Iconic for his ruby quartz visor and for being the only man alive who must wear sunglasses at night, Cyclops isn’t just one of Charles Xavier’s first students but also the team’s longest-running field team leader. The character has been around since the debut of the X-Men in 1963 and even though he’s struggled to get a foothold with fans and creatives alike, Cyclops has remained a staple of Marvel Comics’ premiere mutant superhero team. What’s more, behind those signature lenses lies a torrent of kinetic energy waiting to be unleashed.

Keep in mind that Cyclops’ powers have been redefined and retconned enough that going too far back just creates problems. They’ve evolved from being dependent on ambient solar energy to his eyes being inter-dimensional portals capable of tapping into an infinite energy source. Nowadays, the creatives at Marvel have settled somewhere in between those two extremes, that neither nerfs nor overpowers their mutant commander. The most important thing to consider, however, is the nature of his optic blasts. Are they focused beams of heat like Superman? No, they aren’t. Think of them more as force blasts than a conventional energy beam fans of science fiction are used to seeing. This means no heat, but enough power to blow out the side of a mountain, or, more impressively, destroy adamantium—as seen in the Age of Apocalypse storyline. But how powerful are they according to real world metrics?

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There’s a reason why most mainstream superhero comics stay away from getting too specific regarding their characters’ powers. The more details Marvel gives to readers, the more they are bound by them. For example, making Cyclops’ powers originally dependent on ambient solar energy was pretty limiting for the character. Imagine the leader of the X-Men not being able to venture underground for fear of being energy depleted and helpless. Thankfully, readers do have one surprisingly defined power reading to cite.

In Civil War: X-Men #4, originally published in 2006, written by David Hine and Yanick Paquette, Cyclops teams up with the energy absorbing mutant Bishop to blast through a vault door. While Cyclops is channeling his full power into Bishop, Tony Stark—aka Iron Man—reads the energy output as 2 gigawatts. Fans of 1985’s Back to the Future will know that Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor needs only 1.21 gigawatts to travel through time. For a real world reference, consider this: a large scale nuclear reactor generates half of what Cyclops can by just opening his eyes.

According to the comics, the kinetic energy of Cyclops’ eye blasts are strong enough to end an energy crisis. In the previous two decades his powers have increased in scope to match the growing escalation of popular cosmic-level villains like Galactus, Thanos, and Knull. Since the generally accepted narrative behind his inability to control his optic blasts is due to a mental block originating in trauma he experienced as a child, it’s entirely possible that the upper limit of his powers hasn’t even been revealed yet.

Next: Cyclops Just Showed Why He’s The Batman of the X-Men