By eldercactus, r*ddit link
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Why do people say that Superman doesn't go back in time by spinning the earth backwards? He goes back in time and the earth appears to spin backwards because it is in reverse time.
Itβs no dumber than Star Trek saying that slingshotting yourself around the sun is a tried and tested method of time travel.
TBF they discovered it dring that episode, and only ever did it once again. Also it wasn't just any star, and they slingshot into a warp speed most ships can't achieve.
But ya magnets + gravity + speed /= backwards time travel lol
edit: Canonically James T Kirk wrote about time travel. The first chapter begins as follows.
The second chapter was.
And the final chapter on time travel was.
he really like suspenseful pauses.
But what
is a man
supposed
to do
when he wants to fuck
his Grandma
but like
when she was hot?
They used that method once more in Picard season 2 with assistance from a Borg Queen. As that timeline no longer exists, we can all just ignore it.
With our current mathematical models of physics, if you travel faster than light, you go backwards in time. Though, most scientific communities reject the possibility of FTL travel. However, thereβs still the idea of tachyons, I guess.
A pretty good source on the topic: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNC0xsEp6YXRq2ALms7fTwrx
Everyone's face rapidly de-aging while getting torn to oblivion simultaneously as Superman logrolls the earth into the Mesozoic era.
SG1 travel through wormhole that intersects a solar flare on one side of the sun goes back in time. Other side of the sun goes forward.
I think if any time travel is possible, SG1 had the most plausible.
Well I mean Kirk did it that one time with his Vulcan zombie buddy, so obviously it's been known for at least a century by that point
He wasn't a zombie - he was a mind-ghost that first haunted an elderly human being and then when it became more convenient switched to possess the body of an unwitting minutes-old child cellular clone. None of these btw were first asked if they would consent!
tbf the gravity of a sun is on a scale that puts it into black hole territory. I suppose by slingshotting around a star you could increase your gravitational state enough for time to "speed up" or "slow down".
this was actually observed in the HafeleβKeating experiment.
though, it should be noted, we have observed time travel in three states:
but we have never observed an ability to roll back the passage of time. though it may be possible, it would most certainly require an exotic material (like red matter) to trigger such a perverse violation of time.
Genuine question, but does the sun's gravity put it in black hole territory? I thought black holes had such massive gravity that not even light can escape itβ¦and the sun produces a lot of lightβ¦
I mean more so nothing else in the universe can create such a gravitational pull than a star.
if you think about celestial bodies on a graduated scale stars and black holes are practically in the same "class".
the difference is, you can escape the gravity of a star (with much difficulty) but you could never escape the gravity of a black hole.
that said, time dilation can happen before reaching the event horizon of a black hole. we have observed this as light emitting around a black hole, kind of like a mirage.
light, radio, magnetism, electricity are all based on different waveforms of similar energy and gravity is a constant influence to that energy. it can be used to bend or refract the beams like water does to light from an observation point.
It's more accurate to say that gravity bends spacetime. The light we see being bent around a black hole is a consequence of that, and is evidence for time dilation as it is also evidence of space dilation. And (being extremely pedantic here, I know,) gravity bends spacetime and light travels through that spacetime in a straight line.
Being in any gravity well will slow your time ever so slightly, by the time you die your feet will be about 100-500 nanoseconds younger than the top of your head due to being closer to the earth!
Given movie Superman's powers, it'd be fair to claim he is an exotic material.
Or the avengers explanation for time travel.
Oh, when you are small, time runs slower? Wow, then we can definitely travel back in time like that, because... Quantum!
Also, Pym Articles aren't exactly how they're described, otherwise none of the Ant-Man movies would make any sense.
Then Donner shouldn't have had Superman flying around the earth in the same direction that the rotation changed to. Like if Superman had been flying around the world North-South, it wouldn't look like he was physically turning the rotation of the planet back with his flying.
Donner should've had that dinner party sooner.
Yeah, I've never understood why people don't get this. The scene has him flying around the planet so that we can see within a single frame what he is doing and what effect it is producing. Granted, it is completely made up physics he is using, but it isn't as stupid or unreasonable as people portray it as.
They don't get it because it was poorly presented to the audience. In Donner's defense, filmmaking has come a long way on presenting such sci-fi concepts. It wasn't his fault, he tried something and fell flat.
Wait, he actually did this in a comic? What ended up happening?
He does this a lot in the comics, starting in the Silver Age. Superboy regularly visited the 30th century.
Always took it as a representation of him going faster than light, so he goes back in time and gets a chance to undo the bad thing. As far as comic book physics goes, it's not that bad.
Wow, do I feel stupid. Thank you.
Thing is, in the movie he then reverses course to get the world spinning the right way again. He changes the rotation twice. I feel like the "visual representation of time travel" explanation is from people who haven't watched the whole movie, just the clip.
