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Why isn't my superhuman always hungry?
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I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans. The focus is on individual characters and their daily lives, and I'm trying to maintain some consistency by not throwing all the laws of physics out the window. However, this creates some problems in the daily life of these individuals - where does their super-energy come from, given that they appear to eat a normal amount of food?
For example, a superhuman with super-strength is able to lift heavy objects. This is fine according to the laws of thermodynamics, as long as a proper amount of energy is used to perform it. To lift a 15,000kg semi 2 meters off the ground, my superhuman needs to contribute a minimum of 60 kcal. In a typical day, this character might perform an action like this 50 times, for an additional energy expenditure of 3,000 kcal - that's more than double the normal energy expenditure of a similar human. On intensive days, this energy cost might be closer to 20,000 kcal.
How can I justify this discrepancy between the energy my superhumans expend and the energy that they consume, assuming they eat a normal amount of normal food? Specifically, how could a superhuman obtain the 20,000 kcal expended in an intensive hero day without eating proportionally more?
Shoutout to the Sandbox for helping me develop this question!
science-based biology physics super-powers
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
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I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans. The focus is on individual characters and their daily lives, and I'm trying to maintain some consistency by not throwing all the laws of physics out the window. However, this creates some problems in the daily life of these individuals - where does their super-energy come from, given that they appear to eat a normal amount of food?
For example, a superhuman with super-strength is able to lift heavy objects. This is fine according to the laws of thermodynamics, as long as a proper amount of energy is used to perform it. To lift a 15,000kg semi 2 meters off the ground, my superhuman needs to contribute a minimum of 60 kcal. In a typical day, this character might perform an action like this 50 times, for an additional energy expenditure of 3,000 kcal - that's more than double the normal energy expenditure of a similar human. On intensive days, this energy cost might be closer to 20,000 kcal.
How can I justify this discrepancy between the energy my superhumans expend and the energy that they consume, assuming they eat a normal amount of normal food? Specifically, how could a superhuman obtain the 20,000 kcal expended in an intensive hero day without eating proportionally more?
Shoutout to the Sandbox for helping me develop this question!
science-based biology physics super-powers
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
1
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
1
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago
 |Â
show 1 more comment
up vote
3
down vote
favorite
up vote
3
down vote
favorite
I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans. The focus is on individual characters and their daily lives, and I'm trying to maintain some consistency by not throwing all the laws of physics out the window. However, this creates some problems in the daily life of these individuals - where does their super-energy come from, given that they appear to eat a normal amount of food?
For example, a superhuman with super-strength is able to lift heavy objects. This is fine according to the laws of thermodynamics, as long as a proper amount of energy is used to perform it. To lift a 15,000kg semi 2 meters off the ground, my superhuman needs to contribute a minimum of 60 kcal. In a typical day, this character might perform an action like this 50 times, for an additional energy expenditure of 3,000 kcal - that's more than double the normal energy expenditure of a similar human. On intensive days, this energy cost might be closer to 20,000 kcal.
How can I justify this discrepancy between the energy my superhumans expend and the energy that they consume, assuming they eat a normal amount of normal food? Specifically, how could a superhuman obtain the 20,000 kcal expended in an intensive hero day without eating proportionally more?
Shoutout to the Sandbox for helping me develop this question!
science-based biology physics super-powers
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
I'm writing a speculative fiction story that includes superhumans. The focus is on individual characters and their daily lives, and I'm trying to maintain some consistency by not throwing all the laws of physics out the window. However, this creates some problems in the daily life of these individuals - where does their super-energy come from, given that they appear to eat a normal amount of food?
For example, a superhuman with super-strength is able to lift heavy objects. This is fine according to the laws of thermodynamics, as long as a proper amount of energy is used to perform it. To lift a 15,000kg semi 2 meters off the ground, my superhuman needs to contribute a minimum of 60 kcal. In a typical day, this character might perform an action like this 50 times, for an additional energy expenditure of 3,000 kcal - that's more than double the normal energy expenditure of a similar human. On intensive days, this energy cost might be closer to 20,000 kcal.
How can I justify this discrepancy between the energy my superhumans expend and the energy that they consume, assuming they eat a normal amount of normal food? Specifically, how could a superhuman obtain the 20,000 kcal expended in an intensive hero day without eating proportionally more?
