Theatre physics

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
I think the point is that, because of the conservation of energy law, you couldn’t get any more energy out of the antimatter than you put into its creation -thus, at best, anti-matter can only be merely used as a useful way of storing energy as opposed to “gaining” useful energy.

I can assure you even for energy storage antimatter is extremely unpractical, since it will tend to react with any matter it comes into contact with (this is why antimatter is stored in vacuum rings).

Originally posted by FabianFnas
2001 was a wonderful movie. Even if HAL was a little silly.

But they didn't have to go outside the solar system. Star Wars went through the whole galaxy. This is not possible to do realistically within the physical laws. Einstein still rules. There is a light barrier.

Same thing with Star Trek, and a lot of other movies.

Alien is one exception, w ...[text shortened]...
So if we want realistic movies, they will be quite boring.

But in essence, I agree totally.

I'm not saying that we have to stick with 'known laws'. Some of our most
incredible endevours have stemmed from sci-fi novelists pushing the bounds
of reason.
The ships in star wars always had gravity in them. I'm not asking them to float
around or show the ships rotating in slow arcs. I'm quite content for them to
say 'the quazar beam hit the main hull, anti-grav is at 90%'. No problemmo,
they got anti-grav unit..decent.

No, the bad physics I'm talking about is bad because it's just pure lazy.
It's a tried and tested formula that teaches kids that cars blow up spontaneously
and that you can jump through a glass window without getting hurt

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html

n.b Einstein does definitely rule but he was wrong about God playing dice
and isn't that an important part of time travel and hence faster than light
travel?

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I can assure you even for energy storage antimatter is extremely unpractical, since it will tend to react with any matter it comes into contact with (this is why antimatter is stored in vacuum rings).

Yes, I knew that 🙂

Originally posted by Thequ1ck

n.b Einstein does definitely rule but he was wrong about God playing dice
and isn't that an important part of time travel and hence faster than light
travel?

He was indeed wrong, but there is a subtlety in quantum entanglement which doesn't allow any influence to travel faster than light, so relativity is saved.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
He was indeed wrong, but there is a subtlety in quantum entanglement which doesn't allow any influence to travel faster than light, so relativity is saved.

I would love to hear it if you can put it in layman's terms?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…When I see a scene like that I groan a little.…

What makes me groan the most often by far is when I see a film where a person falls of a tall cliff or falls a long distance down from somewhere but is apparently saved by grabbing onto a ledge or a branch or something just before hitting the hard ground -obviously suddenly decelerating from ...[text shortened]... nd not a single one ever hit’s the good guys -although that doesn’t violate the laws of physics.[/b]

I feel similarly about when superheroes catch people falling from high distances.

At least the Spiderman comics entertain the possibility that he may have broke Gwen Stacy's neck by catching her after she fell off a bridge. In some comics, he makes a point of getting himself at nearly the same speed as the person he's trying to save so he can decelerate safely.

Also, as far as the possibility of no sound in space being boring: Firefly. No sound in space. And not completely unrealistic physics for people in spacewalks (although I think the encounters between ships are generally way, way closer than they should be). And that was NOT a boring show!

There *is* sound in space. Actually so much sound that some astronauts has difficulties to fall asleep.

What sound am I talking about?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
There *is* sound in space. Actually so much sound that some astronauts has difficulties to fall asleep.

What sound am I talking about?

The sound of their own blood flow?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
There *is* sound in space. Actually so much sound that some astronauts has difficulties to fall asleep.

What sound am I talking about?

Machine noises inside, everything whirring, buzzing, making it hard to sleep. I wonder if they use those noise 'canceling' earphones you see advertised in magazines?
What gets me are these films where they are on some spaceship and there is always a nice gravity field, at least they got that right in 2001 with the spinning centrifugal gravity.
Or how bout the aliens always understand english? "We have been studying your TV and radio for a hundred years', seems a bit worn.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Machine noises inside, everything whirring, buzzing, making it hard to sleep. I wonder if they use those noise 'canceling' earphones you see advertised in magazines?
What gets me are these films where they are on some spaceship and there is always a nice gravity field, at least they got that right in 2001 with the spinning centrifugal gravity.
Or how bout ...[text shortened]... nd english? "We have been studying your TV and radio for a hundred years', seems a bit worn.

Right, and also sound of temperature changing in the materials.

The whole universe are talking English according to Star Trek. Even those who are newly discovered. And all have two eyes, and a mouth, and standing on two legs, has fingers, and are very human life, hence humanoid life forms... They have two sexes, man and women, and women are always beautiful, and inferior to the male variant. Well, almost anyway.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
I would love to hear it if you can put it in layman's terms?

Suppose you have some quantum entangled state of two particles and you move them far apart, and subsequently measure one of the particles. The other particle will immediately respond, but an observer at the other particle can't do anything with it unless he has information about the measurement of the first particle, which has to travel slower than light.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Suppose you have some quantum entangled state of two particles and you move them far apart, and subsequently measure one of the particles. The other particle will immediately respond, but an observer at the other particle can't do anything with it unless he has information about the measurement of the first particle, which has to travel slower than light.

Suppose both parties had a batch of 1,000,000 entangled particles with states X and Y at each end.

Person A then wishes to transmit either a 1 or a 0 to person B.

Person A then continually collapses the particles until at some stage there
are more X states than Y states. At this point he stops, indicating a 1, had
he continued to a time when there were more Y states than X, that would indicate a 0.

As the remaining particles remain unobserved, they would not be part of the
same large number set and therefore have 50/50 chances of being either X or Y
so the average should be slightly higher or lower for person B.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
Suppose both parties had a batch of 1,000,000 entangled particles with states X and Y at each end.

Person A then wishes to transmit either a 1 or a 0 to person B.

Person A then continually collapses the particles until at some stage there
are more X states than Y states. At this point he stops, indicating a 1, had
he continued to a time when there w ...[text shortened]... chances of being either X or Y
so the average should be slightly higher or lower for person B.

Well, the entangled particles are not X and Y, rather they are "both", i.e. a superposition of X and Y, which is a bit different mathematically.

Originally posted by Palynka
Errr... Maybe he was just ordering them to [b]stop the engines? Perhaps? Mmmm?[/b]

But that doesn't work either. In space, friction is very low and we can neglect it. Stopping the engines would mean that a 0 net force is applied to the spaceship and so the space ship shouldn't stop but to continue in its state of movement with a constant velocity.

Originally posted by adam warlock
But that doesn't work either. In space friction is very low and we can neglect it. Stopping the engines would mean that a 0 net force is applied to the spaceship and so the space ship shouldn't stop but to continue in its state of movement with a constant velocity.

Oh oh, now you've done it!