Not to the exaggerated degree seen in some cartoons of course.
But is something even close to that even remotely possible?
A while back I read of some monks that dried wet sheets on their backs by raising their heat (or something like that). If thats possible, couldn’t it also be possible concentrate the energy to a point causing heat there?
Are there any documented (pseudo-documented), tall tales, and the whatnot of energy being shot or thrown?
Tall tales, maybe. Whatnot, almost certainly.
Reality, absolutely not.
CAUTION
Examining the resulting energy wavefront too closely
may cause it to exhibit particle-like behavior!
I was going to say “flashlight”, but Squink’s is much better.
Actually, your hand gives off energy in the form of heat, but that’s not what you want, is it?
Peace,
mangeorge
You could clap your hands, or snap your fingers, and thus cause your hand(s)* to give off a wave of sonic energy.
*What is the sound of one hand clapping…
I would suggest pulling the trigger on an oversized handgun. You’ll get MEBuckner’s sound wave in spades, mangeorge’s flashlight effect, and a far more lethal hydroshock effect should you happen to hit the right sort of target.
The answer is obvious. You just need to douse yourself in GC-161. Careful though, it has some weird side effects. Cite.
I miss that show.
how about a one inch punch?
Hit people and cause them to fly across the room.
Well, it’s a good idea. I think EM is the only sort of force likely to give the desired effect. But I think the OP was looking for something more devestating. My advice is to supplement this wave with a matter wave which boosts it, acting as a carrier. Then the force of your punch can be propagated with inertia and speed almost preserved. I plan to patent this technique as Throwing Rocks[sup]TM[/sup].
rofl@this thread.
Certainly it’s possible.
What could be simpler?
A martial arts book I once read gave something like the following instructions:
Light a candle, and practice flicking your finger at it from an inch or two away until you can make the candle go out. Once you’ve mastered that, start practicing from further and further away. After a few years, you should be able to make the candle go out from across the room.
Next, go through the same exercise except with a piece of paper in front of the candle. With a great deal of practice, you should be able to put the candle out without tearing the paper.
Next, start using harder materials up to and including glass. After many more years of practice, you should be able to put out a flame from across the room even though the flame is enclosed by glass. If you can do this WITHOUT BREAKING THE GLASS, then you’ve mastered the technique.
Now, you can kill your enemies at a distance by stopping their hearts with a flick of a finger. Of course you should use your skills very responsibly.
All these monks are doing is taking conscious control of their capillary dilation to increase their skin temperature. When exposed to cold temperatures, your body automatically contracts your capillaries to conserve your body heat; in hot temperatures, your capillaries expand to more efficiently radiate heat into the environment. It’s possible to learn to override your body’s automatic systems and change your skin temperature to approach your body temperature. (Don’t have a cite-but I learned to do this myself a number of years ago, it’s not terribly complicated, once you’ve learned some self-hypnosis.)
There isn’t, as far as I know, any bodily mechanism for generating more heat at a particular point of your skin than this. I would conclude that what you’re looking for is not possible …
SCSimmons, I learned it with biofeedback, it´s probably also possible without the equipment. (But it makes it easier, as you can monitor even minute temperature changes and thus learn the process.) Cites abound; if anyone´s interested, google for temperature biofeedback Raynaud to avoid the quack sites. (Raynaud´s disease is one of the fields of application, as Raynaud´s causes a drop in finger temperature.)
Haven´t tried drying sheets yet, but I can raise the temperature of my fingers by several degrees. No energy rays, though, sorry. 
Thanks, u.z! The person who taught the technique to me had learned it with biofeedback, in fact. I was successful on my first try without biofeedback, if a single-blind trial using someone else’s hands as the thermometer is considered sufficient evidence of that. 
I’d spent a lot of time & effort learning other self-hypnosis ‘tricks’, though-no doubt, biofeedback equipment would have made it a lot easier to learn overall.
I imagine it would a lot harder to maintain the needed concentration with a cold, wet sheet laid across your back. (Not to mention sitting naked in the snow-I’ve seen alleged pictures of monks & fakirs doing that …) But a cloistered Buddhist monk has a lot of time on his hands for perfecting his meditation techniques-it doesn’t look beyond the realm of possibility to me. But I don’t see how you’d get an energy ray out of it either.
But a man can dream, right? ZAP!!!
Check this out.
From x-ray vision’s cite, the Harvard University Gazette:
“Benson” is Herbert Benson, associate professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Not exactly the Weekly World News, this looks to have had some brains looking at it.
I spent a few years working for a company selling medical sensors and biofeedback equipment and software.
Autoperipheral hand warming and related techniques are useful for many things (increasing circulation in the digits of diabetics, dilating vessels in a specific area to generate warmth and ease the pain of an arthritic joint or sore muscle). But, you won’t be shooting Skaran thermal blasts. These techniques are not generating more heat, just redirecting it.
It is possible to increase the amount of heat generated by the body- exercise or a fever will do it. Unless the researchers are lying (and having read many of the books we sold, I doubt that they are.), this would seem to be what the monks are doing.
i’ve seen a friend of mine take down a 350lb man with a one inch punch on a bet. that was a sight to behold, like something out of a kung fu movie.
The “one inch punch” is all about proper punching tecnique and proper target selection.
Anyone can do it, but it’ll take some practice. There are also limits to what it can do. Forget about kung-fu movie type results.