Shoutout to the Sandbox for helping me develop this question!
science-based biology physics super-powers
science-based biology physics super-powers
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
edited 2 hours ago
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
asked 2 hours ago
Dubukay
8,05641852
8,05641852
1
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
1
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago
 |Â
show 1 more comment
1
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
1
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago
1
1
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
1
1
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago
 |Â
show 1 more comment
4 Answers
4
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Improved efficiency!
Lifted from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46788/how-efficient-is-the-human-body
The MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) readout on your gym equipment is
your body doing 1Kcal/kg/h = 4184 J/kg/h and can be reasonably
accurately measured by how much oxygen a test victim uses.
Sitting still is roughly 1 met and cycling at 100 Watts is around 5.5
Mets.
So taking a man of 75kg, cycling at 100Watts (100J/s) he is having to
do 5.5 * 4184 * 75 / 3600s = 480Watts so an efficency of 20%
Remember though that the person is spending 80-100Watts just staying
alive doing nothing - unlike your car. There is an interesting
experimental fit to how much energy you need to just stay alive,
calculated about 100 years ago, the Harris-Benedict equation
If your heroes are more efficient at energy conversion this can explain why they can get double or triple the energy from their food.
Also
Fat heroes.
You can store a lot of energy in your body as fat and that is what your heroes do, with repeated trips to Wendys. I can vouch for that method. By virtue of their superhumanism, they metabolize that fat very rapidly to perform feats requiring great energy expenditures. Note: if their metabolism works normally mobilizing that much energy really fast would entail 3 other things.
1: Rapid respiration. They are burning that fat to CO2. They will need oxygen and lots of it. The might carry a little tank and portable mask, like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Or they might just breathe really fast. Or both.
2: Water production. CHO + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + energy. The water has to go somewhere. I propose they could sweat it out with supersweat glands.
3: Heat. Entropy takes its tax and that means a fraction of the energy goes to heat. These heroes will heat up when they do their stuff. Fortunately panting hard and sweating profusely will take care of most of that in the customary ways. Some heroes might augment onboard cooling abilities by putting ice in their pants before particularly heroic maneuvers.
Your obese, hungry, efficient heroes will be red faced, soaked with sweat and breathing hard when they do their super moves. They will look like Turkish power lifters. I say that is a fine change from the cool and composed thing you usually see!
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
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up vote
1
down vote
Your heroes are nuclear
Not exactly nuclear reactors, but if you're going to hand wave to the point where they are able to channel energy into superhuman acts, you can almost realistically justify that energy supply as coming directly from matter.
Ignoring small potatoes like potential chemical energy (our biological power source), go straight for the roughly 9x10^16 joules per kilogram (21.5 trillion kilocalories) that relativity suggests is in resting mass itself. If your heroes convert mass directly to energy, they have a basically unlimited source.
The only question at that point is why they need to continue eating, since a single meal would power endless exploits.
(Thanks goes to the Mass-energy equivalence Wikipedia page.)
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
add a comment |Â
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0
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The figures you put in your question are not so impressive...
Consider a sumo wrestler:
The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is anything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means that it takes not only strength and flexibility to be a sumo—it also takes the right diet. Eating is an essential part of their training.
A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is pretty astounding when you consider that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats and all of it’s done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.
Your superhero is basically a slim sumo wrestler in Lycra pants...
Here is a typical sumo wrestler daily eating schedule:
Skip breakfast
A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slows down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11am. It also gets them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.
Bulk load
The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ã¡ゃんã“é‹). It sounds a little like ‘chunk nabe,’ which is somehow oddly appropriate. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe (é‹) is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed full of extra everything for the sole purpose of providing calories. To complement their mighty meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 bowls of rice and copious amounts of beer, required for empty calories. A healthy rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.
Take a siesta
After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training—the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch, in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their girth.
Dinner and lights out
At the end of the day, sumo wrestlers eat another massive meal and call it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s protein and calories work their magic and they wake up in the early
morning ready to smash their bodies against each other.
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
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Alternate energy sources:
Obviously, for a world to have superheroes must needs break at least some of our assumed laws of physics. I think the cleanest resolution would be for the distinguishing factor of superhumans to be the access to some other form of energy not normally accounted for.
