A Bad Splice

            We have reached the culmination of the semester.  We’ve seen some horrible physics, such as the cruise ship slamming into the Caribbean dock in Speed 2.  We’ve seen worse physics, like the travesty that is The Core.  And we’ve seen some good Physics, like in Contact.  Regardless of whether the film was good or bad, there was always some tie in, always some way to learn a new principle or concept that may seem alien to some or most of you.  I must say that it’s been largely entertaining and enlightening.

            I’m a Physics guy, I have some water behind me that I’ve navigated treacherously and I’m pretty on top of whatever goes on in class.  The way we’ve been taught this semester, to question and not just accept the crap that Hollywood or whoever else throws at us, is an important and crucial lesson to be learned in life.  Then again, sometimes we have to throw away the questions and just enjoy a movie for what it really is.  Superhero movies are probably the best example here… either that or anything starring The Ahnuld.

            The average $10.00 a ticket moviegoer couldn’t care less about the amount of heat that Iceman has to take out of the air to create the ice wall in X2.  They don’t want to know the magnitude of the mystical force that keeps Superman in the air or the initial velocity that it would take for him to leap a building.  On a more obscure scale, perhaps they don’t want to know the velocity at which V throws his knives in V for Vendetta.  Okay, V isn’t a superhero, but he’s an icon that most of us could probably relate to.

            Superhero movies do take a great deal of liberty with scientific laws, especially those pertaining to physics and, to a lesser extent, chemistry.  I only throw chemistry in there due to femme fatale characters who love the super-concentrated-poison-on-the-lips-to-kill-the-hero maneuver.  Those are always fun.  Let’s kill Robin with Poison Ivy’s mouth.  That’s a good way to portray female characters, good job Hollywood.

            So, this week’s feature film is IronMan, which I own.  Our task, to analyze either three powers that our favorite superhero possesses or one task from three separate superheroes.  I wanted to do IronMan, I really did, but I couldn’t bring myself to analyzing Tony Stark.  I mean, Robert Downey, Jr. has gone through hell, I just want to leave the man alone and let him make his blow crap up flicks.  So, I chose Cyclops’ eye beams to start with.  A quick note, I thought that Cyclops was completely shat upon in X3 with Phoenix just turning him to ash.  I’m a big Cyclops fan and feel that regardless of the advancement of storyline for Phoenix, that shouldn’t have been so quick.

 

            Fanboy aside, let’s scrutinize Cyclops eye beams for a minute.  According to the wiki article on Cyclops, it’s never stated that Cyclops’ powers are light.  They are energy however, probably due to absorption of solar energy through his skin.  Ignoring biological conversion and whatnot here, the energy that is emitted has always been portrayed as light, gamma rays to be exact, and I’m going to treat it as such.  In the first movie, when Cyclops rays hit Sabretooth, he is blasted through the Statue of Liberty and to his demise below.  So, there is enough momentum in this blast, when completely absorbed, to send a 300 pound man flying off of his feet at what appears to be a nice cut.

            Now, momentum for light, given in units Mev/c is different than that for particles with mass.  So, in the movie the X-Men, if he is shooting continuous light from his eyes, it would be in the form of a laser.  Depending on the wavelength of the emitted light, Sabretooth should have been cut in half, burned or something of the like.  If the light had a short enough wavelength, or high energy, it should have gone right through him while burning, cutting, etc.  Now, if we’ve learned anything from conservation of momentum is that it is the same at the beginning and end of a physical interaction.  In the movies/comics, Cyclops’ beam is COMPLETELY absorbed by the receiving target, so it’s a completely inelastic interaction.  The same can be said, then, of when Cyclops shoots these beams.  If the interaction in the beginning is to be the same as the interaction in the end, then the momentum of Cyclops once he shoots the beam should be the same as Sabretooth once he receives it.

            Change the scene to out in the middle of a battlefield and let’s do the equation.

 

Mcvc = msvs.

 

            Cyclops’ mass is 100 kg, 220 pounds or so.  Sabretooth’s mass is 136 kg.  If Sabretooth flew thirty feet out of the room in just under half a second, then his velocity would be 22.86 m/s.  I don’t know if that’s enough to airlift him out of the room, but it sure did.  So, using conservation of momentum, we find that Cyclops’ resultant velocity should be…

 

Vc = (msvs)/mc

Vc = (136 kg * 22.9 m/s)/100 kg

Vc = 31.14 m/s.

 

            So Cyclops should be blown off of his feet every time his uses his lasers, especially if Sabretooth flies as well.  Sabretooth absorbs every bit of the energy thrown at him.  Cyclops loses energy every time he uses his lasers, this is in the comic books, but nothing is ever said about what happens to the energy once it slams into someone.  The comics say it doesn’t transfer heat, but it can’t be 100% converted into the energy of motion.  The receiving body should at least heat up a little bit.

 

            Superman’s levitation and the ability to leap small buildings in a single bound is my next case.  Superman, weighing slightly more than Cyclops, has a mystic force that keeps him in the air.  This is a simple enough calculation to do.  Considering that the only forces acting on him, as long as he’s just floating in midair, is the Force due to gravity, his mass times the gravitational constant g or –9.81 m/s*s.  While he’s floating then, the force due to gravity acting on him is.

 

F=mg

F = 110 kg (-9.81 m/s/s)

F = 1080 N.

 

            So, because this is a 1080 N force in the down direction, the mystic Force, as required by Newton’s second law, must be a 1080 N upward force.  When he zooms away, his mystical force is the accelerating factor to his being “faster than a speeding bullet.”  As for Superman being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, what exactly facilitates a tall building?  Are we talking the Daily Planet or the Empire State Building.

           

            The leaping in a single bound was the prelude to Superman’s ability to fly.  We can calculate the amount of initial Force he would need to throw himself at to just be able to tiptoe on the top of the building in question.  Let’s consider the Empire State Building as an extreme example, even though we know our wonderful hero can FRICKIN’ FLY!

 

            The ESB is 443 meters high.  If we use our trusty kinematic equations, we can figure out exactly how fast Superman would have to be going at the very beginning to reach the pinnacle.  The distance would be 443m and the acceleration would be due to gravity, which is a negative 9.81 m/s/s.  So,

 

(vf)^2 = (vi)^2 + 2ad.

 

            Yeah, he aint moving at the end, so vf is zero, so that leaves us with.

 

0 = (vi^2) – 2(443m)(9.81m/s/s)

(vi)^2 = 8690 m*m/s*s

vi = 93.2 m/s.

 

            Okay, he’s moving at the beginning.  And that’s it for Superman.  He can fly, he can jump, he can throw a bowling ball so hard it shatters pins.  Anyone else remember that?

 

            Last but not least is one of my favorite superheroes, Spiderman.  Spiderman’s ability to plummet hundreds of feet and then save himself in regular pendulum motion would probably rip arms from their sockets.  Not to mention the fact that he’s usually turned in the opposite direction when it happens, so you have to worry about extreme whiplash as well. 

 

Let’s consider for a minute the climactic scene in Spiderman 3 where Spiderman is fighting what seems like every guy in the world.  He falls and hits the ground from a height of no less then 75 stories.  At 3 meters per story, that’s 225 m.

 

(vf)^2 = (vi)^2 + 2ad.

(vf)^2 = 2ad

vf = (2 * -9.81 * 225)^.5

vf = 66.4 m/s

 

            And since F = ma, then F is equal to mass times the change in velocity over the change in time.  If our hero goes from 37.8 to 0 almost instantly, then we can provide a delta time no greater than a twentieth of a second.  One hundredth is more appropriate, but I’ll give Spidey the benefit of the doubt.  Also, how much does Spidey weigh?  I’m going with 160 pounds or 73 kg.  So, the force of him hitting the ground is simply,

 

F = m * (v/t)

F = 73 kg * (66.4m/s /.05s)

F = 97000 N.

