Five Most Egregious Scientific Errors of Battleship

So, I watched the new Peter Berg-directed, Taylor Kitsch-starring Battleship last weekend. I was expecting a dumb, popcorn-munching affair with big action hinging on the thinnest of story pretenses. I was hoping to turn my brain off and watch stuff blow up. Sometimes all I want is a movie that speaks to the basal, reptilian part of my brain, the part of me that still gets excited about making fire and smashing golf balls with clubs.

I will admit that there were elements of Battleship that made that guy happy. When it gets going, there are some gleefully outrageous moments of destruction and stupid mayhem that are very fun.

Unfortunately, Battleship completely pissed off every brain cell not dedicated to firemaking and hunter-gathering.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

See, I am a scientist. I’ve been in school a long time learning sciency things, and I am on track to earn a Ph.D. in marine biology in the very near future. I try not to boast about my education. I try not to have an elitist attitude about it. I certainly know things that the average person does not, like where to find the ceratohyal in a fish, but I also acknowledge that every person I meet knows important things that I don’t. For all my education, I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else. If you know how to change the oil in your car, then you know something I don’t.

Ceratohyals are the two large bones on top. Find them under the gills of the next fish you catch.

One of the things those years in the classroom has taught me is how to be a critical thinker. I’m always asking ‘how does that work’ or ‘how is that possible’. So, even when I want to see a dumb action flick, that analytical part of my brain is still turned on. Usually for Transformers or The Expendables or other silly movies, I can tune it out. As long as they make at least a passing effort to make sense, I’ll play along. However…

Battleship is an affront to science, reason, logic, and common sense.

There are so many things scientifically wrong with the film that it destroyed my ability to enjoy any of it. Things go terribly wrong about three minutes into the movie, and it never gets any better. It doesn’t even try to get it right. It crams ‘science’ into its storyline using whatever bits and pieces it wants, and none of the pieces make any sense.

I started trying to keep track of all of the wrong things in Battleship from the opening scene. I gave up that exercise about twenty minutes in when my ears could only hear a high-pitch tone and my nose started bleeding. Rather than give myself an outright stroke, I decided to limit myself to discussing the five most egregious errors in the movie.

Yes, spoilers follow.

Point One: Contacting Planet G

The opening of the film shows a group of scientists in 2005 preparing to contact an Earth-like planet, named Planet G, using a sophisticated satellite in high-altitude orbit over Earth. Using a ground-based satellite dish array, they send a focused beam of energy to the satellite. The super-satellite then amplifies the beam and fires light at Planet G. This energy pulse carries with it a message of some sort that, if intelligent life exists on Planet G, should alert them to our presence.

Here are the things wrong with that:

They fired a light beam at the Planet G.

There is no way to contact an alien planet in 2005 and expect a response by 2012.

I don’t claim to know the best way to contact a planet, but I’m pretty sure shining a flashlight at one is not a great way to do it. What would happen if we just sent a beam of light at Planet G? They would see a bright flash, think ‘WTF?’, and start looking our way? I kind of doubt it.

There are frequently short bursts of radiation erupting all across the universe. The most impressive come in the form of supernovae. Supernovae are quite enormous explosions that expel all sorts of light and other radiation and solar material across the galaxy when a star dies and explodes. They become the brightest things in the galaxy for several weeks. Those things are much cooler than shining a flashlight and attract far more attention. I doubt that our satellite-generated light source can compete with the luminosity of a supernova. Our flash of light would likely go completely unnoticed.

Crab Nebula - remnants of a supernova.

There is a chance that a sudden flash of radiation restricted to the visible spectrum might garner attention, but only if the intelligent beings from Planet G were already looking our way. They might even be able to detect our hidden message in the beam of light (I’m not quite sure how our scientists imbedded a message in a beam of light) and know that intelligent life exists on Earth. Of course, if they were already looking our way, they would already have picked up on the crazy and diverse amounts of radiation that we humans generate and blast out into space. They might have realized that something weird is going on around our star and that intelligent life on our planet might be responsible. Shining a light at them, ultimately, is pointless.

