Beyond The Bench

If you watched Armageddon and scoffed at the improbability of all of those huge, dramatic fires and explosions¹, or raised your eyebrows at the surprising amount of antimatter in Angels and Demons², you are not alone.

Sidney Perkowitz, a professor of physics at Emory University, is another critical movie-watcher who takes Hollywood to task both in print (with his 2007 book Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World) and in the media (having made a public pronouncement in The Guardian this past February).

Perkowitz belongs to The National Academy of Sciences and Entertainment (NASE), a program that helps entertainment industry professionals to keep their science-related content accurate and credible by connecting them with science and engineering experts. The NASE draws upon its relationship with the National Academy of Sciences—a board of experts created in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln to provide scientific advice to the federal government and the public.

Considering that science has played a major role in 19 of the top 50-grossing movies of all time—Avatar, to name one—it makes sense for writers and directors to start checking their facts. After all, while the public accepted the superhero/science blend presented in Watchmen, those characters and situations were well-researched (with help from the NASE). However, even the average movie-goer knew that detonating a nuclear explosion in the core of the earth (the premise of The Core) was a ridiculous plan . . . and the box office proved it.

MOVIES THAT MAY HAVE LEFT YOU WONDERING

• Avatar (2010): Read about why floating mountains are implausible and how scientists would really propel a spaceship with antimatter.

• Independence Day (1996): Find out why the movie’s opening scene should already have you skeptical. (Hint: you shouldn’t get dust bits blown into your eye on the moon.)

• Jurassic Park (1993): You may already doubt scientists’ ability to bring back dinosaurs, but you may want to find out why using DNA from a preserved mosquito makes this even more unlikely.

1. Once the O₂ is sucked away by the vacuum of space, there is no way for the fires/explosions to carry on in such a dramatic fashion.

2. Scientists have only produced antimatter in submicroscopic quantities. At the rate scientists are currently producing antimatter, it would take billions of years to produce enough for the type of bomb portrayed in the movie. Read more details here.

The new Star Trek film is out, and with all that intergalactic space-time mumbo jumbo floating around, now seems an appropriate time to separate fact from fiction. After all, some of the “futuristic” technology is clearly available today. “Communicators?” We have iPhones. “Universal translation devices?” Although they may turn out some muddled results, Google Translator and Yahoo! Babel Fish can accomplish the basics.

A more surprising device that actually existed before the Star Trek series began is the “hypospray,” or, as it is called in our world, the jet-injector. These devices inject medicine into the body using high-pressure jets of liquid instead of needles. They were first patented in 1960—the first episode of Star Trek aired in 1966—in order to administer mass vaccinations. Why aren’t they more popular today? Most likely because needles work just as well, and jet-injections are significantly more expensive.

Now, on to the more exciting gadgets. While we don’t have guns that can instantly vaporize human beings (these would require too much heat and energy), phasers are essentially energy-directed weapons—which we have developed, in the form of lasers. One example of a modern-day laser is the long-range tactical laser cannon, which is in final development under the US Air Force and Boeing. On August 7, 2008, the C-130H aircraft fired a beam that successfully destroying a three-by-three-foot target on the ground. This weapon is being developed for defensive tactics; it will knock out missiles by emitting the heat of a blowtorch at a distance of 20km.

Alternatively, the military might avoid enemy fire in the first place by evading detection through the use of Star Trek’s cloaking devices. And indeed, they are working on it! The latest research, published by researchers at Duke University in the January issue of Science, uses an algorithm, metamaterials, and electromagnetic radiation to produce a 20” X 4” cloak. The cloak works by bending light around its materials, effectively making them invisible. The technology has not yet advanced to being able to cloak against every wavelength, nor can it make a cloak the size of, say, a spaceship, but as is evidenced by the recent results from Duke (research which was supported by sponsors such as Raytheon Missile Systems and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research), these developments are no doubt underway.

Last but certainly not least, we must address transporters—or, as they are more popularly known, teleporters. In Star Trek, teleportation works by disassembling a person down to the atomic level, converting them into energy, and then “beaming” them to the new location. In reality, however, there are several issues with this concept. First of all, disassembling a human being at the atomic level would require heating them up to a billion degrees. Then, turning those particles into energy would require energy equivalent to something along the lines of a 1,000 megaton nuclear weapon—not exactly practical if this technology is intended for mass transportation. Finally, Star Trek’s method of teleportation is receiverless—that is, no device is necessary to deposit the particles at their destination so long as a “signal” is available. However, according to the theory of quantum teleportation—which does exist in modern-day reality—a receiver would be necessary at the other end of the “trip.”

The modern concept of quantum teleportation involves sending our essential information, or “quantum state,” elsewhere. The problem with teleporting a human, however, is our size and our complexity. To teleport an object, its quantum state must be measured at the subatomic level. The average person is made up of more than 10²⁷* atoms, which are in turn made up of all sorts of subatomic particles (i.e. protons, neutrons, electrons, etc.). Measuring all of these particles would not only take a very long time, but assembling them into their precise quantum state (i.e. you as opposed to your next-door-neighbor Sally, her dog Fido, or the rock in her front yard) is not something that is likely to be feasible in the near future.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the science of Star Trek, check out Lawrence Krauss’s book The Physics of Star Trek. As a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University’s School of Earth & Space Exploration, he gives some valuable insights in a recent interview with Scientific American, as well.

* 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000