Defending my main man, Carl Sagan.

I guess I understand the point of this week's assignment, and I know we're looking at it explicitly from a special relativity standpoint, but I'm a little upset that everyone thinks my main man Carl Sagan (despite passing away before the film's completion) would have messed up something like this. So with my limited knowledge, I'll do the proposed assignment in regards to special relativity, and then try and defend why I think Carl Sagan was correct in the long run. (After all, this same thing happened in the novel he wrote and wasn't altered in the film version). Besides, you obviously already know this, Dr. Fragile. Is this a test? Do I win? I hope so.

The Saroni Paradox

The "Saroni Paradox", as it is will now forever be called, is a paradox concerning time dilation and near-light speed travel. On its most basic level, without adding in all the intricacies and nuances of it, it occurs like this: two humans (let's call one Costas and the other Epe to keep the joke going), are examining one another. Costas is living life on earth, while his more successful brother, Epe, is on NASA's first man-operated vessel traveling at near-light speeds. From the frame of the observer (Costas), any object (Epe) traveling at near-light speed would age slower; however, because of time dilation and "proper" reference frames, Epe would also think that Costas was the one aging more slowly. But once Epe returns back to Earth, he would find that poor Costas is indeed the one who aged drastically more, along with everyone else.

Contact

From a point of special relativity (which the film addresses earlier on), this same thing should have happened in the film. Ellie (Jodie Foster), drops through the WORMHOLE (will come back to this later) and is gone for a span of 18 hours on her intergalactic journey. To her disdain, however, when she returns it appears to everyone else on Earth that only mere seconds have passed -- and that she only dropped from the top of the rings of the machine straight into the water. The problem with this, in regards to special relativity, is that the reference frames are askew. If Ellie (according to her frame) was gone for 18 hours, a much larger span of time would have passed back on Earth -- more like 50 years. This is actually pretty interesting, because many problems could have arisen: they could have turned off the machine, everyone she knows and loves could have died, they could have gotten more contact messages since then, or even scarier, incorrectly assumed the machine didn't work and could have built yet another one and continued to send more people into the abyss. I think this is why they had the discussion earlier in the movie, because of all the possibilities.

Carl Sagan and General Relativity

I might be ruining the fun of the assignment by being a smart-behind, but even though I don't know all the specifics of it, I'm pretty sure wormholes operate in the realm of general relativity, and thus, cancel out the Saroni Paradox all together. All I know is that spacetime bends as seen in the picture above, and wormholes are literally shortcuts through the fabric of space. So Ellie isn't technically going at near-light speed, she's just cutting through spacetime and taking a shortcut. Carl Sagan couldn't have gotten the end of the novel (and eventually movie) wrong. It could be a lot more complicated than it was portrayed, but conceptually, I think he was on the right track. Shame on everyone else for questioning Carl Sagan's greatness. Except you, Dr. Fragile. I'm convinced you actually do know everything about the universe. Did I pass your test?

KHAAAAAAAAAAAN

Star Trek. I really love Star Trek.

Even when it gets so incredulously insane (saving the whales in modern day San Fran to interpret space probes in the future a la Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home / Data playing poker with holographic interpretations of Newton, Einstein and Hawking in the Next Generation / and so many more weird scenes I don't have time to discuss), I will always hold this series dear in my heart. I'm glad I get to dedicate this blog to analyzing it.

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."




This is more than a cool quote. And no, this isn't me saying it's my life's motto that I secretly say to myself every day in intense nerdy fervor or something (although I do, but that's not the point) -- it's essentially the main theme of the series. I've always said that Star Trek was a social critiquing of the 60's disguised as a science fiction show, because that's exactly what it is. Gene Roddenberry developed this series to showcase futuristic situations as analogies for contemporary problems on Earth in the 60's, and then showing how they could be rectified and resolved through humanism, optimism, and strong sense of idealism. In the original television series (I like to make a distinction between the shows and the films, for there are vastly different thematically -- the former verging on science fantasy and the later being the prototypical science fiction), moral issues such as discrimination, war, and slavery were frequently brought up and analyzed. The portrayal of race in the Enterprise crew was perhaps the most paramount of all its social awareness. Communications officer Uhura was an African American female in an era where her race was being discriminated against, Chief helmsman Sulu was a Japanese-American just decades after the second World War where a general distrust and harboring of ill will was still left towards his people, and in the later episodes, Chekov, perhaps the most astonishing development in the crew as a Russian member during the Cold War. In fact, even in the unapproved pilot, "The Cage" (the very first episode ever filmed) featuring Captain Christopher Pike, one of the first scenes showcases the captain's hidden misogynist views as a women walks on deck without being ordered, much to the disdain of one of his trusted communication officers, who happens to be a woman herself. Such examples of social criticism are frequent in the series -- it's only a bonus that the show is also a very good science fiction series with astonishingly good science concepts.

