What science fantasies were you most upset to discover to be untrue?

[TXlib]

I was disappointed to learn that radiation doesn't just make you disintegrate.

I was also disappointed to find out that there are no man-eating plants.

I probably discovered both when I was 7-8 or so.

[rumguy]

1. I'm still holding out for time travel

[TXlib]

9. You're travelling through time all the time.

You can accelerate your passage through time in one of two ways: get into a NAFAL (nearly as fast as light) ship, and jaunt around the galaxy, or get yourself cryogenically frozen and revived.

Neither is prohibited by the laws of physics, although the second option may be more likely to be feasible in the nearer future.

There is no physical method for going backwards, however, which is what most people want.

[7th_Sephiroth]

2. hmmmm dont kno if this counts but

you CANT see the great wall of china from space

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. You can't?

:(

But you can see the AstroDome, Right? Right????

[7th_Sephiroth]

46. nope

you cannot see any man made structure from space

[Ediacara]

59. I've heard you can see freeways pretty clearly actually

From the Space Shuttle anyway....

[denverbill]

3. That xray vision glasses didn't really work.

[VelmaD]

4. Lasers...

I remember the first time I ever saw one I was peeved that it didn't make things explode when it hit them. It was just this crappy little line of red light. x(

[TXlib]

13. A high-powered laser can make some things explode

if they contain water. Kind of like popcorn.

[VelmaD]

19. Yeah, but that isn't the same...

as having a blaster on your hip that you can point and BLAMMO it's gone.

[DrWeird]

6. Obviously FTL.

And thus no Star Fleets or Millenium Falcons.

[terrya]

7. That the "transporter" in Star Trek isn't going to happen.

Teleportation, according to most scientists, isn't feasible. I know there has been an successful experiment where scientists teleported a proton from one place to another.

But "beaming" a person...re-arranging their molecules, transporting them to another location, and then re-arranging their molecules EXACTLY...it's impossible.

Terry

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. What about Stephen King's Jaunt?

That could happen, couldn't it? ;)

[Bridget Burke]

37. Didn't Gully Foyle invent Jaunting?

"Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep Space is my dwelling place
The Stars my destination."

(Alfred Bester, actually.)

[EstimatedProphet]

49. Yes he did

Good book

[TXlib]

43. What is the premise of "Jaunt"?

[Bridget Burke]

48. In "The Stars My Generation".....

"Jaunting" is teleportation. It becomes widespread & changes society. Just the background for the "Count of Monte Cristo" type story. This really is one of the science fiction classics of all time.

Sounds like Stephen King had the same idea--and used the same word! Not sure--I've never been a fan.

[EstimatedProphet]

50. The stars my destination came out in the 50's/60's

Way before Stephen King

[arcane1]

16. hence the invention of the Heisenberg Compensator

:silly:


Turn that uncertainty around! :bounce:

[LynzM]

22. That's mine, too...

Would'a been nice, though :)

[terrya]

28. Even if it would be possible, I'm not at all sure I would be willing...

personally to try it. Machines DO malfunction, after all.

:-)

Terry

[-..__...]

47. You never know what can happen!

[WillParkinson]

61. Impossible...

Two hundred years ago things that we have now (microwave ovens, etc) would have been deemed 'impossible'.

I don't believe it's impossible. I just believe that it won't be done during my lifetime.

[Triple H]

8. I was disappointed to find out that acid...

doesn't eat through things just like that(it takes time). I was also disappointed that acid only "eats" through proteins and nothing else. :(

[enki23]

12. acid only "eats" through proteins?

not quite right on that one. ;-)

[truthspeaker]

26. depends what kind of acid and how strong

They use it to etch metal, for example.

[Triple H]

32. Yeah, they use acid to etch glass too...

I believe.

In my post, I only meant to say that acid doesn't eat through everything readily like it does on cartoons. My bad.

[Ratty]

38. Me too

I remember an episode of Gilligan's Island where they were stirring up a batch of acid in a big cauldron. Mary Ann says to Ginger: "Do you think it's done?" Ginger shrugs and drops a piece of paper in and it bursts into flames. "It's done!"

The first time I got my hands on some HCL when I was 7 or 8, I couldn't wait to put a piece of paper in and watch it burst into flame. Boy, was I dissappointed. Then later I discovered I could put some zinc in and use it to inflate hydorgen ballons. I'm lucky all I got burnt off were my eyebrows!

