Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
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Using Movies to Teach Science
March 13th, 2009
This is a favorite topic of mine. I love stories and I love science, and science fiction movies combine these.
Unfortunately one or the other usually suffers from the combination. Still, for the purposes of education, getting the science wrong can be as instructive as getting it right, if not more so.
I have been giving public talks and class lectures for years using movie scenes, primarily from science fiction films. I’m not opposed to using more mainstream films, but science issues don’t come up so frequently as we know how things are supposed to happen here on Earth and mostly things are right. When they’re not right, it’s usually obvious fantasy anyway and not a good example to use.
Some of my favorite movie scenes for physics involve artificial gravity. 2001 A Space Odyssey does a great job of getting realistic gravity from spinning a ship or space station, while Armageddon somehow gets almost everything wrong, and even school children can figure it out. Things are shown to estimate scale, and you can get some real numbers for how strong the gravity should be and in what direction.
Another topic that comes up a lot is what happens when someone is exposed to vacuum. Again, 2001 gets it pretty much right, as do some other movies and even TV shows like Battlestar Galactica. I seem to recall someone blowing up in Outland, although I haven’t seen it in years, and the super-tough aliens in the Alien movies seem to pop whenever there’s the slightest whiff of vacuum.
Contact and Apollo 13 are pretty scientifically accurate movies that do a lot of things right and have some illustrative scenes. Deep Impact is better than Armageddon, but still has some boners that are good to learn from. There are some very basic scientific concepts, like chaos theory and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that movies like Jurassic Park and the Matrix don’t seem to understand.
Anyway, I am giving another talk on this topic next week and here in Brazil I have a more limited suite of movies than normal. I’ve already bought a lot of DVDs here, and I can find some more things on You Tube, but I thought I’d get some input from you about the things you’d like to see. A year and a half ago I gave one talk here on this topic, and this one I want to get into more physics. I am sure I will do gravity in the 2001 space station, getting the audience to help estimate numbers from the film, and I will for sure talk about what happens if you get tossed out an airlock, but beyond that I am still thinking.
Below I have some ideas for some things to show and discuss. Let me know which ones you like and feel free to suggest others, especially if there is a You Tube video to go with it (leave a link, and bonus for a Portuguese version!). Pick up to five. I’d love to get some new ideas, so get creative.
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hey Mike, where are you giving this talk? Is it open to anyone? You wont require volunteers to test the “humans in vacuum” theories, will you?
This will be at UFRGS at 4pm, the campus out in the valley. I think you could wander in if you can make it here ok. Be nice to meet you finally!
If you want to add a bit more reality to the 2001 talk, y’might want to check out the work of the lab next door to mine: http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/vestibular/Welcome.html
Hamish’s stuff is probably the most directly applicable; he does a fair bit of work with NASA.
Microgravity plays hell with the vestibulo-ocular reflex (the thing that lets you keep your eyes locked onto a fixed point even though your head is constantly moving), and rotationally-created artificial grav tends to be spectacularly nauseogenic (the “vestibular coriolis effect” plays a role there, IIRC) unless you slow the rotation down to impractical levels (rpm’s in the low single figures).
Yeah, the rule of thumb I try to stick with to avoid making everyone sick is slower than 1 rpm or so. If I recall correctly, that’s about what the space station in 2001 does, although I am sure the rotating area on Discovery has to be terrible this way, being so very small.
Ummmm, which Alien movies were you watching, Mike?
In Ridley Scott’s, the Alien snags the engine with it’s tail and crawls inside after getting blown out of the Narcissus, then remains pretty much intact after Ripley punches the ignition switch. No poppage there.
In Cameron’s, the Queen also remains intact as she sails off from the Sulaco’s airlock.
I thought Red Planet was one of the better space movies I’ve seen. They did cheese up some things for dramatic effect, but a good portion of the movie was scientifically sound. A good movie to show the isolation in space (much like Apollo 13), and that if the smallest thing goes wrong, a Herculean effort may be necessary to get out.
