He wasn't healing the cancer cells, he was killing them: much easier, I think. And it did take him a while, and a lot of effort. As for Liz's heart, once Max had it fixed, it should have started on its own.

You're right, though: the writers by that point probably weren't thinking any further than just a hand-waving explanation. If that. :mad:

I had much troubles accepting Max healing the kids than Liz. Liz was shot, Max had to manipulate the area where she was injured, to heal her. But cancer ? it spreads all over the body, it's almost impossible to separate the sane cells from the ones infected with cancer and there are millions of them.

I suspect the "Roswell Christmas Carol" episode was one of those episodes were they count on massive doses of suspension of disbelief... that episode envolves other completely out-of-scope-things for Roswell... like the ghost that haunts Max... It seems to me american tv christmas specials are that kind of episodes that are supposed not to really matter to the series, to the rest of the story normally is like they never happened... that's why I usually dislike them...

Oh, yes, that could be an explanation. It was a Christmas episode so not much in it made sense, on a scientific point of view. At least, in the next Christmas episode, it was shown that Max couldn't cure everything, such as mental illness.

Oh, I dunno. A lot of people were crazy about Roswell, until S3 Max "cured" them. :rolleyes:

NO, no Max didn't suffer from a mental illness... he was just good ol'fashioned stupid :D ...

:look:

Now, did I say that ;) ? No :nono: , I was talking about the kid in Season 3, of course. He was born this way, and there was nothing that Max could do. Physically, he wasn't sick, it was genetic. And maybe it's just too complicated for Max to manipulate genes ? At least, at the stage of his powers at that time. Maybe if he were trained, he could, but not at that moment.

Hi, just dropping by. :wave:
Personally, I think this line is kind of cool:

LIZ: Well, maybe he didn't need to be healed. You heal people who are sick or hurt. But Samuel isn't sick or hurt. He's just different.

And I go for the powers-getting-stronger theory as an explanation for needing Liz to look at him and not the others.
BTW, it was kind of cool when Max healed Valenti--we could have gotten into a whole comparison with that scenario, in which Valenti was in down-and-out mode, and the scene where Michael remarks (in the jail in VLV) that Max had just waved his hand over Michael's gunshot wound and did his "little trick," but that Max couldn't know what it would take to really heal Michael (of his emotional pain).

Max is a healer, not a shrink. And Michael didn't need to be healed, he needed comfort or someone to talk to. Just like Samuel wasn't sick, he was born different.

Anybody has an idea as to how Isabel did to listen to CDs without a CD player, in the pilot ?

I have no idea how Isabel listened to the CD without a CD player but didn't she also play a CD without a CD player in season two? It was at the back to school party at the Crashdown. Isabel, Tess and Maria and eventually Liz were dancing to the music. That should be even more complicated because everyone could hear the music.

Obviously, there's no scientific way anyone can listen to a CD without a computer to analyse the data and reproduce the music. About 20% of the data on a music CD is actually for error correction, etc.
But, that's Roswell for you. :rolleyes: Just ignore it...

Well when you open a cd player you see it spinning and that's kinda how it plays the music but it wasn't spinning in her hand so um I'm not sure she manipulated it somehow to play lol also the other people in the car could hear what she was doing in the pilot to because max asked her if she could stop doing that. at least they were continious when they made the cd's light up both times.

evidence of the cd times:

Isabel must do something to make it work, but with the powers they have, I don't see which one could be used to make a CD work without a CD player :confused: .

Like, why was there this light when Michael used telekinesia to stop the FBI agents's car which were pursuing Max and Liz ? He didn't blow up the car, he just stopped it. So it's telekinesia. And later on, we can see Michael moving things with his hands without seeing this light, like when he threw the bomb out of the house, in Las Cruces.

So maybe the light we saw was in fact for the sheriff to realize that Michael was an alien, too, in the last episode of season 1 ?

Cool! :cool: Discussions about the characters’ powers! I think the light that we see when the characters use their powers is their power in action.




Michael stopped the Special Unit’s HumVee. He reached out his hand and arm. Michael’s blast of power ruined the HumVee’s engine, thereby stopping it. Smoke and/or steam or vapor came out of the engine, as though the engine overheated and seized.