 

            So Spiderman hits the ground with forces large enough to shatter every bone in his body and turn him into soup.  Spider soup.  Spiderman, as a superhero, has a bone structure that can withstand brutal impact, yet his arm gets cut when the Green Goblin throws a blade at him in Spiderman 1?  That’s another one that should be commented on.

 

            In Spiderman 1, Spidey swings in from his web and boots Green Goblin clear off of his glider.  The amazing thing about this is that Spiderman does not appear to lose momentum at all.  So, maybe he has some mystic force driving him as well that helps him avoid losing momentum when swinging from his web.

 

            All in all, superhero movies are highly entertaining even if they flaunt physics in the process.  That’s the part that really moves audiences, the visually appealing and the overly fantastic.  Regardless of whether its right or wrong, it still sells and Hollywood will continue to make them.

            “She says she’s ready to go.”

 

            That’s where I’ll stop Contact as we know it.  Even in the book, much to my chagrin, Ellie takes a journey and comes back in what can only be summarized as a reversal of general relativity.  Some of the commentaries and essays I’ve read on the subject of the Physics of Contact point to wormhole mechanics and time as the reason for the discrepancy though I’m not sure I’m sold on the idea.  First, the Physics and then I’ll offer my own ending to Contact and how Jodie Foster comes back to a world she doesn’t recognize and a civilization that reveres and exiles her.

 

            In the video of Foster falling through the machine, at the instant she hits the center of the energy field, it goes away and she continues her plunge straight into the water.  At the instant she hits, the energy goes away, which says to me that there was an awesome accelerating and decelerating potential swirling away.  They say she’s out of contact for a fraction of a second and then falls through.  It’s not mentioned the exact fraction of a second, but it looks to be somewhere between a quarter and half a second through the center, so we’ll go with 0.5s to be safe.

 

            But there’s the problem.  By the laws of relativity, the time experienced inside of a moving vessel would be smaller compared to the time outside.  So, the split second would be inside of the vessel and the eighteen hours of static would be outside.  Ellie would disappear and everyone would be in shock and awe and panic for eighteen hours or so until she rifled back into the Earth and, hopefully, the aliens had devised a way for her not to become vapor upon re-entry.  An object that large would have a great deal of momentum as well, given by P= gamma * m *v, where gamma equals (1-beta^2)^-.5 and beta = v/c.  Man I wish I could import Mathematica onto this…

 

            So, considering time dilation is given by t = gamma * t` where t is the time observed by mission control and t` is a watch on Ellie’s wrist.  So, given t` is 0.5 s and t is 18 hours or 64800 seconds, then gamma would be 129600, which would yield a velocity of 0.99999999997c.  Now yes, this is a round trip affair, but if you do 9 hours divided by .25 seconds, the amount of time there, it factors out to the same gamma.  So, yeah, she’s hauling it.

           

            The distance to Vega is 25.3 light years.  Length contraction is given by the equation l = proper length/ gamma where l is the distance observed in Ellie’s pod and the proper length is the calculated distance from Earth.  Using this formula, the distance that Ellie sees herself travel is .0002 light years or 105 light minutes.  At this speed, unfortunately, she couldn’t get there and back in the time provided.  And, again, she’s hauling it.  When it comes to wormholes, this time could be much smaller, considering the distance to the wormhole and the mechanics therein.  I don’t know wormhole mechanics, I don’t pretend to know wormhole mechanics, and I’m going to leave it to hand-waving physicists who do this kind of stuff for a living.

 

*** Blogger’s note – I disregarded the 18 hours for the sake of argument.  I calculated that the 18 hours would carry her somewhere far away from the where she wanted to go and, keeping true to the continuity of the movie, she needed to be in the vicinity of Vega.***

 

            In a nutshell, the physics in the movie is backwards.  Going back to the twin paradox, should we follow the physics in the movie and book, then Ellie would be older than those left on Earth.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the ase and deserves a small Hollywood rewrite much in the vein of another physics fiasco called Planet of the Apes.

 

            Back from the beginning, “she’s okay to go.”  And then she’s dropped.

 

            Ellie Arroway is shot to Vega using the same sequence as before, even with the wormholes though I can’t begin to tackle them.  She’s flying and flying for what seems like forever, encountering beauty and amazement that most of us cannot begin to comprehend… I guess… and then she arrives on whatever planet.  It took her roughly two hours to get there, traveling at the aforementioned speed.  Once she stops, assuming the planet she’s on revolves around its star at the same speed that we revolve around the Sun, then time works as normal.

           

            My view of Contact is that it should have been a touch longer, both in the book and film, to allow more interaction with the intergalactic beings.  I think Sagan kinda copped out when he wrote that “things have been done this way for a long time.”  I want to see interaction and learning.  I know you can’t spend too much time, but the way Hollywood does the montage sequences, something spanning a year wouldn’t be too much of a stretch as she learns what the Vegans (we need to rename people’s eating habits here) have to offer and prepare for her return home.  If she gets back home in the same amount of time, two hours, then she’s gone for a total of one year Earth time plus four hours relativistic time.

 

            As a side note, Ellie interactions with the Vegans would have made a neat movie in and of itself.  Perhaps ending it upon her arrival on Vega would have been prudent.  Let’s soldier on.

 

            If we keep the same gamma as before – 129600, then the time experienced on Earth would be 518400 hours.  This equates to 21600 days or 59.1 years.  She’s aged a year and a handful of hours and most everyone she knew is either dead or up there in years.  Even if Joss was only 35 or so, he’d be 94 then.  Oh, I almost forgot about the year spent on Vega itself.  We’ll call it sixty total.

 

            Ellie arrives back, to a lot of pandemonium since the machine has been quiet for decades and then, about an hour before she arrives, it turns back on again, builds up the deceleration potential and wham, she’s there.  She’s been gone sixty Earth years (basing this entirely on the four hour round trip calculation) and returns to find government agents who want to imprison her, liberators who want to take her away from the chaos she’s come back to and religious fanatics who either a) want questions answered or b) want her dead.

 

            Of course, political and military leaders want to know what the possible threat is for attack and occupation from Vega.  She is a global security threat until she is found.  Much of the world has fallen into civil rebellion in the years following her disappearance, separated into those who believe she has gone for good and those who believe she will return.  In any case, society continues on with the knowledge and actually builds toward a promising future of further contact rather than setting up trillions of dollars of defense systems to prepare for an attack that will never come.

 

            And so, she’s freed, exonerated and helps the world with the knowledge she was given from the Vegans.  This includes technological advances, archeological discoveries on our own planet, agricultural expertise and economic/political evolution.  The most important, especially in the eyes of the Vegans, is intergalactic travel and spreading the intergalactic travel with other civilizations across the galaxy and ultimately, universe.

 

            My movie ends with Ellie and a group of Advancement of Extra-Terrestrial Communications scientists beaming the first packet of information into space in hopes that someone will come visit.

 

***Blogger’s note – I simply couldn’t fathom actually writing this out in script form, but if you want, give me a year and I’ll get you a polished copy.***

            All things considered, I don’t like Star Trek very much, largely preferring the more fantasy-rooted Star Wars.   I give Trek its due though, it’s been instrumental in cementing and revolutionizing the sci-fi genre for decades.  The elements that it provides and the innovations offered appeal to our greatest sense of wonder.  Space travel, interstellar warfare, risking life and limb for fellow man and country, all of these things are what Hollywood is built around.  If you look at the movies that really do well, these elements are present somewhere.  Maybe not always space travel, but exoduses that we ourselves will probably never take, war and drama.  Box office bank.

            Science Fiction is the best way to describe Star Trek.  Some of these same elements that equate to gold at the movies are in a future that is not possible right now.  Things like galactic travel in the amount of time it takes you to get to the local convenience store and firing cannons that should tear your ship apart.  And, if these weren’t enough, they are transferring biological beings from one place to the next.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Timeline, you’ll know what I mean when I use the term “faxing.”  That’s another doozy when it comes to Physics in Film.

