Abstract
In very early science fiction films, when mad scientists were commonplace, the Insane Genius Weapon of Choice was typically electricity. The public, ignorant of the scientific properties of electricity viewed it with shock and awe, and more than a little bit of fear. They believed it had deadly and unpredictable properties that bordered on the mystical (something exploited by charlatans and well-meaning doctors alike, who promulgated a variety of electrical-based “cures” for practically every disease under the sun). By the 1950s and 1960s, the cinematic phenomenon that created Godzilla (or Gojira), woke Gamera, created giant spiders, ants, and grasshoppers, and even gave a brachiosaurus the power to deliver electric shocks was another phenomenon that the public had come to believe had deadly and unpredictable properties bordering on the mystical: radiation.
Radiation? What’s a little radiation?
The Doctor, Doctor Who, “The Twin Dilemma”
I don’t want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to… I want to smell dark matter!
Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica, “No Exit”
A day without electromagnetic radiation is like a day without sunshine.
Anonymous
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Notes
- 1.
See what we did there?
- 2.
Or, more recently, was used in a futile attempt to destroy Godzilla.
- 3.
Gamera (1965) A nuclear blast thawed Gamera, who was frozen in ice. In the 1995 reboot, Gamera was a genetic engineering product of Atlantis.
- 4.
Tarantula (1955).
- 5.
Them! (1954).
- 6.
Beginning of the End (1957).
- 7.
Behemoth, the Sea Monster aka The Giant Behemoth (1959).
- 8.
Nice how they covered all their angst-inducing bases with radiation and electricity.
- 9.
Since the topic of scary insects has already been raised, the root of “Boogey” is the Welsh term bwg (pronounced “boog”), which is the root of the modern word “bug”. So when Mr. Oogie Boogie in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is depicted as a burlap sack full of insects, that is actually an awesome allusion to the fact that the Boogey Man is really the “Buggy Man”.
- 10.
Radioactivity can be life-saving, in the proper context.
- 11.
The very same gamma rays that irradiated Bruce Banner to create the Hulk. We’re getting there.
- 12.
- 13.
Our star will become a red giant twice before ending its life.
- 14.
The mean free path—the average distance between successive collisions—of a neutrino passing through lead is approximately 1.5 light years. That value is for low-energy neutrinos, the kind released by radioactive decay. Higher energy neutrinos from supernova explosions will “only” pass through 7 light weeks (about 285 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune) of lead. So neither Galactica nor the Algae Planet would have shielded our heroes.
- 15.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Enemy”, viewers learn that Geordi LaForge’s VISOR (the device that allows him to see) can detect neutrinos. Not likely, even in the twenty-forth Century.
- 16.
We’re stretching the word “distance” to breaking point here, since the shapes of electrons orbits can be very complex, with all kinds of three-dimensional lobes and things, rather than the simple two-dimensional ellipses of a planetary orbit, but it’ll do for our purposes.
- 17.
While there are other ways in nature to absorb or emit photons, this is the most common. In water, the two hydrogen atoms act as if they are attached to the more massive oxygen by springs. It is possible for the molecule to absorb electromagnetic energy to increase the rate of this vibration, or the kinetic energy of this vibrational mode. Exciting this vibrational mode in water is, in fact, how a microwave oven heats your food.
- 18.
Very early radios used a huge range of frequencies simultaneously, but this was enormously inefficient for long-distance communications and very prone to interference from natural radio sources and other human-made transmitters. Nonetheless, for modern high-speed, short-range communications there is renewed interest in so-called ultrawideband communications, in which the signal is transmitted across a large band of frequencies and stitched together digitally.
- 19.
It was not a random guess, it was a very educated guess, as we’ll explain in the next volume of Hollyweird Science.
- 20.
GHz means “gigahertz,” or billions of cycles per second.
- 21.
The exact boundaries for the different segments of the EM spectrum vary slightly among scientific disciplines.
- 22.
You just said either, “Huh?” or “Boy, I feel old.”
- 23.