[Ratty]

40. That Imperial Margarine didn't materialize a crown on your head

I am not kidding. When I was young that commercial really impressed me for some reason. I kept bugging Mom to buy it at the store but she never did. Finally my sister took me to get some, building up how cool it would be, saying she would help me clear a space to pile all of my crowns, warning me that the crowns were "grownup size" and would slip down my head onto my shoulders, saying we had to do it when Mom and Dad were gone on account of the loud bugle music ... etc., etc. She really built it up. Then we had to wait because she said we needed English Muffins for the best results, refusing to put it on plain toast. Finally the day came and she just sat at the table watching me with a HUGE smile on her face.

I have a pretty cool sister if you ask me.

[Pithlet]

44. lol

That made me remember being disappointed when Mrs. Butterworth wouldn't talk to me at breakfast.

[Bill McBlueState]

11. no lab coats!

I'm upset that most scientists don't go around in white lab coats all the time. I've never seen an astronomer wearing one... maybe I should start a trend.

How... fashionable!!

[DrWeird]

42. Hey, I wear a lab coat.

But then again I'm a chemist. Whereas astronomers don't really need them as they sit in front of computers all day. Maybe they have a lab bib for their hot pockets and cherry coke.

[BigMcLargehuge]

14. no flying cars, no giant rampaging insects/lizards,

no space station with a food court, no laser guns...

What a gyp.

[On the Road]

15. When I Was 8 or 9 Years Old,

I saw a TV program in which a child disappears, and his mother says: "Oh, no, he's been into my vanishing cream." It was a comedy and wasn't supposed to be real, but I didn't get it. I couldn't believe that there was a cream that could make you vanish, so I asked my mother, and she said yes, vanishing cream existed and if I really wanted some for whatever reason I could get it.

I was so excited I told my friends at school I was going to get some vanishing cream and disappear. I was not only disappointed, but humiliated to find out the awful truth.

[Endangered Specie]

17. Cold Fusion... If only... and, lightspeed limits suck (Thanks, Einstein)

[Semi_subversive]

18. That you can't bury a picture of a Playboy centerfold

in the ground and have it grow into a full-sized nekked woman (I have my late big brother to thank for that one)

[ScreamingMeemie]

24. ROFL...That's hysterical.

:hi:

[On the Road]

20. On a More Serious Note,

I was truly upset during the 80's when the Vatican admitted the Shroud of Turin to be a 14-century fabrication. Not so much because it is a fake, but because it meant that much of what I had read about the antiquity of the shroud in the media was just grossly wrong. It was a looking-glass experience of not being able to trust anything you read, even in mainstream outlets.

I've actually done some further reading on the Shroud. I am convinced it's a fake and believe I know how the image was created. So in this case, disillusionment spurred further research -- the experience many of us have had with politics.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

31. Actually, that's still something of experiment and debates...

And priests are still insisting it's real.
Duckie

[On the Road]

35. Unless Jesus Had a Flat Head,

there's no way the shroud can be real.

If you wrap a cloth over someone's head, it makes a long, continuous, messy mark. The image on the shroud is a rounded front and a rounded back.

Plus, human heads are pretty deep. There's not enough room for the depth of a human head even if the wrapping produced a rounded front and back for some strange reason.

There is tons of commentary on a wide variety of topics, including complicated 3-D positioning of a body in repose. But for some reason, no one ever seems to remark on this relatively simple quality.

Believers always remark on the 'mysterious' way the image was produced. There's nothing particularly mysterious about it -- the threads show signs of some bleaching agent. It could have been done deliberately or due to the use of a particular paint medium (which may no longer be there).

There will always be believers despite evidence to the contrary. The shroud is a particularly good example of wishful thinking by believers.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

36. I wasn't saying that I believed it really was the shroud...

I was just saying that it's still a matter of experiment and debate...
Duckie

[On the Road]

45. I Wasn't Dumping on You, Duckie...

hope it didn't seem that way.

I'm just at the point now where I feel like I can categorically say it's a fake. No doubt.

What troubled me, and what led me to post it on this thread, is that a lot of the specific things you read about the shroud are simply not true. Even on the show done for The History Channel (or PBS or Discovery).

For example, it gave the supposed history of the shroud as passing through Constantinople in the 4th century, then reappearing the France in the 14th. Actually, the 4th-C relic was supposed to be a small napkin laid over Jesus' face. The description does not match the shroud at all. But it was presented very naturally as if the 4th-C piece was the shroud folded up very small, which then dropped from view and resurfaced. That's one example.

This is what disturbs me about the public presentation. I know the reason -- because any periodical or channel who takes a stand is going to make believers angry. And because it's easier to present a pro/con case without drawing a conclusion. But that in itself is troubling.

[Lars39]

21. Depends on what generation you ask.

A lot of the Dick Tracy stuff came true. :)

[redqueen]

23. That men and women couldn't just have sex and get along afterwards

Damn that Heinlen!