            A quick note about this movie, it’s very cheesy.  And I’ve seen better acting in wrestling.  I’m not close to kidding.  Especially the first scene that Spock and Kirk are together on the ship.  Yikes.

            The speed of light is three times ten to the eighth meters per second or three hundred thousand kilometers per second.  As of right now, we are unable to make anything go c.  Period.  Star Trek takes place across many places in the galaxy or between many galaxies.  This poses a problem because the closest star to us, not planet, but star is 4.3 light years away.  Yes, Alpha Centauri is so far away that it takes LIGHT 4.3 years to get to it.  So, if this is the closest to us, then stars with planetary systems around them would take even longer for light to arrive.

            In this respect, the warp drives on the vessels in Star Trek are a necessity to travel those great distances in a reasonable amount of time so the Shat doesn’t end up looking like Scorsese on the way home.  So there we go, we can now travel many times the speed of light with a simple drive.  So, the laws of relativity just went right out of the window.  If we were to go faster than the speed of light, then relativistic energy, momentum and the gamma symbol falls completely apart.  But, without this little alteration of physical principles, it would be nearly impossible for Star Trek to work.

            Right now, it’s not feasible for us to have this technology.  And, with space exploration much less important than terrestrial issues we face, it’s not really necessary right now.  We would have to tackle pushing beyond our relativistic knowledge and tell Mr. Einstein that he was just flat wrong, no easy feat.  Until then, we have our warp drive and Trekkies should be happy with that.

            Next to the warp drive, another form of travel known as the transporter was a necessity in the fabric of Star Trek lore.  This device turns matter into packets of energy, beams it to another location where it turns back into matter and wham, you have a human again.  Now, if you consider all matter as packets of waves anyways, this isn’t too hard to envision.  In fact, there are several people out there right now who have begun considering this concept and are working to get a model together.  The implications for this, especially with daily travel and military espionage missions would be almost priceless.  I’m sure there are several other uses for “beaming” and the interest of such is gaining traction, but it was critical to the success of Star Trek.

            Instead of having a huge expedition to some alien world, a handful of crew members are beamed to the surface and that’s it.  There no need to put the tech guys in danger, leave Data and Scotty alone and let Spock, Kirk and the rest do the grunt work.  Without this technology, it would have been impossible for the crew to avoid certain dangers that would have been life-ending at any other point.

            In the end, the technology offered by Star Trek was necessary for the plot devices to work correctly, especially the warp drive and without them the entire universe of Star Trek would be unraveled at the seams.

            Or it could all take place on one planet and it could be called Earth Trek or something else like that.

            I want to preface all of this by saying that Hollywood lost a true legend this year with the passing of Paul Newman.  In a career spanning several decades, Newman always brought his heart and soul to his work, be it a grizzled war veteran or voicing a grizzled old car in a recent Disney film.  I enjoyed his films in the seventies, most notably Slap Shot and the Sting.   He always had a way with the audience and connected to moviegoers of every generation.  He will be missed.

            As much as World War Two and our involvement interests me, and as much of a good representation that this movie was, I just couldn’t get into it at all.  I felt that the plot between the two main characters was forced as each tried to dance around impending calamity.  I’ll take on Mr. Newman for a second.  In his role as General Groves, Newman steps into the shows of a man who started driven and ended up pushing the limits of his sanity.

            As the leader of a top secret weapons project, General Groves wants the best for his country.  He was a soldier for many years before he began the project and Newman brings this militant personality to life.  This isn’t one of his stronger roles but he does add depth as the project advances and Groves appears to lose grip with his focus.  He pushes toward shady activities to get his way in the end.  He is a perfect example of political corruption.

            At first glance, I’ve seen Paul Newman do much better and more inspired work in roles that were far less serious than this one.  And Paul Newman is not an actor known for his rambunctious side on the set.    It almost seemed like he had a narrow scope that he had to fit into and the character just didn’t warrant that.  I yearned for the days of the Sundance Kid.  I will grant the fact that he was driven toward his goal and toward the end, Paul Newman made it seem like it was an obsession to finish his project and to get it done the way he said.

            In his interactions with people, Newman is firm but personable as the film gets underway.  During the rougher times of the project, most notably when it doesn’t look like the bombs will be completed, he takes the aforementioned turn to neuroticism and pushes toward the end with little regard to anyone but himself and his country.  It seems almost as if his patriotism even takes a backseat to the completion of his project.

            Oppenheimer, played by the forgotten Dwight Schultz, came from a prolific physics background, often touted as the “next big thing” in the physics world.  What you must understand about Dwight Schultz is that he was a die-hard conservative that was fully behind nuclear arms and the development of this.  I believe with this mindset then, he played his part much better because Oppenheimer, as a physicist, wanted the ultimate control and power.

            As the film progressed, it was interesting to see to which lengths Oppenheimer would go to fulfill his project.  He began and UCal Berkeley and held bomb theory classes there after being selected for the project.  This wasn’t pushed in the movie, but should have been, in my opinion.  It would have added more depth to his influence on the physical world and bomb research.  It was interesting to see the he was more obsessed with completing the project rather than the power it was going to bring him.

            Oppenheimer’s “God complex” was thoroughly delineated throughout the course of the film and it seemed as if he just wanted power.  I know I’m contradicting myself and that’s a result of the film confusing me with a loose plot.  I know Oppenheimer had a God complex, he was better than the rest of the world and he was going to rain death on whoever he could.  This was his time, he would no longer be ignored and he would be the most powerful scientist on the planet.  Maybe this is a simple generalization of the movie, but as interested as I am in World Wars American History, this movie was difficult to watch.

            Oppenheimer quotes the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”  The destroyer of worlds?  He becomes death and brings his death to life?  He even compared his bomb to the splendor of God and, in this instant, equates himself with God.  It’s amazing to see how someone so consumed with progress and obsessed with purpose can forget themselves along the way.

             As far as the plot, it was loose and free flowing but could have chopped off some of the love elements and concentrated on the Manhattan Project slipping into Chaos.  I’m interested in the development of both Oppenheimer and Groves and I don’t think the filmmakers did anywhere near enough to do so.  Their relationship in the 1940s was very close before falling apart with the project and you don’t really see that in the film.  It seems like the filmmakers were more interested in making the bombs rather than making the people who make the bombs.

            In a period of film where Platoon and Top Gun and other war type films were highly interesting with plenty of action and character development, Fat Man and Little Boy was a safe bet.  What the producers did not take into consideration is that both of those films were based around combat with either popular stars or a biting script.  Fat Man and Little Boy did not fit this bill and ultimately fell flat.  As a Paul Newman movie, I was very disappointed with the quality and believe that one of the greatest actors in American history did a few roles for the paycheck.  Otherwise this was just a poor career decision.

            And the movie’s culmination is the Trinity test and the ensuing cloud and rush of wind from miles away.  The witnesses were shocked and amazed, but it wasn’t a revolted reaction as much as it was that of intrigue.  It’s amazing to see how destructive we are.

 

            And you wonder why I detest nuclear arms research.

            The battle over energy is one that’s going to be waged on both sides of the aisle for years to come.  On one hand you have established gasoline technology, entrenched in society and the cornerstone of global economics.  On the other hand, the call for more efficiency has been answered with new technologies – hybrid, electric, hydrogen, etc.  Some folks have stated for a while that a happy medium between established technology and innovation is the development of more nuclear reactors.

            A renewable energy source, nuclear power is an attractive option because it offers more energy per unit cost than most other sources.  And, again, it’s renewable.  When considering the philosophy behind this technology, one can use risk-benefit analysis.  Sure, there is a lot of good that comes out of nuclear power, but the byproducts – the waste and toxicity that greatly outweighs what positives there are.

