Quote:Brother site Kotaku reports on two mountain climbers who for some reason decided to tote their Nintendo DS along with them on the grueling hike up Mt. Everest. Apparently, the DS “DS held up the best of any of [the electronic equipment].” And hey, fanboys even climb Mt. Everest! “I can guarantee a five-year-old can spill jelly on them and they’ll still survive… (vs. PSP)” Oops, now I’m a Sony fanboy for calling someone a Nintendo fanboy! DS Survives Everest: Expedition Update [Kotaku]

Dark Jaguar Wrote:That leads me to wonder how exactly Jedi masters manage to not get burnt to cinders... Well, if they are strong enough to withstand 4000 degree air, seriously, why can't they just GRAB a light saber blade like it's nothing?

Great Rumbler Wrote:8,000,000 degrees!

Quote:Well I won't debate the whole heat radiating thing, because the very notion of a beam of light that just stops midway is silly to begin with.

Quote:I'm just talking about sheer power level here. Oh and, what if the light saber hit a big solid chunk of granite? That might stop it.

Quote:Yes ABF, I agree that the rules have to be slightly, well okay majorly, different. And yes, it's about continuity with itself, but that's what I'm talking about here. If the Jedi can hold back air that should be roasting them alive, they should be able to withstand a lightsaber.

Quote:Ya know, just once I'd like to see a space battle where there was no sound (except maybe the music). IT CAN TOO BE DRAMATIC! Yeesh do you lack an artistic taste? War movies sometimes blank out all the sound completely and just play music in the background as the battle goes on. I THINK the same thing could work for space battles.

Quote:And ABF, I mean that if they don't get fried by being near all that lava, they should be able to withstand a direct hit by a lightsaber. I'm not talking about the heat radiating thing any more. I'm talking about being able to directly grab one.

Quote:I KNOW THAT THINGS DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO BE REALISTIC! Yeesh... You are treating me like a child here. You act as though I've never thought that thought in my life... OF COURSE I agree with that! I was talking about how there is ALSO something to be said for realism in the sense that certain things can add to the whole feel of the movie, and realistic jumping physics WOULD be one of them. Why is it that when I talk about Star Wars it's so hard to actually HAVE a conversation with you without you completely ignoring everything I say or just out and out assuming I mean something I very clearly do not?

Yeesh, I'm not saying that all sci fi movies should ALWAYS obey the laws of physics. Why do you think I'm saying that? I'm saying that a lot of the stuff they do could be done in more realistic fasions and still be exciting, or in the case of the jumping thing, they could do something unrealistic in a way that appears a lot more natural. I DID explain it in a way that I thought made my viewpoint not only clear, but also artistically sound.

Look, it's just very annoying when I keep having to make my point clear. I've argued very similar things to you in the past. You should know what I mean by now.

Quote:how there is ALSO something to be said for realism in the sense that certain things can add to the whole feel of the movie, and realistic jumping physics WOULD be one of them.

Quote:And another thing, the physics of jumping has always seemed a bit unnatural... Yes I know, it IS unnatural, it's the force or gamma ray enduced jumping or spidey powers, but my point is whatever supplies the initial push aside, from that point it should behave in a realistic fasion. Makes it more seamless ya know? It's just part of the way our brains work. What I mean is, it's all well and good that they used a burst of force power to shoot them into the air (if it was continous force after all there would be nothing preventing them from flight, so it couldn't be that). But, they remained the same speed through the entire jump. In reality, when anything jumps, or is thrown, or whatever, it starts out fast, slows down, stops, starts falling slowly, speeds up, then stops again when it hits something hard enough, like the ground. Now, don't get me wrong, a lack of deceleration and acceleration isn't going to kill my enjoyment of a movie, but for a man like Lucas that is so obsessed with his special effects being as realistic as possible, he must realize that a huge part of that is making sure nothing makes people somehow feel that a scene "doesn't look right". They may not know why it doesn't look right, but still it's things like this that make people realize stuff like that If they took the time to really get it right, not only would people not notice it and not be temporarily reminded they are watching a movie, but people like me would notice and appreciate that attention to detail.

Quote:if it was continous force after all there would be nothing preventing them from flight, so it couldn't be that

Quote:Perhaps you just don't realize just how extreme a situation Lucas put on here when he created "level 8, lava world", but it really is that hot. Perhaps there is some property of those lightsabers that makes them unblockable by force powers though... I suppose that maybe they have special vibrations synched with those power crystals or whatever that manage to destabalize any force protection the jedis could have.

Quote:Once again, I feel I must point out exactly what I'm after here. When I say that certain things should be realistic, I'm not saying "that's not how it works, monkeys can't fly!".

Quote:Now on this jumping issue, I will simply say that I acknowledge that you can easily come up with retcon to explain exactly how it works. You've already offerend one possible explanation of constant reboosts in mid jump to maintain speed coupled with constant slowing bursts on the way down to prevent acceleration. Both would actually make tactical sense in fact. However, in the end that shouldn't have been needed. In fact, I'm not going to use such explanations. In the end, I'll simply conclude that the "reality" of the scene did involve all the right things, but it was this movie's expression of it that got it wrong.

