Ghostbusters: 7 Scientific Facts To Make You Hate It Less

Who wants a proton pack?

Ghostbusters 2016
Paramount Pictures

Whether or not you hate the new Ghostbusters movie, one thing that you can't fail to notice about it is that there's a lot of science babble in it.

If they're not talking about ionization and proton streams, then they're knocking together miniature particle accelerators. The great thing is that somewhere beneath the quick fire nonsense and absurdly oversized guns, there's actually a fair bit of solid (ish) science.

Given that this is a kids' film, and one that features slimy green cartoon ghosts from another astral plane at that, they probably needn't have bothered. I would have been perfectly happy to sit and let the technobabble and casual racism in this film wash over me and not batted an eyelid (okay, maybe not the racism part), but when they start chucking around some science, I'm all ears.

The scientific accuracy is obviously not rigorous - I, as the saltiest science geek you'll meet, would want to sit through two hours of people saying "ghosts aren't actually real" even less than two hours of mildly underwhelming ghost train comedy. But, where they have had the opportunity to plug a bit of casual particle physics into the script, they've definitely done their homework.

So, let's delve into the ins and outs of Proton Packs and Ghost Traps and finally figure out what would actually happen if you crossed those damn streams.

Advertisement
In this post: 
ghostbusters
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Writer. Raconteur. Gardeners' World Enthusiast.