) and Superman is supposed to be at least partially psionic-based in powers.

Re: pos/neg mass constructs, I did qualify in my later post that the acceleration force between the two objects would be the limiting factor, though you're right that this would be further limited by the directionality of the objects interacting.  Still, I did posit an engineered structure balancing these forces so it's more a matter of engineering than theory.  The Casimir Effect has proven the existence of at least small scale occurrences of negative mass so it's not even impossible going by real experiments.  And an interacting pos/neg mass black hole system would probably be truly immoveable given the lightspeed accelerations involved there.

[MarkPalenik]

Good comments, Mark.

Renormalization is a mathematical slight of hand that simply substitutes the real world measured values for the theoretically predicted ones of QM.  And renormalization completely fails for gravity as it refuses to be so easily addressed.  Said virtual particle field is responsible for the inverse-square law of EM and grav forces so they can become near-infinite as a particle gets closer to another one.  Given how normal matter can be much stronger if molecular bonds are properly aligned, it's just an extrapolation that the essentially random virtual particle fields could similarly benefit from a reorganization.

from Arnold Neumaier on sci.physics.research

"Virtual particles are not considered real since they arise only in a
particular approach to high energy physics - perturbation theory
before renormalization - that does not even survive the modifications
needed to remove the infinities. Moreover, the virtual particle content
of a real state depends so much on the details of the computational
scheme (canonical or light front quantization, standard or
renormalization group enhances perturbation theory, etc.) that
calling virtual particles real produces a very weird picture of reality."

Furthermore, renormalization doesn't substitute real world predicted values for theoretical ones, rather it is used to make predicted values match real world measured ones.

Virtual particles only arise as a convenient method of solving problems in high energy physics approximately.  Alternately, you could use a matrix representation of your state vectors, or actually solve the path integrals exactly, but since these calculations can't actually be done exactly (we end up with unsolvable differential equations, a simple example of which might be the equation for pendulum motion, theta'' + g/l*sin(theta) = 0, which can only be solved with an approximation, like sin(theta) = theta, which yields theta = Acos(sqr(g/l)t) + Bsin(sqr(g/l)t)), we have to resort to approximate methods - one of which is drawing little diagrams of particles on a piece of paper, which helps our human minds to keep track of what we're doing.

Additionally, according to QM, even a piece of wet tissue paper has a vanishingly small but still non-zero probability of deflecting a cannonball.  Probability manipulation of QM effects is one way of achieving super matter effects esp. since one interpretation of QM suggests observer triggered effects (QM wave collapse) and Superman is supposed to be at least partially psionic-based in powers.

Do a search for decoherence and density matrix

Re: pos/neg mass constructs, I did qualify in my later post that the acceleration force between the two objects would be the limiting factor, though you're right that this would be further limited by the directionality of the objects interacting.  Still, I did posit an engineered structure balancing these forces so it's more a matter of engineering than theory.  The Casimir Effect has proven the existence of at least small scale occurrences of negative mass

Negative energy, actually.  All this means is energy below the vacuum energy.  Actually having negative *mass* on the other hand, is a different story.

so it's not even impossible going by real experiments.  And an interacting pos/neg mass black hole system would probably be truly immoveable given the lightspeed accelerations involved there.

That system would be accellerating very rappedly in some direction.

[Captain Kal]

Let me state it a different way.  Renormalization cancels out the infinities to come up with the observed values.  And QM cannot predict those observed values hence the dependence on the empirical results.  I still consider it a kind of sleight of hand since the values don't come out independently of observation.  The fact that QM does allow the interpretation of an infinite virtual particle field leads to the possibility that this field can be better organized.

As for the 'tissue paper' example, I was paraphrasing Paul Davies from his book "Other Worlds" which is about QM (that tissue paper/cannonball example was his).  It's another valid way of looking at quantum tunnelling.  An electron has a non-zero probability of being on one or the other side of a barrier even for what would be classically an impassable barrier.  Probability manipulation and the Observer influenced aspects of QM do jibe with the psionic aspect Byrne introduced to the character.

As for negative energy, energy and mass are equivalent and just different forms of the same thing.  Gravitationally and inertially we're talking about the same thing.  While traditionally, negative mass/energy has been avoided due to the problem of empty space obviously not spontaneously splitting into both types, it's being more seriously looked at now.  To stick to the tradition, they often substitute 'exotic mass' for what is really negative mass to slip this one by.

[MarkPalenik]

As for the 'tissue paper' example, I was paraphrasing Paul Davies from his book "Other Worlds" which is about QM (that tissue paper/cannonball example was his).  It's another valid way of looking at quantum tunnelling.  An electron has a non-zero probability of being on one or the other side of a barrier even for what would be classically an impassable barrier.  Probability manipulation and the Observer influenced aspects of QM do jibe with the psionic aspect Byrne introduced to the character.

Actually, decoherence and the density matrix are related to your last sentence, not the tissue paper.

As for negative energy, energy and mass are equivalent and just different forms of the same thing.

Well, yes, and no.  Mass is the norm of the energy momentum 4 vector, E^2 - p^2c^2 = m^2c^4.  So, yes, E and m are sort of equivilent, unless the particle has any momentum whatsoever.

You can give the particle an "effective mass" of E/c^2, but this only applies to momentum in the direction of motion.  F in the direction of motion is dp/dt, which ends up being proportional to gamma^3, in other words M^3/m^2, where M is the "effective" "relativistic" mass and m^2 is the "rest mass".  I've never actually seen it written that way, but I did it to avoid having to use gammas.

Force in directions other than the direction of motion, of course, is proportional to something different all together, and the gravitational force exherted by the object is related to something else.

  Gravitationally and inertially we're talking about the same thing.

Inertially, yes, gravitationally, no.  E and p both effect the stress energy momentum tensor, but in different ways, so for a particle where E = pc, like a photon doesn't produce the same gravitational effects as a particle of mass E/mc^2.

[ManSinha]

To ask a simple question: Given the relatively complex physics involved, is there a possibility that when Superman takes off extremely rapidly or is flying (Pre Crisis) at ultra light speeds, that he can exert a pull on the planet or is the mass differential too much?