What if I could fly?
What if I could live forever?
What if I could be invisible?
What if I could lift a tank?
For ages, people have craved for answers
to these questions,
and what unbelievably gratifying way
that we have used to express our fantasies
is through the invention of superheroes
and their superpowers.
These days a summer doesn't go by
without a comic book hero transforming
into a giant to defend a girl next door
or fly across a screen to protect the human race
from unspeakable evil.
While an audience's hearts pump with excitement,
some people have found another path
to make their dreams last
beyond the movie-going experience --
through science!
When the first comic book appeared in 1933,
flying was a luxury.
Nowadays, flying is the safest way to travel.
The world's life expectancy has increased
by 15 years since 1960
due to biology and chemistry advancements.
There's been tremendous progress
in stealth technology,
trying to make real-life invisible cloaks.
The fastest speed ever clocked
by a human being on land
is 760 miles per hour in a jet-propelled car.
And athletes routinely dead-lift over 1,000 pounds
in Strongman Competitions.
We're practically breeding real life superheroes!
From bicycles to jet packs,
from looking up at the stars
to entering outer space in the shuttle,
our capacity to acquire knowledge and imagination
to achieve impossible goals
appears to be limitless.
Exciting developments in the worlds
of both humans and superheroes
will always influence each other.
For as you will see by clicking on any superpower
presented in this series,
the rules of superpowers
and the laws of science
don't always agree.