- I have been travelling a lot lately, usually by plane.
Flying somewhere between five to 600 miles per hour
through the air, which is how I keep this glow of youth.
You see, the faster you travel, the slower you age.
No one knows this better than Valiant's XO Manowar.
Eric of Dasi was a noble warrior of the Visigoths
until he was captured by an alien army known as
the Vine.
He and the other prisoners were used for labor aboard
a massive Vine ship.
There, Eric witnesses a strange ceremony involving
the powerful Man of War armor known as Shanhara.
The origin of this armor is a bit beyond our scope
for today, but just know that it is incredibly powerful.
Basically unbeatable, and it has to bond with its host
as a sort of symbiotic relationship.
If it doesn't deem you worthy, things probably
won't work out in your favor.
Years go by and Eric staged a riot, along with the
other slaves who overthrow their Vine captors.
They head into the temple where the sacred armor of
Shanhara was being kept.
Knowing they wouldn't last much longer against the Vine
force, Eric took a chance and bonded with the armor.
To everyone's surprise, especially the Vine,
the armor deemed Eric worthy enough to wield the
Manowar armor's virtually unlimited power.
Yet even with the firepower on his side,
Eric could not protect the other prisoners.
The Vine killed them all, leaving only him.
If there's a reason he's still alive when so many
have died, Eric was not willing to wait for it.
He went on a rampage through the ship that
quickly led to him being blown out into the vacuum of space.
In his unconscious state, he experienced memories
of the life he left behind, his people, his wife.
He woke up shouting "Rome...Rome...Rome!", which
prompted the Manowar armor to teleport him
back to Earth, back to Rome.
But, there's a problem.
When Eric arrived back home, it wasn't really his home
anymore.
He's been away for years.
1600 years.
It's not 2012 at the time when the comic came out,
Eric is a man out of time, but unlike, say, Captain America,
Eric wasn't frozen, unconscious to the passing of time.
He was active, a slave on a spaceship for what felt
like only a few years to him, while 16 centuries
passed on Earth.
How is that possible?
It's due to special relativity, which we're going to
talk about in super simple terms today, so all of you
physics nerds, bear with me as I overly simplify
something that's pretty complicated, but really,
you only need to understand two things.
Number one, the laws of physics are the same
for any non-accelerating frame of reference.
If you're traveling in a car or bus or even
extra terrestrial spaceship right now going at a constant
speed while I'm here, stationary in my chair,
and we both drop our phones, the laws of physics
acts on them the same way.
Simple enough.
Doesn't matter how fast you're moving,
everything is moving relative to something else anyway.
Number two, the speed of light in a vacuum is the same
for all observers, and that sounds pretty straightforward,
but think about how mindblowing and completely
counterintuitive that is.
Let's say you and I are traveling on a plane,
and you're a couple of rows ahead of me.
I see that you're reading the newest issue of Archer
and Armstrong and I want in on that action,
so I ask you to toss it back my way,
which you do at let's say five miles per hour.
To us on the plane, without any other reference,
that's exactly how fast we see the comic traveling:
five miles per hour.
But to an observer on the ground we're already traveling
in a plane about 550 miles per hour,
so you in the front of the plane throwing a comic
back towards me would mean that the person on the ground
sees the comic actually traveling at 545 miles per hour.
But now, let's say I'm trying to get your attention
by shining a laser pointer from where I am in
the back of the plane to where you are in the front.
The laser travels to you at, obviously, the speed of light,
but think about that observer on the ground again.
Would they be seeing a laser travel at the speed of light
plus 550 miles an hour that the plane is traveling?
No, you can't go 550 miles an hour over the speed of light,
the speed of light is constant, at least in a vacuum,
so retroactively imagine all of those scenarios we
just went over, but we also couldn't breathe.
I'm making things too complicated, which is why
I'm gonna make it, probably harder.
Thanks to special relativity, we get a phenomenon
known as time dilation.
Getting back to XO Manowar, the subject of this video,
we know that Eric was traveling on a Vine spaceship
for years.
It was capable of incredibly fast speeds,
around the speed of light.
This is important, because time dilation
means that time actually moves slower,
the faster you go.
So while the Earth progressed 1600 years into the future,
at his speeds Eric only experienced the passing
of a handful of years, and to explain why this
happens we're gonna need a clock.