            A human life is more precious than any dollar amount, regardless of whether it’s the broker on Wall Street or the con doing 18 to 25 in the state pen.  So, by weighing dollar signs against blood, we’re trying to say that some lives are better than others.  The small guy can get hurt as long as the general populace is taken care of.  Seriously?

Remember Chernobyl.  Something like that is very possible and can negatively affect not only those in the immediate vicinity but the radiation released could kill millions around the world.  Imagine the generation after that and their futures.  What can we do for them?

            When it comes right down to it, people don’t care.  They might think they do and buy cars to make it look like they do and use better light bulbs to make other people say they do, but they don’t.  Long winded, I know, and I apologize, but that’s the way it is.  People don’t care where their energy comes from, as long as it comes.  Their electricity could be dirty or clean, the world could have a shortage but as long as their television, refrigerator and computer work, most people ignore everything and soldier on. 

            In the case of nuclear power, it’s much of the same.  People in general don’t care about the destruction, as long as the electricity keeps coming.  That’s the way it is right now and it’s depressing.  I think that nuclear power, with all of its benefits is still flawed.  Where would the waste go?  How can we safely produce this power without harm to life on Earth?  So far, we’ve been unable to fix that part.  Until we do, then forget about nuclear power.  Invest in other forms of energy, wind, solar, geothermal.  We have the technology, it’s just that the bigwigs who make the decisions for us would rather keep filling their pockets with our money than do something to help us.

            There, that’s my political spin and my perspective on the world view when it comes to nuclear power.

           
As for weaponry,  There is no such thing as tactical nuclear strikes.  A nuclear strike is a nuclear strike, big or small.  Wind will continue carrying the particles across the land and people will be affected that had nothing to do with the conflict to start with.  The bombs we have now cause enough civilian casualties, why would we need to cause more with even more devastating warheads?

            I believe that more countries are nuclear capable and active than what we’re willing to believe.  Countries like Iran and North Korea tout their nuclear capabilities because they want the bully to get fired up and to throw their weight around.  To think that only a select few super powers are able to develop nuclear technology is a practice in willful ignorance.  Now, do I think that Sri Lanka or other tiny nations have a stockpile ready to be unleashed on the world?  No.

            Nuclear weapons are like a boxer’s knockout punch.  They are exhibited once in a while to show people the power of the person, but are mostly kept away due to what they can do.  Sure, we have nuclear weapons, as does Russia and China, India and Iran.  But, we don’t shoot them off at every opportunity just to prove a point?  I like the fact that we keep them off the map and rely on more humane and localized attacks.  I mean, look at what happened in World War II with Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  Those places still aren’t right after the attacks.  Can you imagine Japan now had we hit Tokyo like Roosevelt vowed?

            Can any of this lead to a nuclear holocaust?  I think that threat is very real and always a possibility.  I think that should one of our enemies ever use a nuclear warhead on us or our allies we would more than likely react with equal and opposite force.  That’s the way it is with conflict, he with the biggest stick wins.  No matter how sophisticated or how humane of a society we have become, that philosophy still holds true.

            I think our best bet for a nuclear holocaust still lies in Russia.  With growing tension between the United States and Russia as well as the wildcards of Iran and North Korea, we could very easily find ourselves in a nuclear war in the next ten years.  It’s times like these that we have to be diplomatic and make the right decisions when considering a large scale nuclear assault.

            Godzilla explores the possibilities of mutations due to radiation exposure.  Other effects, such as poisoning and dementia further cement the fact that nuclear testing and nuclear power are more detrimental than helpful in the long run.

            Am I taking things to extreme?  Maybe.  But, when considering the fact that most, if not all, nuclear innovations lead to some sort of calamity, then human suffering due to these is not completely out of rationality.

            And I’m done rambling.

            “Professor, uh, Hall, our economy is every bit as fragile as the environment. Perhaps you should keep that in mind before making sensationalist claims.”

 

            I like that quote, it’s very fitting in the world we live in, overwhelmed by fear and under whelmed by promise.  To the attentive eye, it’s just another Hollywood line delivered by another Hollywood actor selling lies to earn a paycheck.  But, to the target audience, this could be a push in the right direction, or wrong given the circumstances.  To the average movie-goer, these movies are visually appealing as they offer ten times as much in special effects than actual plot.   What you are left with is a father trying to get to his son while the Earth goes on an all out assault against mankind.  The latter, as told in the movie, is a direct cause of global warming, the other side of the equal sign from careless consumption and destruction.

            I don’t believe a single word that this movie had to say.  I want to get that off of my chest right now and put it in the open.  Regardless of what I say from here to the end, just know that.  Also, another quick note.  Al Gore is one of my heroes and I applaud and admire the steps he’s taken to raise global awareness about the harm we’re doing as a planet.  The Earth’s warming trend is not completely man made, but I don’t think we’re helping matters any with our choice of lifestyle.  I enjoyed An Inconvenient Truth and appreciated the facts and consequences it brought to the discussion.  I do understand, however, that it was also produced by a politician and, as we all know, politicians tend to spin the truth to fit into whatever they want it to, even Mr. Gore.

            The Day After Tomorrow begins in Antarctica where Jack Hall and his merry cohorts are out digging up ice cores to analyze.  Ice cores are actually used frequently to explore quick and gradual changes in the environment by studying the concentrations of certain chemicals in them.  An entire ice shelf then breaks off, a result of warming ocean waters melting the ice under it.  So now we have a huge hunk of ice floating away from Antarctica.  I remember seeing this movie in theaters and hearing the opening day crowd murmuring in excitement as the ice broke away.

            I like the depiction of the politicians caring more about the economy and their money than they are about the planet.  This mirrors a sentiment felt by hundreds of millions worldwide: money over nature.  The trees we fell are worth more to us than the money that’s printed on them in the end.  The politicians are warned by a scientist who works with one of the world’s respected organizations for research and they just don’t care.  Given the current charged political climate and citizens reaching out for answers and hope, it’s not hard to see how these feelings can get out of hand.

            On Dr. Fragile’s assignment, he states that people often discard mountains of evidence for the shred that supports what they want.  That’s not bound solely to science, but also to economics and other aspects as well.  Consider for a moment the issue of gas prices.  Right now, the price per barrel of gas has fallen almost 25%, yet the price at the pump has fallen much slower.  Price per barrel is based on a current surplus and faltering market while the price at the pump is based on what people call scarcity.  I think it’s fear.  There is evidence to support low gas prices but the oil companies key in on the war.

            This is often the same way with Hollywood movies, providing the flash and flair as more of a scare factor, kindly ignoring the facts to make a more compelling story.  The Day After Tomorrow, with its two hundred foot waves and freezing arctic hurricanes, offered several strong scenes to shove the point across.  Many scientists do agree that these things can happen, higher seas, varying temperatures and large storms, as a result of global warming, but not in the course of three or four weeks.  Instead, it will be a few hundreds or a few thousand years before this really occurs, if it does.  So, what happens is the average moviegoer believes that their energy consumption is driving these massive storms and unless we fix it, the world will end.

            This is a problem.  Most people trust scientists rather than studying the information and making their own decisions.  They take the media’s spin to be truth and the world is left with whatever someone else wants it to believe.  And so we soldier on, never fully understanding the issue.

            Documentaries, at least the widely accepted ones, hardly ever see both sides of the equation and spend a large amount of time studying just one side.  That’s part of an opinion piece, make sure your opinion is heard.  While considering the role that films such as The Day After Tomorrow and documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth play in society, one needs only look at how scientists and politicians are viewed.  Most politicians do not have a favorable rating and are constantly bombarded from all sides about views, voting record, etc.  The populus knows this and consider politicians to just be veteran pickpockets with nothing more to do than look out for themselves and leave those they represent in the cold.