 And that's the focus of  my blog -- to analyze how these science concepts portrayed in the show further advanced Gene Roddenberry's vision of social criticism, and for added fun, their plausibility as well.


The Warp Drive

Plot Significance 

In order for the crew of the Enterprise to "boldly go where no man has gone before", they needed a plot device to get them there in a reasonable amount of time (mere moments of screen-time versus days, weeks, or years of travel). Besides the logistics of having a plot device that allowed for the quick portrayal of a crew experiencing intergalactic flight, the warp drive, as stated before, allows for the social criticism of contemporary civil issues in far away places. It allows the audience to more easily digest a social issue, such as racism, if the oppressed people are a group of aliens and not contemporary races on Earth. The exotic, alien locals only complimented the very real, very local problems of the 60's  lying underneath. This fantastical blanket was only able to be covered over the plots if they had a device to reach these faraway galaxies, and thankfully, the warp drive was their answer.

Plausibility

It's surprising that their answer was logically correct as well as artistically. It was only a year ago that I finally figured out the mechanics of the warp drive as portrayed in the Star Trek series, and boy was I blown away. I always thought the warp speed synonymous with concepts such as light speed as portrayed in the Star Wars films, but little did I know that there is some underlying truth in the Star Trek version of intergalactic flight.

"It never occurred to me to think of SPACE as the thing that was moving!"

This line was actually uttered in disbelief by Simon Pegg's Scotty in the 2009 film, and although he was referring to the equation of trans-warp beaming, this can pretty much be applied to the idea of warp as well, because, yes -- the thing that is moving is space. Spacetime as a tangible substance is exempt from the physically binding laws of light speed, and thus, can theoretically be manipulated to "bubble" the spaceship around it and carry it across galaxies within seconds. 

To compliment its real world plausibility, the newest Star Trek film, Into Darkness, portrays its warp core after a real life machine in the National Ignition Facility in California. In fact, the Department of Energy actually allowed them to shoot some scenes there. 

Though the actual significance of this particular machine as it relates to warp cores is basically null: the Enterprise is fueled with deuterium, the heavy variant of hydrogen, which the NIF uses in its fusion experiments. So, the real reason basically boils down to the simple fact that it looks cool. But still, kudos to them.



Transporter 

Plot Significance

So you use your warp drive to manipulate space and arrive at your planet of choice. How do you get down there? By boarding a shuttle and flying down there with a landing party, of course. Or, that's what you would have done if Star Trek: The Original Series had a larger budget. TOS was infamous for its cheap effects and props, no thanks to the small budget granted to them by NBC. But even with such a meager amount of cash, the designers for the first Star Trek series really worked well with what they had -- an abundance of props (regardless of aesthetic quality) and lavish sets. But what they couldn't use were shuttles. They did not have the time or the money to construct these sets and scenes portraying the captain and crew flying down towards the planet's surface. The idea of the transporter was actual quite clever -- it's not only efficient, but pretty cool as well.

Plausibility

The concept of the transporter is, in my view, the quintessential "plot over reality" device. The plot requires the seamless transportation of the Enterprise's crew to the surface, and the transporter fulfills that requirement. It doesn't fulfill any sound real world plausibility, however. The main idea behind the transporter is that it deconstructs an object or organism down to its atomic level and then rebuilds it exactly as before. The problem with this is that you would need to know a HUGE amount of information of every biological being -- the composition and location of each of its atoms. We only just figured out the entirety of the genetic code, so knowing the composition and location of each and every one of the atoms which will largely be specific to only that individual will take a little bit longer. Plus, there's no way to accurately tell where the exact position of atomic particles are, so reassembling them would be incredibly difficult and risky.

Red Matter

This one is just a short bonus I'd like to discuss, specifically how it relates to the larger scheme of things in the Star Trek universe.

Plot Significance

The ominous "red matter" in Star Trek (2009) was really a barebones plot device on its most basic level, used to achieve a specific goal; however, the goal it achieved with this, in my eyes, forgives and atones for the incredible impracticality of it. One of the many reasons I loved the reboot of Star Trek was that it didn't simply "rewrite" the history of Star Trek and everything that happened before it. As a grand gesture in the form of black holes and time travel, the red matter acknowledges the past events of the franchise and cleverly allows a new timeline for us to relive the iconic moments of the Enterprise all over again, in brilliant, modern movie-making technology, nonetheless. Instead of spitting in the face of the series' history, it complimented it. And black holes and time travel are always awesome in no matter what form. 

