My name is Dominic Walliman and I have a PhD in physics.
Physics tends to be quite a
difficult subject.
So it's always interesting to see how in the movies they
interpret physics because it's sometimes good and sometimes a bit..
wonky.
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See these neutrinos acting normally minuscule mass
no electrical charge-- they, pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed.
okay, so what they said there, was that neutrinos,
normally they come, from the sun they normally don't interact with matter so they go through the Earth without actually interacting with anything
which is totally true. Ten billion go through every square centimeter of your body
every second.
It looks like the neutrinos coming from the sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle.
Now the neutrinos have mutated into a "new kind of subatomic
particle" which interacts with the core of the Earth heating it up.
That would be a
groundbreaking discovery in terms of like the fundamental theories of physics
Which would be awesome, it would suck that the Earth was boiling from the inside as you could see from that big tank of water.
Bad design of
spacesuit. If it's that easy to take out the critical air supply to your head.
So I don't think your head would actually explode if you're on Mars and you got depressurized i think you'd
suffocate because all of the air would get sucked out of your lungs.
Your blood would boil so you'd get the crazy the bends and..
Yeah, things would really not be good you would not last long.
So he, like, dried out he, like, desiccated.
I'm not sure actually you would lose all the moisture from your body, that quickly.
Is that more realistic than your head exploding?
Yes. Yeah this is a classic, someone falling down and then someone comes
along and saves them by
smashing into them [laughter].
Like like a freight train so actually the first two: The Superman film
They did it pretty well, it seemed like the catch, was pretty gentle
Superman: Easy miss, I've got you.
but with the Batman one:
Those two humans are gonna get snapped
by that cable because it was like a metal cable with no flex in it whatsoever so as soon
as that catches on the building they're just gonna go : BLOOOSH
And they're gonna break all sorts of things. I mean probably Batman's arms are gonna get ripped off.
That batman movie is so good.
I think that might be the best one.
I guess the question is that how
mathematicians actually solve mathematics. It tends to be a lot more argumentative than that I would say
normally it would be
someone draws out the problem and they try and explain it to us, different people will interpret it with different levels of confusion
And then at some stage someone gets it and it's like
Oh, yeah I know what you're doing! Now I can try
and solve it. And then actually solving things right then
and there in front of a blackboard I think rarely happens mostly you have to go
away and think about things really really hard rather than having these coy, little glances to each other and being like
Oh I know the answer.
Whatever the signal is we better do something soon, Vega's gonna set.
When they're doing
measurements of astronomical objects
You can't always rely on just a single measurement from a single telescope telescope because there can
be systematic errors. So people like to have many different
sources, like many different measurements of the same source and so that has come up recently in gravitational waves
they, have three different gravitational wave detectors: Two in America and one in
Italy and so they can kind of triangulate a certain region
and then they can look at it using the electromagnetic spectrum and I imagine a lot of the science in Contact has been very
well researched because it was written by Carl Sagan, who is obviously a giant in
communicating science. He wanted a
realistic mechanism to
transport the protagonist
to Vega which is on the other side of the galaxy and so they thought
about it and they came up with the idea of wormholes stable wormholes which are
actually allowable in
Einstein's General theory of Relativity so you can have basically a tunnel of space-time that goes from one point to the other.
So Carl Sagan basically nerd sniped a load of theoretical physicists with
this question, because then for decades they've been working out like, how
How these wormholes, these stable traversable wormholes, could exist.
People have been trying to work out all this stuff because it's just an interesting science question.
Imagine for a minute that this attractive piece of paper represents
space-time and you want to get from point A here, to point B there.
Like the visual example of the bit of paper with the thing going through it I think that's totally cool
it folds
space.
And the spacecraft
passes through the gateway...
space returns to normal.
It does fall down in terms of actual science: What he said was he used magnets
Use a rotating magnetic field to make gravitons to focus a narrow
beam of gravitons these in turn fold space-time consistent with
tensor dynamics and then the gravitons would warp
space-time.
So those are two different forces and so there's no known way that you could create gravity, using magnets.
Now... [Music]
If you created, let's just say you create the gravitons and creating graviton somehow warps
space-time.
Technically, you're just becoming like a really giant
mass. A black hole or something. So if you warped space-time, where you are
all of the things around you would start wanting to fall into you and so
That might be problematic for your spaceship.
