4 Things We Think Wrong About Movies

1. air battles

Film directors love jet fighters because they are fast and dangerous. On the screen, military planes lay incredible aerobatics, chase each other, water opponents with tracers and missiles in stubborn protracted battles and approach each other until the winner inflicts decisive blow.

Sometimes the desire of fighters to shorten the distance exceeds all reasonable limits. Filmmakers apparently think that they can converge hand to hand.

Movie pilots do not neglect any opportunity to show as many aerial somersaults as possible, not only when colliding with enemy aircraft, but also when attacking ground targets.

You may remember how in the movieDie Hard - 4» A fighter jet sent to destroy Bruce Willis flew into his covered parking lot to shoot him point-blank. Or how in "Godzilla" and "Pacific Rim" the planes did not attack the monsters with missiles from the air, but instead flew close to the giants.

What really. Air fights are extremely boring and not like what you can see on the screen or during real air shows. For a fighter pilot, an enemy aircraft

looksR. L. Shaw. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering as a dot on the HUD interface, because the attack in modern battles is carried out from large distances - up to several hundred kilometers.

Fights with turns and chases remained in pastR. L. Shaw. Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering. They were carried out during the Second World War - then the fighters had no other weapons to deal with air targets, except for machine guns, and the pilots had to get out. But in modern combat, avionics and missile guidance systems are more important than aerial acrobatics.

2. Hanging by the legs

In movies, villains love to hang the main characters by the legs so they can't escape. For example, in "Django UnchainedThe evil planters kept the character chained upside down to the ceiling for several hours - while they decided how to torture and kill him more ingeniously.

But, having sagged upside down unconscious for an hour or two, or even a day, the character, of course, finds a cunning way to finally free himself and escape. Or his comrades will save him from execution. Or a lucky coincidence will help. And no matter how much time the hero spends in such an inverted position, which is so unnatural for the human body, this will not affect his health in any way.

What really. Hanging by the legs was one of the most brutal tortureC. R. boxer. The Christian Century in Japan in Japan: in the 17th century it was used to force local Christians to renounce their faith. And this is not a safe trick at all.

If a person is left in this state for a long time, he will experience severe pain from the rush of blood to the head and risk death.

Then will comeOcular Effects of Gravity Inversion / [The Western Journal of Medicine (temporary, if the prisoner is removed in time) blindness, and a little later suspended will die1. A. th. Schafer. Death in a Head-Down Position / Forensic Pathology Reviews
2. A. Sauvageau. Deaths in a head-down position: a case report and review of the literature / Forensic Science, Medicine, and Pathology either from a cerebral hemorrhage, or from a drop in blood pressure, or from suffocation. The lungs will be literally squeezed by other viscera that have shifted into the body cavity.

3. The action of liquid nitrogen

In the movies, liquid nitrogen is a thing that can instantly freeze anything. Need to open a steel door? Pour with nitrogen and hit with a hammer - it will shatter into smithereens. Need to destroy the T-1000 terminator? The same recipe.

By the way, it also works great with people: in one of the films series "Friday the 13th" immortal maniac Jason Voorhees, having got into the future to the space station, first froze and then split one of his victims.

What really. Liquid nitrogen can really freeze things. But filmmakers overestimate its effectiveness.

Small objects such as flowers or even live frogs can be easy to freeze small amounts of nitrogen. Amphibians even endure this without harm to themselves, as they are used to wintering in a frozen state. And you have to wait a while until they harden.

But to freeze the human body, you really need a lot of nitrogen, because it quickly evaporates on contact with the skin.

In addition, people are warm creatures, and will have to wait a very long time before the victim gives up all his heat with evaporating gas. As a result, the subject will lose consciousness and die from hypothermia-induced shock or cardiac arrest, and not at all from being smashed to pieces.

KnownCould you be frozen solid, then broken into a million pieces? / The Straight Dope several cases where people working with liquid nitrogen were injured by it. Prolonged contact with this substance led to frostbite, gangrene and amputations, but none of the affected limbs fell off.

Simply touching it cannot cause a person to become frail—everyone who has undergone skin cryotherapy can attest. And here drinkDelhi man drinks liquid nitrogen at a bar, ends up with a hole in stomach / Latest News Delhi — Hindustan Times liquid nitrogen is very dangerous. But frostbite has nothing to do with it: warming up, the gas increases in volume by 695 times, so it will almost certainly cause injuries to internal organs.

4. laser beams

In various space operas - for example, the same "Star Wars» - infantry warriors fire lasers at each other. Of course, in different works their devices are called differently, but in general, the creators of the cinema imagine weapons of directed energy in approximately the same way.

We aim, shoot, a short energy beam flies out of the muzzle, flies the intended distance and hits the target like an arrow. Everything is simple.

What really. Laser weapons still exist today, although they are still in the development and prototyping stage. But his work is differentLasers in the Movies / University of Ottawa from what they show us on the screens.

First, in reality, laser beams are movingP. W. milonni. Laser Physics at the speed of light: this is about 300,000 km / s in a vacuum and 90 km / s slower in atmospheric air. And this is too fast for the human eye to have time to fix their spread.

Try shining a flashlight or laser pointer on the wall. This is the speed at which a directed energy weapon fires. You will not be able to see the projectile coming off the weapon and flying into the distance, like in The Mandalorian - only a continuous beam.

Second, we seeP. W. milonni. Laser Physics laser beams due to the fact that in the atmosphere they are partially scattered in dust, fog and moisture. But in the vacuum of space, they would be completely invisible. So energy weapons in orbit will be much less effective than in Star Wars. But then it will become more invisible and deadly.

And by the way, lasers, which are usedP. W. milonni. Laser Physics in security systems, are also invisible. So in reality, scenes with tough thieves who slip between the thinnest red rays to get to the bank vault, like in the movie "The Trap", are impossible.