Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Cad_sl said:

Oh, I'm not arguing with you that it was accurate about much; but it did get some things right. It also got a lot of things wrong. But I would definitely file it under an attempt to be "pseudo-realistic" while smoothing over things they needed to for the story.

I echo a lot of what Phil said:

Bad Astronomy movie review: Gravity.

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Not saying you were, the movie just repulses me. It got basically nothing about the physics of being in space correct. The sets of the space stations were accurate. The star patterns were accurate. That is about it.

With all the stories they have to pull from (there are decades of near Earth orbit science fiction stories with real problems that actually could happen in them all laid out) that is just lazy writing imo. They could have easily been technically accurate and made a dramatic story. It was just such a waste. They didn't need to be wrong to have a good story, they chose it, and ended up with a pretty bad story anyway (though I admit that is subjective on my part).

The Master_sl said:

Not saying you were, the movie just repulses me. It got basically nothing about the physics of being in space correct. The sets of the space stations were accurate. The star patterns were accurate. That is about it.

With all the stories they have to pull from (there are decades of near Earth orbit science fiction stories with real problems that actually could happen in them all laid out) that is just lazy writing imo. They could have easily been technically accurate and made a dramatic story. It was just such a waste. They didn't need to be wrong to have a good story, they chose it, and ended up with a pretty bad story anyway (though I admit that is subjective on my part).

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If they were technically accurate the movie would have been over in 5 minues. In fact it wouldn't have been made.

Azeth_sl said:

^ what Hollywood software says 800 terabytes of scientific blackhole data looks like

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Too much bloom... turn that shit down. Is interstellar like a modern FPS in space or something?

Abefroman_sl said:

If they were technically accurate the movie would have been over in 5 minues. In fact it wouldn't have been made.

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If they were technically accurate they would have needed a different story. That is all. There are plenty of stories they could have told without so many errors.

mkopec_sl said:

If sci-fi was all about factual we would of never got to experience 99% of the great works of sci-fi literature and the countless movies that inspired us to imagine.

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This.

History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian

Good sci-fi will have enough science fact in it so it doesn't strain credulity.

And the parts of good sci-fi that aren't fact should be things that aren't already known to be false.

Tuco_sl said:

The technical critiques of the film seem pretty much founded on, "Those space stations don't have the same orbit." and "She could've pulled Clooney in!". Kind of a waste of an article imo. I'd be more interested in seeing someone describe whether the newtonian physics they used were realistic. What would be the effect of a debris collision? Would it slice through the space shuttle? Would the impact cause the velocities they had in the movie? Would Sandra Bullock have enough strength to perform the acrobatics she had?

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Debris would have been traveling at roughly the speed you shoot bullets out of a gun. You wouldn't have seen it coming. That is, if the debris field happened. Reality is even if something happened and the debris field happened, it'd stay in its orbit, at the same speed. No one in a different orbit or the same orbit but in a different part would ever see it. If it hit it, yes. Strength not so much a factor, but most of the things she did would have caused her to die. Like the extinguisher thing would have caused her to tumble, not travel in a straight line. A professional dancer who also happened to be a pilot could maybe, maybe, control her core muscles well enough to maintain attitude if the extinguisher was positioned perfectly, but it wasn't. She was just holding it. She opened a pressure door that had air on the other side while she was in vacuum. This is impossible. Literally while watching the movie I had a running commentary going for the wife about why it wouldn't work that way. It persisted for the whole movie, there was no point where I wasn't talking about something that was incorrect about the physics. She asked for the feedback, before anyone wonders.

I concede I have high standards. A lot of the Sci-Fi I've read is written by real scientists and I have a science background. But Gravity isn't Sci-Fi, not by any reasonable definition.

Tuco_sl said:

It's hard for me to believe that a black hole would give off such an incredible amount of light. Is this what it'd look like if you had a telescope camp out on the black hole for a month? Or would a person flying by look out the window and see this monstrosity?

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Having not seen it... My assumption, since there's relativity-time-travel and shit in this movie, is that's a time lapse over billions (? I dunno, however fuckin long galaxy orbits are) of years.

Well it will be interesting how close to the book Holywood makes The Martian as people in the appropriate fields reckon the book is pretty spot on.

I wish someone would make the Mars trilogy.

Eomer_sl said:

Stars aside, Kip Thorne is the real deal:Kip Thorne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If he thinks it's accurate, at least as far as our current understanding goes, then I don't think that anyone here has much business arguing otherwise. Looking at you Iannis.

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Meh. Shit like this is how you wind up with NDGT: Cosmos. You've always got a business arguing otherwise. You should always be skeptical no matter how esteemed the source.

Lensing makes a lot more sense than what I initially interpreted the image to represent. What I thought when I looked at it is straight up stupid andshouldbe discarded.