BABloggee David Johnson tipped me off that a new mini-series just began filming in Canada. Called Impact, it will tell the incredibly realistic story of how a chunk of white dwarf will hit the Moon and set it hurtling toward Earth.
Uh, yeah.
You can’t make this stuff up. Wait! I mean, you have to make this stuff up:
Budgeted at $13 million, the effects-heavy “Impact” chronicles the aftermath of a meteor shower during which a piece of a dwarf star lodges itself in the moon. That triggers a series of anomalies on Earth, including cell phone service interruption, exaggerated tides and the occurrence of sporadic weightlessness.
Astrophysicist Alex Kinter (Elliott), with a help of a female astronomer, discover that the moon has been dislodged from its orbit and is on a collision course with Earth.
From the description, it’ll make Armageddon look like Shakespeare. I can’t wait to see it. I’ll tell Mrs. BA to remove all sharp object from the house first though, just to be safe.
If only I had included this scenario in my book! Golly, too late to add it. Shucks.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Wait, wait, wait….a meteor shower causes a piece of a dwarf to lodge in the moon???? And, and…..
Oh, never mind.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
All I can say is, wait, I can’t say that…this is a family friendly board!
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Gee, another reason not to watch television. I guess I will just read a book. When is that book due out again, Phil?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
C’mon, BA, be serious: if there weren’t such… hm… what can I call this kind of stuff? Sci-Fi isn’t sleazy enough anymore… anyhoo, if there wern’t such brickbusters what would you be writing about at Bad Astronomy?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Why must this film this crap in my country?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
let me see, and at the last minute, the moon will MISS the earth and go hurtling off into Deep Space on it’s own, carrying with it the intrepid astronauts manning our Moonbase?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I agree with Jorge, we need schlock like this to make fun of. Maybe it’s just the MSTie fan in me, but I’ll be sure to tune into this one.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
As is often the case, XKCD is ahead of the curve.
-Sean
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
… and here’s the link: http://xkcd.com/254/
-Sean
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Where does the “chunk” of white dwarf come from? If you break a chunk off a white dwarf (how would that even happen?), does it retain its properties or does it just explode since there’s no longer as much gravity for electron degeneracy pressure to compete with?
To be fair to the TV series in question, I had similar questions about the stability of dwarf star matter when The Doctor ran into those guys with the ship made out of dwarf star material in that little universe between N-space and E-space.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Jorge said:- what can I call this kind of stuff? Sci-Fi isn’t sleazy enough anymore
I’ve always made the distinction between Hard Sci-fi and Sci-fi. I say that to people and they get this goofy look and say ” Is that like Hardcore…?” and then I have to explain the difference between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
My god, they just… I… You can’t…
I’m 14, and I could explain everything wrong with that concept to the producers. I don’t think they will listen anyway.
Armaggedon is like Nature magazine compared to this BS.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Signed star Elliott looks a bit like Troy McClure on his close-up shot. And this movie summary sounds just like one Troy would kill to star in!
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
This summary reminds me of the book “Moonfall” by Jack McDevitt, in which a hypervelocity comet from outside the solar system smashes into the moon and totally disintegrates it, leaving enormous chunks of moon rock to fall down on the Earth, only this movie sounds even more ridiculous.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Damn Canadians
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
As I post this I have just read the first paragraph. And suddenly I’m reminded of Asteroid.
Let’s face it… The only good thing we canadians ever made is Porky.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Also sounds like Fritz Leiber’s “The Wanderer.” But I think they’re safe from being sued by McDevitt or Leiber. Who wants to go into a court of law and say under oath that this piece of offal resembles your work?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Is this from the producers of “The Core”?
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Someone has been smoking… I dunno… Dumbseed?
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Hey now, some Kids in the Hall episodes were brilliant.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
You thought blackholes sucked.
I also like to remind people that battlestar galactica, the two stargate series and many other series are filmed here.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
…Stargate was filmed in Canada?
Great. Now I hate my country even more. Thanks a lot. <_<
…PORKY!!!
