How did Superman hear/detect Lois being shot recently?

[Captain Kal]

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.

[RedSunOfKrypton]

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.

[ManSinha]

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?

[Captain Kal]

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.

[RedSunOfKrypton]

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.

[SteamTeck]

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.

[Captain Kal]

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.

[SuperBOX007]

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