This is pure win, and simply must be made into an episode. That is all.

This would be an AWSOME Mythbusters. I just love to watch them blow stuff up.

Adam's a genius. A twisted genius.

I just can't wait till they get to the point where they realize that they're never going to be able to prove or disprove the myth, and just start blowing shit up.

Does anyone know why they cut most of this scene on the TV/Cable versions?

Funny how he doesn't ask about the red button on the bottom...

Anything that involves a flamethrower is a winner in my book.

Oh, and Adam is definetly the one to pull this escapade off.

The thing that always bugged me about 5th element was the complete breakdown of movie protocol involving two props.

1) When you show something as cool as the Zorg gun and all its features, at some point during the film, someone has to use more than one of those features. After the demo, those guns became nothing more than Uzis.

2) The key. They go to all the trouble of showing the origin of the key, then how it got passed down. But then they never show it being used. Obviously it GOT used, but we never see it. Very unsatisfying.

Like singing opera with a belly full of bricks...

@hakubak: Fifth Element breaks a lot of movie rules, thats what makes it such a superb film. Korben Dallas and Gary Oldman actually never talk to each other face to face, the closest they get to meeting is a near miss on the elevator. Not many Hollywood movies have to balls to never have a showdown between the main villain and the hero. It is the French influence, undoubtedly.

Two things I'll never understand.
1: How the blue hell did Fifth Element not even get nominated for a best costume design Oscar? (That a freaking off-the-shelf period drama wound up winning for)

2: Why hasn't there been a Cow Tipping episode of Mythbusters? (As a ranch kid, that's something I LOVE to see put to rest publicly)

@dry-roasted-peanuts: Because while it's possible with enough people to tip a cow, getting them to stand still for it isn't. I guess it's a creulty thing, and maybe they don't want idiot kids trying to prove the mythbusters wrong? Also, in the end, they always get the myth busted, no matter how much explosive is involved. I do think Jamie and a cow talking would be hilarious.

You guys do know Adam is from another planet, right?

@twophrasebark: Really?
Which one?

I can imagine a theoretical construct for the replay feature using very strong, very tightly controlled magnetic fields from the gun and electrostatically charged ferromagnetic ammunition. The charge would allow you to flip the field polarization (side benefit: if the bullet is curving the wrong way you can scream "Reverse the polarity!") in order to bend the path of the bullet one way or the other, while the strength of the field and the ferromagnetism would give you control over the polar-coordinate r-axis. That's at least two-degrees of freedom, something to start with. I'm assuming that no system of airfoils on the bullets/flechettes would be capable of creating the g-forces necessary.

The ice-cube system would actually be harder, I think, just because you start running up against the first law of thermodynamics. Take the case where we want to chill a 70kg (average weight) human down from body temperature (37 C) to freezing (0 C plus heat of fusion for water). Lets assume that the human body is 60% water, with the remaining 40% solid material that has half the specific heat of water and no heat of fusion (since it's already solid). I figure that's reasonable, since proteins have a lot of inter- and intra-molecular hydrogen bonds, and the heat capacity of fat is even higher. Bone is almost certainly less so. Water's specific heat is ~4.2 J/gC, so for 42kg that's ~6.5 MJ. Then there's the heat of fusion to actually freeze it solid, another 334 J/g, or 14 MJ. And finally, we have the solids, which we're going say are about 2 J/gC, for a final 2.1 MJ. That's a total of 22.6 MJ of energy our ice cube function needs to pull out of the average person to freeze them solid.

The problem is, I can't think of any material that could do this and still be compact enough to fit inside the Zorg Gun. Dry ice, one natural choice, has a sublimation heat of 573 kJ/kg and a gas specific heat of ~0.8 J/gC, or 63kJ/kg to bring it from -78 C to 0 C, but that's still only 635 kJ/kg, which means you'd need 35.6 kg per shot. Not only would this be a huge amount to lug around, dry ice only has a density of ~1.5kg/L, so it would take up a significant volume (~24 L) as well. You might be able to improve this slightly ice you cooled the dry ice significantly further before ejecting it, and if you could convince it to undergo adiabatic expansion once it has hit the target, but neither of those are going to give you the order of magnitude greater heat capacity you need to be feasible as a weapon.

