Monday, February 22, 2010

Physicist: Sci-Fi Movies Should Be Allowed Only One Major Violation of Laws of Physics

Sidney Perkowitz, professor of physics at Emory University and scientific advisor on the set of many movies, argues that Hollywood should reign in the bad science:

Professor Perkowitz said he liked Starship Troopers, but criticised its giant insects, saying if you scaled up a real bug to that size it would collapse under its own weight. He hated The Core, in which a team of scientists travel to the centre of the Earth and detonate a nuclear device to start the planet's core spinning again.[...]

''I am not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film,'' Professor Perkowitz said. ''You can have things move faster than the speed of light if you want. But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way.

''If you violate that you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch.'

via reddit

2 comments:

Rich said...

I am personally offended that you chose a photo from Stargate for this blog. You highlight "The Core" so why can't you pick on THAT franchise and leave mine alone!

John said...

I'm an equal opportunity offender.