Theory:Super speed

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The following fan theories are about Super speed.

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Theories

Theory	Citations	Notes
If Daphne charged into someone at super speed, that person would die.	None	+ The force of her hitting them would be similar to that of a bullet. - Daphne is not made of metal like a bullet. - Think of it this way: If you fell out of a helicopter and managed to land on a person on the ground with speeds similar to Daphne's speed... would you survive? - Matt created an illusion of her hitting Knox while traveling at super speed, and only she was hurt. + Knox has super strength. + The purpose of the illusion was to make Knox think he had killed them. • She would also die or at least get seriously injured. • Her ability could be similar to others we've seen, where she's physically able to take more than the normal person to help with her ability, i.e., Meredith is able to hold fire without being burned and breathe in a room deprived of oxygen from fire. - Meredith's immunity to the effects of fire could actually be another aspect of her ability. Whereas, Daphne's ability is simply being fast, not being less prone to physical harm. • Rule of Ted: Her speed grants an immunity to the effect, otherwise, as the speeds she travels, a speck of dust would be more destructive than any bullet could be. - Daphne can decelerate virtually instantly, so possibly her ability does not increase her effective momentum. Hence crashing would not be any more damaging than a normal person running into a wall. • It could be in her ability to be able to stop almost instantly. • Daphne seems to be able to bring things into her super-speed frame of reference instantly without any negative side effects. When she snatches things out of "normal speed time" they would tear apart if they weren't protected by her ability instantly. • Even if she could successfully ram someone, it would be a kamikaze attack at best.
Daphne's power imparts some extra strength.	She can carry at least two grown people with her while moving at super-speed.	+ She carries Matt Parkman and Ando with her to the bike messenger station in Manhattan, presumably all the way from Lawrence, KS. (Our Father) - She isn't seen putting Matt or Ando down after arriving at the messenger station. Rather, it seems that they just ran alongside. It could be that she simply imparts super-speed to anybody that she's touching when she uses it. + She also carried Flint when she broke him out of Level Five. (Dying of the Light") • If Daphne was regularly strong enough to lift Flint and then used her superspeed to run, she wouldn't have to hold onto him very long to carry away. + She visibly carried Samir Mellouk in Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, Part 1. • Daphne may just be strong. + Daphne's cerebral palsy caused her to rely on her arm muscles far more than a normal human. She could have built up her upper body strength prior to receiving her superspeed.
Daphne would be unable to activate her ability while underwater.	None	+ Running underwater requires a lot of strength and it is difficult to remain close enough to the bottom to have something to push off of. - Daphne's speed isn't limited to running, she might be able to swim super fast as well. • Daphne prefers to run on water.
Daphne should be able to fly by flapping her arms really fast.	None	+ Hummingbirds can fly by flapping their tiny wings at 8-10 beats per second. - Wings are naturally adapted for flight, arms aren't. - Daphne said herself that she can't run on air. • Running isn't flying.
Daphne should have been stuck 16 years in the past when she rescued Hiro.	None	+ She has no known powers to travel into the future. - In the frames of the Ability supercharging from Ando she did end up with the ability to travel through time. • The "frames"? + It was mentioned in the show that she may be able to travel to the past by going faster than the speed of light, which it appears she may have done. However, to get back to the present day (traveling into the future of where she and Hiro were), traveling faster than light would not have worked to get them back. Something else had to have been done. - Ando came with Daphne. He could have supercharged her again. + Supercharging her again would allow her to run faster than the speed of light. Running faster than the speed of light only allows one to go backward through time, as she did to get to Hiro in the first place. Running faster than light would just take them further into the past. - Maybe it did, but Daphne could have learned how to travel back to the future. + Using what power? She has no known power to slow time down for herself and whoever she is touching, in order to get back to the future. - And who said that running faster than light can bring a person only back in time, not forward? This kind of time traveling isn't understood well for now. Everything is possible, unless it is proved or otherwise. + Traveling faster than the speed of light is a well-known theoretical method of traveling back in time (special relativity), while moving faster than the speed of light is not a theory for moving forward in time. Special relativity is most likely what Matt was referring to when he explained how Daphne may have been able to time travel. - Perhaps she