whitewalker_646What super power would be impractical in real life?
fastandcuriousSee through
bi_tuxWhat would be the problem with x-ray vision? Except if you couldn’t turn it off
Invisibility. It would also make you blind.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆I think this is really the only thing there is, without assuming there isn’t “complete control” over it. You either sacrifice total invisibility to be a floating pair of eyes (or at least 1), or you’re blind but totally invisible. Making it truly impractical even if you have full control over the ability.
Great take on this in a D&D setting where a players character was able to roll incredibly high to notice an invisible person. The DM came up with this solution on the spot and made fantasy and logic weave together for a believable solution and an awesome situation:
Brennan's Take on Invisibility | Critical Role
I knew exactly what that was going to be before I clicked. Brennan is an incredible DM.
CorkyskogWhat if light is just refracted around you. You would be able to see, but it would look all rainbow like.
If everything but your pupils were invisible, and your pupils were 90% invisible, it’d probably be fine. Most humans can comfortably see with 10% of the light.
It depends on what kind of “invisibility” you mean, if you’d be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you’d be invisible but could still see.
If you mean invisibility by breaking light you can’t really say, since we don’t yet know how we could use this to make a human body invisible, thereforce we don’t know the counter meassures yet
if you’d be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you’d be invisible but could still see.
That’s not invisibility just camouflage.
Like, you can have the same texture as the wall you are standing in front of, but you’d still show up as a human-shaped piece of wall protruding out. Or if a bug was to crawl on the wall behind you, you’d block it’s view.
That depends on the angle you’re looking at it from but yes.
But I don’t think we wouldn’t find any counter meassures if we happen to invent a perfect technology to turn invisible
Guy IngonitoThere is a character in My Hero Academia that can phase through objects, but when he activates his power he can’t see or hear anything as a result.
Assuming that the invisibility is based on a physical property. You could also be psychically invisible where you manipulate others minds so they don’t see you.
But that would me more like “imperceivability”.
True Facts: The Science of Real-Life SuperPowers
Go to https://brilliant.org/zefrank to get a 30-day free trial + the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual subscription. merch: https://ze-true-store.myshopify.com/ patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truefacts classical music: https://soundcloud.com/querflote/5-au... sponsor music: https://incompetech.com/ SHOULD BE INDEX OF REFRACTION NOT REFRACTORY INDEX!!!! SORRY! Thanks to: Dr Paul S. Hamilton, The Biodiversity Group Dr Andrés Concha, Adolfo Ibañez University Dr Carlos Taboada, Vanderbilt University Dr Junjie Yao, Duke University Dr John G. Capano, Brown University J. Monge-Najera Citations Baer, A. & De Sena Oliveira, Ivo & Steinhagen, Max & Beck-Sickinger, Annette & Mayer, Georg. (2014). Slime protein profiling: a non-invasive tool for species identification in Onychophora (velvet worms). Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research. 52. 265–272. Baer A, Mayer G. Comparative anatomy of slime glands in onychophora (velvet worms). J Morphol. 2012 Oct;273(10):1079-88. doi: 10.1002/jmor.20044. Epub 2012 Jun 18. PMID: 22707384. Baer A, Schmidt S, Haensch S, Eder M, Mayer G, Harrington MJ. Mechanoresponsive lipid-protein nanoglobules facilitate reversible fibre formation in velvet worm slime. Nat Commun. 2017 Oct 17;8(1):974. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01142-x. Bagge LE, Kinsey ST, Gladman J, Johnsen S. Transparent anemone shrimp (Ancylomenes pedersoni) become opaque after exercise and physiological stress in correlation with increased hemolymph perfusion. J Exp Biol. 2017 Nov 15;220(Pt 22):4225-4233. doi: 10.1242/jeb.162362. Capano JG, Boback SM, Weller HI, Cieri RL, Zwemer CF, Brainerd EL. Modular lung ventilation in Boa constrictor. J Exp Biol. 2022 Mar 15;225(6):jeb243119. doi: 10.1242/jeb.243119. Concha A, Mellado P, Morera-Brenes B, Sampaio Costa C, Mahadevan L, Monge-Nájera J. Oscillation of the velvet worm slime jet by passive hydrodynamic instability. Nat Commun. 2015 Mar 17;6:6292. doi: 10.1038/ncomms7292. Müller M, de Sena Oliveira I, Allner S, Ferstl S, Bidola P, Mechlem K, Fehringer A, Hehn L, Dierolf M, Achterhold K, Gleich B, Hammel JU, Jahn H, Mayer G, Pfeiffer F. Myoanatomy of the velvet worm leg revealed by laboratory-based nanofocus X-ray source tomography. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Nov 21;114(47):12378-12383. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1710742114. Pomerantz AF, Siddique RH, Cash EI, Kishi Y, Pinna C, Hammar K, Gomez D, Elias M, Patel NH. Developmental, cellular and biochemical basis of transparency in clearwing butterflies. J Exp Biol. 2021 May 15;224(10):jeb237917. doi: 10.1242/jeb.237917. Taboada C, Delia J, Chen M, Ma C, Peng X, Zhu X, Jiang L, Vu T, Zhou Q, Yao J, O'Connell L, Johnsen S. Glassfrogs conceal blood in their liver to maintain transparency. Science. 2022 Dec 23;378(6626):1315-1320. doi: 10.1126/science.abl6620.