            Scientists, as I stated previously are viewed more favorably than politicians because people would like to believe rather than question.  We fall into line rather than take the lead.  I might sound repetitive and for that I apologize but this is a truth that cannot be ignored.   So we’re left with The Day After Tomorrow and An Inconvenient Truth being trusted like they are fact because people simply don’t care.

            An Inconvenient Truth provided sharp imagery and a fear-raising approach but also threw some fact in as well.  Enough to where Gore won an Academy Award with the largely Democratic Academy.  Enough to where hybrid and alternative energy technologies are now on the forefront of everyone’s minds.  Film is the ultimate media to reach out to all generations to get a message across and he surely did that.

            Global Warming is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from cars, factories and power plants, that is the message pushed forth by AIT and its followers.  We are killing the environment, we are destroying all we’ve worked for.  The weather is more violent than ever before because we are making the world hotter.  As previously stated, we aren’t helping the Earth cool any, I’ll give them that, but the Earth is in the midst of a warming trend, much like all other cyclical processes on Earth.

            The imagery of Hurricane Katrina, used as the biggest scare factor of all, were a bit of overkill in my opinion.  It was depressing to see the destruction again as a “byproduct” of a wasteful and apathetic society.  Becoming more green, investing large amounts of money into alternative energies and completely revamping the way we live is going to solve these problems.  Storms are going to get less violent because I bought a Hybrid?

            What the hell?  Seriously?  That’s nature, that’s the world.  The waters are warmer, so of course the storms are going to be stronger.  Hurricane Hugo was stronger than Katrina when he hit and cause catastrophic damage here.  The only reason that Hurricane Katrina’s destruction was so great was because of technological failures in the levees.  Those broke and the devastation went from severe to catastrophic.  I’m not taking away from the power and awe that Katrina brought, but had it hit anywhere else, it would have been damage like we saw here or maybe even a little less.  It wasn’t because of pollution or carbon dioxide, but because the environment made it possible.

          Like I said before and I stand by this, I don’t doubt that we’re throwing hundreds of thousands of tons of crap into the atmosphere and we’re doing so with little to  no regard of our surroundings when we do.  The amount of greenhouse gases that we’re putting into the atmosphere is obscene.  The statistics for the matter are definitely convincing, but they can be misconstrued.  Nine of the past 25 years have been some of the hottest on record, again a warming trend in my opinion.  NOAA has said that hurricanes are becoming more intense than ever before on record.  Our records only span back 100 years and these cyclical changes in Earth’s temperature can take thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years.  This is another example of taking a shred of evidence and running with it while kindly ignoring the big picture.  We can’t keep ignoring the big picture.  So we have decisions to make.  How are we going to handle living in this warming trend while becoming more eco-friendly.  And that’s another word, eco-friendly.  We’re still looking out for us, not for the environment.  All the technologies for cars are to make air quality better for us.  We still deforest and build where we should conserve.  We don’t try and clean up the power plants and mills that are flooding our rivers and lakes with sludge everyday.  Tighter regulation is needed to really conserve the beauty and vitality we have and so far it’s not enough.  More must be done.  What can we do?

            I believe in alternative energy sources and renewable power.  I believe the quicker we reduce our dependency on oil, the quicker we can become more self-sufficient and turn the oil money into money better spent elsewhere.  I believe that we can and will fix this problem.

 

No, no politics, sorry, just had to throw out a little something.

 

            All in all, film is not the only way that the public can get misconstrued and heavily weighted information, but it can definitely provide a good skew in the grand scheme of things.  The two films in question, D.A.T and A.I.T. both throw some far-end devastation at you to make you think that this is what’s coming.  This is what’s knocking on the door for the future and we have to make it better NOW.  Not later, no, but right now.  Just ask any politician, they’ll tell you.  We have to make it better now.

 

So, to recap, movies go a long way to influence those who don’t take the time to study the issues themselves.  By throwing in outrageous examples, great special effects or skewed, politically-charged data, it’s easy to see why they hold so much pull over the everyman.  As far as Global Warming goes, it’s definitely an issue, maybe the greatest issue of our time and we have to listen to both sides to find a solution.  Considering our financial crisis, why keep paying billions of dollars to oil corporations when renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

 

Again, no politics, but that’s my two cents.  Hope you all enjoyed reading my roundabout rambling on global warming.

            I saw The Core when it first came out in theaters, when I was still in my first stint as a Physics student.  Even then, when I didn’t know much of anything regarding Physics, I knew it was a travesty.  Don’t get me wrong, the movie is entirely enjoyable, I’m a big fan of Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank and Stanley Tucci, but it’s still far from correct.  When I first saw the task at hand about breaking The Core down and finding every bit of bad physics I could, I was daunted.  That’s a large task.  So, I decided to take each scene, break it down and try to find what I could.

 

So, In the Beginning….

 

            The guy who plays the Gin in the Wishmaster series dies in a board room as he begins a big speech.  This is the first physics blunder.  When he dies, he collapses over and facefirst onto the table.  His legs do not bend, he does not slide off afterwards and no one is holding him up.  On a glass table, that’s a bit pushing it.  There’s not enough friction to not slide off of a table that’s two or three feet in the air.  Afterwards, carnage ensues outside and people die.  They just die.

 

            This is impossible.  Firstly, should an EM spike actually reach the Earth’s surface, it would be diffused a little bit en route to the ground.  It breaks through the magnetic field, through the atmosphere, and hits a ten block radius in the middle of a city?  That’s more of a centralized event than anything else.  Like I mentioned before, it would be spread out more and more than likely wouldn’t have done the damage it did.  That’s even if it could get through the atmosphere to start with.  The movie dives into bad physics like an Olympic diver cutting through water en route to the gold medal.  It’s amazing actually.

 

            We meet Joshua Keyes.  Good physics with the oscilloscope.  That girl painting her nails would’ve been booted from my classroom.  It’s geology damn it, it’s not supposed to be interesting!!

 

            We meet Serg, not surge.  We meet the general.  Keyes says pretty much what I just said, that we know nothing with that much Power and Force.  There’s nothing on the other side of the equal sign, blah blah blah.

 

            I felt like I was in a Hitchcock movie watching the Trafalgar Square scene.  I’m not a biologist, nor do I claim to be, but I know it’s widely accepted that pigeons use EM waves to navigate on a large scale.  So, if EM waves are breaking through, then birds would go haywire.  I guess this is more diffuse, but then that would be a great distance for the waves to be diffused through, so the Power and Force would still not be great enough to stop pacemakers/watches/create general havoc.  I long for asteroids…

 

            Doctorates blindfolded?  That would be awesome.  Oh yeah, Dr. Keyes starts to get the big picture and I roll my eyes with disgust.  How did someone with Eckhart’s acting ability agree to be in this movie?  How?

 

            Speaking of wasted acting ability, enter Academy Award winner Hilary Swank and the shuttle Endeavor.  Space is a vacuum, and anything moving up there requires thrusters or some sort of opposite force to slow it down or move it in another direction.  Maybe I’m just being picky, but the shuttle moves rather nimbly above Earth’s surface with little thruster help from what I could see.  I can’t give them the benefit of the doubt.  Not a chance.  Re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere is fine, although nothing is stated about possibly bouncing off into space.  And the EM interference pushes the shuttle 129 miles off of course?  Yeah, that’s plausible.  It takes great skill to land a shuttle.  The directors hardly have the skill to park their car so this might not have worked anyways.  EM field, again, interferes and throws the Endeavor off course, straight for Los Angeles.  Gasp, shock, horror.  Why can’t anyone ever land in Missoula, Montana or Salina, Kansas?  By a stroke of luck they are able to turn a space shuttle a complete 45 degrees in five seconds going 300 knots.  Hey, we all get lucky right?

