A classic trope in science fiction stories and film is the "force field." In Real Physics, a force field is a way of visualizing the effect of physical forces (electric charge, gravity, etc.). They are about as real as the contour lines on a map -- the contours show something true, but if you go outside and look around, the landscape is not marked off in neat 10-meter layers. The University of Colorado Physics department has a little tutorial here.
In fiction, however, force fields became a useful shorthand term for any kind of magical (er, "super-scientific") barrier of pure force or energy. They still get a lot of use in stories because of some depressing facts. In the real world, spaceships are very fragile things and weapons are very powerful. Space battles pitting fragile spaceships armed with powerful weapons against each other would be like -- well, like modern air combat: if the enemy sees you, you're dead. Only in space, everyone can see you. So to have space opera stories in which heroic starship captains engage in Hornbloweresque space battles (instead of spontaneously flashing into plasma as their ship is destroyed by an enemy they didn't know about), writers and film makers needed a way to make space battles survivable.
Armoring up spaceships like an Iowa-class battleship is kind of implausible, given the energy needed to move that much mass around. Which leaves the magic force field. Too bad they aren't real.
Except that maybe they are. A group of British and European researchers have developed a form of magnetic shielding which may protect astronauts on long-duration space flights from solar radiation.
If it pans out, this is a big deal. Radiation is one of the biggest hazards in space travel, because it's cumulative. Take a short trip to low Earth orbit and you're fine. Take a longer trip to Mars, and . . . you'll probably be okay (have kids first, though). Get caught in interplanetary space during a violent solar flare event and you're toast. Up to now the best solution anyone has come up with is to fit spacecraft with "storm cellars" -- small, radiation-shielded compartments where the crew can huddle during a solar storm. The room might double as a regular sleeping space to cut down on the long-term exposure.
A radiation shield which can protect the entire spacecraft, and which doesn't require massive materials, would be a tremendous boon for manned interplanetary voyages.
And who knows? Perhaps this line of inquiry may someday lead to science fiction style force fields capable of protecting space battleships from enemy fire. It would come in handy when the alien invaders come.
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