The Best Super Power (Is Not What You Think) | After Hours
Super speed. Either you would need to also think and react at super speeds, which mean the world would be agonizingly slow, or you would have normal speed reaction in which case you would crash and die.
There is also the option of super reaction time on demand, but in any case non of this matters as super speed would make the air as “thick” as a concrete wall so you would also need to me super strong and super durable.
Also friction
This might not be a problem, since you could regulate how fast you run, in which case you could run as fast as a car which wouldn’t necessarily require other super stats
A lot of them assuming you don’t get the required secondary powers.
Super speed, if your perceptions aren’t heightened it rapidly becomes impractical, if they are things are going to get painfully boring real quick. Even thinking at double speed means you are going to be waiting for the world to catch up a lot. Never mind what even relatively low G-forces can do to someone.
Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
If you don’t get secondary powers then super strength is going to suck. The human body is already capable of injuring itself with its own strength. How many fastball pitchers get arm or shoulder injuries just from throwing something really fast, or power-lifters who have something break or burst. Modern sporting records are starting to push up against the structural limits of the human body.
Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
Super hearing would essentially be tinnitus with some variety in the inescapable noise.
Also it would be similar to the experience a lot of autistic people have with their sense of hearing. Feeling overwhelmed by the background noise of every nearby animal, bit of noisy clothing, conversation, and heavy machinery is par for the course for me.
Super hearing is pretty much autism
Duuude what if tinnitus is the superpower trying to happen? 🤯
I think the superhearing power is going to be different than you think. You can already hear your clothes rubbing against skin, the air conditioning blowing, etc. Your brain is pretty good at filtering those out. Now, the conversations will be more difficult, but think about your experiences at a party. Most of the time you can hear another group’s conversation if you listened and focused on them, but you can tune them out (most of the time, ignoring the cocktail party effect stuff for now). Unless you have focus issues already, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The issue would be the initial period where your brain has to learn what exactly to filter out. Right now, a rustle to my right would be a bad sign, and hearing a rat crawling through the wall would freak me out. After a few weeks though, I bet I’d have adjusted.
Yeah, I don’t mean my own clothes, (though I do quite often hear them). I mean everyone’s. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time living in a building where you could hear the rats moving about rather clearly (through a combination of a rat problem and some poor construction decisions.) Yes it goes from a ‘what was that?’ alert to a ‘oh it’s the rats’ but you still notice. It’s very different to continuous background noises like AC or traffic.
Loving one’s life as if always at a loud party is exactly the thing I’m seeing as the problem. Yes you can actively focus on something specific, but always having to do that is going to be unpleasant. Never mind all the stuff you are going to overhear that you don’t want to overhear.
Yeah, as someone with misophonia, I can’t imagine my hearing getting better than it is. Already I can’t tune stuff out, and it’s not just people talking. It’s ALL the lawn work in my neighborhood! It’s the bunny rustling leaves in my backyard from my bedroom. It’s the fan in the fridge that everyone else just blocks out. The gurgle of the fish tank. Lights make a high pitched noise, as do other electronics. That’s all before people. The amount of noises people make that others tune out is so much! Rubbing your fingers together. The spit in your mouth right before you speak. If I’m cuddling with you, the liquid squish your eyes make when you blink. The creaking and popping of your joints! Even just breathing is a loud constant. Most everyone else is filtering all this out, but it’s not something you can learn to time out. You either can or you can’t, and if you can’t you end up literally moving because your neighbor coughs too much and it wakes you up in the middle of the night.
Super speed would come with similar issues as super strength. You would get less than a block, and you’d just be a skeleton.