 

            So Endeavor miraculously makes the turn and heads toward the Los Angeles River.  L over D max?  Really, what is that?  For non-physics folk it might seem impressive.  I honestly have no clue what they’re talking about.  Torque?  So, while steering down the Los Angeles River to the best of his ability, the commander finally gives the order to raise the landing gear.  Ignoring the fact that he somehow kept the wing from breaking off while hitting the edge at well over 200 mph, what happens next is hilarious.  When the landing gear goes up, the shuttle takes a perfectly perpendicular hit at the top and somehow goes into a spin.  There was no angle or anything to make this spin at all.  Again, maybe I’m being too harsh, but I actually laughed at this.  Spinning toward their doom, the crew just hangs on.  And shouldn’t the shuttle have been torn up a little bit more by skidding along the concrete?  The water’s not that deep.

 

            We meet Dr. Zimsky.  Stanley Tucci is excellent.  He makes this movie.  So, while poring over impressive looking charts and graphs and data that probably mean jack, Keyes leaves and Zimsky thumbs through some secret files.  Here comes the part where Hollywood really assumes everyone is stupid.

 

            Beck, yawn.  Ohhh, pretty lights.  Electromagnetic discharge in the atmosphere.  Aurora Borealis.

 

            Aaron Eckhart drunk is like Sean Penn sober.

 

            Good geologic example.  Waste of a good peach though.  Why blowtorch it.  Just use Zimsky’s head.  Good explanation of magnetism.  Now, we get to the central point of this whole debacle.  The Earth’s core has stopped spinning.  I don’t ever use IM talk in my blogs but lmao.  That’s awesome to the point to where it’s almost sad.  The core is spinning incredibly fast.  Just the sheer momentum is enough to take anything we can throw at it.  Seriously guys, seriously.  But, in the end, they had to make a movie so we soldier on.  Man, I almost want to try the blowtorch.  As for the scary scenarios, we have no idea what would happen.  In all honesty, it’s a possibility that the EM field breaking down, in whatever parallel reality, would cause some kind of storm, since our ecosystems are so delicate to start with.  But, for the sake of argument, they’re full of it.

 

            What if we could?  Oh Jesus….

 

            My favorite line:  Why the hell aren’t you dead yet?

 

            High frequency pulse lasers with resonance tube ultrasonics.  Wow.  Yes, this is what’s used to break up a kidney stone.  But kidney stones are brittle and those lasers are nearly the same strength/intensity.  This will come into play later, but right now, sound travels in waves, much like everything else, so the fact that the hole in the rock is smooth makes me throw a BS flag in there somewhere.  As for the chemistry for Unobtainium, I’m no chemist, so I’m not going there.  The concept is crap, however.  An element that converts pressure and heat to energy.  I guess it’s possible, but it’s not anything I’ve ever heard of before.  So, again for the sake of argument, I’m ignoring it.

 

            Rat.

 

            Hacking the Planet.

 

            Vindication for Major Childs.

 

Anyone bored yet?

 

            The outline of the program had some decent shots in it.  But still no good physics.  That explosion model… eesh.  We’ll get there later.  As well as the compartments.

 

            I like the scene on the imaging.  That’s actually pretty neat.  It’s possible as well as we have true color and negative systems like that right now.

 

            Then we have a scene or two for character development.  Nothing of interest here.

 

            Okay, this nonsense with the lightning destroying Rome and whatnot is just ridiculous.  Lightning is very energetic and there is a lot of it, but there isn’t enough to completely annihilate the Coliseum or carve out huge valleys in the ground.  The static discharge is the same discharge that causes lightning.  Even with thirty or forty strikes per square mile or however many they said there would be, it still wouldn’t be enough.  More Hollywood drivel.  I mean, this storm formed in a matter of seconds.  It’s excellent

 

            Back in America, we’re set for launch after Rome lies in ruins.  Here comes another terrible part.  The pressure and temperature at the bottom of the ocean are such that the lasers would not heat the rock enough for them to drive through.  As they dance through the swirling waters with the whales, the lasers don’t fire and then wham, there they are and the mission has started.  I would’ve just taken out a million dollar loan and enjoyed my last year on Earth.  That’s just me.

 

            So they make it into the mantle and fly toward their destination.  Stanley Tucci’s Carl Sagan narration is incredible.  I love it.

 

            Okay, once Virgil crashes into the crystals and everyone gets out… with unobtainium infused suits mind you, we lose the Commander.  When the crystal falls from almost a mile up and goes into his helmet, there is no way in hell that the Commander would’ve been able to blink.  The pressure would have annihilated his head and the rest of his body.   I mean, this cave cannot be devoid of pressure or temperature.  And wouldn’t the lava be THROWN into the cave rather than falling?

 

            And while we’re on pressure, in order for Virgil to remain intact, this substance has to equalize the incredibly high pressures that the oceans and the Earth put on it.  Given the fact that there must be the same pressure in the hull and inside the hull, how the actors are able to walk around without getting compacted into marbles is beyond me.  Same with temperature. 

 

            So everything is good to go on the ship now, sans Iverson.

 

            Diamonds the size of Cape Cod.  Well, yes, I imagine this is possible.  Super heated and super compressed Carbon.  That sounds about right.  So, when the compartment for Serg has been jettisoned, it is automatically crushed.  Is the bulkhead door also made out of Unob?  If not, then the entire ship would be destroyed from the outside through that one door.  Another issue.

 

            More character development and conflict/resolution.  Blah blah blah.

 

            And hell no the warheads aren’t going to cut it.  Did you think it would?  Seriously, this is over 10^24 tons of liquid metal, you’d be lucky to cause a big splash.

 

            It’s never said exactly what they did with Destiny, but it had to be enough to get to the core itself.  So they dug miles upon miles into the Earth with little to no outgassing, magma eruptions or other destruction.  And, to top it all off, they fire a HUGE laser into the ground to try and trigger seismic activity.  Yeah, we’ve lost our minds.  I’ve given up hope in humanity.  I’d rather be a tree in Canada.

 

            Seriously, this is a huge oversight.  It’s common sense, something that’s under a great amount of pressure wants to get to smaller pressure.  So the material beneath the surface should be hurling material and gas constantly toward the surface.  Destiny is a flop.  This whole movie is a flop.

 

            And another thing.  They’re in the Earth’s core surrounded by charged ions of whatever material.  How in the blue hell do the communication devices still work?  It’s a mystery.

 

            Sunlight comes unfiltered through the atmosphere.  I can see that it can burn skin.  Excellent job there, that’s right on task.  But ionizing and melting metal, boiling water, killing fish?  All at a few seconds exposure?  I’m not believing this at all.  San Francisco?  The fact that it hits a major city instead of the more probably ocean or something like that.  I hate Hollywood.  And microwaves?  We are bombarded all the time with more energized radiation than that.  Cmon, give me something to believe in. 

 

            Good physics mumbo jumbo in there.  More good and impressive formulas to the public ear.  Torque equations were correct I do believe.

 

            Scenario 3 works in the movie.  I still have yet to touch on that.

 

            Okay, so the heat and pressure in the crawlspace kills him but the intense heat and pressure in the cave didn’t do anything at all.  Come on directors, try harder.  This is easily avoided.

 

            The explosions of these nuclear weapons would go out in a spherical shape, equally in all directions.  So, the two resulting waves would cancel each other out on the other side.  That’s the way it was in the first model.  In the second model, each blast would cancel out half of the first, except for the final which would push a wave larger to the front that it would to the back.  It still wouldn’t be enough to restart the core.  Their plan would still fizzle in the end.

 

            Boom, boom, boom, Zimsky dies, boom, big boom.

 

            And they ride the shock wave out.

 

            The vessel flies out of the ocean’s floor and drops back down, a literal hunk of cold metal.  I’m still not sure how they were able to make the sonars hiccup with crushing pressure and ice cold temperatures.  With it wired to respond to heat, how Eckhart and Swank had power to do anything is still beyond me.  But, the movie does end on a “physically” correct note.  Whales do respond to sonar and the sound waves must sound like music.