Plausibility

None. Null. Nada. A plot device through and through; however, Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out an interesting mistake in its portrayal in the 2009 Star Trek. Surprisingly, not having anything wrong with the existence of the red matter itself (saying it was "cool"), he said he couldn't suspend his disbelief in how it was initiated in the film. He said that if it really does create a black hole, it could have been deployed at any location -- it didn't have to be dropped into a hole leading to the core of a planet made by a massive drill. All you would have to do, essentially, would be to drop it on the planet's surface and the same effect would be achieved. 

Conclusion

Star Trek will always be one of my favorite pieces of entertainment. Complete, unabashed, unashamed love for this series. Being able to critically analyze on a scientific and artistic level for class is one of the high points of my existence. Thank you. 

P.S. 

This is the greatest thing I have ever purchased. 

Le marchand de la mort est mort.

"The merchant of death is dead."

This was the headline of a French newspaper in Cannes after being mistakenly informed about Alfred Nobel's death. Nobel, great engineer and inventor forever remembered by his patent of dynamite, was on the verge of being posthumously branded as the merchant of death because of a discovery he made in attempt to save miners' lives, a discovery made only to replace the more volatile nitroglycerin with a more stable alternative -- a peaceful discovery with a peaceful application forever scarred by humanity's perversion of it. 

So why do I mention this in a blog reviewing two films analyzing the discovery of a scientific achievement and its application of it afterwards? Because this isn't the first time this question of scientific ethic has been sought, and it surely won't be the last time anytime soon. 

"Fat Man and Little Boy" and "Gojira" both deal with the moral implications of the engineering of the atom bomb and then its eventual use and detonation. The former film delves into the conflicting moral consciousnesses of the engineers and scientists in the creation of this weapon while the latter is a allegorical film criticizing the implementation of this invention in the guise of a monster movie. But the question still persists: was this discovery of the invention wrong? I would have to say no. Even deeper, I would have to say the implementation of this invention wasn't entirely wrong either -- not on an ethical realm, but on a relative realm unique only to its situation. 

On discussing the moral positions of the scientists in "Fat Man and Little Boy", I'd like to recall back to my opening on Alfred Nobel. I purposely painted Nobel entirely as a victim of his own discovery, when the truth isn't that clear-cut. It is true that Nobel began his discovery like any other scientist would have, seeing a puzzle in the volatility in nitroglycerin and using his understanding to solve it, which he did by adding silica to create a malleable and stable paste, thus, dynamite was born. As Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, "A discovery itself is not moral, it's our application of it." The moral dilemma here, however, began upon Nobel's response to when he saw how his invention was being used for martial and warlike purposes -- he decided to opt in. He even continued manufacturing and patenting inventions for the armaments industry beyond dynamite. It was only later in his life when his moral consciousness weighed upon him, and he began making excuses as a comfortable way to defend his activity -- "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops" (this is actually how the urban legend began that Nobel purely invented the dynamite as a weapon of such terror that would demote the idea of war forever more, an idea interestingly held by post-atomic detonation scientists in the US). His despondence is what eventually lead to him posthumously arranging the Nobel Peace Prizes. The question still persists, however -- should his discovery have been made knowing what it would have lead to? Yes.  Neil deGrasse Tyson continues from the quote above, saying "The world is accessible to us". Upon being asked the same question, coincidentally about the moral implications of the discovery of the atom bomb as well, he alludes to the discovery of smelting iron. Should the discovery of smelting iron have been prevented knowing that it would lead to the creation of the sword, a weapon of war? He let out a resounding "absolutely". I'm going to take a leap and say that all the combined deaths at the edge of a sword surpasses the deaths from the atomic bomb by far. But the creation of weapons was just one of many byproducts of the smelting of iron, most of which were beneficial in the progression of humanity's technological and scientific prowess. One detrimental application to a discovery shouldn't undermine the whole thing.

I put so much extensive focus on Nobel because he shared the same plight as the Manhattan Project scientists in regards to moral consciousness, the only difference is their inventions' initial purpose and eventual implementations were reversed -- dynamite was a peaceful tool turned weapon and atomic discovery began a weapon turned peaceful application (eventually). The moral quandary of the Manhattan Project scientists was that they fully understood that their scientific discovery was being weaponized from the get-go. Many held onto the Nobel-like belief that the US desperately needed a weapon of such destruction that it would forever secure its safety through fear. And in that moment, that assumption was right. As I stated before, I believe that the implementation of the atomic bomb on Japan was objectively right not on an ethical standpoint, but relatively due to the unique circumstance America found itself in opposition to Japan. Japan was under the leadership of extremist Prime Minister Tojo who instilled an utter sense of crazed nationalism into the country's citizens through which nothing short of a single display of shear annihilation would suppress them. Under the practice of extreme Bushido, even Japan's citizen populace was displaying fierce loyalty through suicide in a matter of ways to prove their devotion. The nation's army itself was already deploying an art of war not combatable against in the traditional sense of warfare through the form of kamikaze and guerrilla tactics. So that's exactly what the US did -- they combated Japan's nontraditional style of warfare with an equally nontraditional style in the form of the power of the atom. And only through this was the US able to suppress Japan into surrendering. The real problem began years later when the Soviet Union began atomic and eventually nuclear interest, because when you see someone with a big stick, you try and find a bigger one -- and that's the problem it always boils down to, which I think can be attributed to the human condition and not assigned and blamed on morals or ethics. 

