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2004
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)
One of
the very cool things about the original three movies is that, in
spite of a lot of scientific hand waving, they never figure out
exactly why this is happening. A virus? A vengeful God? Alien Space
Bats? It just happens and people have to deal with it.
The remake
takes the same approach but it does give a slight nod in the “virus”
direction. I wasn't happy about that because there's no
freakin'; way a virus could reanimate a dead body. Think about
it. A typical zombie is wandering around for months or years, never
eating or drinking. No respiration, no heartbeat, and yet they can
move. They don't heal but they also don't decay (if
they did they'd be bloated, liquefying messes in days).
Something is animating them, maintaining their body in its present
state, and providing enough biochemical energy for them to move
around. I have no idea what could do that but it sure as hell isn't
a virus.
UPDATE: Writer James Gunn (DAWN OF THE DEAD [2004], SLITHER) responds:
"I don't see the problem in having zombies created with a bite. The bite never implies a virus. Vampires always make new vampires with a bite, so what's the difference?"
Kelly Parks answers, "Oh, yeah. That's right." |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
FEO AMANTE |
THE
BUTTERFLY EFFECT - 2004
Is there really such a thing as a "Butterfly Effect"? Yep, and this movie adheres pretty well to the scientific analogy. But the Butterfly Effect, a term coined by Jacques Hadamard in 1890, is just that: an analogy used to desribe how very small things can have enormous outcomes over periods of time. It's not now, nor was it ever a theory or even a hypothesis. The Butterfly Effect is also known as the Ripple Effect and it was never meant to suggest that a butterfly in one part of the world, merely by flapping it's wings, could possibly create a storm elsewhere in the world.
In 1961, Edward Lorenz, after running a predictive weather computer model, discovered that his predictions were all wrong. How could that be? It was mathematically sound! After a re-analysis of his data, he discovered that just one of his entry decimal numbers, .506, was largely accurate, but minutely innaccurate. The proper number to get a slightly more accurate predition should have been, .506127. The difference of a mere .000127 is so infinitesimally small as to have originally gone unnoticed the first time. But over a course of time, and with the great and dynamic force of planetary weather, that small number, multiplying itself billions of times over, became huge. Thus the allegorical idea of a Butterfly or Ripple Effect: The circumferance of the ripple is much larger than the initial pebble. The air moving from out of a butterfly's wings is much smaller than a hurricane.
Of course, we can only see the ripples from a small pebble when we drop it on a virtually still surface, like a pond. Go to the beach and drop your pebble in the Ocean. What ripples do you see then? Weather, like life, is an extremely complex system, and predictive models - computer or otherwise - are unable to account for long-term dynamic interactions. Consider all of the life that is constantly moving air all round itself as well as the wide variety of weather conditions everywhere and the addition of a multitude of other factors, and the butterfly's wings and the pebble's ripples become meaningless. The movement of air is always roiling over the earth in billions of different ways, and so it's more like tossing a pebble in a tsunami and looking for the ripples.
The very idea of man-made global warming (or Anthropogenic Global Warming: AGW) is based on this Ripple Effect idea. That a "tipping point" is created when a gas like Carbon Dioxide, a trace element of the earth's atmosphere, is doubled, still remaining a trace element of the earth's atmosphere, but providing a tipping point for all the other, more prevalent gasses like Methane, Propane, Oxygen, and the biggest greenhouse gas of all, water vapor. To put this into the proper perspective, if the Carbon Dioxide emitted from our cars (and depending on the vehicle that can be far less than what we emit when we breathe out) is contributing to global warming, and water vapor is about 12,000 times the greenhouse gas of Carbon Dioxide, then what is going to happen when we all start driving around in Hydrogen powered cars? The waste of Hydrogen fuel cells is water vapor.*
*This may be why scientists who believe in AGW will gladly participate in debates with Christians and Creationists on evolution - they know that they are right. But refuse to engage in debate with leading scientists, their peers and colleagues, who are skeptical of AGW. |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
TREMORS 4 (2004)
Hiram
and Juan find the imprints of what they assume were buried eggs
near a creek. From this they jump to the conclusion that these creatures
must have been long buried and that the creek uncovered them and
caused them to hatch. The problem is that in TREMORS
2 we were told that the graboids are “Precambrian life
forms”, which means the eggs have been sitting there for half
a billion years. And still fresh? I’ll concede that it’s
not completely impossible but damn! |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 (2004)
This science
moment involves a personal experience connected to this movie. I
was at the 2002 San Diego Comic Con and, while wandering around
one day, I came across a panel discussion about STARSHIP TROOPERS
2. Actress Brenda Strong, director Phil Tippett and writer Ed Neumeier
(and one of the producers, I think)
were all there promoting the movie and taking questions from the
audience. So I took the opportunity to ask (as
diplomatically as I could manage) why the first movie did
such a terrible job getting the science right, especially considering
that it was based on a Robert Heinlein novel and Heinlein was one
of the first "hard core" science fiction writers who always
made a serious effort to get the scientific details correct.
