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The latest edition of the Are We Alone program is up, where astronomer Seth Shostak and I talk (and diss) Hollywood doomsday movies (here’s the direct link to the MP3). My segment opens with A Dramatic Reading from my book, Death from the Skies!, and also has interviews with my friends and fellow astronomers David Morrison and Lynn Rothschild.
If you’ve ever watched an astronomically-based disaster movie and yelled "That can’t happen!" at the screen, then take a listen. The next time you yell at a movie, you can give it specifics.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
You wrote a book?
August 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
But won’t that make Roland Emmerlich feel bad? I mean yelling at the screen everytime disasters happen?
August 10th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I really wonder when January 1, 2013 rolls around how many currently-scared people will take to heart at least some small does of critical thinking…I have a feeling it will be fewer then one would hope, though.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
@IVAN3MAN
Darnit! You beat me! I was busy reading Orac’s blog and missed this post.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
FenrirKar @3:
Unlikely. Next it will be Unix Millenium bug doomsday theories!
August 10th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Phil, I missed your comments on “Knowing”, the movie with the big solar eruption and the aliens who whisk away the brightest of our next generation. Could someone point me to his evaluation?
August 10th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I nominate David Morrison for planetary ambassador!
August 10th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
@FenrirKar – shhhhh!
August 10th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Still, movies about things falling from the sky and killing everyone are always pretty fun to watch. Even more fun is when they throw in a mixture of disasters. I’m waiting for one about radioactive monkeys falling to Earth in a deadly rain after a comet passes close by while the entire Yellowstone Caldera is exploding during an earthquake and a viral epidemic.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Did any of you see that latest NBC Meteor thing? My favorite part was when the astronomer was talking about asteroids and pulled up a picture of the Sombrero galaxy
August 10th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
@ #1: Dude, that j0ke is *so* old! Still funny, though.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Meteor was on a week or so ago in Sydney as a 4 hour movie. I watched bits and pieces of it but it was pretty incoherent and the acting was really bad. Would I be correct in assuming that the meteor was stopped in its tracks by a bunch of nukes? As in it just stopped and floated above the earth?
August 10th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Kinda on topic: I’ve always wondered about time-travel movies. As depicted, a person jumps into the machine, goes forwards or backwards, and is always in the same place. I guess that template was set down by Jules Verne.
Anyway, if one did own a time machine and traveled a day in time (either direction) would that person stay in the same place? Or maybe that person would end up inside the earth or in space.
With the spin of the earth and it’s orbit around the sun (and the sun’s travel in the galaxy, and so forth and so on), would one’s time traveling be far more risky than shagging one’s own grandma?
August 10th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
I would just like to state, for the record, that the GI Joe movie had more accurate physics than the 2012 trailer. At least the particle accelerator in the movie /looked/ like a particle accelerator. Freaking 2012 trailer, talking about “OMG, the earth’s core is going to become liquid, and then the crust will float around on top! THIS IS BAD.”
Every time I see that in the “20″, before the movie starts in my theatre, I yell at the screen “That’s how the earth is already. That’s how earthquakes happen!”
The worst part: I am totally going to go see 2012. Because I see every movie that comes up. Plus, Oliver Platt=awesome-sauce.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Bahdum – you should read more classic Sci-fi. Bob Heinlein did that topic to death fifty years ago
August 11th, 2009 at 8:06 am
@13 (Bahdum):
Yay, someone else besides me actually thought of this problem too
I would say that if the time machine only moved an object in time (and not also in space) then that would be a big issue.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Bahdum (13) said:
In the British sci-fi comic 2000 AD, there was a character called Strontium Dog who occasionally used a weapon called a time bomb. When he used it, those within its sphere of influence were shifted a short time backwards or forwards in time, usually to then suffocate in the vacuum of space, since the planet was no longer in the same position.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I suggest to Elvee Kaye……….
radioactive monkeys, with a viral epidemic, falling to Earth in a deadly rain after a comet passes close by while the entire Yellowstone Caldera is exploding during an earthquake.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:11 am
@Nigel Depledge (17)
Now, that should be a film. Granted, it would more than likely be a cult film, but I think that would be something for the big screen (in limited theaters, no doubt).
August 11th, 2009 at 11:23 am
13. Bahdum (aka Richard) Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Kinda on topic: I’ve always wondered about time-travel movies. As depicted, a person jumps into the machine, goes forwards or backwards, and is always in the same place. I guess that template was set down by Jules Verne.
Anyway, if one did own a time machine and traveled a day in time (either direction) would that person stay in the same place? Or maybe that person would end up inside the earth or in space.
___________
I’ve wondered about it too, but then what would the machine remain stationary in relation to? There is no fixed space in the universe, the motion of all bodies is relative to each other.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I recently watched Knowing, and OMG, the bad astronomy is strong on this one.
August 12th, 2009 at 2:40 am
@ 3. FenrirKar Says:
I really wonder when January 1, 2013 rolls around how many currently-scared people will take to heart at least some small does of critical thinking…I have a feeling it will be fewer then one would hope, though.
Sadly, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.
People have been predicting the apocalypse forever – almost literally – & the world hasn’t ended yet. You’d think people would learn that such predictions are always bunk but sadly ..
I think there’s a list somewhere on Wikipedia of failed End-o’the-World /Apocalpyse / 2nd Coming predictions. 2012 will just add one more to the list & the same people that fell for the millennium =end’o’ world horrors both 1000 & 2000 versions, the same people who thought the world would end in 1984 and 1975 and so on will just find the next date to carry on about.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:50 am
That wiki page mentioned can be found here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfulfilled_religious_prophecies
Thinking Failed Apocalpyse predictions & the unending guillibility of some ppl check out this true story I read on another blog (Slacktivist, if you’re wondering) :
In 1994, while working part-time in a bookstore, a customer asked me [this blogger] to special order a copy of a particular book. I looked it up and then told her that we couldn’t get it for her because it was out of print.
“When did it go out of print?”
“My guess would be 1989.”
“That’s a shame. It’s a great book.”
The books title?
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‘88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.’
FACE PALM!!!
(The “Rapture” of course being the start of the Apocalpyse & end of the World in some Christian cults mythology.)
August 12th, 2009 at 4:10 am
Oh, you’ll have to scroll down that link a way.
You’d think after the predictions that failed in 1975 & 1988 &c &c &c … this whole “Rapture” nonsense would have disappeared in hail of laughter at the clowns who keep predicting it but noooo ..
Its every time this has ever been predicted it hasn’t come true but this time it will.. Sigh.
I’m guessing we’ll get the same thing when 2013 comes round …
As if main Western culture doesn’t have enough crazy predictions of disaster w/o having to adopt Mayan mythology ones too. But then those guys thought our Sun needed the blood from sacrificed captured prisoners to rise each morning so I guess their “science” and predictions must be a sure bet ..
August 12th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
As far as I’m concered the world will end when the sun becomes a red giant billons of years form now since I wont be hear I don’t worry about it . As for the “Rapture” only some fundamentilst beleve in it (wicth is funy because the word rapture never appares in the Bible ) as I’ve said I am a Catholic and don’t literly interpet the Bible and so I don’t beleve that the book of Revelation is the future newspaper . In fact Jesus says that he dose not know the date of the end of the world . And st Paul warned about to munch thinking about it .
August 12th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
You wrote a disaster book, that hasn’t become a disaster movie?
No wonder you diss the movies! (o O)