Now onto "Gojira". I think it's obvious as to why the US wouldn't allow the complete and original version of the film be viewed until 50 years later. It humanized Japan's citizens in a way and quite literally framed America as a monster. Ego aside, I think the bigger and more realistic reason was because the US was still in an arm's race against the Soviet Union at the time, an arm's race comprised entirely of nuclear warheads. If "Gojira" was publicly shown in America during this period, it could make the populace sympathetic in the plight to rid nuclear weapons. The fact of the matter was that America couldn't have a sympathetic populace because they needed their full support as they continued to make more nuclear warheads in opposition to the Soviet Union's own nuclear arsenal. 

Ending my whole spiel on moral dilemma and now onto the literal possibility of a Godzilla creature, I don't think I can suspend my disbelief here. Godzilla is a big boy, and a big boy has got to eat. Tokyo really is a big entree, but unless Godzilla takes regular strolls to coastal cities and eats all their inhabitants on the daily throughout his lifetime, I don't think he can persist and thrive as an biological organism. And sadly, Japan isn't that big enough to support a diet like that. Besides, by his third of fourth meal in the quantity of a city, Japan would have already devised the oxygen destroyer, which leads me to my final piece of discussion... 

The concept of the oxygen destroyer is actually kind of cool. It's beyond stupid, but cool nonetheless. The main idea behind the oxygen destroyer is mostly apparent in its name, in which it dissolves all oxygen in water. I don't necessarily think it would dissolve Godzilla completely as shown (a la the law of the conservation of mass), but I think the effect would be pretty destructive regardless. In line with the main properties behind the atom bomb, if the oxygen destroyer followed suit and achieved its effects through the splitting of the oxygen atom, an interesting effect would occur either way --all the O2 would be split into individual oxygen atoms. I can still safely say this wouldn't dissolve Godzilla either, but the effect would still probably end in his demise.

***

I began this blog alluding to Alfred Nobel (and perhaps spent a little more time than necessary with this allusion, sorry) to drive home the point that scientific discovery and moral implications always have and always will collide. It didn't begin with Alfred Nobel, and it won't end (and obviously hasn't) with the scientists in the Manhattan Project. Ethics and science will always be opponents, but the discoveries themselves aren't to blame. 

TELL HER HOW YOU FEEL

Oh boy. Global Warming.

Science can be very controversial, and we definitely picked out one of the contenders for the most "heated" argument (wait, that was clever, right?). As a geology major, global warming is an issue very pertinent to my field of study. That's not to say the information I'm about to give makes it any more accurate than others' (that's like feeling on par with Isaac Newton after an introductory physics course), but just that I feel much more passionate about the subject than the average person. Oh boy. Here we go.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

97% of climate scientists --including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) -- agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities. 97 percent. As stated before, science can be very controversial, especially within the scientific community, and an overwhelmingly one-sided agreement on an issue is something to note. A complete list of published statements can be referenced in the link provided under the above picture. In all, that includes statements from: 18 scientific associations, a joint statement from numerous international science academies, government agencies such as the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here is also a list of 200 worldwide scientific organizations that hold the position that climate change has been influenced by human action.

That's not to say there aren't naysayers to the subject of global warming (and there are quite a few), but the above statistic only attributes to those within the scientific community, and honestly in my own opinion, those only worth listening to. Although, there are those within the scientific community, an insignificant-yet-vocal minority who are against the actuality of global warming, but there are always those select few who go against the flow just to do so. There's a hipster in us all, apparently. Politicians have also joined the ring in arguing on this matter, but considering the tenuous nature of politicians overall, those opinions are excluded in this statistic.

http://www.globalchange.gov/HighResImages/1-Global-pg-20L.jpg

Now that the scientific consensus has been noted, the next priority is to state the evidence in support of it. Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, and is projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next hundred years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest on record, and 2010 was tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record. Many places have experienced changes in rainfall resulting in more intense rain, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves. The planet's oceans and glaciers have also experienced changes: oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting, and sea levels are rising.