Michael stopped Pierce by his using his powers against Pierce. Michael outstretched hand and arm. Michael’s blast of power, which we see as bright light, flung Pierce into the air and killed him.



A CD player uses a laser beam to determine the lengths of a series of ridges inside a compact disc. Infrared light from a solid-state laser is sent through several lenses, a polarizing beam splitter, and a special polarizing device called a quarter-wave plate. It's then focused through the clear plastic surface of the compact disc and onto the shiny aluminum layer inside the disc. Some of this light is reflected back through the player's optical system so that it passes through the quarter-wave plate a second time before encountering the polarizing beam splitter. The two trips through the quarter-wave plate switches the light's polarization from horizontal to vertical (or vice versa) so that instead of returning all the way to the laser, the light turns 90° at the polarizing beam splitter and is directed onto an array of photodiodes. These photodiodes measure the amount and spatial distribution of the reflected light. From this reflected light, the CD player can determine whether the laser beam is hitting a ridge or a valley on the disc's aluminum layer. It can also determine how well focused or aligned the laser beam is with the aluminum layer and its ridges. The player carefully adjusts the laser beam to follow the ridges as the disc turns and it measures how long each ridge is. The music is digitally encoded in the ridge lengths so that by measuring those lengths, the player obtains the information it needs to reproduce the music.



In arriving at a science fiction explanation of Isabel’s power to produce music from a CD, without using a CD player, we can surmise that Isabel used a power like a laser sending out infrared light. Isabel’s power is seen as light and color on and around the CD.

Since Roswell is a science fiction story, things that aren’t known to be possible are part of the story. Thus, Michael can stop a HumVee, kill Pierce from a distance without a weapon, heal River Dog’s ankle, shatter eggs in their shells without touching them, shatter car windows without touching them, wilt flowers from his sorrow, change a mask to look like a human face and do other things that aren’t considered possible. Isabel can play CD’s without using a CD player, as well as change her lipstick color, get rid of stains, and other things, which aren’t possible in real life, to do the way she did them.

I love the stories, ideas, and special effects in Roswell!

Screencaps from Roswell Italia Image Gallery

Interesting that in season 3 Khivar just flipped his hand at Max and Michael when they showed up following Isabel. No lights, no sounds, no theatrics, just a force that knocked them off their feet and backwards quite a few feet. Was that suppose to give us the impression that Khivar was more powerful than the hybrids? He seemed not the least concerned that there were the two of them against him.

Then I think the only reason Isabel was able to get the best of him was because she surprised him, pushing him into his "transport" before he realized what she was doing.

Roswell isn't science fiction, and there is no "science fiction" explanation of how anyone could play a CD without a CD player. Once the information is read from the CD, it must be converted from raw data to sound; and that takes a computer. The data includes error correction information, which must not be reproduced as sound.

xmag, consider yourself one of us: You've found your very own CHAD! Noone's ever mentioned the powers/light thing before.Congradulations!
And you thought Roswell was over... :lol:

:wave: Hi Reggie! There is no scientific explanation of how anyone could heal someone by touching them or how anyone could dissolve a bullet inside a person. Those things aren’t possible for normal people.

There is no scientific explanation of how anyone could sweep a hand in front of a clay sculpture and change it to unformed clay and back again to the original sculpture. And there is no scientific explanation of how someone could play a CD without a device. There is no scientific evidence of extraterrestrials or alien spaceships. Those things in the story of Roswell are science fiction.

One of the core ideas in the story of Roswell is that extraterrestrials in the story are different from earthlings and have powers to do things in ways that earthlings aren’t normally able to do. :)

If I understand you correctly, your position is that science fiction cannot be used in stories, because it isn't science fact. If I understand you correctly, your position is that stories can only be about known facts. If I understand you correctly, your position is that Roswell was written wrong and you would like to prove that by proving that the details of Roswell are wrong.


Some viewers want Roswell to have been written differently. Some viewers didn’t want Michael to break up with Maria, or Maria to break up with Michael. Some viewers didn’t want Liz to break up with Max or Max to be with Tess or have a child with her. Some viewers didn’t want Isabel to break up with Alex or Alex to die or Tess to die. Some viewers wanted more of some things and less of other things. Liking or disliking storylines or details of Roswell is a personal choice. People can like what they like and dislike what they dislike. Suggesting that Roswell is or isn’t a science fiction story won’t change that.


