Science of Superman: Just how plausible are his Superhero powers?

I have wanted to write it for a long time but never had time to copy it from the news paper on to the computer screen. yes its not my writing its just one of the articles about SUPERMAN published in "Metro" paper on 29th june, 2006.

What is it that makes Superman super.



He is :
1: more powerful than a locomotive,
2: faster than a speeding bullet, and he can
3: leaps buildings in a single bound or can fly, and he has
4: X-ray vision
5: Heat vision and Superenergy.



Sooooo: lets discuss one by one.

1. MORE POWERFUL THAN A LOCOMOTIVE:


He comes from the planet Krypton, where the gravity was many times stronger than on Earth. No longer weighed down by his home world's crushing gravity, he can perform feats of super-human strenth. ....but can he really.......

In reality, he would be unable to simply walk about. Like a human astronaut on the moon- freed from the constraints of Earth's gravity- he would bound around.
Also he remains powerful no matter how long he stays on earth- in reality, a low gravity environment would result, as any astronaut will tell you, in a loss of muscle mass and therefore the loss of his super strenth.

2. FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET:


What is inexplicable about his super acute hearing is not that it is so acute, or that he can isolate individual sounds from the rush and roar of city life; but that there have been instances when he has heard the crack of a gun and flown all the way across town in time to intercept the speeding bullet.
The problem is that by the time the noise reached him, the bullet would have long since found its target.


3. LEAP BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND:


Again this is attributed to gravity - earth's tiny gravitational forces allow him to jump very high and therefore fly. I nearly comics, jumping was all he could do - albeit jumping vast distances. I n later comics he can fly properly and perform mid-air manoeuvres. In reality, to flly, you need a source of thrust and lift. The fact that the man of steel is able to change direction at will suggests that he gained some ability over gravity that would baffle scientists. He could be generating hypothetical subatomic particals called gravitons. if this was the case he would be flying by ridingthe waves of gravity that are in his immediate environment. Alternatively he may be using a strange magnetic content of his body to push against the Earth's gravitational field.

4. X-RAY VISION:


This would require his eyes to emit x-rays,which would penetrate whatever he is looking at and then bounce back to him.The trouble is X-rays dont bounce back - they just carry on penetrating. So , maybe he doesn't really have X-ray vision at all. Instead he could use a sound waves to create a sort of sonar map - much like doctors use sound to create the sonograms of unborn infants.

5. HEAT VISION AND SUPERENERGY:


To melt things with a laser beam from his eyes he would need a massive power source. the theory is that , rather as a plant does through photosynthesis, he obtains his energy by converting light from our yellow sun, which is many times more powerful than the red sun of Krypton.
Unfortunately, our sunlight isnt really more powerfull than that of any other star- he would have to spend so much time recharging his batteries that he wouldn't get very much crime fighting done.