Revisiting the Physics of Buckaroo Banzai

serutan writes "Shortly before the release of 'The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension' in 1984, physicist Carl Sneider of U.C. Berkeley wrote a surprisingly interesting essay on the physics behind the movie. Since the essay is not widely available on the web and I could only find it in plain text, I posted a more readable HTML version on my site. Among the more interesting points Sneider makes are that the oscillation overthruster is the result of decades of research instead of the usual laboratory accident, and its development corresponds surprisingly well with the evolution of particle physics from the 1930s to the 80s."

This was already discussed by Londo Molari

[rogerborn]

He discussed it a long time ago in the far off, but rather close future.

Here is the link -

http://www.rogerborn.com/commentary/a-walk-among-t he-atoms.html [rogerborn.com]

""These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."

The Usual Accident

[Anonymous Coward]

> the result of decades of research instead of the usual laboratory accident

Decades of research is the usual method. Favourable laboratory accidents (which are recognized thanks to decades of research) simply make for memorable anecdotes. Which does seem to be about all the general populous's education and curiosity can retain, so yeah I suppose a half-wit might think lab accidents are the usual way forward. It's just a shame to see it on /..

Re:The Usual Accident

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point of the article! It's saying that the movie more reasonably potrays advances as the result of protracted endeavour rather than the usual for movies laboratory accident. Next time read more carefully.

He got to see the director's cut!

[SoundGuyNoise]

"The machine which finally enables Buckaroo Banzai to move through matter is based on decades of research that are shown to the audience through home movies and flashbacks."

Dr. Sneider must have seen an early edit of the film in 1984. The home movie segment wasn't widely available until the recent DVD release.

I don't think it would work inside an atmosphere

[SirGarlon]

From the article:

The basic premise of the Overthruster seems perfectly reasonable if we could just find a way to do this. How could we shorten the distance that virtual photons travel within the atom? Since virtual photons have no mass, they are able to travel the full distance between electrons and protons. What would happen if the virtual photons were given mass? If virtual photons had mass, they would be restricted to a very small region around the elementary particles that make up the atoms.

Fair enough, but what would be the implications for the object that gets its virtual photons recombobulated this way?

First thing that comes to mind is that all matter, not just Banzai's rocket car, could move through the target (the mountain in this case). So, the surrounding air would rush into the newly created "empty space" that coincides with the mountain. This would cause a tremendous thunderclap and lots of turbulence. Since the molecules inside the mountain are no longer really solid, they'd get displaced by the inrushing air and spewed all over the place.

Inside an atmosphere, the Oscillation Overthruster would basically be a disintegrator ray.

Re:Atoms are mostly empty?

[SirGarlon]

That an atom really isn't mostly empty space, but that 'space' is full of the wave functions of the electrons in 'orbit' of the nucleus?

Yes and no. I am too lazy to go look it up in my quantum textbook (it's been more than a decade since I graduated) but I remember being surprised to find that, when you actually integrate the wave function, you still come out with a high probability of a particle being localized to a fairly small area in space. That is, in principle the wave function extends through the entire universe but most of its moment is within an angstrom or two (waving my hands here, too lazy to re-read-up on the math) of where a classical "orbiting marble" model of the atom says it would be.

Re:Weird science

[paiute]

Consider this, if you were to disrupt the particle behavior of an object so that its molecular bonds were permeable (since they are mostly made of space in the first place), you'd end up with the particle either collapsing on itself or blown to bits due to repulsive charges of neigbor particles. So Banzai wouldn't be able to fly through a mountain because the mountain would have collapsed upon itself. If he used the oscillator on himself and his ship, he wouldn't be able to recover from the damage.

Going through matter like that is not a question of altering material behaviour in our three or four dimensions but taking advantage of other dimensions, up to the eighth. Buckaroo just used the next fifth through eighth dimension to make him and his car orthoganol to the first three or four dimensions.

Re:Big Trouble in Little China

[silentounce]

"The script for the proposed sequel Buckaroo Banzai vs. The World Crime League ended up becoming the script for John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (1986)."

That's false. I recently had the pleasure to view the recent DVD release of BTiLC. One of the special features discusses how the film was developed. There is no mention of BB in there. In fact, the original script was set in the Old West. My memory is vague. But I'm fairly sure that the trivia from IMDB is BS.

Blatant pitch

[deblau]

The oscillation overthruster was incorporated into BZFlag [bzflag.org], a tank-based FPS. It lets your tank 'walk through walls' and lay in wait inside buildings where you can't be shot by normal bullets. For the record, I'm an admin on a few servers, and I play regularly. Oh yeah, the game runs on Linux, BSD, Irix (where I first encountered it), and Windows of course.

Re:Weird science

[steveha]

If you enjoy pulp adventures, I highly recommend Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe" books. Sadly there are only two so far, but I'm eager for more. The first one is available completely free from the Baen Free Library:

http://www.baen.com/library/aallston.htm [baen.com]

Enjoy!

steveha

Re:Big Trouble in Little China

[silentounce]

I should have looked in the wiki before I posted that.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trouble_in_Litt le_China#Production_History
http://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Banzai_Across_t he_8th_Dimension#Sequels
 
Both of those explain what I tried to say much more clearly.