The reaction?
Confusion. They looked at each other and back at me and clearly
didn't understand what I was talking about. They thought the science
was fine. Which explains a lot about these movies and about Hollywood
in general. |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE
DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)
We'll start with the two important questions you must answer when
you talk about global warming:
1. Is the Earth
getting warmer?
2. If so, why
is it getting warmer?
The problem
is most people assume that if the answer is yes to the first question
then the only possible answer to the second question is "we
are causing the warming by pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
This is what is technically known as "jumping to conclusions."
You might be
surprised to learn that there are many scientists who don't believe
global warming is happening at all. I'm not in that category - I
think the climate is getting warmer - but there is legitimate debate
on the topic. Let me stress that point: there is legitimate scientific
debate as to whether or not global warming is happening at all.
For a good overview read "The Satanic Gases" by Patrick
J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling.
But for the
sake of argument let's answer "yes" to our first question
and assume that the Earth is getting warmer. Are we causing this
warming, as the movie implies? (And by "implies"
I mean "beats you over the head with"). Before
I answer that, let's consider a few things:
Real paleoclimatologists
will tell you that the Earth's climate has been very different from
what it is now, sometimes warmer and sometimes colder, long before
humanity came along. There is evidence that the current warming
is a similar natural event caused by variations in solar activity
and that it would be happening whether we were here or not.
The glacier
and ice cap melting many have pointed to as evidence of global warming
may have been caused by soot, not carbon dioxide. A fine layer of
soot darkens the ice just enough that it absorbs more sunlight than
it otherwise would and melts.
Speaking of
soot, some researchers believe that small particles from pollution
(soot, aerosols, etc.) have a much
greater cooling effect on the climate than previous models have
accounted for. If they're right then humanity has cooled the Earth,
not warmed it.
Ever heard
of Global Dimming? The amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface
has been decreasing for a while now. It was first discovered about
20 years ago but only recently has enough proof been accumulated
for scientists to take it seriously. This is probably also being
caused by soot (they think) and definitely
has a cooling effect.
It's been known
for a long time that developed land (agricultural
and cities) absorbs more heat and make their surroundings
warmer than natural landscapes. But a recent study has shown that
this is effect is much larger than people thought, making it a significant
contributor to warming.
A recent NASA
study has shown that the contrails of high-flying jets over the
northern hemisphere causes increased formation of cirrus clouds.
These clouds trap heat like the glass in a greenhouse roof and this
effect alone may explain all the warming seen in the U.S. since
the 1970's.
So what does
all this contradictory and confusing stuff actually mean? It means
that the only honest answer anyone can give to the question, "Why
is the Earth getting warmer?" is "We don't know yet."
This shouldn't be surprising. The climate of a planet is a deeply
complex system, dependent on many, many variables, some of which
we haven't even discovered yet. Also note that several things we're
doing that may be affecting the climate have nothing to do with
carbon dioxide.
There have been
a lot of climatologists interviewed in the media saying that although
the climate shift described in the movie (warming
leads to polar melt leads to more fresh water in the ocean leads
to shut down of the gulf stream leads to ice age) does have
some scientific merit, but that such a string of events would take
decades at least. A few days are out of the question. I actually
don't have a problem with the whole thing taking place in a few
days. It's probably impossible but I can enjoy a "what if"
scenario for disaster-movie purposes so that's fine.
However, the
"message" of the movie, that global warming is being caused
by our carbon dioxide emissions and that the Kyoto Protocols (which
really would cost hundreds of billions of dollars) should
be instituted immediately is just plain wrong. That would be like
a doctor trying to diagnose a patient with a fever saying, "Maybe
I should take out his spleen, just to see what happens." Far
too drastic an action considering you don't know if it would help. |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
SPIDER-MAN
2 (2004)
There
were a variety of mistakes and poorly thought out details. Here are
the most obvious, in no particular order.
1. What is the
power source for Doc Ock's tentacles? Just because he can control
them with his thoughts doesn't explain where their energy comes
from.
2. Tritium is
not especially rare. And it's an isotope of hydrogen and thus a
gas, not a metal.