Roswell the television series is fiction. Jim Valenti wasn’t the Sheriff of Roswell, New Mexico in 1999. There isn’t a West Roswell High School in Roswell, New Mexico. KROZ isn’t a radio station there. Jeff and Nancy Parker didn't own or operate the Crash Down Café. There is no proof of an alien spaceship crash in Roswell in 1947 or anywhere else on Earth. Extraterrestrials and alien spaceships are fiction, science fiction.

Roswell is a science fiction story, from its first episode, in which Liz is healed from a gunshot wound in a few moments by Max, and in which Max has alien cells, and in which Max, Michael, and Isabel know that they came to Earth in the crashed 1947 spacecraft. From the first episode, things happen in the television series which don’t happen in real life. :)

People’s dreams and desires of doing impossible things have led to impossible things becoming possible. People can fly. People can travel under the ocean in submarines. People have traveled to the moon. People can talk on portable phones to people on the other side of the world. People can listen to thousands of songs of their own choosing on small, portable devices. Once, such things were impossible. They were dreams, wishes, hopes, fantasy, science fiction. At one time, people said that people can't fly, because they don't have wings. At one time, people said that it's impossible to see or talk to people out of sight or far away. Our ability to do the impossible has become possible. We do things the human way. We don’t know how extraterrestrials would do things. Writers and storytellers use their imaginations to think of how extraterrestrials might be, if they came to Earth.

Humans know and understand some things. And there are many more things that humans don’t know or understand. Humans use their imagination to help them think about things in new ways.

Roswell is an imaginative romance, adventure, mystery, science fiction story. :) As such, things that don’t normally happen in real life are possible in Roswell.

Imagination and stories produce new ideas, new ways of thinking about things, new inventions, new solutions, new creativity, new possibilities!

I am grateful to all the people who made Roswell what it is! :ufo:

Well said, Citrus. If Roswell isn't science fiction then I don't know what is.

And Reggie, if you don't think Roswell is science fiction, then what is it? You might not be able to imagine how some of the things could ever happen but someday, someone may very well do a lot of the things that seemed impossible in Roswell.

Speaking of science fiction, credibility, and veiled humor....
from www.biblion.com/litweb/biogs/verne_jules.html:

"What becomes of technical inventions, Verne's imagination sometimes contradicted facts. In From Earth to the Moon a giant cannon shoots the protagonist into orbit. Any contemporary scientist could have told Verne, that the passengers would be killed by the initial acceleration. However, the idea of the space gun first appeared in print in the 18th-century. And before it, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote Voyages to the Moon and Sun (1655), and applied in one of his stories the rocket to space travel.

" 'It is difficult to say how seriously Verne took the idea of this mammoth cannon, because so much of the story is facetiously written... Probably he believed that if such a gun could be built, it might be capable of sending a projectile to the Moon, but it seems unlikely that he seriously imagined that any of the occupants would have survived the shock of takeoff." (Arthur C. Clarke in Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!, 1999) '"

(biography by Petri Liukkonen)

___________

___________Verne's Moon Vehicle


Jules Verne's moon gun, as described in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, was located in Florida. The gun was poured into a 274 m deep well, with a bore of 2.74 m. The first 61 m of the barrel was filled with 122 tonnes of guncotton. This was supposed to propell the 2.74 m diameter shell to a velocity of 16.5 km/second. After deceleration going through the earth's atmosphere, the shell would have a residual velocity of 11 km/second, sufficient to reach the moon. The shell was to be constructed of aluminum, with walls 0.3 m thick. The human passengers would be protected from the tremendous G forces of acceleration and deceleration by hydraulic and frangible shock absorbers.

Although some errors were made, Verne used real engineering analysis to arrive at the design of his cannon and manned moon projectible. As a result, at the time of Apollo 8 and 11 missions it was noted that Verne had made a number of correct predictions about the actual missions....