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Man, that sounds like a SciFi Channel Saturday night movie plot if ever I heard one. I mean, come on, has anyone seen some of the movies that the Sci-Fi channel tries to push off on us? “Mansquito”, “Man Snake”, and “Anonymous Rex” to name just a few.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:28 pm
How can you hate Stargate. Take goofy pseudoscience idea make movie out of the make a fairly good sci-fi series out of it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Well, Canadian-produced television still has Battlestar Galactica going for it. Wait. That’s over too.
This just boggles the mind. A “piece” of a white dwarf? REALLY???
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm
How does one go about trying to halt the production of this sort of garbage anyhow? We probably could’ve used that info for “Expelled” too, but it seems to be tanking quite nicely on its own!
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Just to clarify all this about how much stuff is produced in Canada, as I recall, Vancouver has the second busiest movie industry in the Western Hemisphere. Most of the stuff on the Sci-Fi Channel has been done there.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
At least this movie is for entertainment purposes. Expelled has no point whatsoever except to demonstrate the Ben Stein does not have enough to do.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
From the description: “…a piece of a dwarf star lodges itself in the moon…”
There was an article in Scientific American several years ago - I don’t remember the context, but the author described what would happen if a white dwarf star came through the solar system and collided with Earth.
Basically, there would be no “lodging” anywhere. Instead, the Earth, down to its core would be rapidly absorbed into a thin film over the surface of the star which would then disappear into space in a brief puff.
BTW - “dwarf star” it a vague description in their press release, they might be thinking of a small neutron star. The Sun is technically a “dwarf star” type G2.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
@Chip: a small neutron star or a full fledged dwarf star… That’s worse than a white dwarf, no? O_o
And a PIECE of them? A piece? What’s that about the pieces… I don’t get it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
WHITE dwarf …… Great WHITE North ….. Coincidence???
Blame Canada!
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Ebbeh?
Okay, seriously, WHAT are they smoking?? It obviously produces some incredible trips!
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
That SA article in question Mr. Chip, I believe was about a white dwarf “hitting” our sun (more like passing strait threw it). Either way…the article warned that you don’t want to be around when that happens.
But I agree…I have never heard of a white dwarves dislodging anything. I think they are too dense to break apart like that. Something denser has to be hitting it (I.e a black hole). Even then the white dwarf would more likely be absorbed in a spectacular fashion rather than break apart.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Wha… what?
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Oh yay, they accepted my script! I originally entitled it “Ken’s Thesis on how Intelligent Armageddon explains the events in Revelations” but hey, artistic license for the new license holders right?
/not script writer..no suey.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Kinda reminds me of how the Robinsons used to wilt in the heat of passing comets.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Two Words: Roche Limit.
Everything else is incidental.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
@james: I’m just one of those high-brow, elitist, arrogant pricks that call “science fiction” or simply “SF” to the good stuff a-la Blade Runner, 2001, Dark Angel, and so on, and “Sci-Fi” to the crappy, anything-goes-especially-if-it’s-really-really-dumb stuff that alas is and has been the bulk of what comes out of the studios for the last decades.
This show, however, seems to be able to make even the crappiest examples of crappy SciFi look positively good by comparason.
Should be a lot of fun. I loughed out loud just with the description…
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
“Sporadic weightlessness?” Well, that’s one way to cure America’s obesity epidemic.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Oh. My.
How exactly is a chunk of neutron material on the moon going to mess up cell phones, which are essentially line-of-sight? How would it mess up *any* radio communications?
Large tides I could buy. Weightlessness? How? Isn’t the Roche limit about 18,347 km? Wouldn’t the moon break up if it was spiraling in? (not as though that wouldn’t be a Bad Day when the pieces hit the atmosphere).
You know, done right it could be fun. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound even close.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Wow. This could be worse than “10.5″.
And coming soon from the Sci Fi Channel: “Snake Versus Another, Slightly Larger, Snake”, a 6-hour miniseries event starring yet another Baldwin brother.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Maybe if I am lucky this would only be shown in the states.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Sounds pretty racist to me: Why not a Black dwarf? I wonder, what was it that disrupted the white dwarf? Perhaps a really pointy stick!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Are you gonna give us a BA-style movie review of Expelled? Please, please, please!!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Ooh, I can’t wait to see how they depict the female astronomer!
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Why must this film this crap in my country?
