Be it an elementary school sleepover or a university orientation, there’s always a place and time for the infamous question: If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Some people say they’d love to fly or breathe underwater, but one of the most popular answers is X-ray vision.
The entire process behind X-ray “vision” is based on the varying energies different types of light possess. No, this isn’t referring to the brightness of a fluorescent light VS outdoor lighting. Instead, I refer to the Electromagnetic Spectrum, a visual placement of different types of light we can and can’t see.
According to “The Cosmic Perspective” by Jeffrey Bennett, the length of light visible to us is extremely small. “ROY G. BIV,” the collection of visible light we know (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), is nearly a billion times shorter than all the light that falls between X-ray and radio.
The different types of light that appear on our scale include gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave, and radio. Gamma rays are the strongest, meaning that they have shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies than the other types of light. X-rays, then, are pretty intense and can even harm the human body, causing cancer and mutations in some individuals. For this reason, doctors and technicians take precautions when issuing “X-rays” to patients by covering them with lead aprons. However, x-rays are not typically strong enough to penetrate through our bones – which makes sense considering x-ray images show events like fractures in our bones or cavities in our teeth. Yet, the images are produced on a film that records the light that passes through our body.
Sweet. So Superman could bend science at his will to look at things through walls, right?
Wrong. Without a film behind whatever he’s observing, he wouldn’t be able to see anything special with his vision. The x-ray images we see are merely representations of the process of x-rays passing through a body, being unable to get past bone, and thus leaving an imprint or outline of the bony barriers on the film. The objects Superman would want to see or look through, like walls, don’t give off x-rays. Therefore, Superman’s vision wouldn’t pick anything up, and he’d look straight through the important stuff.
I guess that kills a lot of kids’ dreams (including mine). Now I think I’ll have to answer with a more realistic superpower, like flying.