3. Doc Ock's
tentacles are very strong. But Doc Ock himself is just an ordinary
human being, not a superhuman. That means a single Spiderman punch
should have been then end of him (Actually,
given how strong Spiderman is, it should have torn his head off). |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
I, ROBOT (2004)
My only
complaint is that the movie doesn't really make clear what a different
world it would be if intelligent robots were everywhere. There is
brief mention of people losing their jobs to robots, which would
certainly happen. But think about the effect on the economy if the
cost of labor was effectively zero. Every product imaginable would
become dirt cheap, effectively making us all millionaires. And the
fast pace of scientific discovery we have now would seem glacial
compared to an era when smart machines are designing even smarter
machines. Some people call this rapidly approaching moment "The Singularity",
because once it happens knowledge expands so fast that it's impossible
for us to imagine what it would be like. |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
DISTRICT B13 (2004)
Today the subject is social science and although I am far from a qualified social scientist, I’m going to make a prediction. There will be more and more movies made about crime and social breakdown in France in the years ahead. And the tone of the movies will change from sympathetic to the rioters (like this one) to decidedly unsympathetic as things get worse. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. |
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
ALIEN VS PREDATOR (2004)
The science
in question is geography. The "island near Antarctica"
is called Bovetoya. This is a real island and is listed in the Guinness
Book of World Records as the most isolated island (bare
volcanic rock covered with glaciers and rarely visited by anyone)
on Earth. But it's only "near" Antarctica if you think
1000 miles away is "near". The tip of South America is
closer to Antarctica than Bovetoya. |
|
MEGALODON (2004)
The Megalodon (which
means "big tooth") is related to the Great White
shark but it was quite a bit bigger: anywhere from 60 to 80 feet long.
The movie implies
that the giant underground cave containing the shark had been sealed
for 65 million years (the end of the Cretaceous).
This was unnecessary because Megalodons went extinct much more recently,
probably within that last couple of million years (there
are stories about Megalodon teeth that have been found and that
may be only 10,000 years old!)
And speaking
of the underground cave: this idea has shown up before (DEEPSTAR SIX, for example) but isn't very workable. There
is life in the deep ocean but that ecology depends on the steady
rain of organic material from near the surface. A cave would be
cut off from this mana from heaven and it's hard to imagine enough
life going on to support a population of very large predators. |
|
ANACONDAS:
THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID
(2004)
The one
thing I liked about this movie (the one and
ONLY thing) was how they explained the big snakes.
The biggest anaconda ever measured was 28 feet long and the smallest
of these monsters is easily twice that. But it is true, as the movie
points out, that reptiles grow their whole lives so the older they
get, the bigger they get. Which means if the local environment included
an immortality-granting blood orchid as part of the food chain then
some of the wildlife might live long enough to get really big. |
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
RESIDENT
EVIL: APOCALYPSE (2004)
Part
of the storyline is that Umbrella, the cartoonishly evil corporation,
plans to sanitize the infection in Raccoon City with a nuke. Then
to avoid awkward questions about where they got a nuke and why they're
blowing up cities, they plan on saying that the explosion was actually
caused by a meltdown at the local nuclear power plant. Which is,
of course, impossible.
A
fission chain reaction requires some very special materials. Specifically
you need nearly pure uranium 235 (or plutonium
239, but that's never used in reactors). Naturally occurring
uranium is mostly U-238 which is quite useless for fission. Only
one atom in 7000 is the 235 isotope and the first thing you have
to do to build a nuke is separate the 235 from the 238 until you
have better than 95% U-235 ("weapons
grade"). Only then can a chain reaction of atoms splitting
and releasing neutrons, which split more atoms, be achieved.
Nuclear
power plants use uranium that has been enriched to about 3% U-235.
It's very radioactive and if you surround it with neutron reflecting
materials it can get very hot. But it simply can't sustain a chain
reaction and it can't produce a nuclear explosion.
One
other point: You'd think that when Umbrella tried to say the nuclear
power plant caused the nuclear explosion, someone would have said,
"Really? So an explosion at the power plant on the edge of
town created this big crater in the center of town? Are you sure
you want to go with that story?"
|
THE FORGOTTEN (2004)
A
very short science moment because I can't say much without spoiling
a surprise or two. So all I will say is to mention one of Clarke's
Laws: "A sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable
from magic."
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE INCREDIBLES (2004)
There
are usually two schools of thought regarding superheroes and science.
The first is to analyze their abilities based on known physics and
point out all the various impossibilities, most of which boil down
to violations of the Law of Conservation of energy. The other school
of thought states that superheroes are fantasy and therefore it's
a mistake to use a scientific point of view just as it would be
a mistake to analyze the science in Lord of the Rings.
There is a
third path. I found it in the Robert Heinlein story "Waldo",
where the inventor / scientist Waldo Jones is faced with proof of
the existence of Magic. Rather than having his worldview and his
mind crumble (as happens to another character
in the story) Waldo simply guesses that an undiscovered energy
source (probably extra-dimensional)
is being tapped into and leaves it at that. We don't know everything
yet, after all. This neatly and empirically explains all superheroes-who-violate-physics-especially-Conservation-of-Energy.