 

All in all, The Core is Hollywood through and through.  There is no getting around the physics principles that are butchered throughout the film.  There’s no amount of wit or sarcasm that could possibly make this any easier or more enjoyable.

 

Sigh, I had to go watch the Dark Knight again just to see Eckhart in a redeeming role.

 

            Pray.

 

            That was my initial response to the task at hand.  Find some way to save the world from the monstrosity spelling doom to humanity in Armageddon?  An asteroid the size of Texas is hurtling toward Earth with less than a month before impact?  Oh the loans I would take out…..

 

            Given the lack of experience of the crew, the small time frame to organize and strategize the attack plan as well as the near impossibility of getting everything ready in time, there is no way that this could ever work simply from a logistics standpoint.  Physically, it’s worse, as we explored in class.  For an object the size of Texas, as dense as the Earth, you’re looking at a substantial portion of the moon hurtling our way.  Asteroids like this do exist, but they are very few and far between.

 

            Comet nuclei, however, are whizzing through the solar system each year, some of which we don’t even notice until they’ve already flown by.

           

            I believe the Armageddon model of drilling into the object itself would work on another object closer to the size and density of say, the comet from Deep Impact (better movie in my opinion.)  Unlike Armageddon, though, you would need time to plan for the impact, to study its composition and to plot out the trajectory.

 

            In 2011, Comet McCall passes within fifteen million miles of the Earth.  Previously undiscovered, the comet throws into stark relief the lack of preparation for such an event and the United States government, in a joint effort with other nations worldwide, tracks the comet on the way out to get a better feel for it.  Plotting the trajectory, they find that at some point twenty-six years later, the comet will come very close to Earth.  An impact is possible.

           

            Roughly spherical, the comet has a diameter of eleven km.  Spectral analysis of the body confirms earlier suspicions about the chemical composition: sheets of ice mixed with rock, dust and frozen gases, a typical comet.  The density is theorized to be somewhere around 2.0 grams per cubic centimeter.

 

            So:

 

Diameter = 11 km – 11000 m

Radius = 5500 m

Volume of sphere = 4/3 (Pi)(r^3) = 6.97 * 10^11 cubic meters.

Density = 2.0 g/cm^3 = 2000 kg / m^3

Mass, given by density times volume, yields 1.4 *10^15 kg.

 

Alright, ye olde physical properties have been delineated as such and the world is panicking once the news hits the airwaves that in 26 years, the Earth will come very close to or be impacted by the bit of ice/rock.  What do we do?

 

            As a civilization, we’re given 26 years to prepare.  Using Hubble, we’re able to monitor the rock until it’s blocked out by other planets and dust.  With an orbit angled slightly above the rotational plane, it misses contact with any other planetary body.  Sorry kiddies, Neptune doesn’t take the shot for us.  No, this bad boy is coming, and fast.

           

            So, the world, in all of it’s infinite wisdom, considers several options, including dusting the body with black dust to deter the orbit through interaction with light and the barbaric approach of just firing a warhead at it.  In all honesty, like it or not, Armageddon was right.  The comet would come just as it is now, eleven thousand meters per second.  After weighing the best ideas, we decide to place a probe with a telescope onto Mars, which the comet will pass close to.

 

            I actually like the idea of using the moon’s gravity to catch up to the comet.  Going one step more, the moon is used in this instance to actually get the “drilling” team to Mars, where they will again employ the gravitation boost to get onto a landing site.  By putting an observation tool on the surface of Mars, we’re able to study reflective properties of the comet’s surface and, at least at that point, the chemical composition of said surface.  By considering the composition, we are able to understand the time it would take to drill.

           

            The best thing about studying the comet in its approach is that we will be able to computerize the orbital spin and thus calculate the point of detonation.  If you’re going to drill, you would need to detonate the bomb when the shaft is pointing in the direction of the Earth, to make the comet’s remaining pieces tumble backwards, avoiding colliding with each other.  Also, it would slow the comet down.  Not much, but at least a little bit.

 

            As for drilling depth, I theorize that a kilometer down would be roughly a third of the radius and would split the comet essentially down the middle.  If it’s more rock than ice, the split might not be made as cleanly.  This comet, however, is a good mix of both and so the split would be a little cleaner.

 

            Once the team lands on Comet McCall, they have quite a while to drill.  The eight inch drill bit usually drills 3.2 inches per minute.  At that rate, it would take 990 minutes with no interruptions or mishaps.  If it were Hollywood, someone would definitely die.  But this process is pretty automated, using several brackets for the deep drill.  All the actual beating hearts would have to do is stand back and make sure that nothing goes wrong.  Several engineers would be monitoring the situation from the shuttle.

           

            So, if all goes as planned, the bomb will be placed in 16.5 hours.  In a way to seal the perpetual deal on nuclear power, Russia and the United States work to recreate the Tsar Bomba, which will be lowered into the hole and activated.  From arrival to departure, twenty four hours should be more than sufficient for the crew to be ready to detonate.

 

Distance from Earth to Mars – .5327 AU – 82.6 million km.

Velocity of comet – 11 km/s

           

            From arrival, to departure, the comet has traveled 950,000 km but is still very far from the Earth.  Tsar Bomba has an energy yield of 4.2 * 10^17 J.  So… boom.

 

At a safe distance, the crew triggers the bomb, a massive explosion incurs and, the world waits to see if 26 years of planning has actually worked.

 

Recalling a discussion on conservation of energy,

 

Ei = Ef, and

PEi+KEi = PEf + KEf

 

When the explosion occurs, it’s never 100% efficient as some of the energy is lost to sound, heat and light.  But, 26 years into the future, we’re all wearing our trendy Ideal boots and we’ll take the bomb to be completely efficient.

 

Thus, the initial potential energy is 4.2 * 10^17 J and the initial Kinetic Energy is written as .5mv^2.

 

Each half of the comet, post-detonation, has an x-velocity and a y-velocity and a corresponding Kinetic Energy in those directions.  Given that,

 

PEi + KEi = PEf + KE1x + KE1y + KE2x + KE2y

 

The final potential energy is zero as all pieces in the system are moving.  And we’re not considering the x directions of either piece.  The comet is going to keep coming at us.  It’s just a matter of how far apart the two pieces are when they pass the Earth.  The x direction cancels the initial Kinetic Energy to start with, as both are in the X direction.  So the Energy equation can be written as,

 

PEi = KE(1+2)y

 

The initial potential energy of the superbomb is equal to the Kinetic energies of the two masses after detonation.  Given the definition of Kinetic Energy.

 

PEi = .5 m Vy^2

 

So,

 

4.2 * 10^17 = .5 (1.4 * 10^15 kg)(V^2)

 

Skipping some steps and the final velocity of each half in the y direction is 24.5 meters per second.

 

At detonation, the comet is still 81 million km from Earth.  Considering the comet did not lose noticeable forward velocity, it would still take the comet approximately 85 days to get to Earth.  In 85 days, the two halves would have traveled 184,090 km in opposite lateral directions.

 

I think it would definitely miss the Earth.

 

The Moon, you ask.  Well, that’s a different story.  Considering the relatively small sizes of the two halves, it’s a long shot to hit the Moon.  If it did, however, then I can only offer one suggestion right now.

 

Pray.

Hollywood has no standards.  Period.  The same city that pumped out classics like Citizen Kane, Forrest Gump and American Beauty has also allowed utter crap like House of the Dead and The Adventures of Pluto Nash to see the light of day.  As long as there are explosions, a loose plot and one bad ass leading guy or good looking leading lady, the mantra in Hollywood is that the seats will be filled.  One guy that has made his career in this role is The Ahnuld, the actor turned governor without a modicum of acting ability.  But in Hollywood, it doesn’t matter.

 

In Hollywood, anyone can be a star.