Because the government wants to stop funding porno flics.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Two questions.
If alien life isn’t discovered in the next 100 years, what effect will this have on society?
Who will be the first to mars, the Americans or the Chinese?
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Lay off the Canadians guys. Jaffe/Braunstein Entertainment is based in LA, and Tandem is from the UK.
This is looking like serious international suckage.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
“a piece of a white dwarf”
Wouldn’t it just re-expand into a cloud of CO/CO2/O2 gas?
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Well, maybe it’s a piece of a “dwarf star”… kind of gruesome to think jettisoned pieces of Celebrity Caucasian dwarves can lodge to the moon and cause meteor showers….
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Didn’t the Legion of Superheros once have the moon explode? A few reboots back. Something about a heap of really power explosives set by a really nasty species of alien (hey, it’s the 30th century in those comics… There’s time).
a piece of white dwarf star… What, the FX department can’t afford to do a whole one? But how else could the moon be busted up?
ok… better question, why bust up the moon. Just have a large rock hit us. Unlikely, but hang a candle on it. Man… what is with silly plot points these days.
And yes… It’ll be seen overseas… they are always shown overseas.
Philip
April 24th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Wait a minute…may I remind ya’ll of Plan 9???
Could be great entertainment…
Part of a White Dwarf? which part???!!!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Maybe they’ll cast Ben Stein as the heroic scientist who saves the earth!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Wrote the BA :
“From the description, it’ll make Armageddon look like Shakespeare.”
Impossible!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:46 am
So few good movies with at least relatively good science these days …
Like Jorge I use SF to describe the good stuff (esp. novels) & Sci-Fi for the rubbish …
Would it be too late for them to change their plot for this into something even vaguely plausible sceince~wise?
As it is, it just sounds too silly for words.
… Which means I suppose that the Yanks’ll vote for it!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Said Supernova on 23 Apr 2008 at 9:34 pm : (Hmm mustfind out how to do bold, italics, etc.. here!)
“Ooh, I can’t wait to see how they depict the female astronomer!”
I’m guessing sexy, promiscious & frequently naked!
Well they’ve got to have something good for us blokes to look forward to & make it worth our sitting through this load of excrement!
.. & this strikes me as a seriously “lowest-common-denominator” , “lets -insult their intelligence” type movie.
Not that I’m pre-judging it based on not much knowledge of it but …
April 24th, 2008 at 1:10 am
_Nobody_ tosses a white dwarf.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:50 am
You’ll just have to write a sequel.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:55 am
Yes, Lab Lemming, you got the point.
When the compressional force (self-gravity) is not enough, you can’t have degenerate matter.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Cell phone service interruptions? Hopefully not while I’m driving!
April 24th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Just so you all know, it’s more then likely that the creative team behind this is not Canadian, and their only filming in Canada because it’s cheaper, among other things.
This is a VERY common practice.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Yep, the laws of physics can be a bitch.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:21 am
I dare not think about what would happen in that “hypothetical” (wiggle fingers) universe if something even more dense than that white star hit the moon - maybe something like, say, the brain of whoever came up with that idea…?
April 24th, 2008 at 4:22 am
I am sure they will come up with a scientific advisor who will try his best to explain away all the stupidity of the script with exotic physics. You know, the job that Brian Cox did for “Sunhsine” (one of the most disappointing movies of the decade).
April 24th, 2008 at 4:41 am
At least it’s not another “Beachcombers” movie, eh?
In all seriousness, though, I can see this sparking a wave of paranoia that will engulf the land of woo in a sea of conspiracy theories involving NASA/”Big Science”.
*sigh*
April 24th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Oh, man that is one funny premise. Is it suppose to be a comedy?
April 24th, 2008 at 5:10 am
actually, as any comic book fan can tell you, pieces of a white dwarf do not cause global catastrophe.
instead, pieces of a white dwarf, properly utilized, allow you to shrink your body to microscopic sizes, with full control over both your body’s size and mass.
what, you’ve never heard of the atom?
…..
of course this works! ray palmer IS a physics professor, after all…
April 24th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Go - see - laugh.
