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On the internet, people keep saying that Barry is far faster than light and thus significantly faster then every dc superhero besides his nephew Wally, citing the time he could perceive attoseconds, and reacted in a femtosecond, as proof.

But there's confusion here. In some instances, he is said to be below light speed. Here, Superman states that Barry approaches light speed. Here, Barry struggles to propel an explosion into the atmosphere, and it's later revealed that he was approaching light speed. Here, Barry struggles to keep some light speed shadows at bay, eventually getting overwhelmed and needing phasing to escape. Here, Flash barely stays ahead of a beam of light chasing him, admitting that it would eventually catch him and that he can't afford to slow down.

So it seems either the FTL instances are hyperbole or outliers. Or maybe I'm missing something, can you please help me?

SuperYoshikong
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    Barry approaches light speed, introduces himself to it, shakes hands with it, dances a cheeky polka with it, then leaves before light speed even had a chance to ask for his number! – Paul D. Waite Oct 13 '21 at 14:00
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    He also claims he is the fastest man alive, but Guinness disagrees. – Jack B Nimble Oct 13 '21 at 14:06
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    I'm going to vote to close, because the accepted answer for the possible duplicate addresses the fact that Barry Allen is faster than light – TenthJustice Oct 13 '21 at 14:25
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    @tenthjustice There's instances that say he is and he isn't faster than light, the link you mentioned doesn't answer the question because the links I posted directly state otherwise which was never addressed. – SuperYoshikong Oct 13 '21 at 14:32
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    I am not sure how to edit the question to make it not a duplicate, but "Can Flash run faster than light?" just asks a rather generic question from someone who doesn't know the character, so someone just threw him an answer without addressing all the facts, while my question is more specific in dealing with how Barry Allen is actually written. Wally is the FTL flash. – SuperYoshikong Oct 13 '21 at 14:36
  • My understanding is that around the speed of light, he's getting into "Speed Force" territory where he's as much bypassing the speed of light, like Star Trek Warp Speed, as he is actually going faster than light. What's the difference? Good question, although it may get into how he can interact with the world, and how it can interact with him. I know that the Speed Force "wall" involves a risk of getting lost in the Speed Force, as has happened to other speedsters in the universe. – FuzzyBoots Oct 13 '21 at 15:07
  • The question itself is problematic for at least two reasons. The first being that long running comic books never have hard rule consistency, it's just not a priority for the publishers. And also, relativity theory tells us that light appears to move at the same speed no matter the speed of the observer, so you can never stay just ahead of a beam of light chasing you. Then again, time doesn't reverse when you spin the Earth backwards, so it's best we don't look too close at comic book physics. – CaptainSkyfish Oct 13 '21 at 16:24

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