One of my favorite Asamov stories, The Gods Themselves includes the concept of exploiting access to a parallel dimension, in which physics works subtly differently than in ours, to derive massive amounts of energy.
Imagine some quirk of quantum mechanics which allows certain conscious beings to tap into some other dimension at an unconscious, subatomic level. They would be channeling what amounts to a difference potential in atomic forces. In fact, if you posit infinite parallel worlds, the variations in super powers could be due to the variations in universal laws.
That way, most of the physics in your world work the same as what we normally assume. And, there wouldn't necessarily be any obvious difference in biology (which has often been bothersome to me in certain Superhero world-concepts; evolution doesn't work like that dammit).
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
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4 Answers
4
active
oldest
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4 Answers
4
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
up vote
4
down vote
Improved efficiency!
Lifted from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46788/how-efficient-is-the-human-body
The MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) readout on your gym equipment is
your body doing 1Kcal/kg/h = 4184 J/kg/h and can be reasonably
accurately measured by how much oxygen a test victim uses.
Sitting still is roughly 1 met and cycling at 100 Watts is around 5.5
Mets.
So taking a man of 75kg, cycling at 100Watts (100J/s) he is having to
do 5.5 * 4184 * 75 / 3600s = 480Watts so an efficency of 20%
Remember though that the person is spending 80-100Watts just staying
alive doing nothing - unlike your car. There is an interesting
experimental fit to how much energy you need to just stay alive,
calculated about 100 years ago, the Harris-Benedict equation
If your heroes are more efficient at energy conversion this can explain why they can get double or triple the energy from their food.
Also
Fat heroes.
You can store a lot of energy in your body as fat and that is what your heroes do, with repeated trips to Wendys. I can vouch for that method. By virtue of their superhumanism, they metabolize that fat very rapidly to perform feats requiring great energy expenditures. Note: if their metabolism works normally mobilizing that much energy really fast would entail 3 other things.
1: Rapid respiration. They are burning that fat to CO2. They will need oxygen and lots of it. The might carry a little tank and portable mask, like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Or they might just breathe really fast. Or both.
2: Water production. CHO + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + energy. The water has to go somewhere. I propose they could sweat it out with supersweat glands.
3: Heat. Entropy takes its tax and that means a fraction of the energy goes to heat. These heroes will heat up when they do their stuff. Fortunately panting hard and sweating profusely will take care of most of that in the customary ways. Some heroes might augment onboard cooling abilities by putting ice in their pants before particularly heroic maneuvers.
Your obese, hungry, efficient heroes will be red faced, soaked with sweat and breathing hard when they do their super moves. They will look like Turkish power lifters. I say that is a fine change from the cool and composed thing you usually see!
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
add a comment |Â
up vote
4
down vote
Improved efficiency!
Lifted from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46788/how-efficient-is-the-human-body
The MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) readout on your gym equipment is
your body doing 1Kcal/kg/h = 4184 J/kg/h and can be reasonably
accurately measured by how much oxygen a test victim uses.
Sitting still is roughly 1 met and cycling at 100 Watts is around 5.5
Mets.
So taking a man of 75kg, cycling at 100Watts (100J/s) he is having to
do 5.5 * 4184 * 75 / 3600s = 480Watts so an efficency of 20%
Remember though that the person is spending 80-100Watts just staying
alive doing nothing - unlike your car. There is an interesting
experimental fit to how much energy you need to just stay alive,
calculated about 100 years ago, the Harris-Benedict equation
If your heroes are more efficient at energy conversion this can explain why they can get double or triple the energy from their food.
Also
Fat heroes.
You can store a lot of energy in your body as fat and that is what your heroes do, with repeated trips to Wendys. I can vouch for that method. By virtue of their superhumanism, they metabolize that fat very rapidly to perform feats requiring great energy expenditures. Note: if their metabolism works normally mobilizing that much energy really fast would entail 3 other things.
1: Rapid respiration. They are burning that fat to CO2. They will need oxygen and lots of it. The might carry a little tank and portable mask, like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Or they might just breathe really fast. Or both.
2: Water production. CHO + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + energy. The water has to go somewhere. I propose they could sweat it out with supersweat glands.
3: Heat. Entropy takes its tax and that means a fraction of the energy goes to heat. These heroes will heat up when they do their stuff. Fortunately panting hard and sweating profusely will take care of most of that in the customary ways. Some heroes might augment onboard cooling abilities by putting ice in their pants before particularly heroic maneuvers.