Terminator wasn’t very factual - except for some of the portrayal of weaponry. The $6^10×6 man would have been pretty boring without all of the bionics (hey - that word starts with a B and ends with an S - how fitting!)
Maybe the story line will be good, or there’ll be a great new actor(ess) to emerge. Maybe it’ll stink worse than the astronomy within. But they’re trying to entertain, not educate.
Phil: Do keep up the education - I appreciate it, and I find it entertaining!
April 24th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Funnily enough, this sounds rather similar to a truly dreadful movie called “Earthstorm” I watched last night, which (amazingly!) managed to dislodge “The Core” from its seemingly secure lock on the award for “Worst Science in a Movie Ever”. I have truly never seen anything like it… They got everything wrong. And I really do mean everything.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:07 am
I thought they are already made a movie like that, its call Earthstorm and I watched about 5 minutes of it untill I couldn’t stand the stupidity any longer, let alone the bad acting and terrible sets. There are several parts where you can clearly see that its a model. Terrible.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Sorry its an asteroid that hits the mood in the Earthstorm:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491764/
April 24th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Sporadic weightlessness. Sporadic weightlessness.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Okay, this is bad, but it’s not exactly like televised science fiction has been a poster child for good science (case in point: pretty much any Doctor Who episode ever). That’s not to say that “Impact” will be any good, it will almost certainly be awful, but even the “good” sci-fi shows are pretty lacking in the “science” part.
“Just repeat to yourself, ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax’”
April 24th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Danny Schadeon:
That would mean he’d have to actually watch the whole thing — several times! Are you sure it’s worth the risk?
April 24th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Wow. This could be worse than “10.5?.
Thanks for mentioning 10.5, now my day is ruined. oh, the horror!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:01 am
“Budgeted at $13 million, the effects-heavy…”
With a total budget of only $13 million (Canadian or US?) those are going to be some pretty cheesy effects.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Kevin:
I don’t recall any show about a $362,797,056 man. Perhaps you meant “$6*10^6″ instead?
Rik:
I guess he’s been eating some very expensive cookies?
(Okay, before I get the “what find of WTF non sequitur is that?” replies… There’s an old Sesame Street clip where Grover is going around selling a weather machine. When asked “why”, his reply is something along the lines of “I’ve got to do something to pay the cookies bills”. My wife and I now refer to “having to pay the cookie bills” when things like this come up. Sorry, I couldn’t find a YouTube link, incredibly enough.)
April 24th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Dunc, re: “Earthstorm”.
Wow, here’s IMDB’s synopsis:
April 24th, 2008 at 9:06 am
You’d think someone would have noticed the piece of white dwarf coming in before it hit the moon. At that distance it probably wouldn’t be hard to miss.
This ought to be fun to watch just to pick it to bits!
April 24th, 2008 at 9:16 am
You’d think someone would have noticed the piece of white dwarf coming in before it hit the moon. At that distance it probably wouldn’t be hard to miss.
No. White dwarfs are sneaky that way. They start out as ninjas.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I was thinking… for some of that $13 million, surely they can get Chuck Norris to roundhouse the white dwarf into another solar system. That would seem to be about the correct mix of science and manliness for a movie of this nature.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:36 am
The spirit of Irwin Allen lives on…
I keep thinking, if I were to remake something like “When Worlds Collide” today, how could you do it and have it become something you could suspend your disbelief long enough to enjoy your popcorn?
These days, I’d think getting hit by a rouge superjovian would be pretty much it for the human race… (or even a passing one disrupting our orbit) but, could we even theoretically reach another planet? If this scenario should play out, how far in the future would it have to be before we could detect an Earth-like target planet to flee to?
Between recent advances in suspended animation, Orion-type nuke pulse drives, and other such tech… could it be be even vaugely possible to build a “space ark” to one of the nearest stars? Or at least make a convincing enough case that we might be able to do it as a desperation move?
April 24th, 2008 at 9:41 am
BTW, the 13 million budget is no indication of how cheesy the effects will or won’t be. In this age of CGI, you only need to look at the work of Ikon, and Rythum and Hues to see just how incredible the images can be these days, even for the modestly budgeted film.
