Watching Free Birds, a cartoon about turkeys with a time machine, with my boy, he asked me what the invisible spaceship/ time machine was made with. He’d never seen an invisible spaceship before!
What could I say? What would you say? I said it was a force field, but in my head, I wondered, is it? Or is it an invisible wall? And for the first time, I questioned, is there a difference? Or has it always been just a word game?
(Now, you may well say a wall is composed of matter, and a force field is energy. But then you should talk to Einstein. Since he’s dead, I’ll say this: what is a wall, but an array of pinpoint masses floating in mostly empty space, holding each other in place, and keeping us out, with an electromagnetic field?)
You’re crazy.
If you turn off the switch, the force field goes away. To make the invisible wall go away, you need a sledge hammer.
What you know about rocking a wolf on your noggin?
Exactly what I came up with upon further deep and, I must admit, personally painful reflection. A wall needs a sledgehammer to turn off.
And this answer holds for our common experience. But is it really definitive? If the force field were visible, say, with pleasant pastel stripes, and it didn’t give any funky waves when you touched it, would we call it a wall? Or would that off switch prevent us?
What about a self-assembling nano-bot wall? That wouldn’t need a sledgehammer to be turned off, but it would still be a wall (despite the fact that the space it inhabits would, like a force field, still be 99.999% “matter” free).
What turns you off?
Does it define you?
Did the turkey wear a wolf-hat or am I missing another reference? I didn’t watch the whole movie yet, I was really just interested in the scientific difficulties it presented.
First – Why do you force that kid to watch Free Birds when you know he prefers Sports Center? He should have his own “screen time” and not have it monopolized by your trivial viewing habits.
Second – We do not know what the Time Machine is made of because it is freakin INVISIBLE! If we must consult the experts of such matters, I might suggest Dr. Emmet Brown. Upon such research you would realize that the machine is made up of a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12. It’s not a “wall”. It’s not a “force field”. It is a modified sports car built in Dunmurry Northern Ireland.
Third – But, if I stayed here with you, girl / Things just couldn’t be the same / ‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now / And this bird, you can not change / Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh…….. that’s why these Turkeys have a time Machine
I hope this helps!
Finally, a science-based response.