The Dark Knight Rises: Batman's Flying Cape Would Likely Kill Him Says Physicists

How cool would it be to actually fly like Batman? We've all thought about it at some time or another, right? In fact it's right up there with climbing walls like Spider-Man, Hulking out, flying or bursting into flames ala Human Torch in terms of a comic geek's bucket list. But according to Blastr, a group of physicists have undertook a study of The Dark Knights bat wings and have decided that if he were to actually use them to jump from tall buildings he would be more likely to splat on the pavement than soar from rooftop to rooftop. This bold claim, which suggests Lucius Fox should be sacked on the grounds of gross misconduct, comes from a group of nerds at The University of Leicester and casts doubts on the many other tools Bats has at his disposal. Apparently, working on the idea that his glider cape has a wingspan of 15-foot and assuming the building was 492-foot tall, Brucey boy would reach a velocity of 68 mph, which given his trajectory would mean by ground level he would still be travelling at at least 50 mph. If that was the case it would be no comfy landing for this Bat, oh no! In their paper, titled 'Trajectory of a falling Batman', the group concluded that "Clearly gliding using a batcape is not a safe way to travel, unless a method to rapidly slow down is used such as a parachute". Of course one is required to suspend disbelief when watching an action movie especially one about a man that dresses in a mask and cape but it's safe to say that if this were real life we'd be watching a movie called Flatman, not Batman. To read the full paper visit: http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/395518/batman-jpg.pdf