Comments on: Sunshine trailer is out

By: penny

penny — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 11:39:42 +0000

Of course, it would still take a long time for the energy to reach the
upper layers of the star—so we use mid 21 century physics to find a way for the black hole produced energy to turn into the emission of
neutrino like particles that don’t interact with standard matter–which let’s them travel at the speed of light until they decay ( say just after
long enough to reach the upper layers) into standard matter. String theory should give particles like that. Again, we appeal to knowledge gained after several decades of artifical microblackhole experiments at the
LHC.

Another point–it wasn’t necessary for the sun to be almost dead–a small reduction in its output ( call it a long period variable star) would
be enough to threaten the earth. And that could be the result of deep internal process change started LONG ago.

I could have written a much better movie–with accurate science, in my sleep. With no psychopathy, and lots about physics, the LHC, human culture adapting to the threat and the cooling, how the icarus ship was designed, and built ( there is where human ambivalence and religious
resistance can come in) and then the launching and the trip.

Penny

By: penny

penny — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:00:10 +0000

I saw it, and I walked out about two thirds in.
It was a horror movie–complete with bloody stabbings, people burned to death, an insane horribly burned psychopath etc.,
and it made me physically sick for two hours after I fled. I may never see another new
Hollywood science fiction movie, as the creators are clearly psychopaths.

By the way, here is a more sensible way to turn on a star: You create an artifical small
black hole and send it into the interior of the star using a wormhole.
Both the wormhole and the black hole are created using mid 21 century
knowledge of higher dimensional string theory learned at the LHC after 20 years. The black hole absorbs star matter and creates an alternative
energy source.
Penny

By: Max Tsukino

Max Tsukino — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 04:45:11 +0000

here in Mexico City the movie is on cinemas …

In my opinion, it’s not the average “science fiction” movie … I think that – in a way and maybe taking a lot of liberties – it could be some sort of equivalent of some science fiction books … think Asimov, Poul Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, etc …

I liked the movie, a lot …

it’s not The Core … not at all …

I think there would be some errors and bad astronomy … some people on the IMDB boards posted about them … (I won’t mention the comments, to avoid spoilers) … but I don’t think those are a serious crime …

I really hope for an entry about the movie … =)

By: CR

CR — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:51:22 +0000

Thanks, Gia, for enlightening us a bit better than the trailer did, without giving anything away. Now it sounds a little more believable… or less unbelievable… well, it sounds interesting. If the actors can get that excited about it, for the reasons you cited, it sounds at least worth a viewing!

By: Alex Whiteside

Alex Whiteside — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:49:46 +0000

Reading the blog explaination, it seems like a pretty well-thought-out if implausible premise. I mean, it’s the sort of thing Arthur C. Clarke got up to in a lot of his short stories. Of course it’s the MacGuffin rather than a serious plot point so they get away with more in accuracy than, say, a Michael Crichton novel where the science represented is one of the themes.

By: DennyMo

DennyMo — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:55:57 +0000

I agree with CR, the trailer made the movie look like a space-bound “Faces of Death”.

By: Gia

Gia — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 07:13:45 +0000

Hey Phil! I tried commenting the other day, but it seems it was eaten en route.

Yes, the premise *does* sound outrageous. Trust me when I say that the ‘mission to the Sun’ is to Sunshine what the ‘briefcase’ is to Pulp Fiction… It’s not like The Core (during which even my 10 year old son said ‘Wait! That’s not possible, is it?!’). It’s not like Event Horizon. It’s not a “disaster movie”. Don’t let the marketing people fool you…

The filmmakers (Alex Garland and Dany Boyle) want to use the film as a way to talk about science. They hired Brian Cox from CERN (my husband, actually) as science advisor. Brian admittedly had quite a time working out an explanation for why the Sun could be “dimming”. This is what he came up with.

The filmmakers are taking Brian around the world with them when they do press for the film so that he can talk to the world’s *film media* about science and CERN… which is no bad thing…

Both the filmmakers and the actors were so inspired and excited by their pre-filming scientific ‘education’ that one of the actors, Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Batman Begins, The Wind That Shakes the Barley) gave a talk at the Royal Society saying that he believes the work being done at CERN is ‘truly an heroic pursuit’.