Liquid nitrogen is even worse, with a heat of vaporization of only 200 kJ/kg, although does have a slightly higher specific heat as a gas at ~1 J/gC at room temperature. That gives us a total of only 400 kJ/kg, and with less room to store it at below its boiling point as well. Liquid hydrogen has some attractive properties, with heat of vaporization of 446 kJ/kg, and a crazy high specific heat as a gas of 14.3 J/gC. From its vaporization temperature at -253 C, that works out to ~4 MJ/kg. You'd only need ~5.7 kg per shot at that point, which seems almost reasonable. There are a few drawbacks, such as the fact that liquid hydrogen is very un-dense (is there a word that means the opposite of dense? Diffuse?) at 70 g/L when liquid, or 80L to store our one shot. Could you find some substrate that would store it at a significantly higher density without substantially adding to the weight? I'm not sure that's even theoretically possible, but I suppose I can't rule it out quite yet. There's also the problem that hydrogen doesn't adiabatically cool above liquid nitrogen temperatures, so you may loose some of your potential cooling capacity.

Wow. That was an different way to spend a study break.

Perhaps Judge Dredd's Lawgiver is a more feasible gun to make, since all it basically does is change ammunition.

I admit it's not as cool as a flame and ice gun, but I hear those replay systems are a bitch to get right.

@dry-roasted-peanuts: Wouldn't the ASPCA just have an absolute fit about that? I mean, maybe it doesn't actually kill the cow but I bet it doesn't make them happy. It seems mean.

@Foggynotion: Fifth Element breaks a lot of movie rules, thats what makes it such a superb film. ... It is the French influence, undoubtedly.

I liked Pulp Fiction for a lot of reasons, not least of which was the way it broke the timeline rules. Breaking rules on a large scale, like the example you gave of no showdown, is interesting. And going back to my original thought, there are no rules stating that the audience has to leave satisfied.

Even so, this was like Q giving Bond an exloding, orgasm-inducing, sentient, global-warming-reversing paperweight, only to watch James use it to hold down papers.

@
href="#c5534044">dry-roasted-peanuts: My dad (who was born and raised on a dairy farm) says that the only way to actually 'tip' a cow ( or at least knock it over) is with a rope, and it has to be put in the right spot. Something about hitting a nerve, methinks. Or maybe he's just jerking my chain...

I'd rather have a Zorg wig.

@hakubak: I think it has more to do with the fact that Luc Besson came up with the story when he was sixteen.

Incidentally, is everyone aware that the Fifth Element script was originally twice as long but was cut in half? The second half is supposed to be the sequel, ("Mr Evil" I seem to recall) about what happens now that the evil planet is orbitting Earth. Where the fuck is this, eh Besson? Taxi 4 my arse. Did the first one not make a profit?

@icelight: How about using miniature "guided missiles" for the replay function? One could imagine that with appropriate nano-technology you could fashion "bullets" that can power themselves and have built-in auto-guidance systems. I mean, it's über sci-fi stuff but I'd say it's certainly in the realm of possibility.

And for the ice cube feature, how about some exotic material or nanoparticles that leech out heat to... errr .. subspace or something ;)

Ok that was maybe not as scientific as your awesome post. Haha.

@dingleberry: Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Nanoparticle heat pumps might do just the trick. In that case they'd be powered with stored energy, and there's essentially no theoretical limit to the energy density we can achieve (anti-matter power would be far more than sufficient.) It's the absence of energy that's tricky.

