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.
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.
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.
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...
It’s 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.
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, there’s still the idea of tachyons, I guess.
A pretty good source on the topic: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNC0xsEp6YXRq2ALms7fTwrx
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.
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 Hafele–Keating 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 it…and the sun produces a lot of light…
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.
Given movie Superman's powers, it'd be fair to claim he is an exotic material.
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.
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.
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.