Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Superman somehow 'hears' Lois being shot in the Middle East while he's in Metropolis.  Before she hits the ground, he has her in his arms.

While he's fast enough to reach her in that time, the problem is, the sound of the gunshot isn't fast enough to reach him in time for that.  Anything in excess of about 332 metres would give him a delay of a second, so it would take hours for that sound to reach him via the air.  Having it travel through the Earth doesn't help much as it would still take over half an hour for the sound to reach him that way (sound is faster in solids and liquids that the air and through the Earth is more direct than the curvature of it).

How does he achieve this?

Assuming that this isn't a gaffe, we do have some book evidence to work from.

In DC One Million, Superman is unable to access headnet.  He specifically states that it's interfering with his super-hearing to produce a buzzing noise.

His powers are established to have a psionic aspect along with a physical aspect per Byrne.

He's capable of translight travel in space while somehow being able to see his surroundings.

In The Kingdom, the murdered Supermen pool their telescopic visions to pierce the time barrier to watch Gog murdering earlier and earlier versions of themselves.

Based on the above evidence, it's clear that super-senses do not merely have a passive aspect but have an active physical/psionic aspect to them too.

To be able to see at translight, he'd have to have a tachyonic active aspect to his senses or else he'd be effectively blind and deaf at those speeds.  The same goes for pooling telescopic vision to pierce the time barrier: That needs a gravitational effect for his vision that can be amped up to black hole levels to see backwards in time.

He must have a psionic aspect to his hearing else headnet in the 853rd century wouldn't be specifically interfering with his super-hearing.

Maybe he detects sounds the same way a laser listener detects them. As if he constantly emits an energy field around the globe that detects sound info and beams it to his auditory canal at the speed of light. Or maybe he's just a really powerful Clairaudiant like you said.

off topic; does anyone think that the current canon is headed down the reality of "The Kingdom" with the pairing of Kal-El and Wonder Woman?

Perhaps he can hear EM radiation like the Pre Crisis model used to.  He could hear a radio wave and even used to produce similar signals with his super-vpice to communicate in space.

So, the near-infinitismally faint EM radiation of those moving air molecules produce radiation that moves at the speed of light -- essentially, they can be detected virtually instantaneously on the other side of the world.  He's sensing that faint radiation on his ears instead of the actual sound itself which would take perhaps 16 hours for it to reach him.

OTOH, if he were keeping an occasional super-vision eye on Lois and relegated her to a subliminal awareness while he went about his daily duties, only the actual event of her being seriously injured would bring that subliminal scan to his conscious knowledge.  I don't favour this latter explanation since it seems pretty evident that it was his ears that were supposed to have detected the shooting.

Sounds theoretically plausible, althought his EM "hearing" would have to be pretty darn sensitive and that would probably be pretty difficult in an organ roughly the size of a human ear.

He detected the shot through the power of careless bad writing but I appaud your attempts at a logical explanation. It underscores why the current group of writers can't handle a powerful superman because they don't understand the limits he DOES have. I thought he wasn't that fast anymore anyway. It sort of makes the world too small for him don't you think.

We're already suspending disbelief with an alien humanoid with super-powers fueled by weak sunlight.  At least our proposed patches on this thread are theoretically possible.

And Superman has been quite a bit faster than that for years.  He's outraced Impulse who was going 99% lightspeed at the time.  He's reached a moon of Saturn in 4 minutes during Lex2000 when it takes light 1.18 hours to reach there from Earth, implying a speed in excess of 17 times lightspeed.  He also split a Saturn moon in half while he was at it.  He's independently travelled between multiple solar systems in the Infestation storyline (penned by Wolfman) so arguably went FTL there too.  He's independently shoved the Moon around several times, moved ROTK Krypton with assistance under a red sun, and moved Warworld 2 with a solar core dip assist.  He's described as being able to race a speeding photon in JLA: Heaven's Ladder.

So what is everyones opion on which era of Superman had the best hearing? (golden, silver, modern...)

Ok fair enough.  You remind of Larry Niven's old stuff on the Man of Steel. So he's actually creeped back up to many of his pre crisis power levels but doesn't have the superior mindset of the pre crisis guy now?
    I know  I'm in the minority here but lightspeed is a little much for me and moon shoving I just can't can't handle. I will admit traveling FTL would open up tons of new (old) storylines but I prefer a guy who could  defeat the hulk or Thor with some trouble not with a hand flick. Moving planets is just so beyond as to NOT be inpressive while supporting a huge falling cliff ala "Another Nail" is very impressive.
      One of my favorite post reboot moments was when Superman had to stop a crashing Concord and had to guide it in to a safe landing just not stop and lift it. The weight and momentum were so great that he couldn't just muscle his way through. That's the power level I tend to think of him at.

This was mentioned over at the Superman Homepage in the Ask Eddie forum. Berganza stated that Rucka had Superman "sense" Lois was in danger and didn't actually hear her. It was more of a hunch. Anyway, that's the official position.

Personally, I liked how Supreme's enhanced senses were explained in Supreme: The Story of the Year. He doesn't actually "hear" things far away, he extends his essense.

Ahem, like a laser listener, props to me.  :P Anyhoo, that "essence" terminology seems a touch on the metaphysical side to me though, more like something that should come from Dr. Fate than from Superman.

I agree with the idea that Superman's powers, especially his senses, rely in part on some kind of field (which might resemble either "essence" or "a laser listener" depending on how he's using it) that apparently is capable of transmitting information faster than the speed of light.  It probably explains to some extent how he's able to generate more energy than he could possibly be absorbing from the sun.

Here's a question -- has the post-Crisis Superman ever used any super-senses other than sight and hearing?  I think that there have been a few references to him having a really good sense of smell, but that could be explained as just part of an overall physical augmentation due to Kryptonian genetic engineering.

Y'know what would clinch it?  If he couldn't hear through lead at great distances.

Keep in mind that we're talking about Supreme, though. He's heavily based on Superman, yet he certainly isn't an exact copy.

I think there is a certain metaphysical aspect to Superman's powers, though.  Not in the sense that his powers are "magical," they're meant to be based on the physical laws of the universe in which Superman resides.  Even so, I'm one of those people that thinks that the material world is subject to the immaterial world more than the other way around.

Superman: The Movie was big on metaphysics, when you really look at it.  Even the fact that Superman gets his powers from the Sun seems at least symbolic to me, when you think about the ways in which human beings have always deified the sun.  From a certain point of view, you could say that Superman's transition from Rao to Sol is a metaphor for the transition from Judaism to Christianity, or from Christianity to Islam.  He's a religious transformation in action for the people around him, a higher power that is one of them and yet not one of them.

There are places where physics and metaphysics overlap, and I think Superman is in there somewhere.