For example:

• The United States would launch the first manned vehicle to circumnavigate the moon.
• The cost of the program would be $5,446,675 US dollars in 1865 (equivalent to $ 12.112 billion US dollars in 1969; Apollo cost $ 14.405 billion dollars up to the Apollo 8 circumnavigation mission).
• The circumlunar spacecraft would have a crew of three. The names of the crew were Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl (Anders, Borman and Lovell on Apollo 8; Aldrin, Armstrong, Collins on Apollo 11).
• The circumlunar spacecraft would be built predominately of aluminium and have a mass of 19,250 pounds (empty mass of the predominately aluminium Apollo 8 circumlunar spacecraft was 26,275 pounds).
• The cannon used to launch the spacecraft was called a Columbiad. The Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia.
• After considering 12 sites in Texas and Florida, Stone Hill, south of Tampa, Florida is selected in Verne's novel. One hundred years later NASA considered 7 launch sites and selecting Merritt Island, Florida. In both cases Brownsville, Texas was rejected as a site; politics played a major role in the site selection; and site criteria included a latitude below 28 degrees north and good access to the sea.
• Verne's spacecraft was launched in December, from latitude 27 deg 7 min North, 82 deg 9 min West Longitude. After a journey of 242 hours 31 minutes, including 48 hours in lunar orbit, the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 20 deg 7 min North, 118 deg 39 min West, and was recovered by the US Navy vessel Susquehanna.

The crew of Apollo 8 was launched in December 100 years later, from latitude 28 deg 27 min North, longitude 80 deg 36 min W (132 miles / 213 km from Verne's site). After a journey of 147 hours 1 minute, including 20 hours 10 minutes in lunar orbit. The spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean (8 deg 10 min North, 165 deg 00 min West) and was recovered by the US Navy vessel Hornet.


Many of these similarities are due to the engineering analysis Verne's characters used to determine the design of the gun and its projectile:

The velocity necessary to reach the moon (essentially the escape velocity of the earth) could be calculated easily using Newtonian mechanics: "...by incontrovertible calculations I find that a projectile endowed with an initial velocity of 12,000 yards per second, and aimed at the moon, must necessarily reach it .."

The calibre of the projectile was established by the need to track the object by telescope at lunar distance:

"... a telescope on some elevated mountain...of 48,000 times (magnification), which should bring the moon within an apparent distance of five miles; and, in order to be visible, objects need not have a diameter of more than nine feet."

To keep the mass of the projectile within reason, it would have to be hollow:

"A solid shot of 108 inches would weigh more than 200,000 pounds, a weight evidently far too great. Still, as we must reserve a certain stability for our projectile, I propose to give it a weight of 20,000 pounds."

But a cast iron shell with sides of the thickness to withstand the gas pressure at launch would also be far too heavy. This lead to the conclusion that:

"Aluminium....... is easily wrought... is three times lighter than iron, and seems to have been created for the express purpose of furnishing us with the material for our projectile....but...the cost price of aluminium (is) extremely high....nine dollars a pound!"

The final calculations showed the projectile would be: "...of 108 inches in diameter, and twelve inches in thickness, would weigh, in cast-iron, 67,440 pounds; cast in aluminium, its weight will be reduced to 19,250 pounds... at nine dollars a pound, this projectile will cost....$173,050."

The projectile having been settled, the gun itself could then be sized:

"The problem before us is how to communicate an initial force of 12,000 yards per second to a shell of 108 inches in diameter, weighing 20,000 pounds....The resistance of the air is of little importance. The atmosphere of the earth does not exceed forty miles. Now, with the given rapidity, the projectile will have traversed this in five seconds, and the period is too brief for the resistance of the medium to be regarded otherwise than as insignificant...."

" It must evidently be, then, a gun of great range, since the length of the piece will increase the detention of the gas accumulated behind the projectile; but there is no advantage in passing certain limits....Ordinarily the length of a gun is twenty to twenty-five times the diameter of the shot, and its weight two hundred and thirty-five to two hundred and forty times that of the shot."

".... following this proportion for a projectile nine feet in diameter, weighing 30,000 pounds, the gun would only have a length of two hundred and twenty- five feet, and a weight of 7,200,000 pounds"....(this is not enough so it was proposed) "...to quadruple that length, and to construct a gun of nine hundred feet...." with a "...thickness of six feet..."

