Who needs ghostbusters when you've got Newton, says a scientist who has used physics and maths to poke holes in the way Hollywood depicts ghosts and vampires. In a paper, published recently on the physics website arXiv, theoretical physicist Professor Costas Efthimiou of the University of Central Florida shows that when it comes to things supernatural, the figures just don't add up.For instance, the ability to walk through walls is a common talent of celluloid ghosts.But Newton's laws of physics suggest that if a ghost can walk it shouldn't be able to pass through walls, say Efthimiou and Cornell University postgraduate student Sohan Gandhi.Newton says a body at rest will remain at rest until it's acted on by an external force and for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.So in order to walk, we apply a backward force on the floor with our feet, propelling the feet up and us forwards.But if a ghost can walk through walls, it must be "material-less", the authors argue, and incapable of exerting force.By the same token, a ghost that can walk through walls should also sink through the floor, and a ghost that can walk should be bouncing off the walls it tries to pass through."The depiction of ghosts walking contradicts the precept that ghosts are material-less," they write.Efthimiou and Gandhi also use the mathematical principle of geometric progression to rule out the existence of vampires.

They argue it would take just two and a half years for vampires to wipe out the entire human race from the day the first one appeared, based on the myth that vampires turn their victims into other vampires by sucking their blood.If vampires feed once a month, the great grandaddy of all vampires would have killed one human and produced one vampire in the first month. So in total there would be two vampires and one less human, or a tally of vampires 2, humans -1.By the next month, the 2 vampires would kill 2 humans, and so on. After n months there would be 2 x 2 x 2 ... x 2 = 2n, or a geometric progression with ratio 2."The vampire population increases geometrically and the human population decreases geometrically," they say.Using the principle of reductio ad absurdum, they conclude that vampires can't exist as their existence contradicts the existence of humans.

View: Full Article | Source: abc.net.au

When (most) people watch scary movies, they aren't worried about scientific possibility. They are just looking for a few scares and a good film.
Same reason people like me who watch fantasy movies... I don't care whether a magical ring and orcs can or can't exist... I care that it's a good movie.
So it's silly to research on why fictional movies are too unrealistic...
Let there be SOME imagination and just plain impossible magic left in the media.
Once everything gets too realistic, we no longer have fantasy.

Oh for Pete's SAKE!!!! There's a reason it is called "Supernatural Phenomenon"...

It doesn't have to follow rules.

well thats why they call it fiction. lol

Nope, I just don't see this effecting me watching movies nor caring if physics can prove them right or wrong.

Ok they did not got the ghost right. that only would work if the ghost was made up of matter, but ghost are not beings of matter, they are beings of energy. Energy can pass thow things, it was proved that ball light can and thats energy, we can also see it as well. They need to work on that part again.

In terms of physics, that doesn't make any sense.

the laws of "physics" are not in stone. They are always being rerighting.

Ahhh, physics put to good use! Seriously though, as one person pointed out already, they really seemed to have missed the "super" in supernatural. Science, in most cases, is applied to recorded, repeatedly observable phenomena, or conceptual thoughts that derive OUT of recorded, repeatedly observable phenomena... most of the time. Anyhow, that seemed like a waste of a physics degree. I don't see how anything productive could have came out of such studies.

The paranormal is becoming normal, so, if what's impossible is being discredited then that's just someone believing that all things somehow are comming to a stop. A strange mentality indeed.

Maybe, that's a discussion for another thread. I just meant it's hard to reconcile the physics concept of energy with "the thing that makes up ghosts," Star Trek energy beings aside.

Actually from what i've been reading up on , AFAIK scientists believe that the very structure of a universe should make it possible to walk through walls using the resonance of atoms...

As for ghosts, if as is often surmised, thats ghosts are merely a form of *physical replay of a previous event,* they will indeed seem to walk through walls as the event they are replaying makes no allowances for the topological layout of the surroundings changing over time..

What keeps you from walking through a wall is the repulsive force between the electrons in your body and those in the wall. It's pretty strong--in fact, the force approaches infinity as the distance between electrons shrinks, not that they're allowed to get that close. Unfortunately you can't turn the charge off (at least nobody's ever thought of a way).

I think scientists show their geeky side the most when they talk about stuff like this. Who really cares if the movie does not agree with real life physics or not? Are you going to sit there complaining about physics the entire time you watch a movie. XD




And no, I don't think that the current "laws of the universe" are impossible to break. Anything is possible.

who the hell is gonna watch a scary movie...or any movie and be thinking about physics? WHO?.....WHO?! .....what is physics anyway? lol

this proves once and for all that scientists are dumb.

That explains why horror movies suck. Unrealistic ideas make for unrealistics fears.

They lose all common sense and don't fit in well with the rest of the world. They're only good at the science they focus on, but they suck at life.



XD, ok maybe I took it a bit too far.. Oh well...

How much do you want to bet that this guy is a big fan of Star Trek and/or Star Wars, shows that have as much scientific accuracy in them as a Ren and Stimpy cartoon.

What you said above doesn't make sence redneck. Star-trek is SCIENCE FICTION. It's a made up show that shows us what things might be like in the future. In what way is star trek caliming that what they show is supposed to be real.

Thats the equivalent of reading a sci fi novel set a thousand years from now and complaining because you know the technology they claim to to be using couldn't possibly exist.(yet)

Anywho i believe that the more out there a horror film is, the more it openes our minds to the possibilities.