With the transition to digital television broadcasting, using an antenna to watch TV is actually having something of a renaissance—the interference problems that plagued analog TV reception is much reduced with a digital signal, and the picture quality can be better than that transmitted over cable or satellite, as cable and satellite companies often compress the video signal.
- 24.
You may even recall this yourself. One of the authors does. He’s older than he looks.
- 25.
The value of 1 Terahertz (THz) is 1 trillion Hz.
- 26.
Advanced Imaging Technology.
- 27.
One nm is a nanometer, or 1 billionth of a meter.
- 28.
There are some serious conservation of momentum and relativity issues here.
- 29.
The emitted radiation follows a distinct pattern called the blackbody curve. Figuring out the reason for the shape of the blackbody curve was a major step in the development of quantum mechanics.
- 30.
We will spare you the math for the moment.
- 31.
This is more directly applicable to an incandescent bulb, not a fluorescent bulb. There is a parallel with fluorescent bulbs, but that is a bit more involved.
- 32.
The overwhelming majority of the radiation of incandescent bulbs is emitted in the infrared, in a region of the spectrum where people can not see. It is wasted energy. Fluorescent bulbs are “tuned” so that the majority of their emission is in the visible portion of the spectrum, meaning they emit more visible light while using far less energy. This explains why; when you go to the hardware store, fluorescent bulbs have two output wattages listed: their actual output, and their incandescent equivalent.
- 33.
Really cold water ice, the kind one can find in glaciers for example, actually is blue.
- 34.
The Boltzman constant, 1.38 × 10−23 J/K relates the energy of a subatomic particle with its temperature.
- 35.
Planck’s constant relates the frequency of a photon to its energy, and is 6.626 × 10−34 J s. We will discuss Planck’s constant further in chapter seven: A Quantum of Weirdness.
- 36.
They are also based upon spacecraft sensor technology.
- 37.
In the 2008 Eureka episode “I Do Over” viewers were introduced to a type of EM radiation called “ultra indigo.” Literally, this means “extreme indigo.” The scientific term for that would be: violet.
- 38.
We’ve all probably watched enough crime shows that we’ve all heard of luminol by now.
- 39.
It’s why the gingers and Irish among your authors have to apply SPF 1,000,000 before hitting the beach.
- 40.
1 pm is 1 trillionth of a meter, or 10−12 meters.
- 41.
EHz stands for Exahetz, where 1 EHz is 1018, or a billion billion, Hz.
- 42.
In some, but not all, incarnations of Spider-Man.
- 43.
SPOILER: The rays are mutagenic in this film, too.
- 44.
Interview on the BBC Cult TV 20 Feb. 2004.
- 45.
Benign mutations can accumulate in noncoding regions of the genome that no longer have any direct biological impact on the organism. Knowing the rate at which these mutations accumulate in DNA has allowed geneticists to construct molecular clocks that have allowed us to measure when two species have diverged from a common ancestor, and even estimate when humans began migrating out of Africa.
- 46.
Pacific Rim was a big deal, with wide-ranging implications in the film industry. It was a very rare case, these days, of an original film—one that was not a sequel, a book property, or a reboot—that made a lot of money.
- 47.
Pacific Rim was a big deal, with wide-ranging implications in the film industry. It was a very rare case, these days, of an original film—one that was not a sequel, a book property, or a reboot—that made a lot of money.
- 48.
Chris Evans fans just said, “Incredibly.” Wipe that drool off your chin.
- 49.
Chris Evans fans just said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
- 50.
If he was, would the other three members be similarly demoted: Mr. Above Average, The Translucent Woman, and Rocky?
- 51.
We will ignore Storm’s nova flame, which is much hotter. We’re just interested in his quiescent state.
- 52.
For perspective, let’s remember that we are talking about a man who can fly while enveloped in superheated plasma.
- 53.
Chris Evans fans just said, “So Say We All!”.
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Grazier, K., Cass, S. (2015). Radiation: An All-Time Glow. In: Hollyweird Science. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15072-7_6
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