Your obese, hungry, efficient heroes will be red faced, soaked with sweat and breathing hard when they do their super moves. They will look like Turkish power lifters. I say that is a fine change from the cool and composed thing you usually see!
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
add a comment |Â
up vote
4
down vote
up vote
4
down vote
Improved efficiency!
Lifted from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46788/how-efficient-is-the-human-body
The MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) readout on your gym equipment is
your body doing 1Kcal/kg/h = 4184 J/kg/h and can be reasonably
accurately measured by how much oxygen a test victim uses.
Sitting still is roughly 1 met and cycling at 100 Watts is around 5.5
Mets.
So taking a man of 75kg, cycling at 100Watts (100J/s) he is having to
do 5.5 * 4184 * 75 / 3600s = 480Watts so an efficency of 20%
Remember though that the person is spending 80-100Watts just staying
alive doing nothing - unlike your car. There is an interesting
experimental fit to how much energy you need to just stay alive,
calculated about 100 years ago, the Harris-Benedict equation
If your heroes are more efficient at energy conversion this can explain why they can get double or triple the energy from their food.
Also
Fat heroes.
You can store a lot of energy in your body as fat and that is what your heroes do, with repeated trips to Wendys. I can vouch for that method. By virtue of their superhumanism, they metabolize that fat very rapidly to perform feats requiring great energy expenditures. Note: if their metabolism works normally mobilizing that much energy really fast would entail 3 other things.
1: Rapid respiration. They are burning that fat to CO2. They will need oxygen and lots of it. The might carry a little tank and portable mask, like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Or they might just breathe really fast. Or both.
2: Water production. CHO + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + energy. The water has to go somewhere. I propose they could sweat it out with supersweat glands.
3: Heat. Entropy takes its tax and that means a fraction of the energy goes to heat. These heroes will heat up when they do their stuff. Fortunately panting hard and sweating profusely will take care of most of that in the customary ways. Some heroes might augment onboard cooling abilities by putting ice in their pants before particularly heroic maneuvers.
Your obese, hungry, efficient heroes will be red faced, soaked with sweat and breathing hard when they do their super moves. They will look like Turkish power lifters. I say that is a fine change from the cool and composed thing you usually see!
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
Improved efficiency!
Lifted from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46788/how-efficient-is-the-human-body
The MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) readout on your gym equipment is
your body doing 1Kcal/kg/h = 4184 J/kg/h and can be reasonably
accurately measured by how much oxygen a test victim uses.
Sitting still is roughly 1 met and cycling at 100 Watts is around 5.5
Mets.
So taking a man of 75kg, cycling at 100Watts (100J/s) he is having to
do 5.5 * 4184 * 75 / 3600s = 480Watts so an efficency of 20%
Remember though that the person is spending 80-100Watts just staying
alive doing nothing - unlike your car. There is an interesting
experimental fit to how much energy you need to just stay alive,
calculated about 100 years ago, the Harris-Benedict equation
If your heroes are more efficient at energy conversion this can explain why they can get double or triple the energy from their food.
Also
Fat heroes.
You can store a lot of energy in your body as fat and that is what your heroes do, with repeated trips to Wendys. I can vouch for that method. By virtue of their superhumanism, they metabolize that fat very rapidly to perform feats requiring great energy expenditures. Note: if their metabolism works normally mobilizing that much energy really fast would entail 3 other things.
1: Rapid respiration. They are burning that fat to CO2. They will need oxygen and lots of it. The might carry a little tank and portable mask, like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Or they might just breathe really fast. Or both.
2: Water production. CHO + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + energy. The water has to go somewhere. I propose they could sweat it out with supersweat glands.
3: Heat. Entropy takes its tax and that means a fraction of the energy goes to heat. These heroes will heat up when they do their stuff. Fortunately panting hard and sweating profusely will take care of most of that in the customary ways. Some heroes might augment onboard cooling abilities by putting ice in their pants before particularly heroic maneuvers.
Your obese, hungry, efficient heroes will be red faced, soaked with sweat and breathing hard when they do their super moves. They will look like Turkish power lifters. I say that is a fine change from the cool and composed thing you usually see!
