 So, while we were all locked up in quarantine, I was being highly productive and motivated, waking up early, eating healthy, working out every day. Just kidding, I was snuggling up in a cocoon of blankets on my bed and watching endless amounts of TV. While I was watching my favorite superhero, Barry Allen, fighting villains across Central City, between eating a pound of nacho cheese and taking my fifth nap of the day, I had a realization. The Flash is surprisingly scientifically accurate. This channel covers so much real science, I thought it might be fun to look at the science going on behind the scenes of my favorite DC show. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an upload and let's jump in. Before we get started, I just want to say that this video will include spoilers going through season 3. But that was nearly 4 years ago and chances are if you clicked on this video, you probably already watched the show. Right off the bat, I also want to say that we're going to be taking an in-universe perspective. That means we're accepting that speedsters exist and people can have superpowers. One of the first things Barry and the viewer might notice after the Flash acquires the speed is the obvious friction at play. Now the writers, especially in season 1, struggle a bit with Barry's speed, but in the second episode we have this exchange. Even with that being an offhand joke, let's do the math. One mile is 5,280 feet, and that means Barry can run about 1,800 feet per second, or about one and a half times the speed of sound. Although a few episodes later they make a big deal about Barry having never run faster than the speed of sound. Despite them being a little wishy-washy with his powers, we'll take this initial speed as Mach 1.5. At those speeds, Barry would encounter a ridiculous amount of drag. Now we could flash some equations on the screen, but that's a little too mathy for this video. Instead, you just need to realize the drag on an object increases very quickly as the object speeds up. You can experience this yourself when driving by sticking your hand out the window. At 30 miles per hour, your hand can waft nicely throughout the air, but double your speed to 60 miles an hour and you'll feel much more than double the drag as the air tries to rip your arm off your body. If Barry is moving faster than an F-15, how does he not get torn to shreds? Well, the Multiverse has a clear way of getting around that. When Barry runs, he creates a sort of speed force bubble shield around himself, known as the speed force aura that shields him from most of this friction. On top of that, he wears a suit designed by the great Cisco Ramon to minimize the friction he experiences. You can see this in the beginning, when Barry's first learning to control his powers and his speed force aura and before he wears Cisco's suit as he runs and catches himself on fire. But this bubble isn't infinitely powerful. We can see that when one of Barry's time aberrations races against Zoom, so fast his speed aura is overpowered and CloneBarry is ripped to shreds. If you're wondering, his speedster shield is also what keeps him from swallowing every bug as he runs with his mouth wide open and dampens sonic booms preventing windows from shattering as he runs by at lower speeds. Then there's the question of Barry moving faster than the speed of light. We're still using an in-universe perspective, but seeing as how basically all of science and history is the same up until people start going back to the past to mess with the timeline, looking at you legends of tomorrow, it seems safe to assume the Multiverse shares the same basic laws of physics with our own universe, including the speed of light. In the Flash number 136, the human race, Barry is able to beat a human teleporter in a race by running faster than the speed of light. Although in the TV show, Barry seems to be considerably slower. With the Tachyon device, he was able to run about Mach 13.2. Keep in mind, the speed of light would be about Mach 1 million. Despite this hiccup, there are several interesting scenes. In Season 4 Episode 15, The Flash Time, Barry is able to run around while a nuclear bomb is going off. This whole time, the nuclear blast only advances tens of feet. We know that the radiation coming off an atomic blast moves at the speed of light, and seeing how that deadly radiation never affected anyone around the blast, even non-metals like Joe, we know that all of Barry's movements had to be faster than the speed of light. It's a little weird to think about, because The Flash isn't really running the whole time, but he's able to slow down his surroundings while he moves at his normal speed, in effect making him faster than the speed of light to any bystander. Now while running faster than the speed of light does seem physics breaking, it actually might fit in with how we think general relativity may work. There are a handful of papers on this subject, but let me read for you a snippet from a paper published in the Journal of Classical and Quantum Physics. It is shown how within the framework of general relativity, and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel at an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible. Now this sounds remarkably like what Barry is doing in this episode, using the speed force to distort time around him and allow him to move faster than the speed of light, so no physics broken here. And using the speed force, Barry runs back in time and interacts with himself. While it's basically breaking the number one rule of time travel, if the multiverse consists of branching realities, by going back in time he creates a new reality, and there would be no paradox from interacting with himself. Even other aspects of the show, like snirts, cold gun, are at least theoretically possible by modern understanding, given that the coldest known temperature in the whole universe was created right here on Earth. Absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature is zero Kelvin, or negative 273.15 Celsius. And on Earth, scientists have created temperatures of less than a hundredth of a degree above that mark. Just like scientists were able to make a machine that could reach just above absolute zero, a gun could be fashioned to do something similar. And all this is public knowledge. Who knows if governments are already three steps ahead, out there with cold guns freezing baddies covertly. So yeah, while most people are just sitting there enjoying the show, or getting furious at Candace Patton for ruining the show, I was loving the attention to the scientific details. There are still moments when things don't add up, like the Flash's max speed being all over the place, but most of those are more minor details that can be chalked up to artistic license with the storytelling. If you want to see another episode on The Flash or any other show, be sure to let us know down in the comment section below. Have a great day and remember, there's always more to learn.