So there. |
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
BLADE: TRINITY (2004)
One
of the defining characteristics of vampires is that their strength
and reflexes are far superior to humans. The combination of their
speed and great strength is what makes them such deadly predators.
Blade has these abilities as well, which is why he can fight vampires
hand-to-hand. But Abigail and Hannibal are just ordinary human beings
(well, Hannibal had an odd past but he's an
ordinary human now). So I don't care how strong their Kung
Fu is, they should NOT be able to get in fist fights with
vampires. And yet they do, time and again, with no explanation as
to how this is possible.
As far as regular
science is concerned, the movie stretched my suspension of disbelief
but didn't break it. I can imagine a virus that alters humans into
another species with unusual abilities. But a virus that could do
all these things could never evolve on its own. It would have to
be artificial. |
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
SPECIES III (2004)
Dean says
that his reactor uses hydrogen and deuterium and fusion occurs "when
these two elements combine". In fact they are the same element.
Deuterium (and tritium) are just isotopes
of hydrogen. Plain hydrogen (also called protium)
is a single proton orbited by a single electron. Deuterium is the
same arrangement plus a neutron and tritium is the same plus two
neutrons. But they're all hydrogen and are chemically identical.
|
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
FRANKENFISH (2004)
The genetically engineered creature in question actually wasn't that bad. It's big but not violates-the-square-cube-law big and its behavior is
way too smart and basically monster overacting but its certainly on a
par with the rest of the movie. The fact is that creating monsters like
this is either doable today or will be by next Tuesday, depending on how
ethical the molecular biologist you ask the question is. |
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
DECOYS
(2004)
We find
out that these girls aren't just randomly killing guys for fun -
they're attempting to mate with them. The fact that the implanted
embryos end up immediately killing their male hosts is a disappointment
to the girls, but they figure with enough experimentation they'll
get it right.
Normally, I'd dismiss that as stupid since there isn't
a single animal on Earth capable of crossbreeding with humans (and
all life on Earth is based on DNA), so the idea of successfully
crossbreeding with an alien life form with a completely different
evolutionary history and a vastly different biochemistry is astronomically
unlikely. Unless, of course, you're from an advanced alien civilization
with a good knowledge of exobiology and have done this sort of thing
before. Then maybe it would just take some genetic engineering and
some unwilling test subjects. |
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
DEEP EVIL (2004)
The alien
"creature" doesn't quite violate any laws of physics or
anything (although the apparent difference
in mass between its various forms come close) but I will
point out that its ability to interface with Earthlings means it
could only be artificial. Life may or may not exist throughout the
Universe but if it does then each time it appears it will have its
own unique biochemistry and its own version of something like DNA.
So the idea of life from one planet being able to eat (or
mate with) life from another planet is truly unlikely. |
Continue
to
2005
t0 2006
Back to
MOVIES |
EUREKA!
SCIENCE MOMENT
is interviewed by the prestigious The Scienctist Magazine.
"After ten years of "Science Moments," McMullen and Parks are experts on the science faux paus that plague movies."
- Megan Scudellari: The Scientist magazine
LINKS TO
THE FUTURE!
RETROFUTURE
See Yesterday's Tomorrow, TODAY!
MAN
CONQUERS SPACE
What a beautiful future it was.
BUZZALDRIN
He walked on the moon!
He got Neil Armstrong to take his picture!
He became an MTV Award!
He flew Homer Simpson into space and put the "Buzz" in
Buzz Lightyear!
SCIENCE LINKS!
A
VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS
Strong math Techno-speak for the really smart Techno-Geek.
BAD ASTRONOMY
debunks the myths with clear, easy to understand facts.
BAD SCIENCE PROJECTS
The most fascinating research, experiments, and inventions in the
world.
Lots of robots!
BETTER HUMANS
JUNK SCIENCE
debunks the myths and the myth makers.
MADSCI.org
Where your science questions are answered by REAL (though not necessarily mad) scientists!
NEW SCIENTIST
NUCLEAR SPACE
SCIENCEAGOGO
See Researchers, Professors, Scientists, and Science
Geeks discuss chaos and particle theory (and
more!) with bathroom language!
See flame wars on a doctorate level!
See Ph.D's discuss rabid liberal politics with no
clue as to what they are talking about!
SCIENCE DAILY
SPACE
SPACEDAILY
TECH CENTRAL STATION
TERRESTRIAL MUSINGS
More blog for your bucK!
LINKS TO THE PAST!
NASA.gov
See history archived before your very eyes! NASA's own online mausoleum! |
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