A different kind of clock.
To the animations!
Imagine a clock made up of two mirrors, with a pulse
of light traveling between them.
Every time the light hits a mirror, the clock ticks.
Now, let's put that clock on the Vine spaceship
that's traveling close to the speed of light.
Eric is traveling on board and he sees the pulse of light
moving straight up and down between the mirrors.
Everything looks normal.
But now, let's get the perspective from you on Earth
as the Vine ship travels by.
If you've got a keen eye, as we slow things down here,
you wouldn't see the light pulse moving just up and down,
you'd observe it moving diagonally.
From your frame of reference, it travels a much
greater distance than how Eric observes it.
So how would we account for this extra distance?
Well, the speed of the light pulse has to be faster
in order for it to travel the longer distance
in the same amount of time.
Except that we know that that's impossible.
The speed of light is constant, so it must be that
time itself slows down from your perspective.
This is a real quirk of physics that we've observed
with clocks on space stations, and satellites,
which can get thrown off whack compared to clocks on Earth
due to them experiencing time differently.
It's typically only by a few microseconds.
The effect gets exponentially stronger as you
approach the speed of light, but forget about clocks,
for a second.
Imagine what this means for speedsters like The Flash.
The faster he runs, the slower he ages relative to his
friends at Star Labs.
He can return from a battle and find Cisco as an old man.
I'm exaggerating a bit, plus I'm sure there's
an explanation like the speed force protects him
or something.
Maybe he just needs to run faster, I don't know.
Seems to solve all Flash's problems.
Just for funsies, I wanted to do the math on this
and find out exactly how fast the Vine ship
must have been traveling for our hero XO Manowar here,
to have missed out on 16 centuries.
We know that Eric was captured in 402 AD and held prisoner
for several years.
Unfortunately, the current canon doesn't give us
an exact number.
Thankfully, my buddy Daniel from Valiant Blogs
tracked down that before the Valiant universe
was rebooted in 2012, the classic canon stated that
Eric was captured for seven years.
We'll assume the same for the current state of XO.
Eric reappeared in modern day Earth, presumably in 2012
when the comic was printed.
This means that from the perspective of XO Manowar,
during this seven years he was captured the Earth
progressed 1610 years into the future.
And with those numbers, we can figure out exactly
how fast the Vine ship must have been traveling.
If you wanna see the full math behind this,
we'll link some videos below that explain it
in much more detail, but for now we'll just
do the math in our heads real fast,
let's see what that would be...
Ah, yes, of course, it's 299,790 kilometers per second,
or 186,280 miles per second.
It's all up here guys.
Now that is some incredible speed.
In fact it's just below the speed of light.
Over 99.99 percent there, which for a fictional comic
book universe is theoretically possible.
As long as we're not exceeding the speed of light,
as that would take an infinite amount of energy.
And you might think Valiant cut it a little close
with these numbers, but, not really.
Remember, the effects of time dilation get exponentially
stronger as you approach the speed of light.
Eric could see a million years on Earth go by
compared to his seven in captivity, and still not
exceed the speed of light.
So well done Valiant, the science seems to be on your side
here, and unfortunately that means the sad parts too.
You see, no matter how much Eric wants to return
to his people, to his wife, time dilation only works
in one direction.
He can't ever go back.
A warrior from the past, with armor from the future,
stuck in the present.
What do you guys think?
Does the science of XO Manowar check out?
Would you travel far into the future knowing you
could never return to the past.
How many comments about the movie Interstellar
do you think I'm gonna get in this video?
Let's talk about it right down there,
and thanks so much again to Daniel from Valiant Blogs
for helping out with this video.
Go check his channel out guys, links are gonna
be in the description, and all sorts of great stuff
over there.
And if you like these comic book science videos
we've got a whole playlist about them right here,
like this one about mindblowing time travel paradoxes
with The Flash.
If you're in the mood for more Valiant, check out
this video about how Super Soldier's like a bloodshot
might actually exist.
There's a bunch of science in that one too.
Links are also in the description.
And make sure you hit that big sexy subscribe button
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we make for you every week,
that explore the history, science, philosophy and art
behind your favorite comic book superheroes.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read between
the panels, and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.