You know, every once in a while, I see a movie and can't help but point out everything that's wrong with as far as the laws of physics go. For example, all of the ships in Star Wars move at impossibly fast speeds. While the amount of time for the occupants of the ship might be fairly reliable, due to the time dilation formula, years would pass outside of it.

Of the physically impossible thins in Star Wars, that's one of the less commonly stated ones since hyperspace assumes a means of FTL that doesn't involve time dilation. Perhaps the most common physical impossibility in movies is the presence of sound in a vacuum. You would not be able to hear laser fire or exploding Star Destroyers in space. That's one reason I like Firefly a lot more. It's in a solar system so time dilation is relatively negligible in travel between nearby planets and they don't have sound in vacuum.

twallas and I rented the GI Joe movie a while ago. A series of mines is set off, breaking up a chunk of the polar ice cap, which promptly sinks in salt water.

Alright, this isn't a movie, but have you guys played Luigi's mansion lately???
You can't keep ghosts in a vacuum. Physically impossible.

Great game.

The supernatural is, by definition, not bound by natural laws.

Eofpi does have a good point there. Have you ever attempted to store a ghost in a vacuum?

have you ever even seen a ghost?

I submit that every non-documentary set in the past is a physically impossible movie. They have not happened exactly as show and thus are impossible. To suggest that parts of movies are impossible in a similar situation is a more valid idea to discuss.

Yeah...in Luigi's Mansion.

also, light sabers are impossible (they cut like lasers, but stop at a certain place), but don't forget the part "in a galaxy far far away. This means that that galaxy by no means must follow the laws of physics.

As best we can tell, the laws of physics are not local phenomena. They apply throughout the entire universe.

Apparently their jurist diction ends right outsides Luigi's Mansion...

I still see no reason why ghosts are physically impossible.

Remind me how ghosts work, exactly. I can't think of anything that would be able to pass through solid matter, but would still be able to be observed off the top of my head.

Light goes through glass!

/me ducks

Sorry, I forgot to put the part that says that the galaxy might as well exist in another universe, so is not necessarily bound by the laws of our universe.

Wouldn't this statement invalidate the entire thread if accepted? I mean, the basis of the discussion here is movies (and now games, I guess) that are not possible using laws of physics, and the rest of the natural laws, according to what we know of them. That's the fun in it.

I watched a movie explaining what parts of Star Wars would be possible according to our physics and what parts wouldn't
Anti gravity would have to exist there...

Also in Avatar...the floating mountains...

Just out of curiosity, could something like that happen as the result of a gravitational struggle between two significantly massive bodies? Not instantaneously of course, but gradually over time assuming one side of the moon always faced the orbited planet.

I think the moon would then have to be bigger than the planet, so supposing the planet in Avatar [I forgot what it was called] was actually a moon (which is possible, because there was that gas giant in the background), was really near to the planet, and the planet was extremely huge, That just might be able to happen (but I think the mountains would simply either float between the planet and the moon, or plunge onto the planet)

Unless somebody can provide me with a situation where it would happen, I'm going to say no. Assume for a moment that it could happen. Said mountain would be in a case of unstable equilibrium, that is, one small nudge and it would go to either the moon or the planet.

The thing is, gravity is attractive and gets weaker the further away the object is. We're not talking about something similar to a magnet being suspended above another magnet. In that case, you have a repulsive force (the magnet suspending the other one) and an attractive force (gravity). Gravity pulls the top magnet down, it gets closer to the other magnet, the repulsive force grows, magnet goes back up, repulsive force weakens. The only thing that comes to mind that could possibly work would be the moon getting closer and further from the planet, changing the relative distance to the mountain, but I highly doubt that the mountain would take long enough to fall for that to change anything. I doubt it enough that until somebody smarter than me provides a proof with numbers, I will maintain that floating mountains don't work.

there might be a magnetic force on the planet/moon, too...