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2003
SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
DAREDEVIL (2003)
I have no problem with almost everything here. Who knows, maybe some
odd side effect to toxic waste could produce a good mutation instead
of the much more likely bad ones.
The only genuine mistake involves
the Daredevil's ability to dodge bullets because he hears them coming.
I'm sorry, but no. Bullets travel faster than the speed of sound.
They would arrive at your skull before the sound got to your ear. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
X-MEN 2 (2003)
I want to say something about physics and biology (which,
like all sciences, is a mere subset of physics). Biology
first. Narration and conversation at several points make references
to mutants being the next stage in evolution and they
compare their situation with the conflict between Neanderthals
and Cro-Magnons. Both points of view are inaccuracies based on the
common misconception that evolution is some mysterious force driving
life toward greater intelligence and that we (and
now mutants) are the pinnacles of that achievement. In fact,
evolution could care less how smart you are. All evolution cares
about is how good you are at reproducing. If being dumber helped,
then each generation dumber people would produce more offspring
until the human species was gradually replaced by a less intelligent
breed (Hey, wait a minute
).
Thus, being
able to freeze things like Iceman does is great fun but if it doesnt
help you get a date or support your offspring to make sure they
survive long enough to breed, then evolution doesnt apply.
And the Neanderthal
/ Cro-Magnon situation is spurious as well. When modern humans entered
Europe 30,000 years ago the Neanderthal had been living there already
for at least 100,000 years. Within 5,000 years of our arrival the
Neanderthal were gone. This wasnt a war or anything
we simply out bred them. We were better able to compete for resources
(because we were smarter, but that parts
still disputed) and generation by generation they declined
and we increased. The situation in the movie doesnt fit the
details very well.
And now the
physics. The fact is the powers possessed by these mutants clearly
violates one of the most hallowed rules of science: The Conservation
of Mass and Energy (Neither mass nor energy
can be created or destroyed merely change form). In
other words, where does the energy come from for Jean Greys
telekinesis or Storms movement of huge masses of air? Are
these things impossible?
No. But you
have to assume that the basis for all mutant power is the ability
to tap into some unknown energy source. What it is and what dimension
it exists in is a mystery but if you assume its existence you can
explain everything else.
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE MATRIX RELOADED (2003)
I was pleased to see no attempt to add to the ridiculous idea mentioned
in the first film that the machines are using their unwitting human
slaves as a power source. That's just plain stupid for a long
list of reasons and they wisely skipped over it here. On the other
hand a lot of the computer references are as ancient as Tron. The
story centers around a plan to get into the enemy mainframe,
an idea right out of the 70s. Have these artificial intelligence
programs not heard of distributed networks? Like, for example, the
Internet? The Internet has no central computer, nor
does it need one. I find it hard to believe that these vastly more
advanced computers would take such a giant step backwards. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE
CORE (2003)
Now, I'm not going to discuss the magical underground drillship.
A half-crazy lone scientist inventing something essentially impossible is a staple of science
fiction so that's fine. But I do have a problem when the movie
makes scientific sounding statements that are just plain wrong.
Here are the high points:
1. If there
really were solar microwaves being held off by the Earth's
magnetic field, why didn't they cook the Apollo astronauts
when they ventured beyond the field's coverage? Why isn't
Mars being cooked, since it hasn't got much of a field? The
answer is that the sun doesn't produce much in the way of microwaves
and that what it does produce isn't stopped by our magnetic
field anyway. A magnetic field can only affect the paths of charged
particles like protons and electrons. It has no effect at all on
electromagnetic radiation like microwaves or visible light or ultraviolet
light. Its our atmosphere not our magnetic field
that filters out the harmful parts of the suns radiative output.
2. The inner
core of the Earth is a ball of crystalline iron about 2400 kilometers
in diameter. A good way to get a feel for how much energy would
actually be required to get it spinning again if it stopped can
be found from calculating the rotational energy it has right now.
This is the rotational equivalent of kinetic energy: the energy
of motion. Plugging in the numbers reveals that the inner core has
a rotational energy of 385 trillion trillion joules. Thats
equivalent to 96 billion megatons of TNT, so the mere 1000 megatons
worth of nukes they bring along is about 100 million times too small.
3. Many times
in the Earths past the magnetic field has reversed its polarity,
making the south pole the north pole and vice versa. During these
field reversals (just the field flips
not the Earth itself) there are intervals of a few thousand
years where the field collapses completely and the Earth has no
magnetic field to speak of. None of these incidents resulted in
the Earth being cooked by microwaves, and the fossil record doesnt
show any evidence of mass extinctions during these times. The biosphere
survived just fine.
4. An overlooked
effect has to do with gravity. The deeper you penetrated into the
Earth, the less Earth thered be below you and thus the less
of a gravitational pull youd feel.
5. If you have
a bomb, and you put a pile of explosives next to it, that will make
the total explosion bigger. However if you have a nuclear bomb and
you put a pile of plutonium next to it, that will only be a waste
of plutonium. Nukes just dont work that way.