Not to mention, the concept of saving someone from being hit by a car, likely results in 1 or (more likely) both of you being turned into paste from the impact.
Superpowers really only work in comics and movies, in real life there’s just too many variables.
Super strength doesn’t make any sense either, even if your body is fine.
Strong enough to pick up a house? Well all you are going to do it rip a chunk of the wall off. No way you to grab enough to lift and not destroy.
I think there is no situation where you gain super speed without extreme forces resistance, because if you exert the force to move at the speed of sound but aren’t resilient then you’re muscles, bones, and tendons will immediately shred themselves with that first step.
Honestly the best super power IMO is the ability to open gateways in time and space
Seeing as the earth is constantly moving at 1600 km/h I feel like it would be incredibly difficult to actually open a portal on earth in the past or future
Seeing as position is relative, why not?
mind reading. it would make you super sad super fast, because you’d always know when you’re being lied to.
I remember one of the tidbits I picked up from a psychology textbook was that people who were worse at knowing if their partner was lying were in happier relationships. Turns out that white lies are important.
Teleportation. Unless truly instantaneous, you need to account for the fact that the earth moves 18 miles per second relative to the sun.
On top of that you need to account for the fact that the earth’s surface is moving at different speeds depending on latitude and elevation. Even if you can do the calculations to hit your mark, there is most likely to be some energy mismatch that needs to be accounted for.
Very nicely addressed in the Jumper novels by Steven Gould.
EndorkendAnd isn't the solar system moving at like 500000 miles an hour around the milkyway too?
Teleportation and timetravel both have this issue where you have to take a fuckload of moving parts we don't even completely understand yet, into account.
Time travel would have to imply teleportation as well. If teleportation is actually instant or ftl, it would also be at least some level of time travel as you would be able to move outside your causal envelope.
Why would you teleport relative to the sun or the center of the milky way? Wouldn’t it be easier to teleport relative to the nearest surface?
The universe doesn't care what you think is easier.
It moves, you moving from one point in the universe to another needs to take into account where all the moving parts are going.
Only instant teleportation, where nothing has had time to move, would work. But that would be akin to traveling back in time.
The Universe doesn’t give a damn about the Sun or the Milky Way, either, idiot. There is no defined central point for all coordinates. Everything is relative to something else or might as well be staying perfectly still for all intents and purposes.
Inertial systems are all equal in a certain relevant here sense, if there is no need for account for your movement relative to Sun, Galaxy, CMB, or anything else. Yes, in this sense, Sun also rotates around Earth.
56!This doesn’t make sense. The earth moves at very different speeds depending on what you compare it to. The only thing that makes sense is for the teleportation to be relative to the teleporter. Maybe it would still require taking into account rotation, instead of linear momentum. idk, still seems complicated.
But if it takes time, there’s a moment where you’re not there, and thus, the reference is lost.
Instant teleporting no problems though. I would even be okay with nightcrawler/Minecraft nether-like teleport where you travel through another locked in dimension.
What if you could “lock on” a target like in star trek?
Call me Lenny/LeniTelepathy. You get all their mental illnesses.
Any sort of super strength without added toughness and motor control. You’d break your own body let alone everything around you pretty fast.
Being able to turn into metal/sand/water/bats/lettuce or whatever without additional magic would destroy the structure and state of your brain immediately.
hrimfaxi_workDisregard modernity. Embrace lettuce.
I think you guys are overthinking things too much. In a world in which some magical phenomenon can turn you into a lettuce, all of a sudden you draw the line in brain function?
Obviously the brain is just encoded into the lettuce DNA
Maybe it works like caterpillar goop in the cocoon. It’s goop, and not exactly a caterpillar anymore, but experiments have shown that there’s at least some persistence of being, even after the former caterpillar-goop has become a butterfly. E.g. If you train a caterpillar to react to a specific stimuli with a negative response, the resultant butterfly will respond to the same stimuli in the same way that the caterpillar did.
The Giant KoreanAlso, forget picking up buildings or planes. Most things would break or crumble under their own weight as soon as you tried to pick them up.
Insert: >Superman is actually a psychokinetic
I think this is the way they explained it away. But then other extremely strong supes can lift gigantic things as well. I’m actually OK with them not trying to explain it.
Pdf warning: www.qwantz.com/fanart/superman.pdf
Superman actually controls the inertia of matter he comes in contact with.
My Hero Academia deals with this
I think that’s why I love that series. Each quirk has a consequence to it. One-for-all can store and unleash energy, but unless you use that stored power to reinforce the opposite forces, your bones will disintegrate