Strangely, the bigger the image, the less expensive it it to create. It’s only when the cast has to interact with parts of the image does the budget begin to shoot through the roof.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Will there be a talking dog?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I experience sporadic weightlessness everytime I jump off the ground. Granted, it’s only for the smallest fraction of a second…
I hope they are going to explain how Verne Troyer’s leg got in that meteor shower in the first place.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:46 am
“I keep thinking, if I were to remake something like “When Worlds Collide” today, how could you do it and have it become something you could suspend your disbelief long enough to enjoy your popcorn?”
Wow, I just watched “When Worlds Collide” last night, and I was thinking the same thing: “How would this movie come off if it were to be remade today?” Would they delve deeper into the science of it? Would they expand on the fear of the world about to end? etc..
Afterward, I started watching “War Of The Worlds” (since it was on the same DVD) and was thinking “What if this were to be remade… oh wait… nevermind…”
April 24th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I wonder if the white dwarf fragment effects will be made to look like a typical cratered asteroid with a white glowing aura?
April 24th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Yeah, BA! Give us a review of Expelled! But make sure you have at least 3 extra keyboards on hand!
And exactly how does one break a piece off a white dwarf?
April 24th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
“To be fair to the TV series in question, I had similar questions about the stability of dwarf star matter when The Doctor ran into those guys with the ship made out of dwarf star material in that little universe between N-space and E-space.”
That would be in “Warriors Gate”, a wonderfully surreal episode and one of my favorites, even though I had exactly the same problem as you. The actors make an attempt to show how massive the “dwarf star alloy” is (unexplained is WTF “dwarf star alloy” is supposed to mean — maybe it’s not really made from a dwarf star but is just really dense, and the name is just meant to evoke images of dwarf star densities). But there’s only so much that can be done. You just have to suspend disbelief on that one, I guess.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
# Quiet Desperationon wrote:
“Will there be a talking dog?”
No, but they’re be a barking Robot Dog:
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Muffit
-S
April 24th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Why all the fuss about “piece of a white dwarf”? It’s easy to picture, really. Just visualize a giant piece of pie (I’m thinking key lime, but use your favorite dessert) only huge, white hot, totally deadly, and sticking out of the side of the moon like a . . . like a . . . well, like a giant piece of pie embedded in the moon. Then, picture that the giant white-hot pie can make you weightless. (Maybe we could have a pool to guess what unlikely objects will be shown levitating: aircraft carriers? icebergs? cows? Oh, wait, the cows have been done…) And then picture that the giant pie will mess up your cell phone, which would be the worst thing ever. SO, if you can picture it, and cobble together a story around the pictures, and get a good CGI company to make those aircraft carriers really fly, and if you can make a pile of money doing it, and if you really don’t give rat’s behind about science, why not? Get the picture?
April 24th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I usually watch these kind of flicks just to see the FX. I don’t expect them to be good, I just like to see what kind of stuff is being done these days. My fascination with advanced FX started when I was a kid watching old sci-fi movies where you could see the strings on the spaceships and the zippers on the Gozilla suits. I never get enough. For instance, when Deep Impact came out, I loved the last 30 minutes of it. I was rooting for the asteroid. Seeing the mushroom cloud from orbit, the massive tidal wave hitting Manhatten…oh yea, very cool stuff. Otherwise it was pretty lame.
If the story in “Impact” is bad enough it will just give me an excuse to get out my basket of NERF bricks. I bought them for the 2004 election debates. It’s great fun to throw a NERF brick at the TV (along with loud and rude expletives) everytime you see Bush’s ugly mug. On that score only, I’m gonna miss the ignorant little SOB.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Can we please just “Expel” the “Impact?”
Aside from the spelling champ: One dwarf, several dwarfs.
My 2 cents worth regarding the “piece” of a white dwarf - isn’t stellar material just a lot of gas (mostly H and He) held together by gravity? If a “piece” flies off, it’s just a bunch of hydrogen gas, not something solid like an iceberg that can poke the ol’ mood in one of his eyes.
WRT Ben Stein making Expelled because he has nothing better to do, that’s just plain BS. Expelled proves you can be doing nothing and still fart.
Phil - thanks again for this and your other posts. I enjoy every one of them (well, except those devoted to Dr. Who, of whom I’ve never enjoyed).
