Gallery: Summer Movie Science Smackdown

And yet, how many years ago was it that people thought that cloth would not stop a bullet. Now we have Kevlar. Next....

My previous post was for Captain Americas' shield. As for Cowboys & Aliens, “We are not talking about anything remotely wrist-mounted.” Once again, someone being short sighted. "The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons." Today, a mere 65 years later, that computing power IS worn on the wrist. Think about it. What technology will be reduced to a wearable size?

Lol a laser can't be wrist mounted? Computers used to be the size of a small building, now they fit in your pocket and have 1000 times more computing power. Plus all the articles that come up about the Navy's laser system continue to show improvement.

... Just a matter of time.

Science fact for Capt. shield debunked in your own article yesterday: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-06/new-nanometal-changes-hard-soft-flip-switch

seriously the only serious set back to transformers or a wrist mounted powerful laser is the proper compact power source. in theory, if u can build a nuclear power source the size of a soda can, u could have a transformer built in a couple of months with the right grad students.

Who's the genius that thinks Lonergan’s wrist-mounted cannon is firing lasers. You would think for a science magazine the writers could tell the difference between a laser and something ... not a laser.

Green Lantern - "Jordan becomes the first human to serve as a Green Lantern, a guardian that ..." notifies train engineers that the next block of railroad track is clear. :grin:

Re all the stories - here are a few of my favorite quotes:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C. Clarke

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
--Robert A. Heinlein

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
--Robert A. Heinlein

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
--Robert A. Heinlein

I think the thing here is we are confining our thinking to the term laser and what we know of it.

the description in the article is laser but who is to say that is what the writer of the story meant.

how about bolt of energy so powerful it emitted a bright light?

that could be plasma, antimatter, solar flair.....etc

if we are to create and "get it" we cant take what we see and put what we know to it.

Tesla said he was able to turn on a field of light bulbs by transferring electricity through the air.

i didn't get this for a while but now a little invention last year solved my confusion.

you can now charge your phone by just placing it on a pad.

the electricity passes through to the device by a frequency of microwave... huh? pretty good what..

So as we now learn a new use for the modulation of microwave we will soon learn how to pull the energy from the sun and air and space around us to power many things of great power.