Science Fiction or just a conspiracy

greenwoodmonkey

OK, in Starwars nearly 30 years ago communications were done via (albeit fuzzy) hollograms, and now we have them

In Star Trek they had the little flippy communicator thingie (please do not use this discussion to "flame" me for slagging off Star Trek, I really enjoy watching all the series but just because I don't know the name of every character and every piece of equipment and which episode had the red fuzzy thing that ate Kirk's last hairpiece does not make me satan.....) and now we have the Motorola whatever - which looks exactly the same...

So, I have seen two moves now where electricity is created from a cup of salt water or something (The Saint with Val Kilmer and that one with the fella from Seven and Keanu Reeves) and it looks pretty easy.. now.. it seems to me that there is some sort of conspiracy hiding all this, because both those films were made ages ago, and I still haven't seen a gizmo I can use in my home to make my lamp work from a cup of brine...

Whats happening? Are they hiding it or are the movies talking out of their ass??

urangkayo

i think science come from people imagination

but who knows Smile

Tumbleweed

Life imitates art..........or is that art imitates life..........I'm all confused now

Beem me up scotty

Aiz

I agree to some extent.

I think governments do hide some technology from us common folks, but not to the extreme of the movies.

My father's in the telecommunication field. He designs satellite communication devices used during wars by the government and from what I see >.> they really aren't that...advanced yet. Things still come in bulky packages and nowhere as sleek as the thingies in movies. In fact, they don't look much different from our daily devices like our modems and routers. Well less pretty designs, but yeah. >.>v

Indi

I don't know about the Keanu Reeves movie, but the technology in The Saint was cold fusion (see Wikipedia article here).

There is considerable controversy in the science community right now about cold fusion. Some say it's pseudoscience, some say it's the next big breakthrough. Which is it? *shrug* Here's the "for dummies" run down:

A couple of scientists in the late 80's named Fleishman (sp?) and Pons claimed they had made an apparatus that generated more energy than could be accounted for than by what they put in by electricity and possible chemical reactions. The assumption was that the excess energy came from atomic fusion at room temperature - cold fusion.

However, their results came under fire right out of the gate. First of all, there were serious disputes between them and a collaborator named Steven Jones. Instead of sharing the credit, Fleishman and Pons published ahead of Jones. In order to do that, they had to publish without peer review - which is almost a sure indicator of pseudoscience in most cases. When they finally did get around to seeking peer review, their article was clearly flawed.

To make matters worse, the larger community wasn't having any luck reproducing the results (another fairly sure indicator of pseudoscience), and several scientists actually argued that Fleishman and Pons had ****** up in their measurements - and that there actually was no excess energy being produced.

And if that wasn't bad enough, no-one to date (to my knowledge) has even been able to figure out a mechanism by which such fusion should be possible according to theory. So to summarize:

The experiment design had errors.
The experiment may not have been properly controlled.
Attempts at repeating the experiment have met with mixed success at best.
It does not jive with current nuclear theory.

So it's looking pretty bad for cold fusion research, and in fact, many research centers shun cold fusion research for these reasons.

Nevertheless, it's still being done. There has been lots of controversy about evidence of isotopes to prove that fusion actually occurred. And there's still the repeatability problem. But there are still people plugging away at it, although the hype has died down a little since the early 90's. And of course, current success claims are still nowhere near the levels needed to be practically useful.

So, is it real or is it pseudoscience? *shrug* You decide. But as for having a cold fusion cell running your desk lamp? I wouldn't hold my breath.

frozenhead

That's why Science is there to make the impossible possible. All technologies that are used today are product of imagination + research if I must say.

iexplore

nature...whever you look we're just copying nature. here's a thought for peanuts and yes, some of you might have read/though of this before but me being me (a thinker/inventor/dreamer) have come up with something like this. You might also compare this with a lot of sci-fi movies/books articles but this thought came to me in a dream and I believe whatever comes in REM sleep (deep sleep) is in someway or the other going to happen or has already happened...

here goes
The way science is moving in leaps and bounds, we might, in a few years from now, know the secrets of life itself including all that is fiction right now might be fact a couple of years from now, just as green... pointed out about star wars and star trek stuff. Confused

So human "civilisation" becomes so advanced that they become Gods in time and can do (literally) anything a God can. Get my drift...

Not sure where this is leading to but leaving it to you guys to take it from there.... Rolling Eyes

Miniwood

LeviticusMky

Science fiction is a way for the human race to direct our endeavors. The reason that automatic doors, flip phones, holographic communication, etc. are all viable technologies now is specifically BECAUSE of its role in the science fiction world. Scientists see these things, and drive to make them real.

It's only a matter of time till we see the myriad other technological marvels start to pop up, Flexible transparent screens, holographic desktops, personal robots, all these things are on the docket, mainly due to their appearance in the human psyche, which stems in large part from our forward thinking, aka science fiction.

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