That would have two awesome benefits. The first would be that you could threaten to shoot someone with "Billions of nanoscopic air-conditioners! Mwahaha!!" The second would be that there would be a truly awesome flash of light and heat, leaving a frigid ice-cube in the center. The cognitive dissonance alone would overwhelm your remaining enemies. With an efficiency ~200% (feasible even with modern air conditioners) we would be putting out 30 MJ of energy, or the equivalent of ~7 kg of TNT, likely all as thermal radiation. It's going to get toasty standing near the target. Over the space of 5 s, that's an energy release of 6 MW. With a standard surface area of 2 square meters, they'd be glowing with a surface intensity of 3 MW/square meter. The Stefan-Bolztmann law says we'd need a surface temperature of ~2700 K to do that assuming a perfect black body emitter. So our nanoparticles will need to be made of sturdy stuff, or maybe be ablative. At that temperature, their emissions would peak at ~1000nm, or right in the near infrared, and they'd probably glow a cheery yellow-orange (based on their color temperature).

I leave it as an excercise for the reader to figure out how to get 22 MJ of energy out of the human body in 5 seconds. I'm thinking room-temp superconducting filaments, but without really, really careful placement that would kind of rule out thawing your target into anything more than a shredded mess.

@icelight: You could have the hydrogen in superdense, metallic form; alternately, since we're talking SF, and they already have contragravity, a 'contravibration' field, that would dampen out the molecular vibration we call 'heat' may be possible along the same lines. An intense, highly focussed artificial gravity field may be doing the bullet steering, too.

The hardest farmyard animal to tip is the pig. Very low centre of gravity y'see. They know this, and use it to their advantage to tip humans. This is why I don't eat pork; not for ethical reasons, but because I fear porcine retribution.

@MrLister: Any insight as to what the brown fluid was that flowed down Baron Munchhausen and Zorg's head?

@HomoSapiensRex: I find tipping ducks is the hardest. They pad their bills as it is.

::rimshot:: Try the veal!

@AmishJohn: Metalic hydrogen, as known, has to be under extreme compression. As soon as you let it go, it would violently expand, releasing energy, which is the exact opposite of what I want it to do. Unfortunately, as noted earlier hydrogen doesn't adiabatically cool when it expands at even relatively cold temperatures, so while I could "certainly" store it, it would have to be expanded in a controlled fashion and cooled within the weapon before use. Based on the heat dissipation studies above, the weapon user would then become something of a nuisance to those around them. Properly controlled it would be possible, but certainly inconvenient. You'd think you could use a truly impressive heat sink, with a specific heat many orders of magnitude higher than hydrogen, but the latter unfortunately already has the highest known (and I think theoretically possible) specific heat out there. There's also that fact that you'd be storing substantial quantities of a substance at near-terra pascal pressures in your weapon, which just sounds like a recipe for disaster. The little red button perhaps?

As for "contragravity" and "contravibration", I was trying to limit myself to what is known to be theoretically possible, rather than flagrant violation of one or more laws of physics as they are currently known. Hard SF if you will.

@icelight: Wouldn't using an electromagnetic force to completely 180 the trajectory of a bullet pretty much kill any terminal/killing forward momentum?

Do Want.

@dingleberry: That seems to me to be the simplest solution. Fire small darts that have some kind of piezoelectric fins. Though making severe turns like they did in the movies would slaughter their velocity.

[www.blacklibrary.com]
/Not Impressed.

@Git Em SteveDave: That was blood, check your color balances.

Unless I'm wrong in which case HAHAHAH! you'll never know now!

@donkeyjote: Not if you applied it at right angles to the path of the bullet, as happens to a charged particle moving through a magnetic field, and similar to how a satellite doesn't slow down when orbiting the earth.

@Shai: Hundreds, if not thousands of gees from an airfoil (and a tiny one at that to keep it small)? Not going to happen, I think. Vectored thrust might do it, but at that point they're tiny missiles, not bullet, and so you have the choice of thousands of rounds of really, really expensive ammunition or thousands of rounds of cheap ammunition and one expensive gun.

@Git Em SteveDave:

ha. ha. ha.

(seriously, that was kinda funny!)

@icelight: Wow dude. That was righteous. Tell me more! ;)