Slashdot

It's just a movie.

In recent news from a subject that has always casually interested me, it seems that some now believe that the human race nearly became extinct about 70,000 years ago. We've heard human population fluctuation stories before, but this is the first I can recall that involves such a dramatic reduction, which, according to the article, had the population down to as low as 2000 individuals before the species' comeback. Interesting tidbits from the article:

And:

From CNN "The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/close.call.ap/index.html

eldavojohn writes "Microsoft is offering a $100k grand prize to its beta testers in the U.S. and an additional 30,000 prizes between now and May 11. Unfortunately, reviews of the online office tool have been fairly negative. It also turns out that you need to be using a PC with fully installed and updated Office on it to use the Office Live Workspace at all. In related news, Microsoft is demanding a UK firm stop streaming MS Office from their website in a software as a service business model."
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_002570DE00740E1800257402000312F0.html?em&ex=1204952400&en=dc500cd2c9ff2904&ei=5087%0A

u-bend writes "Blow into a specially designed tube outfitted with mirrors and bombarded by a laser which examines "every molecule a patient exhales in a single breath," and your doctor may be able to detect the early symptoms of cancer, diabetes, asthma, and other illnesses.
Such is the claim of University of Colorado researcher Jun Ye:

"This technique can give a broad picture of many different molecules in the breath all at once," Jun Ye, who led the research at the University of Colorado, said in a statement.
Ye's team at a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the university developed a new technique, called cavity-enhanced direct optical frequency comb spectroscopy.
When animals and people breathe out, they exhale not only gases that are not needed, such as carbon dioxide, but also compounds that result from the metabolism of cells.

A link to the abstract for the original submission by Ye's team, as well as a PDF of the study, can be found here."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/laser_detector_dc;_ylt=AgeVYqWmFFkppH900BzQTcoDW7oF

Apple has released new, higher capacity models of the iPhone and iPod Touch. The new iPhone boasts 16 GB of storage and is priced at $499.00 (the 8 GB model remains at #399.00), and the new iPod Touch has 32 GB, also priced at $499.00. Although the price is still pretty hefty, it indicates that the capacity/price ratio on these wireless flash-based players is starting to move in the right direction.
http://u-bend.com/listen.html

u-bend writes "The Guardian and many others are reporting about a meteorite that struck a remote area of Peru on Saturday. Although details are scant as yet, it now appears that fumes from the impact zone are making locals ill enough to require hospitalization."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,2171920,00.html

Well, being a cautious Danny Boyle fan, I went ahead against my best judgment and saw Sunshine this weekend. The premise, about our Sun burning out roughly 50 years from now, and our noble attempts to rekindle it, was suspect from the start, but I thought that Boyle and writer Alex Garland would be coming up with a plot that would make certain tramplings upon the laws of physics as we currently know them at least somewhat swallowable, as they ably did with other scientific Macguffins in 28 Days Later. I was totally wrong. Here are the most obvious physics problems that I can recall off the top of my head:

1. Star of our sun's age and mass dying out billions of years before it's due to (crappy excuse for a crappy premise of a crappy movie).
2. Space-time getting messed up from gravitational acceleration towards an object with the mass of our Sun--this is plain-old silly in my opinion; as far as I know, you'd have to get reasonably close to light speed in order for this to happen--if that were to happen to objects close to the Sun, we'd have bigger fish to fry in our solar system on a daily basis, like what are we going to do about the small black hole we've discovered in the same place as the Sun--bad times all around.
3. Sound in space--I know, this is an old movie convention, but come on, this was exactly the type of movie that should have been trying to be accurate. A rare example of good space physics in a movie is 2001. Serenity is pretty good in this respect too, but its TV series Firefly was even better.
4. The likelihood that we could build a shield that could withstand the heat of the Sun's corona, which in real life is much hotter than the surface. Couple this with the fact that once you're in the corona, anything behind the shield is toast. Moreover, the payload would be vaporized long before it reaches its target.
5. The idea that you could "restart" a star, let alone with a tiny bit of material. I know, it's supposed to be a chain reaction, yadda yadda, but PLEASE, once a star has converted all its fuel to heavier elements such as iron that cannot be used for nuclear fusion, you're done. Find another star and live there, cause yours is not coming back. Jeez, thought everyone knew that, duh.

Those are just the ones that come to mind. I suspect that's just scratching the surface of the physics problems, never mind the problems with the plot (e.g. is it likely that the world's best and most dedicated scientists are all petty, jealous, mean-spirited, and prone to such obvious and gross errors?). Additionally, many of the actors seemed mis-casted, and the dialogue was wooden at best. In fact, the best parts of interaction between the characters were the expository Alien-style sitting-around-the-mess-table sections. It's a shame that this movie didn't inspire or scare the way the Ridley Scott classic did. In case anyone's still planning on seeing this, I won't reveal the big plot turn at the middle of the movie. Suffice it to say that the intended effects--surprise, fear, tension, suspense, as far as I can tell--are not achieved, and I spent the second half of the movie in just as much incredulous boredom as I did the first.