No matter how you signal Planet G, the second point outweighs it in utter stupidity. Let’s do some interplanetary space travel math, shall we?

If we signal Planet G on January 1, 2005 and get invaded on December 31, 2012 (giving the maximum amount of time allowable for our movie timeline), then how much time has elapsed? If you said about 9 years, then good on you. Now, assuming our light beam signal travels at the speed of light, and the aliens from Planet G have ships capable of traveling at (or near) the speed of light, then what is the minimum distance they must travel? If you said 4.5 light years, then move to the head of the class.

Planet G must be within 4.5 light years of Earth to get a response as quickly as occurred in the film.

How close is the nearest star to us? Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away, which is cutting things close. Good thing it has an Earth-like planet in orbit, right? Oh, wait. It doesn’t! Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star containing no known planets. Neither does Alpha Centauri AB, which is 4.37 light years away. In fact, the nearest star with a planet is about 10.5 light years away, which is far outside the range of travel for our Planet G invaders.

They are close, but not that close!

Bottom line, there are no Earth-like planets nearby! Our Planet G-ites could not possibly have reacted as quickly as shown in the movie. Unless there is a hidden Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri (one of the best studied stars in the universe, given its proximity), AND an alien race was waiting at the ready with near-light speed capable ships, then they don’t make it to us in nine years.

Point 2: Unidentified elements in the crashed space ship

One of the five ships our alien invaders sent to investigate/exterminate us hits a satellite and crashes into Hong Kong. The Chinese recover the crash and make the staggering announcement that this alien material is composed of elements otherwise unknown to science.

Let me say that again: The elements of the space ship are not known to science!

Let me introduce you to the Periodic Table of Elements. On this chart are all of the different types of atoms that make up all matter in the universe. These things are, quite literally, the building blocks of the universe. Everything that exists is composed of some arrangement of these elements.

Everything in the universe is composed of this stuff.

If the Chinese could not identify the elements of the space ship, then our Chinese friends don’t have a working mass spectrometer, which is a machine commonly used to determine the mass of particles and allows for identification of elements. This seems unlikely. The Chinese are pretty on top of the technological curve. It could also mean that the spaceship is composed of atoms that haven’t been identified yet. Since we’ve been able to identify or create several heavy atoms of high molecular weight, this must mean that the spaceship is composed of super-heavy atoms. The problem with this is that heavy elements are extremely radioactive. The elements at the bottom right of the table are very heavy and very unstable. These guys only exist for hours or minutes or fractions of seconds before they decompose into lighter elements with an accompanying burst of radiation. If the spaceships were composed of these things, not only would the entire structure of the ship degrade in a matter of hours as those atoms decompose into something else, but the Chinese scientists would also all be dead from severe radiation sickness.

Hilariously, the Chinese were able to identify one element from the alien spaceship: lawrencium. This is hilarious because, wouldn’t you know, lawrencium is a radioactive element that can only be created in the lab. All isotopes of lawrencium are radioactive. The most stable isotope is lawrencium-262, which has a half-life of about 3.6 hours. After 3.6 hours, lawrencium decomposes into a suite of other radioactive elements with fun names such as bismuth, americium, californium, and einsteinium. So, lawrencium is unstable and deadly and, if the Chinese detected it, then they would also detect the decomposed elements as well.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence has an element named in his honor.

It’s entirely possible that the alien ships are composed of alloys that are not known. There are lots of cool alloys out there, and material scientists and chemists are constantly creating new ones. But to say that the elements, the very building blocks of these alloys, is unknown is beyond dumb.

Point 3: De-masking the alien

At one point in the film, an alien is recovered from the sea, and our rag-tag group of Navy heroes decides to take a look. The alien is wearing a suit of armor and a helmet. One of the first things newly appointed captain Taylor Kitsch does is remove the humanoid alien’s helmet so they can get an up close view of the enemy. This is an unwise move for several reasons.

