Serious physics question

[Orrex]

When did movies & tv start that bullshit about two organic beam weapons striking each other in mid-air and blocking each other, until one wins out over the other?

You see it almost everywhere that includes two characters with beam weapons.

Superman vs. Doomsday
Supergirl vs. a bunch of different villains
Ironman vs. War Machine
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla
etc.

We're not talking about "crossing the streams" as in the Venkman formulation, but rather it's when two entirely non-solid beam weapons meet mid-air and have some sort of lightshow reverse tug-of-war. What's the in-universe thinking behind this?

Let's say that you and a pal have a pair of laser pointers of exactly frequency so that their waves & troughs will cancel out if they hit each other perfectly head on. How difficult would it be to aim these at each other from across the room during a fight such that they do, in fact, cancel?

Bullshit!

It would be as ridiculous as two character firing machine guns at each other and having every bullet hit and deflect a bullet from the opponent. Actually, that would be less ridiculous, because they'd at least be solid projectiles.


When did this start? And why did it make it past the first pitch before someone had the sense to say "yeah, even in a universe with 300' lizards, that's bullshit?"




Aaaargh!

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. First I remember was with Ultraman in the 1970's (nt)

[Orrex]

6. Seriously? I wondered about that

I had a vague memory of that from my early childhood, but I wasn't sure if I was recalling it correctly.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

11. I'm not POSITIVE but when I think back to when I first saw that kind of thing, it jumps out (nt)

[drray23]

2. Actually there is an application for it.

you can not really cancel out lasers against each other because photons don’t interact with each other. however you can and people have used intersecting lasers to make atom traps and slow down atoms to nearly zero kelvin.

it’s not just of theoretical interest. it has potential applications for things like making ultra precise atomic clocks. This n turn has implications on gps systems or other metrology.

[Orrex]

5. Interesting, but...

I suspect somehow that this isn't the effect that Godzilla is going for when he puts the smackdown.

[applegrove]

3. I've always thought a good political cartoon would be two sides fighting

with their platforms in 5 words, instead of laser light, coming out of their light sabers. In different fonts for dems and repukes. That is the only sci fi I've ever thought of.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. I have no idea when that started, in no small part because I simply don't watch those things.

But I can assure you that's not a valid physics question. Essentially, the beam weapons are fantasy.

I know, I'm driven bat-shit crazy by stuff like this that does not conform to reality. This is why you never want to go to a movie with me, because when we get out I'll be nattering on and on about what's wrong.

Worse yet, I'm a science fiction person. Not fantasy, s-f. There really is a difference. I love hard science fiction.

Oh, and I'm talking the written word. Almost all of what's on TV or in movies is utter garbage. Sadly, most people think that Star Trek is science fiction. Try reading novels or short stories in the genre and you'll be amazed.

For my money, the most purely science-fictional movie ever is "Twelve Monkeys." Holy cow! Totally amazing. And it never breaks any rules or does random bullshit.

[Orrex]

7. I understand your qualms, though I don't share them.

I have a totally employable degree in pre-Renaissance lit, but when I sit my ass in the theater I implicitly accept that the 10th century hero won't likely be speaking a period-accurate language. Nor will his teeth and complexion likely reflect the realities of the time.


Fun fact about fantasy vs. science fiction: if you ask ten people to define the difference, you'll get thirteen confident yet incompatible answers. Kind of like asking ten people to define a "real" Philly cheesesteak.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. Twelve Monkeys is a top-10 all-time movie for me

I guess I'm better at suspending disbelief for entertainment than you as I like lots of fake Sci-Fi, but I love a good honest Sci-Fi story as well.

I mean ... it's still a bit of a stretch cause time-travel is totally unproven, but ... I know what you're saying.

Minority Report is another big favorite of mine.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. Oh, I'm good with time travel even though the consensus among physicists is that it can't possibly

happen. But once you decide you'll have time travel, everything else needs to be consistent. Essentially, the rule in good science fiction is that you ask the reader to suspend their disbelief on only one thing. Every thing else needs to be in the real world.