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
28
DAYS LATER (2003)
At first I thought the fast acting nature of the infection was a
bit contrived but the more I thought about this, the easier it turns
out to be. Consider that there are many drugs (and
poisons) that can have an almost immediate effect upon reaching
your blood stream. Now imagine such a fast-acting drug that turns
you into an enraged monster (maybe a variation
on PCP). It is probably within our technological ability
to genetically engineer an existing bacterium to manufacture this
drug.
Now put it
all together. A blood-infecting bacteria strain that makes the rage
drug as soon as it hits your blood stream. Infected blood splashes
your face during a struggle and the bacteria is in through your
mucous membranes. Suddenly you want to kill, kill, KILL! We could probably do it.
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
CABIN
FEVER (2003)
The monster in this monster movie is a member of the Streptococcus
family, but you may know it better as the flesh eating bacteria.
It's quite rare but when it does happen it usually enters the
body through a cut or other injury. Once in the blood stream it
infects the muscles and fat just beneath the skin and produces toxins
that dissolve the flesh in a process called necrotizing fasciitis
(Be careful if you google those words, by
the way, because you'll probably end up seeing some of the
grossest medical photos ever taken). This is a life threatening
infection and treatment usually involves immediate amputation of
infected body parts.
And yes, the
movie mostly gets the details right. This infection really isnt
very communicable (unless an infected bleeds
into some elses open wound) but these kids aint
exactly rocket scientists so their ignorance (and
terror about getting the disease) is very believable.
And the way they get infected is basically believable, although
it requires some criminal negligence.
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
ARACHNIA (2003)
Giant
spiders violate the square-cube law in the sense that spiders as
big as horses wouldnt be able to support their own weight
and would have a long list of internal problems like not being able
to absorb enough oxygen to survive. But when the snooty professor
is first told about (but hasnt yet seen)
the big spiders, he snootily points out exactly those facts! Later,
when we learn that the giant spiders are some unknown underground
species, all thats left for me or the snooty professor to
say is that its really unlikely but not impossible. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE
MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS (2003)
There
is a very brief scene where a ship piloted by the good guys gets
above ground and then, just for a moment, above the perpetual cloud
cover. Trinity sees the sun for real, probably for the first time
in her life. The sunny, beautiful world above the clouds is a huge
contrast to the grim horror below. But it's also more proof
that the whole using people as batteries idea (that's
what we are told the machines are using people for: electricity)
is stupid. Totally aside from the simple fact that burning the food
you're feeding these people would provide more power than you'd
ever get from their body heat (humans are
poor heat engines), just a few miles up youve got as
much solar energy as you want. The tech these machines have is plenty
for solar cell covered blimps or solar power satellites. I don't
know what they're using people for, but it ain't electricity. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)
There
is a scene where we discover that Nemo's great submarine is solar
powered. Yeah, you heard me. Now that's not quite as stupid as it
seems because they mention this when the sub is on the surface,
charging its batteries with solar energy. But why would Hollywood
writers choose solar power when (nuclear)
there is a much more (nuclear) obvious
choice (nuclear) that the U.S. Navy
has been (nuclear) using for many decades
(nuclear)? Who can say? My guess is
that solar energy, while perhaps not the most obvious choice as
a submarine power source, was the most politically correct choice.
And by the way: in the original Jules Verne story Nemo's sub was
powered by extracting electrolytes from the water. That wouldn't
work but it still makes more sense than a solar powered submarine. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
PAYCHECK (2003)
The idea
of any kind of "memory marker" artificially set in the
brain is something I'm pretty
sure wouldn't work, given that memories are stored holographically
rather than linearly but maybe they learned a way around that. I
have to be careful because I don't want to ruin the surprise of
what Michael was working on. All I'll say is that although current
thinking on the topic would not allow the idea in question to work,
the whole subject is sufficiently in flux that I'm fine with a future
discovery making it workable. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
THE HULK (2003)
There
are a lot of violations of basic physics here (like
if a multi-ton creature can leap miles into the air then by virtue
of equal-and-opposite-reaction he should kick a huge crater into
the ground with each leap), but the most blatant is the transformation
itself. If an average-sized man triples in height then according
to the square-cube law his weight will be three cubed or 27 times
greater. That means he goes from 200 pounds to 5400 pounds (more
than 2 and a half tons!). Where does that mass come from?
Not from "accelerated cell growth" because cells don't
just appear from nowhere. To gain 5200 pounds you'd have to
eat more than 5200 pounds of food and let your body process that
raw material INTO more cells. That's not what happens
here. The mass just magically appears (and
then disappears when he changes back), a clear violation
of Conservation of Mass and Energy. Only magic can do that so this
is fantasy, not sci-fi. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
KING OF THE ANTS (2003)
There
is a standard plot device in thrillers involving turning on the
gas on a stove and either leaving a candle burning or waiting for
someone to light a match and thereby blow up a house in a huge fireball.
Very dramatic and it would sort of work. It's just that it would
take hours for the house to fill with gas this way, not the mere
minutes that's usually shown. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
TIME OF THE WOLF (2003)
I say
frustrating because, since the movie never explains what happened,
there's no science for me to analyze. If I had to guess I'd say
some kind of terrorist-released plague was the culprit but the fact
is it could be a lot of different things. Civilization is surprisingly
fragile. |
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