discovered she has said power. - According to special relativity, traveling very fast but not exceeding the speed of light will move you forward through time (the frame of reference for them would slow relative to earth's frame of reference). This part of special relativity is actually well accepted (and tested via atomic clocks). Going backwards by exceeding the speed of light is probably in reality impossible, but still theoretically plausible. Thus Daphne, Hiro, and Ando could go forwards through time by approaching the speed of light without passing it. • If we want to talk "theoretically" it is impossible to reach the speed of light as you start to gain mass as you reach the speed of light so that even more energy is needed to maintain that speed. Nothing moves faster than light. • All ideas concerning faster-than-light travel are theoretical, as they are currently impossible to test in a controlled environment. And, according to the most generally accepted theories concerning special relativity, it is not impossible, it would just simply require infinite energy. Who is to say that part of their abilities does not involve the use of infinite energy? • This seems to be sheer and utter handwaving. Any attempt to reconcile this with modern physics would fall flat on it's face. She apparently travels at a significant portion of the speed of light in general, would would bring along all the relativistic consequences. Decreased length along the axis of travel and increased mass. After she was supercharged, as she accelerated to the speed of light she would have increased her mass as well (without regard as to what would possibly happen after she achieved it) which would have meant by the time she got close she would have done a whole lot more than rustle a few papers (think more pulled the Earth out of its orbit).
While primarily biological, super speed also has a temporal component.	When Hiro 'stopped time', Daphne would always gradually 'unfreeze'.	- In Our Father, Ando mentions that Daphne's ability is 'too windy' and that he prefers Hiro's mode of travel. Hiro's spatial teleporting does not produce 'wind'. + This theory suggests that super speed involves a very small amount of temporal manipulation. If it was purely biological, then Daphne would not have been able to overcome Hiro's time manipulation. Space-time manipulation and super speed are very different, but have a single point in common (for example, telepathy and mental manipulation are different abilities, but both involve manipulation of others' minds). + If speedsters achieved that kind of speed without manipulating time to a certain degree (speeding themselves up along a temporal axis as well as the physical one), they would need impenetrable skin to avoid having their organs liquefied by the G-force and then pushed out through their pores. • They could be protect by ability immunity. + If that were true, then Ando and Daphne would have had to spend hours going over the route to the bike courier. If Ando made even one wrong turn, his hand would part company with hers, causing him to catch fire, lose his organs, and finally have his brain explode through the front of his skull (due to the forces of friction and inertia). + Also, if super speed did not involve temporal acceleration, then Daphne and Edgar would be just as unable to see what was going on as the bystanders (meaning that instead of zipping into Hiro's office, Daphne would have sped out of the elevator and flown through the window). In addition, changing direction quickly would be very difficult without temporal manipulation. • The acceleration could also affect their minds, making it possible for them to analyze their surroundings at high speeds. • The ability to speed up your perceptions sounds like it would be an ability to itself. • When Daphne asked Matt if he trusted her and he hesitated, she said that as a speedster, moments feel a lot longer for her. + If she processed data at a rate high enough to handle super speed at all times, then she would find almost any conversation unbearably long (especially since the person would be speaking in slow motion). Imagine if Neo got stuck in 'bullet time'. It's possible she simply perceives things a little bit faster as a biological effect, then speeds herself up temporally as well as physically when she runs. + Hiro doesn't actually stop time; he simply enters a time frame which is much faster than the norm, making everything seem frozen. If super speed was purely biological, then speedsters would be as helpless as anyone else against it. - Writers Joe Pokaski and Aron Coleite explained that Hiro doesn't actually stop time, he just slows it down very much: "Whatever a nano of a nano second is, that's where they live." This is why he is able to have a "normal time" conversation with Daphne, who moves at super speeds. + In a blog post Hiro (when explaining why in Godsend he appeared to be only slowing down time as opposed to stopping it) says, "Instead of Stop, I casted Haste". The term "Haste" implies that time was accelerated, not slowed down. • The writers could have been referring to the above statement; stating that he speeds up so that, in comparison, everything else moves at "a nano of a nano". + It doesn't matter how fast an object moves; as long it is accelerating along a purely physical plane, space-time manipulation can stop it dead.