Really, Chris? Have I gotten that old that I’ve forgotten this much crap? I just watched the movie a year and a half ago…and the last scene 30 seconds ago, and they don’t agree!
You’re right!
Well, Alien: Resurrection looked ridiculous at least…
I’m going to see if I can dig up Outland or Mission to Mars to contrast to 2001 for the what happens in vacuum stuff then!
Christopher, I have Red Planet back in the States and have shown a couple of scenes as good examples (the spin for gravity, the zero-gee fire, the slow falling on Mars). I agree, it is surprisingly good about the science.
I think there is something to be mined from The Arrival.
The short-lived 1995 TV series “Space Above and Beyond” is a gold mine of shoddy science. The five or so episodes will give you more than enough for a thesis. Some of the technobabble is simply mind-numbing. Ouch.
shah8, I had a class watch The Arrival last year and I should really have blogged about the science issues there. There weren’t as many as I would have liked, but there were some items of interest.
Wolf, I remember watching and liking that series when it aired, but I wasn’t as critical in the day and I did recognize it was the WW II pacific theater in space and not much more than that.
Glad I could help clear the cobwebs, Mike!
Chris Johnston, cobweb cleaner…looking into the seldom-used corners of your brain so you don’t have to!
Red Planet gets the structure of DNA wrong and refers to what is clearly an insect as a nematode (which is a roundworm). From the biology side, these are high-school level science blunders. But they are good for teaching. When I’ve shown the clips in freshman biology classes, they’re always good for a laugh.
Yes, you’re right, Bill! I mostly keep my criticisms on the physical sciences where I know I’m an expert. I know some biology, but not usually well enough to heckle movies about it.
Here’s Seth Shostak’s take on Red Planet:
http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/red_planet_review_001113.html
Well, in that original script for Red Planet, the nematodes are described as worm-like.
(And, are we only allowed one post per day?)
Post away! I’m not into rules…
Well, I just emailed you the comment I’ve tried three times throughout the day to post, that was supposed to come right after the “cobwebs” one.
It wouldn’t show up, and when I tried the second time I got a “duplicate post” error message.
What the hey!
Hmm, you seem to be coming through now, so good! Internet weirdness. WordPress seems pretty good overall, but I still find some annoying things that make no sense. Maybe you stumbled over another for some reason.
Maybe WordPress is a fan of Mission to Mars over Red Planet and is showing a bias???
Mike: how big would a spaceship have to be to get 1g of fake grav out of a 1rpm rotation?
It’s in the ballpark of the 2001 space station. Acceleration due to rotation is given by v^2/r. 1 rpm is the circumference times the velocity divided by 1 minute (60 seconds). And one Earth gravity, 1g, is 9.8 meters per second squared, but let us round it to 10 meters per second squared.
So, that means that the radius = v^2 (in meters per second) divided by 10m/s^2, and that the velocity is 1/60 divided by 2*pi*radius. Let’s do everything in meters and seconds.
Going through the math gives me about 2400 meters or about a mile and a half for the radius.
We haven’t done artificial gravity space stations yet because it’s more complicated than not rotating, and you do need to make them relatively big.
lets not forget that the size factor of a rotating space station has another advantage: the smaller the space station, the largest the difference of artificial g on a smaller distance scale.
meaning, in a small enough space station, you can have your feet at 1 g but your head in much smaller gee. Or the “bottom” floor can have one gee and you get up the stairs and you have lunar gravity already.
lets build a space elevator. Then we can surely build the big space stations like the ones from 2001.
btw Mike, I think you forgot to say the DAY of the talk, or maybe I am missing it. Thanks.
Do you have the adress of the Valley Campus? gee, I hope they let me in!
Those are some good movie choices. I saw this mash up video of Science films that can be used for teaching on youtube. You can see it here:
http://youtu.be/edIWoS2jqpM