Born on planet Krypton, the infant son of scientists of an advanced civilization, Kal-El, as he was named by his parents, was sent by his parents to Earth in a space capsule to escape the destruction of his home world when its sun went nova. Raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent in Smallville, USA, Kal-El soon demonstrated super-powers, abilities, and moral character beyond that of ordinary humans.

The secret of his super-powers, we are told, lies in the effects of our yellow sun on his red-sun-evolved physiology.

Yet, there remain some key misunderstandings of his life and powers that persist to this day. In particular, his invulnerability is misunderstood.

The popular media portray his invulnerability as hardness. Bullets bounce off his chest. How does this come to pass? Is he just tense? Are the electro-magnetic fields of his body so strong that nothing can pierce them? How do the higher-energy light frequencies of our yellow sun produce invulnerability?

I suggest the answer lies in the delusions of human culture as regards vulnerability and invulnerability. For humans, the answer to weapons -- spears, arrows, and bullets -- is shielding. "Stop them bullets!" We have interpreted Superman's invulnerability according to our own, familiar understanding of things. But we are wrong, and we have portrayed him incorrectly.

Superman is invulnerable to bullets not because he is so hard they bounce off him; he is invulnerable because his body regenerates so quickly when penetrated by them that he appears unharmed. The answer lies in the effects of higher-energy yellow sunlight upon a physiology evolved in lower energy sunlight.

Everyone knows that sunlight energy is absorbed through the skin -- and it produces more than warmth and a tan (it also produces vitamin D) -- in humans, that is. The physiology of humanoids from Krypton has certain differences, however. For one thing, as a largely frozen world, Krypton's food chain had become "tenuous." The humanoids of Krypton evolved to recycle their body chemistry with exceedingly high efficiency, needing only energy to carry out the chemical transformations. The added energy of our yellow sun permits super-regeneration.

What of the other powers? Superman's X-ray vision is not truly x-ray vision. What do you think -- Superman's eyes emit x-rays, which he uses to see with? That's not how x-rays work. They require a source that aims the x-rays toward the receiving end, whether it be eyes or photographic film. No, Superman's vision involves sensing energy fields that have hitherto been unidentified by human science. These energy fields surround and pervade all forms of matter, varying by density and vibratory rate, according to the density and composition of the object. In other words, Superman is seeing the subtle energy fields involved in the inter-transformation of energy into matter. His ability to distinguish those fields depends upon the "signal-to-noise ratio" between any object he is sensing and any intervening objects. Lead, being dense, has a field so dense that less-dense fields behind it are hard to distinguish. Gold has the same effect. But since people do not commonly use gold as shielding, it has not been written about. So people think, "Lead blocks x-rays; lead blocks Superman's x-ray vision."

What about his ability to fly? It involves those same energy fields, only, instead of sensing them, he is moving against them, using his own body's energy field as a "push against", like an oar or a foot. He flies, as everyone knows, as an act of will, just as we move as an act of will.

As to his chilling breath, it has to do with his ability to create fantastic pressure in exhalation, and it works much as a common air-conditioner does. Compression of air results in heating; decompression of air results in cooling. As he blows, he compresses the air in his lungs; his physiology absorbs and redistributes the heat so quickly that, when it escapes and decompresses, it rapidly cools.

And finally, his super-strength: it also results from his ability to sense and control the subtle energy fields that surround and pervade matter. Some of it aids his muscular control and some of it goes to distorting the subtle field of, say, a steel bar, which causes the steel bar, itself, to distort -- again, as an act of will. Uri Geller does this, though not with such thick bars (he does it with spoons and watches).

The whole point of this series of explanations is that Superman's powers, including his invulnerability, come not from being hard and resistant to outside effects, but from having heightened sensory awareness and control of the energy fields that make up and control the behavior of matter and of his own body.

One more thing -- "Superman" is not his full name; it's his last name. His full, secret identity is Howard Superman -- and his public identity, Clark Kent -- well, it used to be "Kantrowitz". His name at birth, Kal-El, reveals the truth of the matter -- the word, "El", in Hebrew, means "God". Superman (though he never talks about it) is Jewish.