What Would The Mass Of Netflix’s Luke Cage Be?

Luke Cage is set to debut on Netflix this month and fans are more than ready for a worthy bingefest. After a botched prison experiment, Cage is left with super strength and unbreakable skin. The gritty crime drama will follow Cage and his efforts to rid his hometown of Harlem of organized crime.

Everything we’ve seen so far in trailers and promos has shown off his incredible strength. For example: a man broke his fist on Cage’s face, he caught a shooting bullet in his hand without being harmed, he ripped off a car door with ease, and finally he lifted up a bad guy high above his own head like it was no big deal.

Wired decided to delve into the scientific side of things by trying to explain how all of that is possible using physics and calculating the mass of Luke Cage.

First of all, we all know that most super powers can not be fully explained using scientific theory, however Wired came up with a fairly accurate answer using this picture and some fancy formulas:

To me, those just look like lines…but there is a great explanation from Wired below:

“First, there is the idea of equilibrium. This says that if an object is at rest and not rotating then two things must be true:

• The net force of the object must be zero (zero vector).
• The net torque about any point must also be zero (technically also a vector).

It seems clear that a person standing on the ground would have a net force of zero (vector). Also, a person holding another person would still have a zero net force (gravitational force pulling down and the ground pushing up). But what about the torque? What is torque? I like to describe the torque as a rotational force. Just like a force can change the momentum of an object, torque can change the angular momentum of an object. The torque due to a force depends on the magnitude of that force and the distance from the point of rotation which we call the torque arm. Oh, it also depends on the angle the force makes with this torque arm.

Let’s say our “object” is the combination of Luke Cage with bad dude. If this is the case then I can consider the system as having two masses (for the two people). There will be a total of three forces on this system: the two gravitational forces and the ground pushing up. Also, if I pick Luke’s forward toe to be the point of rotation, the torque from the the gravitational forces have to add up to zero.“

After loading the above image into an analytical program, a formula was created that also spit out the estimated mass of Power Man – 179.3 kg.

Keep in mind that average body mass globally is 62 kg, and North America has the highest average body mass of any continent with 80.7 kg. So, yes 179.3 kg is a lot stronger than your normal human. See, science can be fun…sometimes.

Luke Cage will premiere on Netflix on September 30, 2016.