For starters, ripping away the alien’s mask might be effective, if the crew wanted to suffocate it. Earth’s atmosphere is a finely stratified covering of gases consisting mostly of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (1%), and trace amounts of other gases.

The composition of our atmosphere has changed greatly over the course of Earth history. The primordial Earth atmosphere contained 60% hydrogen, 20% oxygen (mostly tied up in water vapor), 10% carbon dioxide, 5% hydrogen sulfide, and small amounts of other gases. Try breathing that for a few minutes and see how you feel. You would be poisoned almost instantly.

At this point in time, the composition of the atmosphere at sea level is stable. However, there are great differences in pressure related to elevation. For example, the pressure at the top of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, is about 1/3 of its pressure at sea level. This low pressure makes it difficult for oxygen to enter the bloodstream. Climbers of Mount Everest must carry canisters of pure oxygen to increase the loading of oxygen into their bloodstream.

The chances that the alien could breathe our atmosphere and survive, much less be able to run around and fight are very remote. It would require an exact match of atmospheres, both in composition and pressures, even with regards to trace gases. The chances of our atmosphere exactly matching that of the alien’s home planet is very unlikely. Odds are one of our gas mixes would prove toxic to the alien. Poor guy would die instantly if you took his mask away.

Secondly, an alien that travels across light years of space is probably harboring all sorts of nasty things that are incompatible with human existence. Disease might be a major problem for our heroes (or the aliens). There could be acute or long-term disease effects on our guys. Exposing themselves to possible alien microbes for which we humans have no defenses is a big mistake. It is true that relatively few diseases jump across species lines. It’s likely that microbes that cause disease in aliens simply wouldn’t recognize us or have any real effect. However, all it takes is one exotic microbe to decimate the human race, or all life on Earth, for that matter. We would have absolutely no defenses against these alien diseases, and, if they did hurt us, they could race through us like wildfire.

The aliens could also respire toxic gases or emit caustic fluids when they get injured. Remember in Alien how the Xenomorph’s blood was acidic? That might not sit well with our Navy crew if a wounded alien was bleeding acid on deck or outgasing some toxic gas like hydrogen sulfide or cyanide. Just standing near an alien could lead to death.

Don't let this guy bleed on you!

So, yeah. Don’t go taking off the alien’s mask unless you want to kill the alien or yourself.

Point 4: Homonid aliens

Why must all aliens look like humans?

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Battleship, but it fits here. The aliens that we see in the film look almost exactly like us. They follow the same basic body plan of humans and share a lot of our features. They are the same height as us (maybe a little taller), they have four limbs, walk upright, have two eyes, have hands and feet with fingers and toes, etc. They even have spiky projections off their head and chin that resemble hair. In one scene, the aliens fog up their masks while breathing. This tells us that they are warm-blooded, since the condensation is forming because of temperature differences between the exhaled air and the glass of the mask. It’s an indication that they breathe like us. It is very, very unlikely that an alien being would be so similar to us.

Aliens will not look like this guy.

Look at the diversity of life on planet Earth. There are millions of distinct extant life forms and millions more that are extinct. Many of them are single-cell microbes, but there are a great many multi-cellular life forms as well. Of al that diversity, only the apes look like us, and even within apes only a few routinely walk upright like humans.

The chances of an alien life form resembling us are so far remote that it’s laughable. Why can’t they look like insects or birds or plants? Why can’t they look like some wholly unique creation, a conglomeration of parts and pieces for which we humans have no frame of reference?

Given the uncertainty of the forward progress of evolution, it’s impossible to predict what an alien life form will resemble. The driving forces behind natural selection on our own planet are difficult to determine. We can make inferences on what happened in the past, but there is no realistic way to predict what organisms will be like in the future. It’s hard to say what humans will look like in 1,000 years much less 10,000 years from now. Who knows what natural selection forces are driving evolution on other planets? There simply is no way to predict what an alien will look like, even if it originated on an Earth-like planet. The path of evolution for an alien life form will have been so fundamentally different from that of humans that it is inconceivable that they would resemble us, even if their home planet was exactly like Earth in every way (which it wouldn’t be).