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
answered 1 hour ago
Willk
93.4k22179398
93.4k22179398
add a comment |Â
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
Your heroes are nuclear
Not exactly nuclear reactors, but if you're going to hand wave to the point where they are able to channel energy into superhuman acts, you can almost realistically justify that energy supply as coming directly from matter.
Ignoring small potatoes like potential chemical energy (our biological power source), go straight for the roughly 9x10^16 joules per kilogram (21.5 trillion kilocalories) that relativity suggests is in resting mass itself. If your heroes convert mass directly to energy, they have a basically unlimited source.
The only question at that point is why they need to continue eating, since a single meal would power endless exploits.
(Thanks goes to the Mass-energy equivalence Wikipedia page.)
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
Your heroes are nuclear
Not exactly nuclear reactors, but if you're going to hand wave to the point where they are able to channel energy into superhuman acts, you can almost realistically justify that energy supply as coming directly from matter.
Ignoring small potatoes like potential chemical energy (our biological power source), go straight for the roughly 9x10^16 joules per kilogram (21.5 trillion kilocalories) that relativity suggests is in resting mass itself. If your heroes convert mass directly to energy, they have a basically unlimited source.
The only question at that point is why they need to continue eating, since a single meal would power endless exploits.
(Thanks goes to the Mass-energy equivalence Wikipedia page.)
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
1
down vote
up vote
1
down vote
Your heroes are nuclear
Not exactly nuclear reactors, but if you're going to hand wave to the point where they are able to channel energy into superhuman acts, you can almost realistically justify that energy supply as coming directly from matter.
Ignoring small potatoes like potential chemical energy (our biological power source), go straight for the roughly 9x10^16 joules per kilogram (21.5 trillion kilocalories) that relativity suggests is in resting mass itself. If your heroes convert mass directly to energy, they have a basically unlimited source.
The only question at that point is why they need to continue eating, since a single meal would power endless exploits.
(Thanks goes to the Mass-energy equivalence Wikipedia page.)
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
Your heroes are nuclear
Not exactly nuclear reactors, but if you're going to hand wave to the point where they are able to channel energy into superhuman acts, you can almost realistically justify that energy supply as coming directly from matter.
Ignoring small potatoes like potential chemical energy (our biological power source), go straight for the roughly 9x10^16 joules per kilogram (21.5 trillion kilocalories) that relativity suggests is in resting mass itself. If your heroes convert mass directly to energy, they have a basically unlimited source.
The only question at that point is why they need to continue eating, since a single meal would power endless exploits.
(Thanks goes to the Mass-energy equivalence Wikipedia page.)
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
answered 1 hour ago
Jedediah
5415
5415
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
add a comment |Â
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
Maybe only a specific element within the food is converted?
– Joel Coehoorn
17 mins ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
The figures you put in your question are not so impressive...
Consider a sumo wrestler:
The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is anything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means that it takes not only strength and flexibility to be a sumo—it also takes the right diet. Eating is an essential part of their training.
A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is pretty astounding when you consider that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats and all of it’s done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.
Your superhero is basically a slim sumo wrestler in Lycra pants...
Here is a typical sumo wrestler daily eating schedule:
Skip breakfast
A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slows down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11am. It also gets them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.
Bulk load
The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ã¡ゃんã“é‹). It sounds a little like ‘chunk nabe,’ which is somehow oddly appropriate. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe (é‹) is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed full of extra everything for the sole purpose of providing calories. To complement their mighty meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 bowls of rice and copious amounts of beer, required for empty calories. A healthy rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.
Take a siesta
After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training—the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch, in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their girth.
Dinner and lights out
At the end of the day, sumo wrestlers eat another massive meal and call it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s protein and calories work their magic and they wake up in the early
morning ready to smash their bodies against each other.
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
The figures you put in your question are not so impressive...
Consider a sumo wrestler:
The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is anything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means that it takes not only strength and flexibility to be a sumo—it also takes the right diet. Eating is an essential part of their training.
A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is pretty astounding when you consider that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats and all of it’s done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.
Your superhero is basically a slim sumo wrestler in Lycra pants...
Here is a typical sumo wrestler daily eating schedule:
Skip breakfast
A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slows down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11am. It also gets them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.
