DARPA Working On Arthur C. Clarke Weapon Idea

holy_calamity writes "DARPA is working on a weapon which is similar to one first described by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1955 novel Earthlight — firing jets of molten metal using strong electromagnetic fields. The Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition (MAHEM) will function on a smaller scale than Clarke's fictional blaster. DARPA's write-up says it could be 'packaged into a missile, projectile or other platform and delivered close to target for final engagement and kill.' Clarke is also widely credited with suggesting geostationary communications satellites — what other ideas of his will come to pass?"

Comments

Re:Who is Arthur C. Clarke?

[Dripdry]

I unofficially mod this Funny.

Yes, even at the expense of getting hit with an "Off Topic" tag or multiple Idiot Sticks.

Thank you.

Actually, most are wrong

[Moraelin]

Actually, IMHO most prophecies are wrong, or too uninteresting to make good SF. The real future doesn't just exceed the expectations of SF, it leapfrogs and changes the very premises for it. The future doesn't just turn out to be beyond your wildest dreams, it turns out to be fundamentally incompatible with your dreams, because you base those dreams on the present.

Pretty much, think all the myths about angels (or similar creatures) with swords. Maybe flaming magical swords, but swords nevertheless. Roll that around in your head: flying units with melee weapons. Way to get aerial combat all wrong. They just based it on their own present-day where the sword was a weapon of the nobles and elites, so it made sense that uber-elite angels would get such elite weapons.

What I'm saying is that reality didn't just overshoot their prediction. That prediction was just wrong and based on a flawed premise.

Or think of it this way: think you're in the year 8 AD, arguably near the apex of Roman power, and with the society being what it was. Now think you're writing SF.

Would those romans even be interested at all in an accurate depiction of life in the 20'th or 21'st century? E.g.,

- Would they be interested in something like the issues around minority emancipation, and, say, the fact that some people are treated badly just because of where or who they were born? Heh. Those guys practiced chattel slavery. The slaves in Rome often had easier jobs as, pretty much, janitors and servants and such, but even there they saw nothing wrong with making them fight to death in the Colosseum. Outside Rome, ooer, it often made the Nazi slave labour camps look tame and humane. In the cereal-rich Sicily, a slave revolt was based on the fact that the owners starved the slaves, so they can export more grain to Rome. Or things like mining or processing asbestos were known to be a slow death sentence, and pretty much the cost of keeping buying new slaves was factored into the cost of business.

- Would they see a point in our whining about attacking Iraq on trumped charges? Those guys didn't even need that to start a war. They started a war just because they could. They considered themselves the Sons Of Mars. Their whole history and origin was traced to a fratricide (Romulus killed Remus), the Rape Of The Sabines, and razing Carthage after using, yes, trumped charges to break the peace treaty and attack Carthage again. They were _proud_ of doing that kind of thing. The legions killed at least one emperor, off the top of my head, for trying to make peace with the Germans instead of attacking them. That was seen as being weak and thus unfit to rule.

- Issues surrounding religious intolerance, separation of the church and the state, etc? Now generally they were more religiously tolerant than the Christians that followed them, but they still threw you to the lions if you denied the official gods. That's what they killed Jews and later Christians for: those guys came and said, "your gods are false." Would they think twice about killing Muslims just because they're Muslims, for example? Nope.

Etc.

Now don't take that as an apology of their ways, it's not. I'm just saying that if they wrote some SF play that happens 2000 years in the future (starting at their time, so around present day), they'd get everything wrong. They wouldn't foresee life and technology as it is today, they'd just put their own society and their own legions and triremes in the year 2008, with some props that are probably wrong too. _Maybe_ they'd be flying triremes with wings, but they'd probably still try to ram each other in the air, and/or they'd each have a cohort of marines with swords trying to board and capture the enemy flying trireme.

Arthur C Clarke's prophecies are feasible _because_ they are conservative and were almost feasible when he made them. Sorta like Jules Verne's prophecy of guns using guncotton, which was already possible when he made it. Not practical until someone stabilized the guncotton so it wouldn't auto-ignite, to be sure, but otherwise didn't need much of a technological leap.

But when you try to predict too far ahead, it often turns out that you're not just undershooting, but shoot in the completely wrong direction too.