[Ganja Ninja]

25. That none of the near by planets in our solar system are ...

populated by an all female race of hot babes in skimpy space outfits. What a bummer that was.

[TXlib]

27. Who were hell-bent on enslaving Earth men...

Ever play InfoCom's Leather Goddesses of Phobos?

[Ganja Ninja]

29. No I never have but It sounds like fun.

[HFishbine]

30. Close enough?

There's always New Jersey.

[loftycity]

33. That people from another planet have not come to same us from ourselves.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

34. There is no Brontosaurus

This was my favorite dinosaur as a kid. :cry:

[Ediacara]

52. Well there is Brontosaurus sort of

In 1877 a fellow named Othniel Charles Marsh


discovered the bones of two robust Diplodocid specimens in the American west. He named one of the specimens Apatosaurus ajax and the other Atlantosaurus montanus. It has been since discovered that A. ajax and A. montanus belong to the same species, so the earliest name, Apatosaurus ajax has priority. What's weird in this case is that both species were named in the same publication, and the Apatosaurus vs Atlantosaurus dilema was decided on page numbers.



In 1879, Marsh named more bones of a robust diplodocid Brontosaurus excelsus. The skeleton was much more complete than any other sauropod previously discovered, and became an instant celebrity.



In 1903, it was discovered that B. excelsus really does not deserve it's own genus name, and should really be thought of as a species of Apatosaurus: A. excelsus.

Most paleontologists were, "Okay, sounds great," the public however never heard about this until oh..... the 1970s.

What is normally lost in the story though is that what was named Brontosaurus actually does exist as a seperate species in the genus Apatosaurus. It's more a semantics question, "what is a genus?" Lions and tigers still exist even though they're both members of the genus Panthera (P. leo and P. trigris respectively).

Even more confusing is Bob Bakker.



Bakker, puts just two species into Apatosaurus, A. ajax and A. louisae; uses the generic title Brontosaurus for A. excelsus; and has created a new generic name, Eobrontosaurus, for another Apatosaurus species, A. yahnahpin. Almost nobody in paleontology agrees with this useage though, so Bob is, in a way, in a world by himself!

Confusing, yes, but not actually uncommon. Chimps were originally placed in the genus Homo, then were taken out and put in their own ganus Pan, and have recently been put into Homo again, although like Brontosaurus, not everyone agrees!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

54. I read somewhere that Brontosaurus was a conglomerate dino

Apatasaurus body with a Camarasaurus head.

Paleontologists seem to love disagreeing with Bob Bakker. I don't care what they think...I say hooray to him for bringing back brontos.

Speaking of scientific myths...remember all those bronto burgers Fred Flintstone used to scarf down despite the fact that dinosaurs were long gone by the time Fred ever would have existed?

[Ediacara]

55. Also partially true, but a different story entirely

Diplodocus carnegeii was blessed with fantastic specimens, including complete skulls:



All specimens of Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus, until the mid-twentieth century, were headless however. When mounted skeletons were first put in museums, they needed a head, so they had to sculpt one. Brontosaurus is much more robust than Diplodocus, so they sculpted a head similar to the more robust Camarasaurus, even though Brontosaurus was clearly a close relative of Diplodocus and NOT Camarasaurus

Subsequent discoveries have actually turned up a skull for Apatosaurus:



Which is quite unlike the very tall somewhat square skulls with high arched nostrils that Camarasaurus had:



And unlike the sculpted "Brontosaurus" skulls which had formerly addorned museum specimens (sorry for the crappy image, it's the only one I could snag):

[GoddessOfGuinness]

58. Thanks for the info!

and the pics! :beer:

[supernova]

39. That there is no Warp Drive

even if we could go, it would take us centuries to reach some destinations. So visiting all those distant stars and planets is just a dream. :cry:

[everythingsxen]

41. That radiation does not make you a mutant with super-powers

:(

[Deja Q]

51. Time travel, dimensional transcendence, a diet pill that works, FTL speeds

Except for tachyons... I love tachyons. Don't you love tachyons? Everybody should love tachyons... They're the key to FTL...

[geniph]

53. I can't believe we're still relying on internal combustion engines

and fixed concrete highways for transportation! Where are the moving roadways, jetpacks, aircars, and transporters promised me by decades of sf???

[Faygo Kid]

56. "To Serve Man" was a cookbook

I really thought those GOP-types were here to help us.

[sam sarrha]

57. that those penis enlarger pumps dont work...

[Astarho]

60. No "Lost Worlds"

I was disappointed to learn there are no secret enclaves full of dinosaurs and cavemen.

I was also disappointed that a Type 0 civilization hasn't discovered all the secrets of the universe (well, actually I'm not disappointed about this one)