 

          In one of The Ahnuld’s more…. I can’t say memorable…. Recognized movies, Eraser, there is a particular scene that stands out to me.  Near the end of the move, when Arnold bursts through the metal like a Kraken from the sea, he sets into motion a physics-devastation chain of events that are laughable and sad.

 

          It’s prudent beforehand, however, to discuss the railgun.  The railgun uses magnetic propulsion to fire “bullets” at very high velocities, destroying anything and everything in their path.  Physically, railguns are possible and, according to a Wikipedia article on the subject, the Navy has tested a very large version of the weapon using a seven pound projectile.  The resulting explosion was pretty impressive.   In Eraser, the railguns are handheld and, when fired, also cause explosions.

 

In one of the scenes at the end of the movie, after The Ahnuld has already procured his double railguns and begun wreaking havoc upon his enemies, he is running through the warehouse while being fired at.  The shooter on the catwalk is nearly one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet away.  When he fires his gun, the resulting tracer that indicates the projectiles’ path hits the ground nearly instantaneously.  Nearly instantaneously, at most a tenth of a second.  We’ll call the distance one hundred and seventy feet away, in a tenth of a second.  That’s 533 meters per second.

 

In the Wikipedia article, the railgun’s estimated velocity for the Naval weapon is 3500 m/s, nearly 7 times the handheld railgun.  That’s not a terrible approximation for the velocity of a projectile.

 

What of the projectile?  Are we considering a bullet?  A plastic round?  An orange?  I’ll again pull from the Wikipedia article, where a mass of two kilograms is considered for a rod that is fired.  The size of the gun is roughly ten times the size of the one that The Ahnuld uses in Eraser.  Given that the density of the material stays the same, then the 2(pi)(radius)(length) formula for volume gives a volume one hundredth that of the original projectile, considering that the projectiles and weaponry are proportioned the same.  Thus, the mass is also one hundredth of the original mass, or .02 kg.

 

There, velocity is 533 meters per second and the mass is .02 kg for the projectile flying out of the gun.

 

Momentum, at least classically, is defined as the mass of an object times its velocity.

 

Conservation of momentum is set up so that the total momentum of the system at the beginning of a collision is the same as the total momentum of the system afterwards, set up as

 

Σmv initial = Σ mv final

 

The first collision in the scene is The Ahnuld firing the gun.  Classically, on a material never before seen, called Ideal Ice, firing the gun would send The Ahnuld sliding backwards.  As he shows no signs of recoil while firing, nearly all of the momentum would have to be pushed against his body.  As a former Mr. Universe and overall muscle-bound oaf, The Ahnuld is probably somewhere close to 250 pounds in this movie, or 114 kg.  If his initial velocity is zero, the his initial momentum would also be, gasp, zero.  Thus, the initial momentum of the system is zero, since the bullet is not moving either.

 

By law then, the final momentum must be zero.  If you set the two parts of the final momentum equal to zero, then they are equal to each other in opposite directions.  The Ahnuld is moving backwars, so we’ll give him the negative sign…. And a nice pair of Trendy Ideal boots, so he doesn’t stop skidding on the ideal ice.

 

So,

 

Final momentum of the bullet = – Final momentum of The Ahnuld.

 

(mass bullet)(velocity bullet) = -(mass Ahnuld)(velocity Ahnuld)

 

(.02 kg)(533 m/s) = -(114 kg)(velocity Ahnuld)

 

Velocity Ahnuld = 0.0935 m/s.

 

So, on a perfect sheet of ice, in a vacuum, with the trendy Ideal boots on, The Ahnuld would be blasted backwards at a whopping 0.0935 meters per second.  To put that in inches, the result is 3.68 inches per second.  He’s really moving.

 

But, it’s not a perfect world and his boots, however trendy, are not ideal.  The friction from his boots onto the ground is more than enough to stop this crawl in the opposite direction.  Fortunately for Ahnuld, this is not the impact we are trying to explore.  The real physics caper is the victim, who is unceremoniously flung through the air backwards.  Okay, so let’s do that experiment.

 

Ahnuld is about one hundred feet, 30.5 meters, away from the bad guys when he initially fires the guns.  For that short of distance, I believe we can ignore air resistance, especially with the speed the bullets have.  Also, it’s important to note that Ahnuld is on level ground with the victims, a fact that I will touch on a little bit later.

 

This time, the bullet has momentum, so there is an initial momentum going into the collision.  The bullet’s momentum is 10.7 kg m/s.  So, the final momentum must also be 10.7 kg m/s.  Thus, we can set the right side of the resulting equation to 10.7 kg m/s and we’re given.

 

10.7 kg m/s = (vf of bullet)(mass of bullet) + (vf of victim)(mass of victim.)

 

We know the mass of the bullet to be .02 kg.  The victims are usually more diminutive in size than the star, so we’ll give them a weight of 175 pounds, or  79.5 kg..  The vfb, or final velocity of the bullet is more of an objective observation than a calculation.  In the movie, it doesn’t appear that the impact with the victim slows it down any.  But, to be fair, we’ll suspend reality and say that it cut the velocity by 50%, or to 265 m/s.

 

Let’s say the bullet transfers every bit of its momentum to the victim and they are one system at the end.  Victim + victim yields a mass of 80.02 kg.  So,

 

10.7 kg m/s = 80.02 kg (Final velocity of victim + bullet)

 

Final velocity = 0.13 m/s

 

Wait, what?  0.13 m/s, that’s it?  So the victim doesn’t get rocketed backwards 50 feet in three seconds?  No, he doesn’t.  And what makes this even better is that the bullet DOES NOT transfer all of its momentum to the victim, so the end result is less than that.  This realization makes the scene that much more farfetched.

 

With a final speed of 265 m/s, the bullet transfers enough momentum so that the velocity of the victim, when  And what makes this even better is that the bullet DOES NOT transfer all of its momentum to the victim, so the end result is less than that.  This realization makes the scene that much more farfetched.

 

With a final speed of 265 m/s, the bullet transfers enough momentum so that the velocity of the victim, post-collision, is .0675 m/s.  Again, wow.

 

Finally, I found it hilarious how the victims were blasted into the air.  Since The Ahnuld and the victims were at the same level when he shot them, if they did fly anywhere, it would have been straight backwards.  But, this is Hollywood and physical principles really don’t matter there.  I wonder how fast the bullet would have to be going in order to actually cause someone to fly fifty feet in three seconds.

 

We can actually calculate the velocity of the projectile, in this case, the victim, using the formula listed below.

 

Rg = 2(v^2)cos(θ)sin(θ),

 

Where g is the acceleration due to gravity or -9.81 meters per second squared and θ is the launch angle.  Let’s use θ = 30 and R, the range, to be 50 feet or 15.2 meters.

 

15.2 (-9.81) = 2 cos(30)sin(30) (v^2)

149 = 2 (.866)(.5)(v^2)

v^2 = 172

v = 13.1 m/s.

 

So, assuming the rod stuck in the victim’s chest and they both went flying backwards, their resultant velocity would be 13.1 meters per second.  The victim was initially at rest, so the victim’s initial momentum was zero.  Thus, we can set the final momentum of the system equal to the initial momentum of the bullet.

 

(mass bullet)(velocity bullet) = (mass system)(velocity system)

.02 kg * (velocity bullet) = 1050 kg m/s

 

Oh dear….

 

Initial velocity of the bullet = 52,500 m/s.

 

Yep, the bullet is flying at 52.5 km/s.  I want a mach 153 bullet, that’d be awesome.

 

So there you have it, in order for the scene to be physically accurate, the bullet must be traveling at 153 times the speed of sound.  That figure is considering that the bullet lodges itself into the victim and transfer all of its momentum.  Otherwise, the bullet would need to be going faster than that just to achieve the feat in Eraser.

 

Next time, just give them photon cannons and let that be that.