The image above also supports the claim that the primary cause for the recent warming of the earth is due to greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. human caused effects. Although the earth periodically goes through natural climate shifts, the graph illustrates the projected change if only natural forces were present and the actual change with human contribution.

Finally, here are some examples of the drastic changes that can occur even with a seemingly small temperature change*:

                     For about every 2°F of warming, we can expect to see
                            5—15% reductions in the yields of crops as currently grown
                            3—10% increases in the amount of rain falling during the heaviest precipitation events,                                   which can increase flooding risks
                            5—10% decreases in stream flow in some river basins, including the Arkansas and the                                 Rio Grande
                            200%—400% increases in the area burned by wildfire in parts of the western U.S.

*Referenced in NRC (2011). Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8665530

For my "definitive" piece of evidence in support of global warming, I'm going to discuss sea level rise, an issue that has very real consequences for a coastal city such as Charleston. Charleston has a mean sea level rise of 3.15 mm/year which is equivalent to a change of 1.03 feet in 100 years. Sea-level rise and the likely increase in hurricane intensity and associated storm surge will be among the most serious consequences of climate change. Low-lying areas, including some communities, will be inundated more frequently – some permanently – by the advancing sea. Current buildings and infrastructure were not designed to withstand the intensity of projected storm surge, which would cause catastrophic damage. If sea-level rise increases at an accelerated rate (which is dependent upon ice sheet response to warming) a large portion of the Southeast coastal zone could be threatened – especially Charleston.


      

Now onto The Day After Tomorrow and its relation to real life global warming. The movie primarily focused on a piece of evidence that I chose to be my definitive example -- sea-level rise; however, it spotlighted it on a much larger, dramatic, and more ludicrous scale. 

In the first half of the film, there were several montages of massive natural disasters, such as super tornadoes ravaging California and a gigantic storm surge destroying New York, depicted above. While sea-level rise does indeed influence these natural events, at the rate it is rising currently (as shown previously), it is nowhere near the rate that would produce these storms, especially so quickly. 

The second half of the film focused on an "ice age" effect due to sea-level rise. The explanation for this was a profound amount of desalination disrupting the North American current. The North American current flows warm water towards Europe, and given that oceans primarily regulate the climate, if they changed, the climate would as well. The error in this scenario is that a humongous amount of fresh water would have to be dumped in the ocean in an extremely short period of time so the water couldn't regulate itself, and seeing as that the only source of fresh water would be melting ice caps, this idea would simply never happen. At least not within a week, as shown in the film. 

The last part of this puzzle is to analyze and discuss how much movies impact public opinion -- and it's honestly both alarming and scary all at once. I don't have the proper figures at my disposal, but after questioning an audience about their stance on global warming before and after viewing The Day After Tomorrow, the figures showed that a significant amount of people changed their view in favor of the issue after watching the film. This is kind of scary to think on a much broader scale. Although The Day After Tomorrow highlighted a real issue, it did so in typical Hollywood fashion: irresponsibly and immaturely. Thankfully it influenced public discourse correctly, but the question remains -- if a movie as silly as The Day After Tomorrow can drastically influence public opinion on a controversial issue, what can other movies to towards other issues as well? Hollywood blockbusters aren't where the public should be educated and ultimately indoctrinated on controversial subjects. Thankfully it converted the masses for the good this time, but it might do just the opposite the next time.

2001: A Space Mind-Expletive

So, I've finally seen it. I've finally seen the great "2001: A Space Odyssey". After all these years, I can finally say that I've actually sat down and watched this film. And what do I have to say about that?

I really want that monolith in my room.

On a more serious note, 2001 is a really interesting, albeit slowly-paced science fiction movie released in the great space era of 1969. It honestly couldn't have come out at a better time. And for this reason, I feel like the movie was both a success from an artistic standpoint as well from a physics standpoint.

It may be young ignorance, but I always thought Stanley Kubrick was a bit of a pretentious loony. He really was. Any research into the guy will yield some interesting finds concerning the way he treated his actors on set and so forth. I only mention this because it's evident through how the plot progresses. It's Kubrick's story, and obviously he felt like that too in the way he didn't care about what the audience may or may not have thought on the fluidity of the plot's events; it escalated just as fast as he saw fit.

But his "pretentiousness" in my eyes isn't all bad. Through his meticulous eye for detail, he undoubtedly made a pop culture phenomenon. But while it aged well in some regards, it didn't in others. The effects by today's standards are actually still pretty solid. Nothing blew me away of course, but it's a testament to his production team that even after 45 or so years, the effects are still only marginally flawed.

