Yes he can fly, yes he can lift buildings, but perhaps most impressive is that Superman can handle almost anything thrown at him literally! And this is because of two things: cells and radiation. It is thought that the people of Krypton had a much denser molecular structure and therefore, it would be extremely hard for anything to penetrate through their supremely compact molecules! It would be like having a body of Kevlar! Not only are Kryptonian cells very dense, but they can metabolize solar radiation.
The radiation given off by Krypton's red sun was too weak for Kryptonians to process. Yet, when Superman lands on Earth and into the light of our younger star, he is able to take the radiation from our yellow sun and metabolize it—the way a green plant converts light from the sun into energy through a process called Photosynthesis. This extra boost from the sun gives Superman the ability for flight, super strength and invincibility.
Superman is invincible! But, there is a BIG exception to that statement. This alien element is so well-known and engrained into pop-culture, that Microsoft Word recognizes it and can auto-correct to it for you! The element comes in many forms, but the most iconic is as a glowing, green rock.
It could be that Kryptonite affects Superman by interfering with his cells and their ability to metabolize solar radiation. Thus, it makes him weaker due to the inability of his cells to process the radiation necessary to give him his superpowers!
Writers want instant effects to keep the reader interested and intrigued! All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Mike Wall has been writing for Space. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American.
Create your free account or Sign in to continue. In , a miniseries entitled World of Krypton was published, providing a great amount of detail into Krypton's history just before its destruction, along with the life story of Jor-El himself.
A three-issue miniseries entitled The Krypton Chronicles , published in , tells of Superman researching his roots when, as Clark Kent , he was assigned to write an article about Superman 's family by an assignment editor impressed with the television miniseries Roots.
To do so, he and Supergirl travel to Kandor where they learn the history of the El family. In , writer Alan Moore gave a somewhat darker glimpse into the world of Krypton in his story " For the Man Who Has Everything " in Superman Annual 11 , the premise being an elaborate dream of Superman's in which Krypton had not exploded and he'd grown to adulthood there.
Background details are culled from other Krypton stories. This same story was retold in Justice League Unlimited animated series in an episode by the same name. The race of Krypton was believed by some to be linked to the planet Daxam, whose inhabitants also acquired powers and abilities similar to Superman 's when they were exposed to the radiation of a yellow sun.
However, the Daxamites, as they were known, were highly susceptible to lead poisoning , which affected them in a manner similar to Kryptonite when they came into contact with lead ; however, the poisoning was not stopped by taking the lead out of the Daxamite's vicinity. One Daxamite, Mon-El , was poisoned by lead, and preserved in the Phantom Zone until a cure was found by Brainiac 5 in the 30th century, thereafter Mon-El became a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
In this version, the Daxamites were originally Kryptonians who left their homeworld in order to explore the universe. The Eradicator , programmed to preserve all Kryptonian culture, altered the birthing matrices artificial wombs the explorers took with them so that the newborns would be fatally vulnerable to lead.
Thus, if they persisted in their anti-Kryptonian wanderlust, they would all die from it. After the miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths , this version of Krypton was soon replaced by a newer version.
However, the Silver Age Krypton made a rare post- Crisis appearance in The Sandman 48, during a flashback sequence featuring Death and Destruction of The Endless , beings who were evidently unaffected by the reality-altering events of the Crisis. In the relaunch of the Superman franchise, it was declared that the new version would never encounter another surviving Kryptonian.
This rewrite was started in the Man of Steel miniseries , which addressed Krypton in both its opening and closing chapters. Krypton itself was the main subject of the late s The World of Krypton miniseries not to be confused with the miniseries of the same name.
This miniseries was written by Byrne and illustrated by Mike Mignola , and filled in much of Krypton's new history. The new Krypton was approximately the size of Earth and orbited a red sun called Rao 50 light-years from our solar system.
Over , years ago, Krypton had already developed scientific advancements far beyond those of present-day Earth , and by a few millennia past had conquered disease , learned to retard the aging process, and perfected cloning ; vast banks of non-sentient clones held multiple copies of each living Kryptonian so that replacement parts were always available in the case of injury.
All Kryptonians were effectively immortal and eternally young, and enjoyed an idyllic, sensual existence in an Arcadian paradise. However, this society was tipping towards decadence and eventually political strife resulted from the debate as to whether clones should have rights sparked by the presence of an alien missionary known as the Cleric.
Eventually this disagreement led to open violent conflict, during which Kryptonian science was turned to warfare and several super-weapons were developed and used. Among them were the devices which became known as the Eradicator and the Destroyer. Although the Eradicator 's effects altering the DNA of all Kryptonian life-forms so that they would instantly die upon leaving the planet were felt immediately, the Destroyer's effects were possibly more significant: by the time the Kryptonian government admitted defeat and abolished the clone banks, a terrorist faction known as Black Zero had started the Destroyer, a device intended to trigger a massively explosive chain reaction in Krypton's core.