The gun would be emplaced in the earth:

"..... mounting a mass like that upon a carriage.... would be.... impracticable.... I think of sinking this engine in the earth alone, binding it with hoops of wrought iron, and finally surrounding it with a thick mass of masonry of stone and cement. The piece once cast, it must be bored with great precision, so as to preclude any possible windage. So there will be no loss whatever of gas, and all the expansive force of the powder will be employed in the propulsion." The gun would not be rifled: "...we require an enormous initial velocity; and you are well aware that a shot quits a rifled gun less rapidly than it does a smooth-bore."

Cast iron is selected for the barrel: "...cast iron costs ten times less than bronze; it is easy to cast, it runs readily from the moulds of sand, it is easy of manipulation, it is at once economical of money and of time. ....Cast iron is very brittle.... but it possesses great resistance. ..the cannon will weigh 68,040 tons. And, at two cents a pound, it will cost ...two million five hundred and ten thousand seven hundred and one dollars."

Ordinary gunpowder would not do. The latest invention, guncotton, would be used as propellant: "...it imparts to projectiles a velocity four times superior to that of gunpowder..... in place of 1,600,000 pounds of powder, we shall have but 400,000 pounds of fulminating cotton; and since we can, without danger, compress 500 pounds of cotton into twenty-seven cubic feet, the whole quantity will not occupy a height of more than 180 feet within the bore of the Columbiad. In this way the shot will have more than 700 feet of bore to traverse under a force of 6,000,000,000 litres of gas before taking its flight toward the moon."

The location of the cannon were set by the requirements for a vertical shot: "..the gun must be fired...toward the zenith. Now the moon does not traverse the zenith, except in places situated between 0 degrees and 28 degrees of latitude. It.." was "...agreed that this experiment cannot and ought not to be tried anywhere but within the limits of the soil of the ... United States... as far as the 28th parallel of the north latitude... the southern portion of Texas and Florida. Florida, in its southern part, reckons no cities of importance... it is simply studded with forts raised against the roving Indians. One solitary town, Tampa Town, was able to put in a claim in favour of its situation. In Texas...Corpus Christi, in the county of Nueces, and all the cities situated on the Rio Bravo, Laredo, Comalites, San Ignacio on the Web, Rio Grande City on the Starr, Edinburgh in the Hidalgo, Santa Rita, Elpanda, Brownsville in the Cameron, formed an imposing league against the pretensions of Florida...."

Critics of the scheme "...maintained that it was absolutely impossible to impress upon any body whatever a velocity of 12,000 yards per second; that even with such a velocity a projectile of such a weight could not transcend the limits of the earth's atmosphere. Further still, even regarding the velocity to be acquired, and granting it to be sufficient, the shell could not resist the pressure of the gas developed by the ignition of 1,600,000 pounds of powder; and supposing it to resist that pressure, it would be less able to support that temperature; it would melt on quitting the Columbiad, and fall back in a red-hot shower upon the heads of the imprudent spectators".

Unlike later critics of Goddard's rocket propulsion, the critics of the Columbiad were right. Analysis in the next century would indicate how the gun could be redesigned to meet these objections...

____________________________________________

Great stuff, C & V.
So, I will speculate that in another generation or so, "CDs" will be disposable, one-time playing. They will be ridiculously cheap, so the masses will buy them up.
They will be tiny, and each will come with some nano-engineered qualities that allow the user to place it in her ear and rock out.

I thought it already existed with DVD ? I am sure that I heard on tv that you can buy for cheap a movie but it only last for a few hours before it, how can I say ? dies ? doesn't work anymore ?

Um, no. Actually, sound science is at the core of good science fiction, just as real love is at the core of any good love story and logical deduction the core of any good detective story. Jules Verne took the trouble to "do the math" for his "From the Earth to the Moon", as you have shown. This reality helped shape the story. In Roswell, no one took the trouble to develop or offer any explanation beyond "they're aliens, they're different, this is part of it". In Roswell, reality does not shape the story; things happen (like bullets dissolving) without any attempt at logical explanations. (Even "Jimmy Neutron" offers bafflegab explanations!) For this reason, Roswell is "fantasy" rather than sci-fi.

xmag:
Those DVDs go bad because you have to pull a sticker off of them before you can play them. When the sticker is removed, a seal is broken, and air gets to a part of the disk which starts to corrode. Once it corrodes badly enough, the disk is rendered unreadable. I doubt that we'll see many of these, as it'll be too easy to work around the corrosion thing.