Bulk load
The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ã¡ゃんã“é‹). It sounds a little like ‘chunk nabe,’ which is somehow oddly appropriate. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe (é‹) is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed full of extra everything for the sole purpose of providing calories. To complement their mighty meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 bowls of rice and copious amounts of beer, required for empty calories. A healthy rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.
Take a siesta
After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training—the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch, in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their girth.
Dinner and lights out
At the end of the day, sumo wrestlers eat another massive meal and call it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s protein and calories work their magic and they wake up in the early
morning ready to smash their bodies against each other.
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
up vote
0
down vote
The figures you put in your question are not so impressive...
Consider a sumo wrestler:
The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is anything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means that it takes not only strength and flexibility to be a sumo—it also takes the right diet. Eating is an essential part of their training.
A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is pretty astounding when you consider that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats and all of it’s done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.
Your superhero is basically a slim sumo wrestler in Lycra pants...
Here is a typical sumo wrestler daily eating schedule:
Skip breakfast
A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slows down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11am. It also gets them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.
Bulk load
The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ã¡ゃんã“é‹). It sounds a little like ‘chunk nabe,’ which is somehow oddly appropriate. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe (é‹) is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed full of extra everything for the sole purpose of providing calories. To complement their mighty meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 bowls of rice and copious amounts of beer, required for empty calories. A healthy rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.
Take a siesta
After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training—the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch, in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their girth.
Dinner and lights out
At the end of the day, sumo wrestlers eat another massive meal and call it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s protein and calories work their magic and they wake up in the early
morning ready to smash their bodies against each other.
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
The figures you put in your question are not so impressive...
Consider a sumo wrestler:
The ideal weight for a sumo wrestler is anything from 400 to 600 pounds. This means that it takes not only strength and flexibility to be a sumo—it also takes the right diet. Eating is an essential part of their training.
A typical sumo wrestler eats a daily diet of 20,000 calories, which is pretty astounding when you consider that the recommended daily intake for a healthy, active male is 2,500. They eat 10 times what a normal male eats and all of it’s done in two massive 10,000-calorie meals.
Your superhero is basically a slim sumo wrestler in Lycra pants...
Here is a typical sumo wrestler daily eating schedule:
Skip breakfast
A sumo wrestler’s day starts at four or five o’clock in the morning with training and exercise. Surprisingly, breakfast is not served. Skipping breakfast and working out instead slows down the wrestler’s metabolism, so they usually don’t eat until around 11am. It also gets them hungry enough for that 10,000-calorie lunch.
Bulk load
The main dish that sumo wrestlers eat is a stew called chankonabe (ã¡ゃんã“é‹). It sounds a little like ‘chunk nabe,’ which is somehow oddly appropriate. This is a stew filled with fish, vegetables, meat and tofu. Nabe (é‹) is a traditional Japanese stew, but chankonabe is the supersized version, stuffed full of extra everything for the sole purpose of providing calories. To complement their mighty meal, sumo wrestlers eat around 5–10 bowls of rice and copious amounts of beer, required for empty calories. A healthy rikishi (力士, sumo wrestler) may down as many as 6 pints during the midday meal.
Take a siesta
After lunch, there’s one more essential bit of training—the nap. How could you not pass out after a meal like that? Sumo wrestlers take a siesta for as long as 4 hours after lunch, in order to slow down their metabolism and add everything they just ate to their girth.
Dinner and lights out
At the end of the day, sumo wrestlers eat another massive meal and call it a night. While
they sleep, the day’s protein and calories work their magic and they wake up in the early
morning ready to smash their bodies against each other.
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
answered 2 hours ago
L.Dutch♦
66.3k20159313
66.3k20159313
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
add a comment |Â
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
This doesn't seem to actually answer the question. The numbers I gave are just an example - a superpower like flight would require more, and if a superhuman with the ability to carry a building is going to obey the laws of thermodynamics then they'll need more than even what sumo wrestlers consume.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
It's your world, I can only answer based on the info you provide...
– L.Dutch♦
2 hours ago
1
1
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
Regardless, I did request that they consume "a normal amount of food". I don't think that the amount of food a sumo wrestler consumes is considered "normal". It might be normal to them, but not to an average human.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
Alternate energy sources:
Obviously, for a world to have superheroes must needs break at least some of our assumed laws of physics. I think the cleanest resolution would be for the distinguishing factor of superhumans to be the access to some other form of energy not normally accounted for.