The answer, of course, as to why aliens in sci-fi films look like humans has nothing to do with biology. These creatures are the star villains of a Hollywood blockbuster. They have been designed to make them relatable to the audience. The best way to do that is to make them look human. There are all sorts of psychological connotations with viewing a humanoid antagonist. We immediately assume that they are intelligent (hey, like us!), that they have similar needs and motivations, and that they present an equal challenge to our human counterparts. If they looked too different from us, then we would never know what to expect from them. Because the aliens look human, the audience has a sense of their capabilities.

To be fair, Battleship tried to show us that the aliens were different from us by making a big deal out of their reptile-like eyes. Nevermind that the eye is an inefficient design for vision. It works, obviously, but the mechanism is so convoluted that it doesn’t make sense. Shine light through a lens, mess with the focus a bit, bounce the light off of different light sensors (cones and rods), flip the image around, and send it to the brain. There are a lot of moving parts to vision as we know it. There has to be a simpler way of doing that, and aliens may have evolved a different way of viewing their surroundings. Imagine eyes that can process a far greater portion of the electromagnetic spectrum while keeping everything in focus. That would be pretty neat.

Scary eyes. Not that alien.

Our aliens are poorly suited to vision on Earth. Their eyes were overly sensitive to light and require a visor for the aliens to see. They are even less efficient than our own. At least they resemble something to which an audience can relate. We’ve all seen snake eyes and know how ominous those things can be. It serves the purpose of making our bad guys even badder while keeping them familiar.

A dollar say that aliens, when we finally meet them, won’t look anything like us.

Point 5: The Brooklyn effect

Brooklyn Decker is hot. Like, smoking hot. She’s an actual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model.

She's hot! I'm supposed to be a moron to get her attention?

Inexplicably, our moronic hero of the film, Taylor Kitsch, woos this hot girl early in the film by the dumbest means imaginable. He gets himself arrested trying to secure her a chicken burrito.

In the opening of the film, our down-on-his-luck Kitsch (no job, no money, no future) decides he will do anything in his power to get Decker’s character a chicken burrito. See, this strange beautiful woman comes into the local bar craving a late night snack, and the star of the film takes it upon himself to save the damsel in distress. He solves this problem by breaking into the nearby gas station, stealing a burrito (he leaves a few buck on the counter, cause, you know, he’s a nice imbecile) and warming it in the microwave. Naturally, he sets off the alarm, and the police arrive to arrest him. He breaks out of the gas station and runs past the cops to deliver his prize to Decker. Along the way, he gets tasered a couple of times. At the end of this scene, he successfully delivers his chicken burrito to the girl before being arrested. Good job Taylor. You have established yourself as one of the stupidest guys on the planet.

A chicken burrito. What it takes to get the girl, apparently.

And the hot chick falls for it! In the next scene, we learn that she, who happens to be the admiral’s daughter, and he, who is now a Navy officer, have moved in together and are happily in love. All I can think is that Brooklyn’s character must like puppy dogs because she’s about to marry one. He will obviously do anything to keep her happy, but he’s also likely to pee on the rug or wander off into traffic.

In my experience, it is scientifically impossible to get the girl by being such a complete doofus. If it were easy to land a hot girlfriend by displaying a total lack of common sense, then I would have a steady stream of hot girls flocking to my door. Taylor Kitsch’s character in Battleship defies all logic or reason.

In fact, most of Battleship defies logic or reason.

Yet, despite these and other issues with the movie, there were parts of it that I legitimately enjoyed. There are several moments of excitement and fun in the film. Parts of it are funny, parts of it are moving.

Just be advised that trying to think your way through the movie could result in permanent brain damage. 

How many scientific inaccuracies did you spot in Battleship? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter!

Street Fightin' Man

I don't normally write about video games. I like to play them as much as the next guy, but I seldom find the popular shooters and role playing games I prefer interesting enough to write about. Nobody wants to hear about my excitement for the next Call of Duty; you are all excited too. I especially don't write about fighting games. I've never been a huge fan of the genre, and I get my fix with the occasional Mortal Kombat game.