And now on to the meat of the movie: the physics. One may be baffled that a movie so old could be so scientifically sound, but I think it actually makes perfect sense when you take one thing into account: it was released in the space era. This information was literally all they knew. Space, and all the variables concerning it, were so fresh and current that they literally had no other source to pull it from. Aside from the popular Star Trek and Doctor Who shows on televisions which were released in the prepubescent space era, this was on the heels of actual interstellar discovery. And Kubrick having his eye for detail, there's no way he could ignore such current information. And thus, we have many of the factual aspects of the movie: "soundless" space, Velcro shoe-wearing hostesses in zero gravity ships, rotating space stations to create artificial gravity, and so forth. This, however, only leads me to be even more baffled at the moon scene and why they seemed to be walking on a gravity similar to Earth. But this just could have been accosted to set restraints, or maybe even more realistically, some "profound" and bizarre artistic statement Kubrick was trying to make. Who knows, it's Stanley Kubrick we're talking about.




In conclusion, I acknowledge the brilliance in "2001: A Space Odyssey", but that's about all I could do in that room. Did I like it? Well, it was 8 o'clock on a Monday night after a long day of classes. I wasn't really in the mood for an introspective mind-bleep. Maybe one day after a proper viewing I can fully appreciate it. But like I said, even though I wouldn't recommend it for popcorn viewing, there's no denying the artistic and scientific achievement Kubrick had with this film.  

The World's Greatest Detective (Not Physicist)

I love Batman. I really do. There's no way to precisely articulate how much of a fanboy I am over Batman. An introductory paragraph in a class blog certainly won't do it justice. Anyway, I was extremely excited to hear we were doing a comic book themed blog this week, and even though I love the Avengers and Marvel, I prefer my comic books and films with far less levity and more austerity. They don't call him The Dark Knight for nothing.

Keeping in line with the "film" part in the class title, I'm going to analyze some scenes throughout the newest Christopher Nolan movie trilogy.

• Chinese Take-Out

One of the most notable attributes about Batman is that he, well, dresses like a bat. In doing so, this gives him one of his prime abilities -- to glide around with his bat-cape. Now the question I'm not asking issn't whether or not it is possible for him to glide around with a material (I'm going to assume it's possible), but if it's possible or not that his arms would be able to take the force after an extended fall.

In the above scene, Batman attempts to retrieve the mob's accountant in Hong Kong and use him as a major witness to testify against the Joker in court. To do this, he needs to penetrate Lau's corporate building, which he does by gliding in from a taller, adjacent building to its side.

Bruce Wayne jumps off the building for 4 seconds, and using our old kinematic equations, we know that his final velocity at the point before spreading his wings was 39.2 m/s. After this, he does a circle maneuver, where go goes from completely vertical to completely horizontal. This circular motion makes it a centripetal force. To prevent his arms from giving way or buckling, Bruce Wayne would have to exert the same force back onto the air as it is pushing onto him, a la Newton's 3rd law.

We're assuming Batman's mass is 80 kg, and that the radius of the circular path to be about 20 m. With the knowledge that a centripetal force is involved, we can plug it into one of those equations.

F = mg + mv^2
                     r
m = 80kg
g = 9.8 m/s^2
v = 39.2 m/s
r = 20m

F = (80)(9.8) + (80)(39.2^2)  =   6930.56 N
                                   20
6930.56 newtons turns out to be 1558 pounds, so Batman would have to withstand 779 pounds on each of his arms. And since Batman doesn't have super strength, I don't think that can happen. 

• Truck Derby

Another good scene in The Dark Knight is when Batman is on the Batpod chasing the Joker in a semi truck. To stop him, the Bat attaches some cables into the ground which halt the truck, making it flip in spectacular fashion. But the question is, can the cables Batman attached withstand the force its being put under?

Let's assume that the entirety of the truck has a mass at about 15, 000 kg and is traveling at a speed of 22 m/s (50 mph). The forward motion also looks to be stopped at around 0.1 s. 

F = (m)(Δv)
            Δt
m = 15, 000 kg
Δv = 22 m/s
Δt = 0.1 s

F = (15, 000)(22)  = 3, 300, 000 N
                0.1
The truck experiences 3, 300, 000 newtons of force, and using Newton's 3rd law, the cable would have had to withstand just the same amount of force as well -- 3, 300, 000 newtons or 741,869 pounds of force. Since I love Batman so much, I'm going to let him slide this time and assume Luscious Fox gave him some super wire that can withstand that crazy amount of force. 

• Conclusion

So I still love Batman. I always will. Forcing me prove that the physics in the movies aren't up to par with reality was soul crushing, so paging Dr. Fragile to save the day and come up with some cool-yet-accurate movie scenarios to make Batman credible once more.

We need you.

IT'S COMPRESSED OF IRON-IRON!