We're used to viewing space as flat right, like this piece of paper this is
The long way across the flat space in between but given what I was trying to explain
we could fold the space... Dominic: So this concept I didn't realize, this concept has turned into a bit of a
cinematic cliché. A good reason that the original film had created a really nice visual image for something, which you know
there's something to that---so one thing I really liked about that is
when the lady said
We've spent a huge amount of energy on this. Woman: We used huge amounts of energy to create this.
Why can't I see this bridge. Dominic: So yeah the amount of
energy, you would need to expend to make one would be equivalent to creating a
black hole which is like the
remnants of an explosion of the largest most energetic bodies in our universe [stars] so
Yeah, you're, gonna use a little bit of energy on that one!
So they say you wanna go from here
to there. Dominic: It's turned into a real cliche hasn't it?
So a wormhole bends space like this. Dominic: So when you, when they were going towards
the black hole the fact that you could see things reflecting off the surface almost like galaxies and stars were like
reflecting off it kind of like it's a mirror--I mean that's not technically correct. They are
black because anything that falls into them
disappears. But you know, that's fine then, what they need to show something otherwise you don't know
what you're looking at as an audience so that's totally fine.
I love that visualization of how
from your perspective what it would be like for all of the everything you see around you
warp around yourself. It was really cool I really enjoyed it. I have other problems with Interstellar
apart from that but that bit of it I think, was really really good.
Guy: And it's a dead heat!
They're checking the electron microscope and the winner is
number three in our quantum finish. No fair, you change the outcome by
measuring it. Dominic: In quantum physics when you
measure something that's in a superposition, which is the special state where it's in like
this special mixed state kind of like two states at once before they measure it
Both horses are in a superposition of winning and not winning
At the same time and then they measure it and then one of it comes out but
According to theory of quantum physics if you measured that
again, you might get the other one see if
Each time you measure it you get one winning or the other one winning 50% of the time.
So, yeah they've got it bang-on i was also a really funny joke.
I like their hats.
Their special space hats. Well they keep your brain in
when you explode. On the Apollo missions for sure they, had little food packets with
straws in it. Generally you
Want to avoid loose food floating
about. I remember one astronaut got into a lot of trouble for bringing a ham sandwich on to one of his space flights.
And they were and they're really worried about the crumbs getting out and frying the electronics.
Omg, the thing I...
2001 is good but it just
takes so long for anything to happen. I don't fall asleep in movies I've fallen asleep in this movie
twice on two separate occasions.
Yeah, it was it was a good boring movie though, sorry I know people love
2001 but...
So, Gravity got a lot of things right but this one thing is kind of the glaring
problem in the whole film.
You have to let me go. No! The ropes are too loose. I'm pulling you with me.
What would happen if they were connected by this tether and he gets pushed
outwards, that totally could happen but as soon as it gets taut
he would bounce backwards again
and he would just gently drift back to her and then they'd go back to the space station so he would have been absolutely fine.
I'm okay with
bad physics in movies because the job of a movie isn't to be a
science documentary the job of a movie is to tell an interesting story. I just feel, like, they could have come up with
some much better
physics thing but still it's so frustrating when a film does so much stuff really correct
and then you've got this one thing that is like.. uhh
We have a signal on the luminosity monitors, we have events.
Woaaaah
firework noises.
Man that looked so cool. I really wish all of physics could be explained using that kind of
visualization like cinematography they were talking about suspending
antimatter. Woman: The antimatter is suspended in there. Dominic: Using nano
particles and
electromagnetism. Woman: In an airtight nano composite shell with electromagnets on each end. Dominic: That's all good I mean the nano particles
They just put that in because nano particles sound cool but
the
Containment of antimatter you do have to do an electromagnetic field I think the things they actually use a lot
bigger than that because the magnets that they use have to be giant
Antimatter if it combined with matter does
explode in tons of energy. Woman: But if it were to fall out of
suspension and come in contact with matter then the two opposing forces would annihilate one another violently. Dominic: But typically the amounts of antimatter
That they, store in places like Cern are so small I don't think you would get a massive explosion
from it. The best bit is them running on a battery which is gonna run out. Woman: Just before midnight
Don't put your antimatter in storage devices on battery power
Prepare the red matter.
Oh is that the guy from Westworld?
I don't know, you get this thing with
Sci-fi films where
They always have to raise the stakes, so there's kind of like an arms race of like the cool, crazy, super-powerful
stuff. They've got this magical red matter and a tiny little piece of this red matter
If you put it in the middle of a planet it will create a black hole that will
suck the entire planet into it just a tiny drop
full. Why the hell does this ship got so much of this red matter on it like if
If you tripped and bumped into that
vessel containing that red matter you'd create a black hole big enough to
absorb the entire universe or something. So yeah I give it a fail.