Maybe he overshot and went too far into the past and had to catch up, with raises the question why he didn't stop everything bad in the movie by punching Lex Luthor right at the start...
This video shows the whole sequence, he un-reverses the Earth's spin at ~1:38.
Does Superman have access to the SpeedForce ?
so i have a hard time to decode your comment, maybe it is because i am not deeply familiar with superman, but this comic is not about time travel.
earth's rotational speed on equator is roughly 1600 km/h (or ~1000 mph in freedom units). anything else on earth, including people, is also rotating with the same speed. we just don't have the feel for that speed because nothing in our inertial system is moving, the only thing we can see moving are celestial objects, as we rotate around them.
if it would really be possible to instantly switch the direction on rotation, anything that is not bolted to earth would steel have its momentum and continue moving in the speed and direction given by it.
so anything, including people, would continue flying ~1600 kmh, and since the earth is now rotating the other direction, it would factually result in the speed of ~3200 kmh relative to surface of earth, killing anything alive almost instantly (as soon they hit any object connected to ground.
object incapable of withstanding this momentum switch, like i assume all houses, would instantly collapse.
this all would be accompanied by winds at the speed of ~3200 kmh, unless superman's magic trick can somehow reverse rotation of the atmosphere together with earth.
this is what you see in the last panel. long story short, the fucking moron would instantly destroy earth.
The comic references the way Superman seems to rewind time at the end of the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie. In the the film, Superman flies fairly high above the earth, accelerating faster and faster until he travels back in time. The way this is depicted shows the earth's rotation slowing down, and eventually rotating backwards. A common misconception of the movie is that he is making the earth rotate backwards - he is not, he is just himself accelerating to faster than light speeds high above the atmosphere.
Thereby making himself exist in two places at the same time. Superman created a paradox. The conversation is never about that though.
Omg, i havent watched this movie or thought about it in 30 years.... but it was very confusing to me as a kid. Thanks for finally explaining this to me
This comic references the movie Superman from 1978, in which Superman travels back in time. They chose to show this time travel as the earth spinning backwards and people got confused thinking that they were implying if you spin the earth backwards time would go backwards. The comic is referencing that confusion, or playing into it.
the comic is referencing confusion of the script writers who came up with the scene end explains what would actually happen...
Buddy, listen to what people are trying to tell you. The Earth doesn't change direction, time changes direction. We are watching the earth "re-winding". Superman individually goes back in time and we see from his perspective time going backwards. He doesn't impart forces on the planet to turn it backwards on it's revolution.
He did it because he has to choose between stopping the missile or saving Lois. Going back in time means there's 2 Supermans for a short period of time so he can do both.
okey, "buddy". please educate me. what do you think this comics is about? what do you think is happening in the last frame? and why should "going back in time" result in two supermans at the same time?
In this comic, they are suggesting that Superman going really fast will impart a physical force onto the planet Earth, like grabbing a spinning basketball and making it spin in the opposite direction. The affect shown here is that the objects on the surface of the planet will experience being thrown around.
This is based on a misinterpretation of what happens in the 1978 feature film Superman, starring Christopher Reeves. In the final act of this film Lex Luther presents two simultaneous threats for Superman to react to: a missile launched to kill many people, and Lois Lane in mortal danger. As the viewer we are expecting to watch him choose one over the other. He stops the missile, Lois Lane dies. Stricken by grief he comes up with a plan to travel back in time, presumably by travelling faster than light. Having travelled back to before Lois died there is now two Supermans: past Superman who is currently dealing with the missile, and now future Superman who goes and saves Lois. At a certain point past Superman travels back in time and there are no longer two Supermans.
So, it turns out that the author of the comic is the moron and relies on falsehoods for their punchline to be valid.
hey, so you do understand!
of course. because going really fast resulting in imparting physical force is moronic, while going really fast resulting in time travel makes complete sense.
what? i mean... what?
you are spouting complete nonsense that doesn't make sense even in the scifi frame of mind and you call someone making fun out of that a moron... are you sure it is the other side who is the moron? hm?
You must be deliberately ignoring things at this point.
Have you never seen a science fiction time travel film where a person occupies the same timeline more than once? You've not seen Back to the Future? Or Doctor Who? Or more then half of any TV show or movie about time travel?
Also, travelling really fast to time travel, while not grounded in reality, is actually based off the theory of relativity and time dilation. It was also the premise of the Planet of the Apes films.
my sincere apology for contradicting the time travel education you got at the university of hollywood π
it is not. theory of relativity and time dilation does not allow to travel to past. (it does not allow to time travel anywhere, because no massive element can accelerate to faster than light speed, but between forward and backward directions, the backward time travel is even more impossible than the forward one π)
yeah, it is not grounded in reality, but it was on tv, so it must be good! (also you can notice they went forward in time in that movie)