The Day the Earth Stood Still

[Resnic]

The laser wasn't invented until 9 years after the movie was made

Does that mean star wars is a problem to? Because he haven't invented space ships yet either. Forbidden planet had space ships in the 50s before we went to the moon also.

That movie is fiction. It's fake it's not real. And it certainly does not need reality drug into it.

I guess I don't understand. Are we supposed to be astounded with your observation or something? Marvel at your revelation?

I mean I'd seen this mentioned before online so I assume you read it somewhere else and thought you'd post it here so you can assume we would be impressed?

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

Does that mean star wars is a problem to? Because he haven't invented space ships yet either

And we NEVER WILL leave the solar system. Neither will man invent teleportation or warp drive

 

[Harry Dresden]

And we NEVER WILL leave the solar system. Neither will man invent teleportation or warp drive

you sound like the head of the US Patent office who in 1899 allegedly stated that "everything there is to be invented has already been invented".....

 

[Captain Caveman]

A movie from 1951. The scene where Gort first appears, he uses what looks like a LASER weapon to destroy the weapons of his adversaries.

Anybody see the "problem" here?

I have that original film on DVD, a classic. The Tom Cruise modern version is shit.

No problem with anything in sci-fi because essentially that's what it is, made up.

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

you sound like the head of the US Patent office who in 1899 allegedly stated that "everything there is to be invented has already been invented".....

There are physical limits --LAWS -- that govern the universe that cannot be violated. We are advanced enough now to KNOW these things, unless you've grown up watching science FANTASY

 

[Harry Dresden]

There are physical limits --LAWS -- that govern the universe that cannot be violated. We are advanced enough now to KNOW these things, unless you've grown up watching science FANTASY

you dont know how science will advance,.....do you think the people in 1899 could ever conceive of the things we have today,or what we have accomplished?....you are pretty small minded...

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

you dont know how science will advance,.....do you think the people in 1899 could ever conceive of the things we have today,or what we have accomplished?....you are pretty small minded...

We will take ONE

Star Trek Warp Drive: in the Star Trek universe they at least understand the LAW that NOTHING exceeds the speed of light. There are reasons NOTHING can go faster.

So how did they get around it? By FOLDING THE UNIVERSE to bring other stars closer. That is the essence of "Warp Drive.". Sorry, but that ain't gonna happen. No amount of wishful thinking will make it happen

 

[Harry Dresden]

We will take ONE

Star Trek Warp Drive: in the Star Trek universe they at least understand the LAW that NOTHING exceeds the speed of light. There are reasons NOTHING can go faster.

So how did they get around it? By FOLDING THE UNIVERSE to bring other stars closer. That is the essence of "Warp Drive.". Sorry, but that ain't gonna happen. No amount of wishful thinking will make it happen

like i said...you and that guy in 1899.....to closed small minds.....

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

like i said...you and that guy in 1899.....to closed small minds.....

You live in the land of wishful thinking. I understand the Laws of Nature. I don't live in a Fantasy Land

Got 45 minutes to kill? Let's take a trip to Jupiter at light speed

 

[Harry Dresden]

You live in the land of wishful thinking. I understand the Laws of Nature. I don't live in a Fantasy Land

Got 45 minutes to kill? Let's take a trip to Jupiter at light speed

you are also saying science can never go beyond what we have today....thats being pretty close minded....do you believe in god or some kind of more advanced being?....

 

[Mushroom]

Star Trek Warp Drive: in the Star Trek universe they at least understand the LAW that NOTHING exceeds the speed of light.

And it was done to make the story enjoyable and make sense. Otherwise the time to get between stars would make any show impossible.

And others were purely for budget reasons. Like "Transporters", as it would have been too expensive to show shuttles leaving and returning to the ship, so the transporter was a cost saving way to work around that.

 

[hjmick]

The laser wasn't invented until 9 years after the movie was made

I doubt that usage of the word "laser" preceded the invention of a functioning laser, but the principle of the laser was understood years before one was created. Flash Gordon was wielding "ray guns" on screen in the 1930s. It could be argued that said "ray guns" were early depictions of lasers. It's not at all far fetched to think lasers could be depicted a few short years before the first one was invented.

 

[Mushroom]

I doubt that usage of the word "laser" preceded the invention of a functioning laser

Especially as it is an acronym and not an actual word. Not unlike RADAR.

LASER is actually "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". And more than partially inspired by the MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), which was invented in 1953. And a Japanese patent application in 1957 called a similar device a "Semiconductor Optical MASER" (which I guess would be SOMASER). But Gordon Gould is the one that coined the now familiar LASER in 1959. And he even proposed additional future "-ASER" technologies like XASER (X-rays), UVASER (Ultra-Violet), and RASER (radio frequencies).

