Book Review: Hollyweird Science

Gravity movie poster
Gravity movie poster

Do you remember science classes from way back when? All those laws and rules made it seem like everything was logical and well behaved. Then perhaps with television and movies being a big part of your life you began to wonder whether what you saw was real and unreal. Those things on the big and small screens didn’t seem nearly as well behaved. For instance, can people hear sounds in space? Or, can travelers quickly and easily go from one star to another? If you want to get yourself back on solid footing, get a hold of the book “Hollyweird Science – From Quantum Quirks to the Multiverse” by Kevin Grazier and Stephen Cass. With it, you can sift through a lot of tropes and conceits and glean some wonderful insights of both modern science and modern cinema.

Yes, tropes and conceits are terms from the world of cinema and not of physics. Think of these terms as ‘untruths’ for entertainment that writers use to capture and hold the attention of the audience. As this book describes, writers conjure up these exigencies to meet their demands. Their main demand is to prepare a story that fits into a very limited timeframe and into a very limited budget.

HollyweirdAnd much of the first part of this book takes the reader on a journey of past and present cinema that involves detailed science. This part of the book substantiates the claim that science in the Hollywood world of cinema is weird, whether it is Superman’s kryptonite, Star Trek’s dilithium crystals or Godzilla’s shear bulk. So how does this book go about proving that the science is weird?

Ah, this is the part that you may either love or hate. The authors include science boxes at regular intervals throughout. These science boxes have the equations you may remember from your early science classes. And the equations include numbers or ratios that show how a trope or conceit is particularly untrue. That is, the authors return to all those laws and rules of science, such as the law of gravity, the formula for acceleration, and the standard chemical composition of ecosystems.

Nevertheless, most of these weird issues are ones that the audience has already accepted and even a science box won’t affect the shear enjoyment. For example, think of Torch, a human that can instantly become a flame even though there’s no fuel. While the authors do raise a general lament on the failure of cinema to faithfully follow science, they do provide some rationalization that the untruth or trope was necessary, whether to fit a timeframe or a budget. Perhaps most promising from this section of the book is that the authors indicate that the typical audience member has become much smarter. In consequence, writers put a lot more reality into their science and even the depiction of alien worlds.

Who knew that learning physics could be so much fun?

Overall, the first third of the book is a fairly light, simple read with not so many science boxes. At about a third of the way in, however, the book transitions from being a discussion of cinema entertainment, with particular attention to its science, and becomes a discussion of science with reference to cinema. Here the science boxes are more detailed and numerous. They assess the possibility of using material from the Earth to kick-start a failing Sun, as done in a movie. Or, the likelihood of the Earth’s Moon being kicked out of the solar system, also done. And there’s much detail on the holy grail of science cinema, the faster than light transportation, as happens in most science fiction cinema.

Reading through this part of the book may bring you right back to your science classes of yore and their laws and rules. That is, it will if your science classes included quantum mechanics, parallel universes and wormholes. Here in the book things get really weird as today’s science has yet to faithfully prescribe the laws. Thus, the authors introduce a whole field of science, add current investigations and then associate the science with somewhat related relevant films. Perhaps, when the science gets this challenging, then it’s a good thing that entertaining cinema can come along and at least introduce the ideas to the general public.

With all the attention that the authors give to the science in this book, the reader will quickly appreciate that the book is not just a simple list of cinema bloopers. Rather, the book’s details provide enough depth of knowledge to allow the reader to hold their own at lunch time conversations when the topic swings around to the science in the latest show or movie. Perhaps it may induce the reader to do a bit more exploring and learning, especially as many current films feature a website that defines the science, the tropes and the conceits. However, cinema is for entertainment and the authors must realize the same holds for their book. So as much as this book has lots of hard science, the authors still keep the book entertaining.