Ahh, I saw this film so long ago.
If you had a telescope you would be for a start just
beaming out such incredibly high amounts of x-ray radiation that you're giving everyone cancer and also
For you to see stuff you have to have the detector of the x-rays at the back. So you fire x-rays through
something and then you get stuff at
the back and where the x-rays are absorbed like, by your bones that's
where you get the white bits and when the x-rays come through you get the black bits, yeah, so that's not really physics.
Railguns do exist. They accelerate bullets using electromagnetism and in fact you've got
massive giant ones, that can
People have thought about launching things into space using rail guns so that's a legit thing.
That's why you don't use
X-ray vision when you're shooting people because you don't know, who is Arnie and who's a goon?
Like this, see see I'm right again, nobody could have predicted that Dr. Grant would suddenly suddenly jump out of a moving vehicle.
So this is not a good
description of Chaos Theory at all he does explain it with the butterfly effect
The shorthand is the butterfly effect
A butterfly can
flap its wings in Peking and Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine. Dominic: So that is the essence of chaos theory.
The whole thing about the water on the hand
Aha, okay, okay now freeze your hand don't move I'm gonna do the same thing start with the same stay in place again
I don't think that's the best description of it because presumably
if you
have water on your hand it will drip off the same way the last drop of water
Did because it's already kind of wetted that bit of skin
so it's more likely actually that the water will go the same route that the second bit of water is.
It changed, it changed. Why?
But the point of it actually is that Jeff Goldblum's character is just hitting on Laura Dern's
character
in kind of a creepy way so actual fact I think it's pretty realistic
because his character probably cares more about hitting on a chick than he does about getting the right explanation of
mathematics. I haven't actually seen Armageddon.
What is this thing? It's an asteroid sir. How big are we talking?
It's the size of Texas Mr.
President. Dominic: I mean it sounds super scary
some giant space rock could just turn up out of nowhere and slam into the planet. I think the one that caused the extinction
of the dinosaurs was 10-15 kilometers wide.
So I don't know how big Texas is but it's, way, way bigger than that. Guy: We need you to prep the team we're sending up
We'll send them to the asteroid, they'll land, they'll drill a hole they'll drop some nukes take
off and detonate if we can fix this equipment problem. Dominic: That's a really bad idea if you
If you do that you basically turn it from from a single bullet into a shotgun blast so then
you've just got loads of slightly smaller
asteroids
that are all radioactive.
Yes there's a very real possibility the probability of it is incredibly low.
And it is interesting hearing the different ideas people have
Some are as simple as you go up there with
a spaceship and you just paint one side white and the other side black and if you do it early
enough it'll pick up enough solar radiation
from the sun on the white side that it will actually deflect it a certain amount
And then what was another... another one was attach rockets to the side of it and then deflect it sideways
to, again to deflect the orbit. Exploding with the giant nuclear bomb is
is
not the best idea I think.
Painting it---- but painting is not gonna make an exciting move, we have to paint it white! Guy: I don't know but
they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five-dimensional reality to allow you to understand it. Time is represented here as a
physical dimension. Dominic: Like the visualizations in that film is so cool
When you look in different directions things line up and so it looks like you can travel through different things
and that would be kind of
So hard to do to kind of imagine higher dimensions and how
geometry works they
had made time into a physical dimension so as he traveled in certain
directions he could find that the time he was looking for but the thing that was navigating him through
That higher dimensional space, was the power of love. Cooper: It's like i found this moment. TARS: How Cooper? Cooper: Love, TARS, love.
And that's the bit of the film where i was just like
Maybe I'm just not sentimental enough but I mean come on guys..
Seriously? Not to belittle love, I love love it's good. But I feel like it actually
ruins it to reduce love to some kind of physical
physics. Physics is so basic.
I have no problem with
wonky science in movies I even kind of enjoy it to be honest because it's fun to try
and imagine the kind of things that they're saying it can be kind of quite imaginative actually how you interpret it
When they say things wrong the problem I have isn't with
bad science in films, the problem I have is bad films in films.
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Is this a military kind of installation because I find that there's often
science and the military come together in these sci-fi movies and the
scientists are always like trying to explain things and the military people are always just like "No! I need
a yes or no answer now!" I mean geez they control all the nuclear bombs I hope they're not just like
"Don't give me a jibber jabba! is it nuclear or not!"
Denzel Washington getting really angry about science.
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