April 24th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Tod,
Most white dwarfs would have fused their H and He into Carbon and Oxygen. And they are freaking dense (Sun mass into Earth size), so it would feel much more solid than your lousy iceberg, believe you me.
Phil may show me wrong here, but I think I’m close to it.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Most film/TV SF is pretty silly from a real science perspective but, as has been pointed out, this doesn’t mean it can’t be fun to watch. I mean, I’m sure the science in ‘Iron Man’ is gonna suck, but I’m still going to see it and will probably think it’s awesome. Just as long as they tag it as Science *Fantasy*, which I think is the more accurate term for this sort of thing.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Most white dwarfs would have fused their H and He into Carbon and Oxygen. And they are freaking dense (Sun mass into Earth size), so it would feel much more solid than your lousy iceberg, believe you me.
I’ve wondered about that. Certainly if you could stand on a white dwarf, I agree with what you’re saying.
But, if by some powerful mojo, you knocked a piece of a white dwarf off and took it away from the powerful gravity of the star, I would think the matter would just de-compress back to something more “normal” and float/ooze/gointostarrehab away.
Thoughts? BA?
April 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Also think it would de-compress. I don’t think there’s mojo to do that, and I don’t think I could still be called a white dwarf. It would just be a chunk of C and O. And they wouldn’t even know where it came from.
BA, you basically said the premise is a load of crap, but didn’t really explained why in tiny little details just like we like. Please, elude us.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Well, there’s more info on this…extravaganza. Here’s the official synopsis from their website (http://tinyurl.com/5ccgnc):
“Synopsis
After a massive meteor collides with our moon, disastrous abnormalities start happening on Earth – on one side of the planet, cars begin to hover over the ground as if in outer space, while on the other side, the Earth’s gravitational pull becomes so intense that the Eiffel Tower crumbles together under its own weight.
A team of international scientists realizes the horrifying truth: the meteor has knocked the moon out of its orbit and has hurled it on a collision course with the Earth. In 45 days, the Moon will crash into our planet. As with the total extinction of the dinosaurs through a meteor shower, history is about to repeat itself, this time with mankind…
The US has a plan, but finds no international support. The Europeans have another strategy, which the Americans don’t buy into. Now it is up to a small group of scientists on both sides of the pond to get the nations of the world to cooperate and act as one, before it will be too late…
Unique visuals and powerful human drama will bring this chilling story to life.
Get ready to experience the dark side of the moon!”
I wonder what kind of “plan” they’ll have to shove an entire 2,000 mile wide body back into its orbit…
April 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
45 days? That makes no sense at all. Should be 7 days (orbital period of an ellipse with minimal perigee is about 1/2 the orbital period of a circle at the distance of the apogee, and it takes 1/2 an orbit to go from apogee to perigee. 1/2 of 1/2 of 28 days equals days. If the perigee was higher, the orbit would take longer, but then it would miss the earth.
What happens when it hits the Roche Limit?
Why cell phones? Why not toasters? Or police radar guns (Tim Wakefield just threw a 973mph knuckle ball?) Or it could cause all the chocolate on earth to vanish. Oh, the humanity!
April 30th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Asked # Oh on 23 Apr 2008 at 10:25 pm :
“Two questions.
If alien life isn’t discovered in the next 100 years, what effect will this have on society?
Who will be the first to mars, the Americans or the Chinese?”
I suspect the answer to your first qu. there is : very little.
As for the second; neither of them but the Europeans or maybe Australians or (long shot here but, hey, they’ve got the cash) the Saudi Arabians!
Or perhaps, seriously, thefirst human expedition to Mars could actually be a joint international effort as suggested in Ben Bova’s novel ‘Mars’ among others …
Also asked (& yeah its probably too late to be answering but what the heck …) was the question :
by # themadlolscientist on 24 Apr 2008 at 11:49 am :
“… And exactly how does one break a piece off a white dwarf?”
With a neutron star knife of course!
June 12th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I just got over the moon being blown out of orbit in the britsh tv show space 1999 and now this . and Phill is so concerned about education in this country it seem bad astronomy is a world wide porblem we are in trouble!!!!!