And entertainment is mostly what we want, whether from cinema or books. So even if explosions in space come with a loud bang on the sound track or people fly without space suits up and around the Moon, we the audience are content if we are entertained and we haven’t hit the ‘Oh please!’ moment. If you want to know more about this moment, take a look at the book “Hollyweird Science – From Quantum Quirks to the Multiverse” by Kevin Grazier and Stephen Cass. From it, you can make up your own mind on just what you’re ready to accept as entertaining and what is just too much expectation by the storyteller.

The book is available through Springer at this link.

Moisture Vaporators, Death Star Construction and Other Real Star Wars Tech

X-wing fighter flies by Earth? Actually, it is the ATV2 (Johannes Kepler) as it departs the ISS in 2011. Credit: NASA/Ron Garan

Remember that time an X-Wing fighter flew past the International Space Station? Or when R2D2 saved the ISS crew?

OK, yeah, those things didn’t really happen, but since the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, there has been a lot of technology developed that mimics the science and tech from the sci-fi blockbuster films. Of course, we now have real robots in space (Robonaut), drones are now everyday items, there are actual holograms (Voxiebox and Fairy Lights) and DARPA has been developing prosthetic limbs that Luke Skywalker would totally use, called the Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET). Plus, Boeing is building blaster guns that will use “pew-pew” sound effects from Star Wars. Seriously. The lasers are silent, and so they need to add sound to know for sure they’ve been fired.

Since we all certainly have Star Wars on the brain today (The Force Awakens opens tonight), let’s take a look at a few recent space-related developments that hint of inspiration from the movies:
Continue reading “Moisture Vaporators, Death Star Construction and Other Real Star Wars Tech”

Radio waves absent from the reputed megastructure-encompassed Kepler star?

Radio observations were carried out from the Allen Telescope Array of the reputed megastructure-encompassed star KIC 8462852.

Astronomers at the SETI institute (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) have reported their findings after monitoring the reputed megastructure-encompassed star KIC 8462852.  No significant radio signals were detected in observations carried out from the Allen Telescope Array between October 15-30th (nearly 12 hours each day).  However, there are caveats, namely that the sensitivity and frequency range were limited, and gaps existed in the coverage (e.g., between 6-7 Ghz).

Lead author Gerald Harp and the SETI team discussed the various ideas proposed to explain the anomalous Kepler brightness measurements of KIC 8462852, “The unusual star KIC 8462852 studied by the Kepler space telescope appears to have a large quantity of matter orbiting quickly about it. In transit, this material can obscure more than 20% of the light from that star. However, the dimming does not exhibit the periodicity expected of an accompanying exoplanet.”  The team went on to add that, “Although natural explanations should be favored; e.g., a constellation of comets disrupted by a passing star (Boyajian et al. 2015), or gravitational darkening of an oblate star (Galasyn 2015), it is interesting to speculate that the occluding matter might signal the presence of massive astroengineering projects constructed in the vicinity of KIC 8462582 (Wright, Cartier et al. 2015).”

One such megastructure was discussed in a famous paper by Freeman Dyson (1960), and subsequently designated a ‘Dyson Sphere‘.  In order to accommodate an advanced civilisation’s increasing energy demands, Dyson remarked that, “pressures will ultimately drive an intelligent species to adopt some such efficient exploitation of its available resources. One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star.”  Dyson further proposed that a search be potentially conducted for artificial radio emissions stemming from the vicinity of a target star.



An episode of Star Trek TNG featured a memorable discussion regarding a ‘Dyson Sphere‘.

The SETI team summarized Dyson’s idea by noting that Solar panels could serve to capture starlight as a source of sustainable energy, and likewise highlighted that other, “large-scale structures might be built to serve as possible habitats (e.g., “ring worlds”), or as long-lived beacons to signal the existence of such civilizations to technologically advanced life in other star systems by occluding starlight in a manner not characteristic of natural orbiting bodies (Arnold 2013).”  Indeed, bright variable stars such as the famed Cepheid stars have been cited as potential beacons.



The Universe Today’s Fraser Cain discusses a ‘Dyson Sphere‘.

