Originally posted by Marcus Rowland:
You'd think that at some time over the years someone would notice that it really is X-rays in his X-ray vision. But I would have expected the heat vision to be infra-red and pretty harmless at low power. Microwaves instead?
The show leaves it pretty open-ended about whether his X-ray vision is truly in the frequency range of real X-rays, or whether it is called that only because it behaves similarly to X-ray machines in some respects. Therefore, I purposely tried to leave it vague as well. My own thought is that it isn't truly in the X-ray range. When Clark looks at people through walls, he sees them, skin and all. I would imagine that if his vision really did work like an X-ray machine does, he would see people as being more like skeletons with some suggestions of organs. I am guessing that the difference is due to his using a different frequency range; but I suppose it could be due to using the same range in a different manner.
I think this is one of those aspects of the show (and, by extension, of fanfic) that is best just swallowed whole and not examined too closely; along with the myriad other suspensions of disbelief necessary to enjoy LnC.
One of my BRs had more or less the same comment as you did about the heat vision. My initial thought upon seeing the show was that it was microwave radiation rather than simply infra-red. I'm not sure why I thought that; perhaps from the rapidity with which his eyes were able to heat things up. But that can't be right, either, since I would imagine that a metallic gun exposed to microwave radiation wouldn't simply get hot. At least, metals put in a microwave oven tend to cause some pretty, but destructive, light shows. (The first time I ever saw a microwave oven in action was when a friend put a loaf of bread -- still in the wrapper with its metallic fastener in place -- into the oven. Since I had never seen such an oven used before, I hadn't been sure about whether the blue arcs that appeared when the oven was turned on were supposed to be there...) So my speculation would be that it would be somewhere else along the electromagnetic spectrum; somewhere with properties closer to microwave than to infrared.
Thanks for the comments.
cheers,
Lynn