But, this is really cool and sounds like an amazing deal.

Capcom's Street Fighter franchise turns 25 this year. It's one of the longest running and most storied fighting franchises around. Capcom is releasing a limited edition, blowout collection to celebrate.

This impressive collection contains the following:

• Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition
• Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition
• Street Fighter X Tekken
• Costumes for Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter X Tekken 
• 11 discs of soundtracks
• Blu-Ray of documentaries
• Blu-Ray of Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter anime films
• Blu-Ray of the Street Fighter and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
• 64-page art book
• 8-inch Ryu statue
• Ryu martial arts belt
• Certificate of authenticity

All of that for $149.00. That's actually quite cheap for a special edition these days. Consider that the Street Fighter X Tekken game alone costs $50. They also are sponsoring a $500,000 tournament across the U.S.

Fighting fans should probably jump all over this.

Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter if you're going to be a street fightin' man!

Beyond the Black Rainbow

Do you want your movie-going experience to feel like an acid trip? Do you like intense aural and spectral presentations that lead you to total sensory overload? Then check out this poster and trailer for Beyond the Black Rainbow.

This is the kind of experimental/weird film that I tend to like watching at about 3AM on a Tuesday morning. It's in the same vein as 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Enter the Void. The visuals are trippy, the music is fantastic, and the story seems weird and likely very unsettling.

The movie hit the festival circuit a few years ago (the movie was completed in 2010), but it just released in theaters last weekend. Unfortunately, it made about 8 grand in two theaters and is already gone. I hope that it finds life on Blu-Ray or DVD, cause this film looks all kinds of crazy, and I would love to experience it at some point.

Let me know which freaky sci-fi films you like watching in the comments below or on Twitter!

Skyfall Teaser Trailer

One of the hottest films of the fall will be the new James Bond film titled Skyfall. Marketing is starting to ramp up on the film with a new poster and a teaser trailer. Check 'em out.

Looks to be a fairly standard Bond poster with the famous British spy walking down the barrel of a gun. Nice poster, but it isn't spectacular.

The teaser trailer however:

That looks amazing! We don't know exactly what the film is about, but we can certainly say that it looks slick and has great action. A good teaser is all about getting us excited, and this does a great job. It starts out with an interrogation of Bond, and as soon as the word Skyfall is mentioned, all hell breaks loose showing us little bits of action scenes. I also love the line "Some men are coming to kill us. We are going to kill them first." Classic Bond and totally badass.

The film hits on November 9, 2012.

Tell me how amped you are for this movie in the comments below or on Twitter!

Pixar on the Big Screen

This weekend, AMC Theatres will be showing four fantastic films from Pixar.

Ratatouille
Up
Toy Story 3
Wall-E

All of these are amazing films, and I am excited that they are coming back to theaters. Pixar films play great on any screen (even on my dinky iPod), but the big screen is where they were meant to be seen.

The even better news is that tickets are only $6, and you get a preview of the upcoming Pixar film Brave. You can't beat that for a night of entertainment! Note that this also is NOT a marathon. You can buy individual tickets to any of the films. You could turn it into a marathon if you want (and I might), but you can also select your favorite and just see that one.

The bad news is that they are scheduled only for Memorial Day weekend, May 25-28. You're going to have to jump on this deal quick. It's going to be hard to see all of the movies with this short release window, unless you camp out at the movie theater all day.

Are you going to be like me and try to cram all of this Pixar goodness into a single weekend? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

New Prometheus Poster

I don't think I can get any more excited for Ridley Scott's next film than I am right now. There is a viral campaign going on for the film with several videos featuring character bios floating around the web, but I am actively avoiding them. I just want to see the movie! There is a new poster out now, which is very cool and not too spoilery. It's basically a glossy version of the cool ship crashing scene shown in the trailer.

I want that poster hanging on my wall right now! June 6 can't get here fast enough!