If a Dyson Sphere encompassed the Kepler catalogued star, the SETI team were seeking in part to identify spacecraft that may service a large structure and could be revealed by a powerful wide bandwidth signal.  The team concluded that their radio observations did not reveal any significant signal stemming from the star (e.g., Fig 1 below).  Yet as noted above, the sensitivity was limited to above 100 Jy and the frequency range was restricted to 1-10 Ghz, and gaps existed in that coverage.

Fig 1 from Harp et al. 2015 (http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.01606) indicating the lack of signal detected for the Kepler star (black symbols).
Fig 1 from Harp et al. (2015) conveys the lack of radio waves emerging from the star KIC 8462852 (black symbols), however there were sensitivity and coverage limitations (see text).  The signal emerging from the quasar 3c84 is shown via blue symbols.

What is causing the odd brightness variations seen in the Kepler star KIC 8462852?   Were those anomalous variations a result of an unknown spurious artefact from the telescope itself, a swath of comets temporarily blocking the star’s light, or perhaps something more extravagant.  The latter should not be hailed as the de facto source simply because an explanation is not readily available.  However, the intellectual exercise of contemplating the technology advanced civilisations could construct to address certain needs (e.g., energy) is certainly a worthy venture.

First Looks at The Martian Revealed

The Martian. Image credit: 20th Century Fox

Alert: mild spoilers lie ahead, as we’ll be discussing minor plot points of the book The Martian. What, you haven’t read it yet? Have you been stranded on Mars? Don’t make us pull your geek card…

Never mind The Avengers or the seventh installment of the Star Wars franchise… some early stills from the big screen adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian have been circulating around ye ole web as of late, and we like what we see.

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Mars population: 1.  Image credit: 20th Century Fox/Empire

Self-published in 2012 and lauded for its scientific accuracy, The Martian follows the exploits of astronaut Marc Watney (played by Matt Damon in the upcoming film) as he struggles to stay alive on Mars. Watney must rally every bit of scientific expertise at his command to accomplish everything from growing food to establishing communications to surviving the disco music and bad 70s TV left behind by fellow crew members.

The 20 Century Fox film adaptation is directed by Ridley Scott (of Alien and Blackhawk Down fame) and promises to have a ‘successful failure’ vibe in the tradition of Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. Heck, reading The Martian, we simply love how it breaks the convention advocated at innumerable writing workshops that exposition is somehow always bad. Engineering and science geeks want to peek under the hood, and see what makes that warp drive tick. The Martian breaks very few rules when it comes to getting the science right, and there’s high hopes that this will translate well on the big screen.

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Stranded on the Red Planet… Image credit: 20th Century Fox/Empire 

From the design of Watney’s Mars excursion suit to the expedition rover he uses to cross the Martian terrain, we’re seeing lots of actual NASA designs being incorporated into the production.

“NASA was very involved in consulting for the film,” author Andy Weir told Universe Today. “The production got numerous people in both NASA and JPL involved and listened very closely to what they had to say.”

One of our favorite bits from the book is where Watney must use the rising and setting of the twin Martian moons Phobos and Deimos for a rough dead reckoning while travelling over the open Martian terrain. It’s a terrific scene with some possibilities for some great panoramic vistas, and we hope it survives into the film adaptation.

We also hope that the first NASA rover to roll across the soils of Mars (hint: it wasn’t Curiosity, Spirit or Opportunity) makes an appearance in the movie, as it did in the book.

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Matt Damon on the set of The Martian. Image credit: 20th Century Fox/Empire

The current release date set by 20th Century Fox is November 27, 2015 and Mr. Weir noted that we may be seeing the very first trailers for The Martian very soon, possibly in the June time frame.

And did you know? The cover for the script for The Martian—complete with early conceptual sketches by director Ridley Scott—actually flew aboard last year’s EFT-1 mission to test the Orion capsule in space.

