silverpig
Lifer
So I was at a conference a month or so ago and got to talking with a few people about superheroes. We realized that Batman, great as he may be, has no special powers. Superman has, well, almost everything, The Flash has super speed, etc, but Batman is just a rich guy with toys and a suit. So the question is this:
If Batman has no superpowers, can he be a superhero?
Now, we initially said no, but then realized that he somehow "got into the club" so to speak as he was a member of that group of superheroes... I can't remember the name (maybe there were a few groups?). So Batman sits up there with Superman, Wonderwoman et al, so he's got to be considered a superhero somehow right? But what is his superpower?
One of the postdocs there figured it out: Batman has the null power. Now, some of you may not know, but this is NOT the same as having no powers like you or I. The null power is a power, it just does nothing. Subtle, but it gets our friend Batman into the club.
So we then went on to discuss how there must be a "superhero space" that is like a vector space or a Hilbert space (details are a bit tricky and haven't been figured out yet). Each power is a vector in this space that is orthogonal to all other power vectors. Together, all power vectors span the space and form a set. A superhero's state is a linear combination of any number of vectors.
But what about the super-villains? I guess they'd exist in the super-villain space which is sort of like a rotation of the superhero space into the complex plane or something.
PS: In case you were wondering, this was a physics conference.
If Batman has no superpowers, can he be a superhero?
Now, we initially said no, but then realized that he somehow "got into the club" so to speak as he was a member of that group of superheroes... I can't remember the name (maybe there were a few groups?). So Batman sits up there with Superman, Wonderwoman et al, so he's got to be considered a superhero somehow right? But what is his superpower?
One of the postdocs there figured it out: Batman has the null power. Now, some of you may not know, but this is NOT the same as having no powers like you or I. The null power is a power, it just does nothing. Subtle, but it gets our friend Batman into the club.
So we then went on to discuss how there must be a "superhero space" that is like a vector space or a Hilbert space (details are a bit tricky and haven't been figured out yet). Each power is a vector in this space that is orthogonal to all other power vectors. Together, all power vectors span the space and form a set. A superhero's state is a linear combination of any number of vectors.
But what about the super-villains? I guess they'd exist in the super-villain space which is sort of like a rotation of the superhero space into the complex plane or something.
PS: In case you were wondering, this was a physics conference.