But yes, the actual coining of LASER predates an functioning LASER by about eight months. The word in 1959 in the project proposal, the device from that proposal first being tested in 1960. But it was coined by a person that was on the development team, it did not predate the development team that invented it. And ironically, the device is actually an optical oscillator and not an optical amplifier. Which if taken literally would have seen it called a LOSER,

I think many are confused, as the word simply did not exist before 1959. Much like RADAR, which is a word created by the US Navy in 1940. At that time the British actually called it RDF, for "Range and Direction Finding". But by the end of the war, even they were calling it RADAR as it was simply easier to say. And yes, this is why I always in every post I have ever made in here called it a RADAR. Because it is actually an acronym and not a "real word".

 

[Cougarbear]

The laser wasn't invented until 9 years after the movie was made

I think you lost this one dude.

 

[Flopper]

It's Science Fiction. It doesn't have to be realistic. What makes good Sci-Fi is the same thing that makes all movies great. It begins with great direction. In this movie it was Robert Wise with 20 movies or best direction Oscars under his belt. Then it's a great story. In this movie it was an exciting tale by Harry Bates, one of the great Sci-Fi writers of the 40s and 50's. Next it's takes a good script which was written by Edmond North who an Oscar for Patton. Then comes an experience talented cast, Michael Rennie, Patricia O'Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, and Billy Gray. Great movies are made by talented people.

 

[Divine Wind]

The laser wasn't invented until 9 years after the movie was made

Energy weapons have been in SF for decades before the movie.

The War of the Worlds was published in 1897 by English author H. G. Wells. The Martians use a "heat ray" to incinerate humans and a chemical weapon.

 

[petro]

Energy weapons have been in SF for decades before the movie.

The War of the Worlds was published in 1897 by English author H. G. Wells. The Martians use a "heat ray" to incinerate humans and a chemical weapon.

It wouldn't be any stretch that at that time, humans knew that light could be focused with the simple trick of a magnifying lens.
People realized that a lens could focus light to ignite a fire as far back as 1268 AD, maybe earlier just doing a quick internet peek. What boy didn't enjoy frying ant colonies? Much like aliens frying humans.
By the late 1800's some could imagine taking that general principle into a more tightly focused and powerful beam. Especially as the country was discovering the benefits of electricity.

 

[Mushroom]

The War of the Worlds was published in 1897 by English author H. G. Wells. The Martians use a "heat ray" to incinerate humans and a chemical weapon.

In his writings he also had atomic bombs, something else not possible at all but it was already a theory. That is the main thing about early Sci-Fi, a lot of their speculation came true.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Advanced computers that fit in the palm of your hand that contains access to all information was a feature in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

By the time The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was written, personal computers had come into being. Douglas Adams, in fact, was an enthusiastic early-adopter of such technology.

By contrast, Star Trek imagined that computers would remain much bigger and scarcer. The Enterprise had one main computer, incorporated into the spacecraft, with no concept of computers small enough or portable enough that individual crew members might have them.

Star Trek also assumed that by the end of the 20th Century, some of humanity might venture outside of our solar system in sleeper ships. Khan and his bunch are supposed to have fled that way in the 1990s.

2001: A Space Odyssey was a bit more conservative, predicting that by 2001, we'd have colonized the Moon, and be sending a manned ship out as far as Jupiter—Also, with just one computer for the entire ship, incorporated into the ship.

It seems that in the 1960s, science fiction writers believed that we would be making much more progress, much more quickly, toward sending men into space; and completely missed the advances that were going to take place in computer technology. I don't think they had anticipated, by that time, that we'd even have basic electronic calculators in a portable form, such as what very quickly became common in the 1970s, much less the personal microcomputers such as the TRS-80 or the Apple ][ that came out in the late 1970s.

It was even considered laughable that people would cook with microwaves when I was a child.

How old are you, if I dare ask?

Microwave ovens didn't become common until some time in the 1970s (seems like that was a period of massive advancement in electronic technologies in general), but I thought I remembered hearing that they were invented in the 1940s, and on perusing the Wikipedia, I find that the concept of using radio waves to cook food was first publicly demonstrated in the 1930s. Looks like the first actual microwave oven as such, as invented in 1945, and the first commercially-available microwave ovens hit the market in 1947. The original Radarange stood almost six feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000 in 1947 Dollars (about $66,000 in 2022 Dollars).

 

[Bob Blaylock]

And we NEVER WILL leave the solar system. Neither will man invent teleportation or warp drive

you sound like the head of the US Patent office who in 1899 allegedly stated that "everything there is to be invented has already been invented".....

I'm reminded of an apocryphal story about a man who held the title of Bishop in some fairly obscure religion, who boasted a similar belief, that everything of any importance that would ever be invented had already been invented. Visiting a college run by his church, he was shocked when the President of that college predicted that one day, men would be able to fly. The Bishop said that flight was reserved for angels, and that it was blasphemous to suggest that mortal men would ever fly.

With the rise of the Internet, it is now possible for me to confirm that Milton Wright, the father of Orville and Wilbur Wright, was indeed a Bishop in a church called the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. There seem to be a lot of hits suggesting that he said something similar to denying that men would never fly, but these accounts do not seem terribly consistent or solidly reliable. That might just be an urban legend, of sorts.