Image credit: 20th Century Fox
The cover of the draft of the script for The Martian that flew on EFT-1. Click here for the full image (warning for rough language) Image credit: 20th Century Fox

Unlike trendy dystopian futures that are all the rage these days, The Martian depicts an optimistic future, a time where budgetary woes have been overcome and humans are living and working on Mars. This may well have been the true reason that the novel resonated so well throughout the science and space community: it conveys a message of a future that we all hope will be a reality in our lifetimes.

We even see a direct sci-fi lineage between The Martian and the classic 1954 science fiction tale The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. The universe is indeed out to kill us, and only science can save the day.

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The cast of The Martian. Image credit: 20th Century Fox/People

It’ll be interesting to see if The Martian becomes the breakout hit of 2015. Also starring Michael Pena, Mackenzie David, Sean Bean, Donald Glover, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Jessica Chastain, The Martian features an all-star cast. We’re also curious to know if the film will have a disco soundtrack, but the author isn’t telling.

Much of the Mars-scapes for The Martian are being filmed in the deserts of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan. We traversed this region during our global backpacking trek in early 2007 and can attest that it is suitably Martian in appearance, though of course, we’ve yet to journey to the Red Planet… Weir’s book and the upcoming film will have to suffice for now.

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A NASA spokesperson played by Kristin Wiig. Image credit: 20th Century Fox/People 

Wadi Rum also simulated Mars in the films Red Planet and The Last Days on Mars.

We’ll definitely be waiting in line come opening day!

Check out this exclusive interview with The Martian author Andy Weir in the recent Weekly Spacehangout:

 

See more images from The Martian courtesy of Empire, Entertainment Weekly and People magazine.

Sci-Fi Book Review: “Elsewhen”

Elsewhen is a story about star-crossed young lovers, a love story for science fiction fans. Conceived when author/actor Gary Bullock was working at a radio astronomy site, Elsewhen follows the path of Elijah (‘Lije’) and Laura Bess, two child prodigies who fall head-over-heels in love before tragedy strikes and tears them apart. But for Lije and Laura, it seems that True Love might be able to thwart even fate…

Concepts from the more poetic end of theoretical physics are liberally peppered among the pages—musings on the directionality of time, for example—but this is by no means ‘hard’ science fiction. Scientific complexity level is about equivalent to the first Thor movie, so if you don’t know your bosons from your fermions, don’t despair.

Blending physics with a love story might seem like a difficult line to walk, but Bullock does a respectable job with his 118-page novella. Bullock’s career appears to have wended from screen writing to writing novels, and indeed, Elsewhen reads kind of like a screenplay—which I mean as both praise and as a critique.

On the side of praise, there is a good kind of inertia to the book. The plotline barrels along at a cracking pace, and given the length of the novella, it’s quite possible that you might read this cover to cover in a single night. But on the flip side, I wanted this novel to be longer. Several concepts and (particularly) characters were only loosely sketched out before the plotline whisked away to the next development.

The brevity led to my two main problems with the book. First of all, some key characters are bald rehashes of literary tropes. Some character development earlier in the novel could have, for example, fleshed out the villains in the story to make them more human and relatable.

Second, I craved more depth from the story. The many fantastical elements of the storyline open up the main characters in discussion of various concepts of philosophy and metaphysics, and I felt that more exposition here would have led to a more interesting read (and probably would have also helped with the character development problem). However, this may be less a critique of Elsewhen, and more a problem of my expectations going into this novel.

These issues aside, Elsewhen is a fun book with a clever premise. For the price of a cup of coffee, it’s easy enough to recommend for a light read.

Elsewhen is available on Amazon, Itunes and Audible.

Here’s a “trailer” for the book:

Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy Leaves a Lasting Legacy

Leonard Nimoy with SETI astronomer Frank Drake on September 8, 1994. Seth Shostak, also from SETI, was the photographer. Image courtesy the Drake family.

Leonard Nimoy played a half-alien-half-human character — Spock — who seemingly was going to live forever. He survived having his brain removed, being bitten by a deadly alien creature and other harrowing experiences. Later, he actually did give his life to save his crew but was resurrected. And he was transported through time in the Star Trek universe to spend his life across hundreds of years. But the very human Nimoy died earlier today at age 83, leaving a legacy of not just an enduring science fiction character, but the generations of scientists and explorers he inspired.