Minority Report was okay for me.

There are a lot of old s-f novels that I wish would be made into movies. The one I'd most like to see is The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. For those who read this post, if you've never read it, do so. Back when it came out it might have been filmable, but these days CGI would make it amazing.

Similarly a lot of Heinlein novels could film well. Unfortunately, the two or three that have been made into movies were not done well at all. Sigh.

Back to time travel. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is just amazing. I first read it when it came out in 1992, and have reread it several time since, most recently for the Kansas City area book club a week ago. It was recorded, and alas I'm too much of a luddite to find the link to the recording. Connie was invited to the talk and graciously showed up. The book is totally amazing. I am looking forward to her forthcoming book The Road to Roswell.

[dutch777]

8. In theater theory, the audience is expected to have a "willing suspension of disbelief"

or in other words, almost any BS goes as long as people keep buying tickets. What drives me more crazy are all the scenes where the hero goes into some dangerous place likely full of people with lots of guns and bad intentions and doesn't call for police, the cavalry or any backup of any kind and handily prevails with only maybe a scratch and some dirt smudges and a slight hair muss. He or she does look slightly winded afterward sitting on the bumper of the ambulance having a bandaid applied.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. A "willing suspension of disbelief" is essential in all fiction.

I'm driven bat-shit crazy by the people who walk into a dark room and don't bother to turn on the lights.

Really?

[Binkie The Clown]

10. Simple: It's not physics. It's magic. Movie magic. nt

[Orrex]

12. You understand that that's in no way a satisfying answer, right?

Literally every glitch, mistake, inconsistency and error in the history of film can be wiped away with that handy explanation, so for that reason it really doesn't work.

"General Patton lifted a Tiger Tank in the middle of Trafalgar Square and threw it at Stalin? Gosh, that's some movie magic!"

The same goes with the similar answer that "YoU hAvE tO sUsPeNd DiSbElIeF."

I mean, no kidding. That's fundamental to enjoying fiction. But the reader or viewer has a reasonable expectation that the physics of the imagined world works within the established parameters of that world, so when something clangs against that established background, the reader is justified in crying foul.

[Binkie The Clown]

21. What can I say? I like magic. hehe nt

[hunter]

13. Maybe it's not a beam weapon at all.

Perhaps it's a hot glowing slime ejected at high velocity.

That's right, Superman shoots hot slime out of his eyes!

[Orrex]

19. I would watch the hell out of that movie

[TlalocW]

14. But if as you say the frequencies would cancel each other out

But what if the beams are not hitting each other at the right points to cancel each other out or the beams are different frequencies?

TlalocW

[bluecollar2]

17. Simple....flux capacitors

It's not complicated...

[Donkees]

18. 'This Buck Rogers film short was made for the 1934 Chicago World's Fair'

---

Ray guns were so common on magazine covers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction that Campbell's Astounding was unusual for not depicting them.[6] The term "ray gun" had already become cliché by the 1940s,[7] in part due to association with the comic strips (and later film serials) Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Soon after the invention of lasers during 1960, such devices became briefly fashionable as a directed-energy weapon for science fiction stories. For instance, characters of the Lost in Space TV series (1965–1968) and of the Star Trek pilot episode "The Cage" (1964) carried handheld laser weapons.[8]

By the late 1960s and 1970s, as the laser's limits as a weapon became evident, rayguns were dubbed "phasers" (for Star Trek), "blasters" (Star Wars), "pulse rifles", "plasma rifles", and so forth.

In his book Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku used gamma ray bursts as an evidence to illustrate that extremely powerful rayguns such as the Death Star's primary weapon in the Star Wars franchise do not violate known physical laws and theories. He further analyses the problem of rayguns' power sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raygun

[Jim G.]

20. Yeah, I Always Thought They Were Some Kind Of Generated Matter

Not lasers.

[Orrex]

22. Can't watch the clip yet, but try this:

Last edited Tue Aug 31, 2021, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Stand opposite your neighbor, each armed with a garden hose.

Spray them at each other full blast and see how much of the matter is deflected.