“Okay, lemme get it. You’re tellin’ me that if Superman were to fly opposite around our planet fast enough, it could reverse time? Bullcrap!” – Dave3, 9 years old

Sure, I can suspend reality with the best of ’em, but even as a kid I had a problem swallowing that scene from “Superman: The Movie.” I just couldn’t believe that the turning of the earth would affect the flow of time in any way. If you’re gonna throw time travel at me, give me a method that defies logic — a telephone booth with an umbrella, an electric buggy with a psychedelic spinny wheel, a bubble with a naked governor in it.

This earth rotation business is just one of the many ways in which Superman has found himself navigating the fourth dimension, some far more outlandish than others. Let’s explore the science behind this particular fiction, shall we?

Okay, I won’t deny that there is proven evidence that by encircling our planet you can, in a sense, “time travel.” In October 1971, scientists J.C. Hafele and R.E. Keating put Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the test by having four (cesium) atomic clocks flown around the world twice via commercial jets — first all four were flown eastbound around the world, then they were flown westbound around the world.

Using voodoo (read: math) they predicted that the eastward clock would “lose” 40+/-23 nanoseconds and the westward clocks would “gain” 275+/-21 nanoseconds compared to the reference clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Their results were almost exactly as predicted, with the eastward clocks being behind 59ns and the westward clocks being ahead 273ns. These temporal variations were due to gravitational and kinematic effects, and compounding velocities (i.e. relativity).

Voilá, time travel! And considering the relative speed of 35-year-old commercial jets (about 270km/h), this is a marvelous outcome.

Now get Superman involved in this experiment and see how he fairs….

Superman: The Movie Climax — Lex Luthor’s second missile hits the San Andreas fault, the Golden Gate bridge becomes a theme park ride, Lois Lane’s car falls into a crevice and she’s killed, Windows runs on Apple, total chaos ensues.

Finding Lois dead pushes Superman over the edge — he ain’t havin’ none of this business. So in a rage, Kal-El takes to the heavens and breaks one of Jor-El’s strictest commandments: Do not interfere in human history. Encircling the earth at unimaginable speeds, flying counter-rotational, he eventually manages to reverse our planet’s rotation which, according to Superman screenwriter Mario Puzo, also reverses time.

Um, Mario, study relativity much?

Yeah, I know that relativity supports time travel — Don’t believe me? Ask that guy who got into the rocket-ship and traveled away from earth at half the speed of light and returned after two years…. Oh wait, you can’t — because when he returns he’ll be 200 years in our future. No return ticket.

That’s Einstein’s math, not mine. He was freakin’ smart, but even he said going backwards wasn’t gonna be happening without a source of infinite power — The kind of power and speed that it would take to move an object that would continue to double in mass with every increment as it approaches light-speed.

So we can take this one of two ways. First, my personal justification — Superman’s power is limitless, and he did not actually change the earth’s rotation, but rather traversed the light-speed barrier, for which the whole earth spinning nonsense was merely a visual metaphor (a delusion which is promptly ruined when he flies in the other direction to “right” our rotation.), or simply put, Mario Puzo copped-out on us.

Now, who’s ready to tackle the whole duality/paradox issue? Wouldn’t there temporarily be two Supermen flying around deflecting missiles and crapping all over Marlon Brando’s rules? If so, what would happen if they met?

Discuss.