Quote:Surely if Lucas HAD actually taken the physics of thrown and falling objects into account, Star Wars fans would see that as an example of Lucas' attention to detail and applaude it though. This much you must admit would be true.

Quote:So, we must assume, as is indicated anyway I believe, that the gravity generator was somehow disabled.

Quote:Again, I'm not saying that they have to make everything obey real world physics. That's boring and crippling. But, there is something to be said for not only inventing new physics but maintaining a certain touch stone with us.

Quote:For example, any good story has humans in it somewhere.

Quote:And, I've come to pretty much be convinced of that. If I see something like The Lion King, they don't really make any claims that any of the animals are anything more than creatures who act exactly like humans. Had they made the claim that lions are completely different than humans, they would need to add one somewhere, perhaps shooting Simba's mother or something, so you could get some glimpse of how the author sees humans.

Quote:However, that extra mile, an added attention to detail, really would have made it more clear. What I'm getting at is that something as simple as realistic jumping physics, after that initial burst of force, would really drive home how amazing the force is in this universe, at least at a barely liminal level.

Quote:And again, in Zelda there is a LOT that defies our world, of course. However, they keep certain things normal so we have some idea of what the hell is going on. For example, Link is pretty much human (aside from those ears) and thus has human limitations. If everyone was a superpowered freak, then for what purpose would I be gathering a tool kit? No, it was the fact that he was realistically limited that made gathering all those tools with pretty obvious utility such a joy.

Great Rumbler Wrote:One explanation I thought of for that scene was that the gravity generators were NOT destroyed, but in fact malfunctioning. They were creating artificial gravity in the wrong parts of the ship, thus causing everyone to slide around on the floor.

Quote:ABF, you beg the question. DO people stand next to active volcanos? The answer is an emphatic "no". The reality of the situation is that flowing lava that hot REQUIRES special protection even from a distance of a meter or so away from it. Another factor is how much physical space the heat source takes up.

Here's something for you. If the moon was the same tempurature as the sun, but still as big as it was now (that is, taking up the same space in the sky as the sun) it would actuall heat up the earth by exactly the same amount as the sun. The area that a heat source takes up has a bigger impact on how much it heats something up than distance does.

So, if the lava is so far away from you, or is simply a really small drop really close to you, then you don't need protective gear. Have you never seen the protective suits people need to wear in order to gather samples of lava or gauge the temp? No, humans CAN'T take the heat. I know of what I speak here.

Quote:And you totally misunderstand gravity... First of all, the atmosphere is NOT the creator of gravity. You can be pulled by gravity well outside the atmosphere. In fact, when in orbit, gravity is not gone. In fact, it's only reduced by around 20% at the average orbitting distance. That's why the ship is in orbit and not flying off into the void. Now then, the reality is that an orbit is actually LITERALLY falling AROUND the body in question. Imagine this scenario. Let's say you were in an elevator and the cable suddenly snapped and fell. What would happen? Would you be pulled directly to the floor of the elevator and not notice what is happening? Would you be slammed into the ceiling and stay there? Neither. The reality is that if an elevator fell, with you in it, you would be in free fall, essentially weightless. You would behave exactly the same as though you were in orbit. (In fact this is a key example Einstein uses to demonstrate relativity, also an example comparing being in a standing elevator on Earth being indistinguishable from being in an elevator in space that is constantly accelerating, leading to the conclusion that not only are inertia and gravity similar, they are literally the same force, but I'll get into that another time.) What I'm saying is that on that ship, when it fell towards the planet, it should be the same as that elevator example. Since both the ship and the crew would fall at the same rate, why would they fall FASTER than the ship? Remember, they would have to fall faster than the ship for any sort of sliding to take place. They should be weightless until something happens to collide with them, like the bottom of the ship when it suddenly slows down in an instant.

Quote:At any rate, for the rest of that you seem to have quite simply ignored all the points I tried to make to defend myself and fall back on rhetoric... I may misunderstand, but it really seems as though you won't try to understand what I said. I made it very clear exactly why something like that could help the movie, and also gave some good examples of how certain things could be done. Rather than take things on point by point you seem to have ignored it. I don't appreciate that. Also, I made it clear that it's okay that it didn't happen and I was debating it purely on a conceptual level, on "if it's this or that, I would say that is the better alternative". I did like the movie, but I do have my views on how art and science can be combined in great ways and I thought I did a good job defending that.

Quote:At any rate, I will now point out something GR already knows. A lot of the science I obtained about that I got from a place called

Quote:Anyway, which elevator are you speaking of? If it's the one in free fall towards a planet, then it doens't matter if the floor tilts because you are floating around in there. With no pull to the floor of the elevator, no sliding is going to happen. Further, tilting reletive to what? With no up or down, a surface can hardly be defined as "level".

Quote:Yes, you can push yourself off the floor, if that's where you were when it started falling, and float in the air. This is because both you and the elevator are falling at the same speed.