Nimoy had been hospitalized earlier in the week and his agent confirmed his death on February 27, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year and attributed it to years of smoking, a habit he had quit nearly 30 years ago.

Nimoy was active on social media, and for the past couple of months, he seemed to be sending farewell messages to his fans with words of wisdom and sentiment that ended with “LLAP” — “live long and prosper” — a phrase made famous by Nimoy and his character Spock:

Now, following the announcement of his passing there has been an outpouring of sentiments for Nimoy and his character on social media, with expressions of how Nimoy inspired generations to look up and reach for the final frontier.

Journalist Nadia Drake shared her memories and provided Universe Today with the lead image for this article:

The Spock character was known for Vulcan logic and pointy ears, and Nimoy was a favorite with Star Trek fans of all ages. Nimoy not only appeared in the original Star Trek but he reprised his role in later Trek incarnations. He appeared in a total of eight Star Trek movies, and three different Star Trek series (original, animated and Star Trek: the Next Generation).

In addition to Star Trek, Nimoy appeared in “The Twilight Zone,” “Mission Impossible,” “THEM!” “The Brain Eaters,” “Sea Hunt,” “The Outer Limits,” “Get Smart,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Night Gallery,” and was host of “In Search Of.” He also wrote two autobiographies (“I Am Not Spock” and “I am Spock,”) wrote and performed on 5 albums (one was titled, “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space,”) was a photographer and poet, contributed to vocal acting, and directed 6 feature films, including “Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home,” and “Three Men and a Baby.”

He is survived by his wife, Susan, as well as two children and six grandchildren from his first marriage to Sandra Zober.

Spock has now reached the final frontier. Tonight we’ll toast his legacy of the “good of the many.”

How To Experience ‘Zero Gravity’ Without Leaving Home: Virtual Reality

Still from a video short previewing "Weightless", a virtual-reality experience showing how to play with objects in a microgravity environment. Credit: Martin Schubert/YouTube (screenshot)

If you don’t have a few thousand dollars to spend on a “Vomit Comet” ride, and especially if you can’t afford to buy a ticket for a future weightless joyride in a spacecraft, virtual reality remains the best option to “experience” weightlessness.

There’s a new game available for the virtual-reality headset Oculus Rift that lets people play with objects in microgravity to see what happens next.

Called “Weightless”, the game appears to have a person zooming around a sort of space station and playing with things including pill bottles and cubes, seeing how they spin and soar without gravity’s pull weighing them down. (Note that the author does not have an Oculus Rift and could not test the game out for this article.)

“I wanted the player to have an experience that’s only possible in VR [virtual reality],” wrote creator Martin Schubert on the game’s webpage. “That means taking advantage of the ability to look around in any direction and having good spatial awareness. This led to investigating a weightless environment that allowed freedom of movement in any direction.”

Schubert wrote that the game is available in prototype form for the Oculus Rift DK2, and is best used with a head-mounted Leap Motion finger-tracking sensor. Bear in mind that the Oculus is still very much a prototype gaming platform, but that being said, the experience looks like a lot of fun for those of us lucky to have one. You can learn more about the hardware requirements and download information here.

Our Space Future Is Terrific And Terrifying, New Sci-Fi Short Says

A still from the short film "Cinema Space Tribute", which combines several science-fiction films to portray different visions of space. Credit: Max Shishkin/Vimeo (screenshot)

This new space film called “Cinema Space Tribute” combines visions from several sci-fi franchises to show us what space exploration could look like. Will we gracefully explore the moons of Jupiter and far space? Or is it more a reality where we fear the death that lurks behind every action?