You could ignore all 5 of the above trounces upon physics if the plot turn at the middle of the movie was at all revealing, insightful, or surprising, or showed you something about humanity that you didn't already know, or conspicuously pointed out something in a novel way, or, oh never mind. I've probably wasted even more of my life on this silly movie than is advisable.

Visually and auditorily, the movie is strong. The visual effects are stunning and the sound effects are jarring and effective. But... it's not enough. The implausibilities and shortcomings of the plot and premise outshine (so to speak) the masterful way in which the movie was filmed and edited.

Wikipedia has a good entry about stars, that may be informative, and may ruin your enjoyment of some of these types of plot devices (if you already didn't know these things), but I'd rather know than enjoy--I'm masochistic that way! There's also a good entry about our Sun. The lifecycle section gives you roughly the perspective you need on the scientific follies clumsily employed in the movie. Really, I know it's JUST a plot device, but people should be doing their homework better these days, and much of their target audience is going to know better anyway. If you're going to go ahead and write a movie with this premise, you HAVE to explain why the Sun's having unexpected problems 5 billion or so years before it's supposed to.

I know, lots of this information is known and considered obvious to much of the Slashdot crowd, and my understanding of physics is dwarfed by many of my peers here. But my point is that the movie's plot sucked in a manner that egregiously outweighed my ability to accept the scientific laziness that pervaded the film (a laziness that became so annoying that it began tempting me in my boredom, to construe it as contempt that the writer had for his audience's knowledge of the Universe). For this reason alone--the way in which Garland/Boyle insult their target audience--the film should be ignored, and definitely scores as a must-miss for the Slashdot crowd.

If you'd like to discuss this movie in a non-Slashdot environment for whatever reason, go here.

u-bend writes "There's a story at Wired about a new magnetic brain stimulation technology that's expected to soon gain FDA approval. Much less invasive than electroconvulsive therapy, the device stimulates the cortex and associated blood vessels by being placed on the patient's head, in a procedure so mild that patients can get in their cars afterward and drive back to work: 'TMS works by creating an electromagnetic pulse that doesn't disturb the skull or scalp, but can reach two to three centimeters into the brain to stimulate the prefrontal cortex and paralimbic blood flow, increasing the serotonin output and the dopamine and norepinephrine functions.'
The question is, does it work through tinfoil hats as well?"

u-bend writes "The International Herald Tribune is running a story about EMI's upcoming takeover by a private equity group. The article states that EMI's stock "soared" after the announcement. Even so, the company's stock finished the day at London's stock exchange at just USD 5.30, or 3.94 Euro, which was about an 8.5% increase.
From the article:
'EMI Group PLC, home to the Beatles and Coldplay, agreed to a 2.4 billion pound (US$4.7 billion; 3.5 billion) takeover by a private equity group on Monday, but the deal raised speculation of an all-out bidding war for the struggling music group.'
Anyone want to speculate what effect this will have on the recent DRM-free decision with Apple?"

u-bend writes "Discovery has an article about a massive melt detected in a region of Antarctica previously thought to be virtually impervious to such a climate shift.

From the article:
'A team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the University of Colorado said new satellite imagery had revealed a vast expanse of snow melt in 2005 where it had previously been considered unlikely.

The NASA statement described the findings as "the most significant melt observed using satellites during the past three decades."'

Rather interesting in light of recent discussions about the pros and cons of global warming."

u-bend writes "Discovery has an interesting little article about a super-ancient star right here in our galaxy. According to the article, the star could be almost as old as the universe itself.
From the article:
Known as HE1523-0901, the 13.2-billion-year-old star was born half a billion years after the universe exploded into existence, say astronomers.
That unprecedented birthdate was confirmed by using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope to split the star's ultraviolet light into individual wavelengths — like a UV rainbow. In that rainbow, or spectrum, they were able to identify lines that show the presence of heavy elements like uranium and thorium."

u-bend writes "In an attempt to combat elephant poaching in the Republic of Congo, a trailside metal detector system is being installed on commonly used poaching routes. If successful, it is hoped that that this method can be used in other poaching hot spots, such as Russia, the Galapagos Islands, and Costa Rica. Better not go camping with old fashioned metal tent pegs.
From the article:
'Endangered animals killed for their skins, meat or tusks may soon have a life-saving technology on their side. A metal-detecting sensor that can be buried alongside oft-used trails help identify weapons and alert authorities to potential poachers.'"

u-bend writes "Discovery news has a quick read about the possibilities that methane has as a rocket fuel for future interplanetary exploration, since it's known to exist on other planets.

From the article:
"The trouble with exploring the solar system is that there just aren't any rocket fueling stations out there. That won't be the case if future planet-hopping astronauts are equipped with a new kind of rocket engine which burns two gases that are already in good supply on several other planets: methane and oxygen.""

u-bend writes "Engadget has a short story lamenting the demise of Microsoft Portable Media Center. The article discusses the OS as well as the Zune as its successor, and concludes with a link to an engadget search for articles about the "wacky variety of devices" supported by the OS."