bad science in brisbane planetarium movie

[troypiggo]

Wife and I decided to go the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium on Sunday. They had a movie narrated by Tom Hanks, made by the American Natural History Museum or something like that. Movie was quite good for the most part. "Passport to the Universe" it was called. Started off with Solar System, Milky Way, then zoomed out to Virgo Local Cluster, then further out to Orion Nebula, further yet all the way out to edge of visible universe.

Interesting part was zooming into Orion Constellation, seeing the perspective of the stars forming the constellation change as you got closer to M42. They zoomed inside M42 showing the new stars forming etc.

From my limited astro knowledge, and the fact that Tom Hanks at the beginning said "this isn't an artists impression of the Universe, it is an actual representation...", and it was made by AMoNH, I guessed that the details like distance between stars, and some of the facts quoted would be "fair dinkum".

Imagine my disappointment when the movie was at the edge of the visible Universe and Tom starts looking for a black hole to find the quickest way home... we go inside and it looks like the Dr Who intro... and surprise surprise when we get out we're back in our Solar System... sigh...

There were kids there, a Scout group, supposedly to learn.

[dugnsuz]

The film makers musn't think the real universe has enough pizzazz!!!

[Glenn Dawes]

Did someone say pizza! Make mine a universal supreme and hold the black holes!

[Quark]

Hi Troy,

Last time I looked the Virgo cluster, for that matter any Galaxy cluster even the LMC and SMC are substantially further than M42 which is about 1500 LY distant.

Even with the inaccuracies, I wouldn't take them to task over it. So many of our population know so little about astronomy, our place in the Universe and films like this might capture the imagination of some, to the extent that they might even take a more active interest and find out about the facts of it all themselves.

I really think that the stimulation stuff like this provides is worth putting up with the inaccuracies, it may well provide the spurr for some of the young people you saw there to go into science.

Regards
Trevor

[Jen]

Awww i went to the planetarium in Melbourne last January and we watched Tyco to The Moon it was cute :thumbsup:

[troypiggo]

Sorry, I may have been a bit out with my own details there, just giving an idea of what it was like. I'm sure the sequence of distances of M42 and galaxies etc was accurate.

I'm not usually this pedantic. It was just that for such a supposedly factual, scientific type movie to end with jumping into a black hole to warp home was such a corny ending to a decent movie.

[AstroJunk]

Convenient things those wormholes! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole. Those shows are a wonderful piece of edutainment. I wouldn't be too harsh on them.

[omnivorr]

It's funny that you took umbridge at the finale to the sequence, when evidently you did not whince at having travelled to the edge of the 'known' universe in a mere 40 minutes (a feat requiring velocities of travel far exceeding the speed of light)...
...sounds like a case of selective "suspension of disbelief" to me ;)

[troypiggo]

I know I know. But zooming in and out is pretty common place and simple to put in context. Don't think kids would walk away from the movie telling their friends that you can zoom out to the edge of the universe in a few seconds by seeing that.

But I can imagine them believing that you can jump into a black hole and warp home or something. That's all.

No biggie. I don't have kids. Just my thoughts on a film that was purporting to be based on fact.

[omnivorr]

...who knows what kids end up believing, the lies upon lies adults tell them! is it any wonder some of us become cynics? ..and some deluded fantacists.. and some "me me me" robots...

I think we could say the film is largely based on theory, mostly well supported theory, ..but not "been there done that" 'fact' ;)

ps Happy B'day Troy! :D