One of my favorite Asamov stories, The Gods Themselves includes the concept of exploiting access to a parallel dimension, in which physics works subtly differently than in ours, to derive massive amounts of energy.
Imagine some quirk of quantum mechanics which allows certain conscious beings to tap into some other dimension at an unconscious, subatomic level. They would be channeling what amounts to a difference potential in atomic forces. In fact, if you posit infinite parallel worlds, the variations in super powers could be due to the variations in universal laws.
That way, most of the physics in your world work the same as what we normally assume. And, there wouldn't necessarily be any obvious difference in biology (which has often been bothersome to me in certain Superhero world-concepts; evolution doesn't work like that dammit).
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
Alternate energy sources:
Obviously, for a world to have superheroes must needs break at least some of our assumed laws of physics. I think the cleanest resolution would be for the distinguishing factor of superhumans to be the access to some other form of energy not normally accounted for.
One of my favorite Asamov stories, The Gods Themselves includes the concept of exploiting access to a parallel dimension, in which physics works subtly differently than in ours, to derive massive amounts of energy.
Imagine some quirk of quantum mechanics which allows certain conscious beings to tap into some other dimension at an unconscious, subatomic level. They would be channeling what amounts to a difference potential in atomic forces. In fact, if you posit infinite parallel worlds, the variations in super powers could be due to the variations in universal laws.
That way, most of the physics in your world work the same as what we normally assume. And, there wouldn't necessarily be any obvious difference in biology (which has often been bothersome to me in certain Superhero world-concepts; evolution doesn't work like that dammit).
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
add a comment |Â
up vote
0
down vote
up vote
0
down vote
Alternate energy sources:
Obviously, for a world to have superheroes must needs break at least some of our assumed laws of physics. I think the cleanest resolution would be for the distinguishing factor of superhumans to be the access to some other form of energy not normally accounted for.
One of my favorite Asamov stories, The Gods Themselves includes the concept of exploiting access to a parallel dimension, in which physics works subtly differently than in ours, to derive massive amounts of energy.
Imagine some quirk of quantum mechanics which allows certain conscious beings to tap into some other dimension at an unconscious, subatomic level. They would be channeling what amounts to a difference potential in atomic forces. In fact, if you posit infinite parallel worlds, the variations in super powers could be due to the variations in universal laws.
That way, most of the physics in your world work the same as what we normally assume. And, there wouldn't necessarily be any obvious difference in biology (which has often been bothersome to me in certain Superhero world-concepts; evolution doesn't work like that dammit).
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
Alternate energy sources:
Obviously, for a world to have superheroes must needs break at least some of our assumed laws of physics. I think the cleanest resolution would be for the distinguishing factor of superhumans to be the access to some other form of energy not normally accounted for.
One of my favorite Asamov stories, The Gods Themselves includes the concept of exploiting access to a parallel dimension, in which physics works subtly differently than in ours, to derive massive amounts of energy.
Imagine some quirk of quantum mechanics which allows certain conscious beings to tap into some other dimension at an unconscious, subatomic level. They would be channeling what amounts to a difference potential in atomic forces. In fact, if you posit infinite parallel worlds, the variations in super powers could be due to the variations in universal laws.
That way, most of the physics in your world work the same as what we normally assume. And, there wouldn't necessarily be any obvious difference in biology (which has often been bothersome to me in certain Superhero world-concepts; evolution doesn't work like that dammit).
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
answered 46 mins ago
Karl Justice
512
512
add a comment |Â
add a comment |Â
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1
3000 kcal is not double but what your average, active male will consume. I know because that's what I consume. Do you mean from physical moving of objects alone? I don't have the time to check your other numbers, but I wonder if they are correct. Additional fuel is trivial btw: cellulose and so on. Have fun.
– Raditz_35
2 hours ago
@Raditz_35 That's 3,000 kcal additional, on top of the 2,500 kcal required by normal functioning. I've edited my question to reflect this.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
How much super do your superhumans get to be? If they are only lifting semis, we can work out something biologically. If they are lifting ocean liners, we need to look for a different energy source.
– Alexander
2 hours ago
@Alexander For now, I'm trying to just get them to lift semis. I'll edit the question to reflect that.
– Dubukay
2 hours ago
1
Have you seen Michael Phelps's diet?
– Renan
2 hours ago