     Iron ferrite, probably the funniest oxymoron ever coined in existence. This really has nothing to do with the analysis at hand, but it was just so funny I couldn't leave it unmentioned. Guess they had space dementia when they wrote that line.

     So let's get back on track. Although there are many things wrong with the NASA plan in the film, given some leniency, the real problem boils down to their "Zero Barrier" theory -- the point at which the two asteroid pieces would have enough distance to spread out far enough not to hit earth. The earth has a diameter of 12,742,000 meters and according to the plan in the movie, the asteroid would have spread out a whopping... 253meters.

It's okay Ben. I'm upset at that number, too.

     So, assuming there's no other way to construct a more explosive bomb, the "Zero Barrier" is really the only thing that needs to be changed in this scenario. So let's see what the newly modified barrier would have to be for this crazy Michael Bay plan to work.

t = Δy/Vf

Δy = 12, 742, 000m

Vf = 0.0246 m/s

t = 517, 967, 479.7 seconds

    So, we have the time in seconds, and since we know the initial velocity of the crazy fog asteroid of doom, we can plug that into the distance formula to calculate the new "Zero Barrier". 

d = (t)(Vi)

t = 517, 967, 479.7 seconds

Vi = 9834 m/s

d = 50,900,000,000 m

 

      In retrospect, the Chinese space probe Chang'e-2, which was launched in 2010, just reached this distance (50 million km) in outer space in July, marking it as a record in deep space exploration.  

China is at it again.

AHNULD, GET TO DA HARBAH

     Confession: this past week, I've been saying "you've been erased" nonstop. And with good reason -- Eraser was one of the best "worst" movies I've ever seen, starring the big Austrian himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

So many muscles.

     If those two guns in Arnold's hands don't look familiar, it's because they aren't -- they're "rail guns", high tech weapons that shoot aluminium rounds "close to the speed of light". If the premise of the gun sounded wacky, then the payoff must be insane; men are lifted off their feet and flung back multiple meters. And that's exactly the draw of the movie.

Simply beautiful.

     But no matter how beautiful that looks, it just can't be because of a little thing called the Law of the Conservation of Momentum. In this, it states that the final momentum and the initial momentum must be equal to each other. Meaning, that our dear friend Arnold should have flown back just as far as his victims. 

     But that scene isn't the one I'm analyzing today. The scene I'm going to dissect is when the audience is first introduced to the rail gun at the damsel-in-distress's house. 

Ain't no party like a rail gun party.

     This scene is golden because up until then, the film seems to be a pretty standard action movie, but then they completely jump the shark with the firing of the rail gun. As seen above, poor Darryl, the heroine's ex-boyfriend, is completely obliterated by the weapon. He flies back and smashes into the wall. It looks hilariously impossible, because it really is once you look at the numbers. Let's do just that. 

Whoops, wrong movie.

• Important Values

--Average mass of an adult male = 70 kg

--Average mass of an assault rifle = 10 kg

--Speed of light = 299 792 458 m/s

--Mass of an aluminium round = 0.00023 kg

• Gun + Bullet

Initial
--Vg = 0 m/s

--Vb = 0 m/s

--Pi = 0 kgm/s

Final

--Pb = (Mb)(Vb)

--Pb = (.00023 kg)(299 792 458 m/s) ---> 68,952.27 kgm/s

--Pf = Pg + Pb = Pi

--Pg = -Pb

--(Mg)(Vg) = -68,952.27 kgm/s

--(10kg)(Vg) =  -68,952.27 kgm/s

--Vg = -6,852.23 m/s

• Shooter + Gun

Ps = (70kg)(-6,852.23 m/s) ---> 479,656.1 kgm/s

• Bullet + Victim

Initial

--Vb = 299 792 458 m/s

--Vv = 0 m/s

--Mb = .00023 kg

--Mv = 70 kg

--Pb = 68,952.27 kgm/s

--Pv = 0 m/s

--Pi = Pb + Pv ---> 68,952.27 kgm/s

Final

--Vb = 0 m/s

--Pf = Pbf + Pvf

--Pf = Pbf + (Mg)(Vvf)

--Vvf =  68,952.27 kgm/s    ---> 985.03 m/s

                     70kg

--Pv = (Mv)(Vvf) ---> 68, 952.27 kgm/s

     Well, the numbers don't lie. The film didn't really pay attention to the Law of the Conservation of Momentum. But then again, if they did, it wouldn't be as hilariously bad as it was. And for that, I am thankful. Rock on, Schwarzenegger.

When are we watching this one?

 

Well, I guess the fun part is over and it's time for the real work to begin.

