President Barack Obama speaks, or perhaps gathers an energy ball using his superpowers, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. CAROLYN KASTER/Associated Press file
trapped a beam of light energy in a crystal for about a minute - nearly four times higher than the record. Obviously there are some innovations likely to come in sci-fi-style weaponry. Or maybe fortune telling.
The physicists did some fancy stuff with lasers and, brace yourself for some super nerdy vocab, quantum superposition.
Geekosystem does a good job explaining in normal-person language the work done last month by Germany’s University of Darmstadt. Suffice it to say, it was impressive that they made photons basically stop, contained, for a full minute - time enough for the light energy to have traveled 11 million miles.
The Darmstadt group said the next step is upgrading the crystal used to store the energy. With any luck, this proves real-life magic balls could be possible. In honor of that group's work, I've enlisted some help from my fellow Prairie Nerds and compiled a list of magic balls throughout fantasy and sci-fi pop culture. Get ready for a super nerdy wild ride.
David Bowie's crystalline orbs in 'Labyrinth'The image of Jareth, the tights-clad goblin pimp done to perfection by the inimitable David Bowie, spinning these crystalline orbs in one hand is a visual that's hard to forget. In several of many last-ditch efforts to gain the favor of Sara (the jailbait-age Jennifer Connelly), the orbs come in handy for whatever magic Jareth is trying to work. Greatest trippy young-adult fantasy movie ever.
Dragon BallsThe Dragonball series, dating back to the mid-'80s, centers on Son Goku as through years of martial arts training and his travels seeking the seven mystical orbs known as the Dragon Balls, which when gathered can summon a wish-granting dragon. Or whatever that was in "Dragonball Evolution" -- a forgettable movie, but I never got into the Japanese manga stuff. But Dragon Balls still sound cool.
Xayide's memory-storing crystal ball thing in 'Neverending Story 2'This definitely falls in the category of fantasy movie sequels that never should have been made, but when I was a kid Jonathan Brandis was the it boy, and the first film was a campy emotional favorite. Long story short, Bastien ends up back in Fantasia and gets tricked into giving up all his memories, which the evil Xayide stores in lots of spheres. It was like a gumball machine where she got one of his memories each time he made a wish. As the photo makes obvious, this film was pretty crazy.
Here's what the other nerds had to offer in the way of magic balls:
Jason Powers
The 1979 movie
"Phantasm," and its two sequels have a crazy orb weapon that the villain uses.
1981 version of "Clash of the Titans," Perseus forces three witched to use a magic "eye" to find out how to defeat the Kraken.
And of course the
1981 movie "Heavy Metal" follows a green orb through several stories where it is an evil influence on the people who come into contact with it.
I don't know why my knowledge of sci-fi balls ends in 1985, but there you go.
Chris Moore
The
Palantir from the "Lord of the Rings" books. You could communicate with Sauron with them and also it was pretty much a remote eye for Sauron.
Let me know if we left any out - I feel like this this isn't representative of what's out there in games, novels and comics.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082509/
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