Many scientific developments begin with fantastic ideas.

When Jules Verne wrote his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, his ideas were considered fantasy. Over a hundred years later, when people actually went to the moon, it could be said that his ideas were based on science, rather than just fantasy. If no one ever went to the moon, then the idea of people traveling to the moon would still be fantasy. Once people went to the moon, travel from earth to the moon became reality. It is no longer science fiction. Rather, travel to the moon, which was once fantasy, is now science fact.

If I understand you correctly, you would like to limit the definition of science fiction to imagined gadgets and devices you understand and can explain. You would disallow stories of life forms that could act in ways not currently explainable by humans. It sounds like you insist on a technical explanation for everything in a story, even if the explanation is bafflegab.

Here are definitions of science fiction.

Science fiction - fiction based on futuristic science: a form of fiction, usually set in the future, that deals with imaginary scientific and technological developments and contact with other worlds. Roswell fits that definition of science fiction. Roswell is set in the years 1999-2002. It includes the imaginary technological development of space travel to Earth from other planets. It also includes the future of Earth and time travel.

Science fiction - fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component. Roswell fits that definition of science fiction. Roswell has the imagined science of extraterrestrials coming to earth in a spaceship. It has the imagined science of creating human-extraterrestrial hybrids. It has time travel.

Science fiction - fiction in which scientific findings, capabilities, or speculations provide an essential basis for the imagined events. Roswell fits that definition. Vessels created by people can travel to other planets and do so in the series. Roswell also speculates on how extraterrestrials would affect life on Earth.

Science fiction - A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background. Roswell fits that definition and specifically defines science fiction as fantasy, as you defined Roswell.

Science fiction - a form of fiction that draws imaginatively on scientific knowledge and speculation in its plot, setting, theme, etc. . Roswell fits that definition of science fiction.

Science fiction - literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recounted are within the realm of future possibility, e.g., robots, space travel, interplanetary war, invasions from outer space. This definition of science fiction, like a previous definition, also includes the fantastic, as defining science fiction.


Roswell is science fiction and romance and adventure and mystery! :) :love:

Although you perhaps prefer stories and ideas about the known, writers of fiction and of science fiction chose things that aren’t real, but might be. We don’t know if extraterrestrial aliens exist or what they might be like. We don’t know if they could ever come to earth.

We don’t know how to explain many things. For example, people can regenerate new livers, when part of it has been removed. We can’t explain how the liver regenerates. We don’t know if it would ever be possible to get other human organs to regenerate, but we can imagine the possibility. Starfish, crabs, and other animals can regenerate new limbs on their own, without help, but humans cannot regeneate their limbs at all. We can imagine that someday, by stimulation or some other means, it might be possible to grow new parts.

People can dissolve some gallstones in patients, without surgery. People can also break up some gallstones in patients, without surgery. Someday, we may be able to dissolve or break up bullets safely, without surgical intervention.

Electric eels can send out electricity. People can’t, unless they use a device. So we know that different organisms can do things that other organisms can’t do in the same way. Electric eels use their electrical discharge to kill prey or warn off predators. Currently, we use an electrical device to shock people back to life.

Perhaps the glow that we see as Max heals Liz, Michael heals River Dog, and Michael heals Isabel is energy, something like the electrical energy that electric eels send out, which then stimulates the touched person to heal rapidly, as well as dissolves the bullet.

Although we cannot heal people the way Max healed Liz, someday it might be possible to do so.

In stories like Roswell, we can imagine the impossible being possible. :)

__________________________________________________

I agree here, science-fiction has to be based on science. When it's not, it's fantasy. I remember watching a tv documentary about scientists at the Nasa. They were working on a new kind of motor for shuttles and the name of their project was based on Star Trek (I don't remember the correct name). And that the reason why they had chosen this name was that they used to watch ST and how the science fiction aspect of the show could be explained by science.