   "We do more than watch movies in here?", I asked as I sat through the first day of class. Plot twist -- we do! And even though Mission Impossible III was so much fun to watch, it's time to analyze and critique the physics behind the film.

• Scene 1: Shanghai Shenanigans 

   At the beginning of the third act of the film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) needs to obtain a cleverly ambiguous device called the "Rabbit's Foot". But it's never that simple, is it? The device is located in a laboratory on the top floor of a heavily guarded building. And since taking the elevator is out of the question, Ethan and the team seem to be out of options -- or only seemingly. Ethan Hunt does something even more shocking than breaking into the Vatican or assassinating a whole room of people in the blink of an eye; he uses science!

Tom Cruise can do anything, can't he?

   In spy movie fashion, Hunt decides to use a fulcrum and swing from the adjacent building to the laboratory rooftop. And because he apparently has the blueprints for every building in Shanghai (the perks of being a spy, I guess), Hunt figures out that the height of the lab building is 162 meters and the adjacent structure next to it tops out at 226 meters. With a distance of only 47.55 meters between the two, its practically begging to get swung across.

   There are many questionable variables concerning this stunt and certain aspects of it (like the furthest horizontal distance it can be placed such that he can jump to the roof using this method, or the angle at which Hunt cut the rope being a plausible release point), but given that we are currently studying kinematics and not trigonometry and geometry, the best I can deduce is whether or not the length of the cable attached to Hunt is a realistic length in relation to the footage shown. To find this, I'm going to watch the scene from when Hunt jumps off the roof until it shows the cable running out on the fulcrum. Using the amount of time, I'll be able to conclude how far Agent Hunt fell, and in turn, the length of the cable.

   Note: At this point, I assume the initial velocity of Hunt is still 0, seeing as he is simply falling off the building. If I am wrong, I apologize and will rework the math.

   From the point Hunt jumped off the roof and when the cable length ran out, 4 seconds pass (negating all the dramatic angles and slow motion. I only used the footage focusing on the fulcrum, counting the seconds I heard the unraveling sound of the cable until the snap when it ran out). I defend this observation, because using the time (4 seconds) and the acceleration (-9.8 m/s^2) in the kinematic equation for displacement, I get 78.4 meters. Recalling the 47.55 meter gap between the buildings, a cable that long could surely swing Agent Hunt across the gap.

  And also remember in the scene that Hunt releases quite a length above the target building, explaining the extra few meters of cable used (shown below).

That's going to hurt.

• Scene 2: Humpty Dumpty is a Secret Agent

   Apparently the Vatican is the easiest place in the world to break into (I really hope it isn't -- the new pope is pretty dope in my book). However, there is a pretty accessible scene in the realm of physics that is ready to be dissected.

No, not this one. Let's forget this one ever happened.

   The scene I'm referring to is the one right after the tragedy shown above -- when Agent Hunt rappels down the opposite side of the wall. There isn't much to I can deduce about this scene, as you will see later. Using a range finder, Hunt measures the distance between the top of the wall and the ground  to be 16.55 meters. Now, from the time of the descent to the point where he stops, 4 seconds pass. It becomes clear that this isn't a simple free fall given the variables (a descent of 4 seconds would equal a drop of 78.4 meters if it were). Rope rappelling is a complex area of its own in the realm of physics, with variables such as: the mass of the climber, the height, where his center of gravity is located in relation to his feet, the degree from the horizontal, the angle from the cliff face and so forth. Given the lack of deductible quantities here, this scene makes like the title of the movie, as it's an impossible mission to accurately figure out the validity of this stunt. So close yet so far.

• Scene 3: Shanghai Splat

Let's revisit the fulcrum swinging scene once more to analyze a critical part that made me wonder: the releasing of the rope.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Now, that just looked like it hurt. And it looked like it was pretty high up as well. If only there was a way I could surmise the actual distance of that fall. Oh wait, I learned how to do that in class last Monday. At the point of free fall and the point of contact with the landing (and I'm being very liberal with the editing, negating the frame in the middle of the scene), 2 seconds pass. With the knowledge that the only acceleration acting upon Hunt during the fall is gravity (-9.8 m/s^2), I can plug this into the kinematic equation for displacement. Using this equation, I get that the displacement of the fall should have been -19.6 meters. That's 64 feet! I don't think Secret Agent Humpty Dumpty Hunt or his team could put all his pieces back together again after a fall like that.

Roll the credits. Movie over. RIP.

• Conclusion

So yes, we do more than watch movies in this class. And after watching Mission Impossible III -- plot twist -- the physics, in most cases, are indeed atrocious. For as much as the movie tries to remain plausible and correct, there are still a few glaringly obvious hiccups in the universe of physics that undermine all of its precautions.

I'm not even going to comment on this one. Case dismissed.