Max Shiskin pulls together an impressive list of franchises to show us some fictional versions of space exploration. Backdropped by the soundtrack for Interstellar, you see quick glimpses of ships from Star Trek and Battlestar: Galactica and Star Wars and many more. He even throws in some you might not think of right away, like Man of Steel and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

There are some neat synergies between the franchises, including a seeming obsession with circles, that Shiskin also shows off in the video. It’s definitely worth four minutes of your time to watch.

 

New ‘Star Wars’ Trailer A Force Among Fans — And An Inspiration For Lego Parody

A still from the first Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens trailer, released in November 2014. Credit: Lucasfilm/Bad Robot/Walt Disney Pictures/MOVIECLIPS Trailers/YouTube (screenshot)

Just how fast can X-wings hope of Star Wars fans go? In the first day since the new Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens trailer was released, the YouTube channel racked up more than 19 million views, inspiring discussion about how good the new films could be. You can watch the trailer above.

Below (with minor spoilers) is a roundup of the coverage and a cute Lego-inspired parody from a fan.

Entertainment Weekly published seven things that Star Wars fans have learned from the trailer, including the fact that no outer space is featured (!), none of the old-time stars are present yet (why?) and how the new lightsaber actually has a Game of Thrones look.

Ars Technica declared the trailer “definitely looks like Star Wars” because it includes the familiar elements we have been accustomed to since 1977, ranging from stormtroopers to the Millennium Falcon. “One of the challenges … in reviving the Star Wars movie franchise is winning over hardcore fans and washing away the bad taste of the critically reviled prequel films, and there’s no better way to start doing that than by appealing to nostalgia,” the mini-review read.

The Verge cleverly finds a Lego-themed parody of the Star Wars trailer and appears to like the bricked lightsaber more than the one showed in the trailer. And yes, the famous bricks are important to the franchise due to the immensely popular Lego video game series based on Star Wars.

IGN covers what it considers “the major talking points” of the trailer, including the fact that we’re on Tatooine, John Boyega “looks a little anxious” for a stormtrooper, and questions about some of the junk lurking in the background of one of the shots.

Business Insider finds the ultimate Easter egg for Star Wars fans. No, we’re not going to spoil the surprise — you’re going to have to click through to see it.

The Telegraph collects a bunch of fake trailers for those who haven’t had enough of the real thing. You can see one of them below.

Star Wars Fanpedia fulfills our destiny for even MORE fan-made trailers. Expect to see more as the release date comes up in about a year.

Mashable has some amusing asides based on what we see in the trailer. Our favorite: “There’s one piece of writing in the trailer, on the X-wing pilot’s uniform, written in the language of the Star Wars universe, known as Aurebesh. And what does it say? Star Wars nerds had that answer almost immediately: ‘Pull to inflate.’ ”

Carscoops watches the trailer with perhaps the best unique angle ever: what if the characters had to drive cars? What would they look like?

Darth Vader, Renaissance Man? How ‘Star Wars’ Could Have Looked Centuries Ago

Darth Vader, a major character from 'Star Wars', imagined as a Renaissance gentleman. Credit: Sacha Goldberger

You underestimate the power of Dark Side fashion. Imagine for a moment that Darth Vader was around during the same time as say, the ostentatious Louis XIV (the “Sun King” who had a fancy court at Versailles palace in France). If Vader was a high-society gentleman, or at least masking (ha!) as one, what could he have looked like?

Photographer Sacha Goldberger recently put several ‘Star Wars’ characters in this historic time period as part of an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. As this Facebook gallery shows, the results are amusing and potentially frightening (most prevalently with Chewbacca.)

Goldberger doesn’t stop with these characters, either. You’ll see others from the Batman franchise, Alice in Wonderland and even that famous caped hero, Superman. The credits just above the images hint that even more characters were on display in the gallery than what are available on the website.

It’s too bad this cosplay came just after Hallowe’en, as this presents some potentially awesome ideas for future costumes. For those who couldn’t make the fair where Goldberger exhibited, you can take a virtual tour here and also learn more about it on the official website.

Learn more about Goldberger at his website and his Facebook page.

(h/t Kotaku)