Warp wrote:
> TC <do-not-reply@i-do get-enough-spam-already-2498.com> wrote:
>> Never 
>> mind that in a vacuum there is no sound to be heard and laser beams are 
>> invisible.
> 
>   Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, at the energy
> levels usually used in terrestrial conditions, might be invisible. But
> energy weapons in scifi movies do not necessarily use either LASER nor
> the energy levels we are accustomed to. (The word "laser" has become more
> or less synonym of "light/energy ray", especially in scifi settings, but
> that doesn't mean that it's literally a LASER.)
> 
>   The energy beams used by space ship weapons in scifi movies may be though
> of using some form of energy still unknown to us, and the levels of energy
> involved are ostensibly staggering (after all, these energy beams have to
> penetrate energy shields and reinforced space ship hulls, so a regular
> earthly LASER won't cut). It's *plausible* that this form of energy beam,
> at the energy levels involved, might be visible, either all by itself or
> by "burning" whatever matter is in space (after all, space is seldom 100%
> total vacuum, and instead there are always trace amounts of hydrogen
> molecules from stellar wind, etc).
> 
>   As for sounds in space, if you require space scenes to be mute, you are
> actually requiring for the movie to break the fourth wall. See more here:
> 
> http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/AboutSoundsInSpace.html
> 
>   (Not that breaking the fourth wall would be *wrong* per se. However, it's
> equally non-wrong to not to break the fourth wall as well.)
> 
Don't know. This may be less the case now than it was in the past. 
Battlestar did *everything* in space, unless you where in a cockpit, or 
inside the ship, "silent", and it worked.

As for the Sci-fi effects issues.. Blasters and sabers both require 
something we can't manage "containment". Both are likely to be plasma, 
not laser. We can produce cold plasmas, and hot, and to *some extent* 
control the cold ones, but it takes a lot of energy to produce them, and 
"containment" is limited to more or less flat planes, between emitter 
and collector, and such. In other words, we are more likely to see 
something like Star Trek corridor shield, before we ever see a blaster, 
never mind a saber. Sabers.. Are probably more likely than a blaster, 
simply because it may be, in principle, possible to create a plasma 
"blade" which is hot enough to cut something, but cool enough/isolated 
enough, from the emitter, to prevent it melting a central "core" into 
slag. In effect, you would generate the plasma at the tip of a baton, or 
maybe the bottom, depending on how it had to work, then "collect" it on 
the other end. This means that, unlike a true lightsaber you would have 
a solid core, under the plasma. The most likely design such such a thing 
would be more like a plasma chain saw, where the emitter and collector 
where isolated by distance, from the "core" used to feed the energy and 
particles to the emitter system. Its would be hottest nearest the emitter.

But, its all about containment, when making something more complex. 
There is no known way to trap such a mass of plasma energy in a ball, or 
limit how far it goes from an emitter, without a container, so that it 
can be fired at a target. You would get something more like a flame 
thrower, than a blaster, or blade, and it would diffuse in *all* 
directions at once, with the only exception being what ever directional 
movement may have been added at the emission point. Its that containment 
issue that creates a hang up. Its one thing to contain particles in a 
layer, between points you can control, then mess with the particle 
density, its another thing entirely to force it out in a tight beam, or 
a pulse, and expect it to maintain cohesion over more than a few feet.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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