At the time, it was believed that the device had been stopped before it could achieve this, but eventually it was discovered, centuries later by Jor-El , that the reaction had only been slowed to a nearly imperceptible rate and would eventually destroy the planet as intended. In the meantime, though it had for now survived the war, Krypton was scarred deeply by it. The formerly lush garden world was burned and blasted, left mostly a lifeless desert.
In direct contrast to the society that had existed prior to the Clone Wars, a sterile, emotionally dead civilization emerged. The population became isolated from one another, living in widely separated technological citadels and shunning all personal contact.
Procreation became a matter of selecting compatible genetic material which would then be placed within an artificial womb called a "birthing matrix. It was into this world that the young scientist Jor-El was born. By his adult years, the mysterious "Green Plague" was killing Kryptonians by the hundreds, and upon researching the matter, Jor-El discovered that the cause was growing radiation produced by Krypton's increasingly unstable core.
Due to this process, the planet itself was going to explode. Unable to convince his associates to abandon tradition and consider escape, Jor-El took the birthing matrix of his unborn son Kal-El , removed the Eradicator 's planetary binding, and attached a prototype interstellar propulsion system to the vessel.
Just as the planet began to shake apart, he launched the matrix towards Earth , where it would open and give birth to the infant upon landing The post- Crisis Superman therefore was technically "born" on Earth. A central theme of this version of the Superman mythos was that the character was to remain the last surviving remnant of Krypton. Thus, Silver Age elements such as Supergirl , Krypto , and Kandor had never existed in this version though post- Crisis versions of these elements were eventually reintroduced.
The supervillain Doomsday was revealed in the s as a being genetically engineered by Bertron, an alien scientist, on an ancient Krypton; this happened hundreds of thousands of years before the rise of Krypton's civilization this fact explains how Kryptonians obtained their advanced technology. In the newer continuity, Superman also only became aware of his alien heritage sometime after his debut as a superhero , when a holographic program encoded into the craft which brought him to Earth uploaded the information into his brain.
In a late s storyline, Superman traveled to the former site of Krypton to discover that the planet was slowly reforming from the vast sphere of debris remaining. However, it would take millions of years before the planet would be solid again. This sphere of debris had been turned to Kryptonite by the planet's destruction, and the radiation causes Superman to have a hallucination concerning an alternate scenario in which the entire population of Krypton comes to Earth.
In the s comic series Starman , Jack Knight became lost in time and space, landed on Krypton several years before its destruction, and met Jor-El as a young man. The story boldly implies that it was this early meeting with a Terran that led Jor-El to study other worlds, and eventually choose Earth as the target for his son's spacecraft. In an early s storyline, an artificial version of the pre- Crisis Krypton was created in the Phantom Zone by Brainiac , a descendant of the original Brainiac who had traveled back in time to the present.
It was stated to have been based on Jor-El 's favorite Kryptonian historical period. In the miniseries Superman: Birthright , a new retelling of Superman 's origin and early years, Mark Waid depicted a Krypton, officially stated as being located in the Andromeda Galaxy 6 million light years away, with elements of various versions of the planet, but closer to the pre- Crisis version. It was later implied that the time-bending adventure in Superman v2, and Infinite Crisis had rewritten history so this was now the "official" version, and later stories have held to Birthright as being the official current version of Superman 's origin.
Waid also made use of Superman 's "S"-shield in his version of Krypton. While in previous comic versions of the mythos, it was assumed the "S" simply stood for "Superman"; in Birthright , Waid presented the symbol as a Kryptonian symbol of hope borrowing and modifying a concept from Superman: The Movie.
DC 's mandate for Superman being Krypton's only survivor changed as well. Superboy's origins were retconned later revealing that he was the cloned son of Superman and Lex Luthor making him half kryptonian. The series reversed a lot of John Byrne 's decisions from The Man of Steel to reflect the more Silver Age -oriented version of Superman , similar to Smallville television series and Superman movies.
However, a current storyline co-written by Geoff Johns and Superman director Richard Donner presents yet another version of Krypton which reintroduces the General Zod and the Phantom Zone criminals into mainstream continuity.
With art by Adam Kubert , the design of Kryptonian society is distinct yet again from Birthright , incorporating elements of both pre- Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity and Donner's work on the first two Christopher Reeve films, in particular the notion of Krypton's Council threatening Jor-El with harsh punishment were he to make public his predictions of their planet's imminent doom.
Whether this further revision of continuity has an in-universe rationale is as yet unknown, but it may stem from continuity changes wrought by the reality-fracturing conclusion of Infinite Crisis.
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