Tell me how excited you are about Prometheus in the comments below or on Twitter!

The Expendables 2 Trailer

One of my most anticipated films of 2012 is Expendables 2. The first film was a blast, and the sequel looks to be more of the same, only bigger. I’m probably more excited for it than I am for The Dark Knight Rises or The Hobbit or any of the other films on the release schedule for the rest of the year (except for Prometheus). Why? Lots of action stars, crazy action set pieces, cheesy one-liners, guns, explosions, more guns! What's not to love?

Here’s the latest trailer:

Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? The sight of Arnold ripping the door off a puny Smart Car is enough to get my ticket. Watching Stallone and company take out entire battalions of Bad Guys is a guaranteed good time. 

August 17, 2012. Be there people!

Who’s with me? Are you as excited about gunfights and explosions as I am? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Concept Artistry

Concept artists are tasked in the movie industry with creating the “look” of films. They design the settings, architecture, frame shots, and generally paint the film before set construction or complex CGI work begins. These guys do amazing work with Photoshop and Maya.

IGN posted the links of a couple of artists, Nathan Schroeder and Steve Jung, who worked on The Avengers and several other films. Here is a look at a few pieces of their art. I would love to have few of these hanging on my walls.

Nathan Schroeder - Fantastic Four

Nathan Schroeder - X-Men 2

Nathan Schroeder - TRON

Nathan Schroeder - Captain America

Nathan Scroeder - The Avengers

Steve Jung - The Avengers

Steve Jung - Thor

Pretty awesome stuff, right? These guys have a pretty awesome job, I must say. It's just one of the many jobs that take place behind the scenes in modern filmmaking, especially the blockbusters like the ones shown here. There's a lot riding on the success of these films, so the production usually has teams of artists like these guys churning out ideas. It's all done with the goal of getting the look and feel right so that we the audience are thoroughly entertained. 

Good job guys! Let me know where I can buy a print!

Let me know what you guys think about this artwork in the comments below or on Twitter! 

The rides of The Dark Knight Rises

Want to see the Tumbler and the Bat-Pod from upcoming blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises? As part of a promotion for the film, both of the vehicles are going on a nation-wide tour leading up to the July 20 release.

Check here to see if the tour is making stops anywhere near you.

It would be pretty cool to see these creations. The styling and engineering that goes into these vehicles is quite remarkable, and to see them up close would be rad. Too bad the tour isn't coming near me. Maybe they will be in your neck of the woods so that you can check them out for yourselves.

If you see them, let me know in the comments or on twitter!

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer

With all the hubbub about The Avengers it's easy to miss that a new The Dark Knight Rises trailer is out there. Actually, it's pretty hard to miss since it's playing in front of The Avengers.

It shows a lot more footage and gives us a bit more insight into what's going on in the film. From the looks of things, Bane is going to be every bit the villain as The Joker. While Heath Ledger's character wanted chaos for chaos' sake, Bane wants to outright punish everyone. He's bringing the pain.

Have a look:

They don't need to do much to get me in a seat this July 20, but it nice to see a bit more footage. It looks like they are aiming for the best airplane prison break since ConAir. It also looks like this will be the most painful Batman film yet. Can't wait!

Have you pre-ordered your TDKR ticket yet? Are you already camping out in front of your favorite theater? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

The Avengers Dominates

I think everyone knew that The Avengers was going to be a very big deal. The only real question was how high it would rank on the all-time list of openings.

It turns out: at the top following a $200 Million opening weekend.

Get some!

The number two opening weekend is now owned by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 with a measly $169 million opening weekend.

Of course, the $200 million number is based on estimates, and the actual total can go up or down when all the cash is counted early in the week. Nevertheless, this will still be a record-breaking weekend and near enough to the magic $200 number that nobody will care.

So, yeah. It turns out that when you take a host of well-establish and well-loved characters and put them into a smart, fun, big-time action film where each character is given a chance to shine, then you can make a lot of people happy. Good job Marvel! This has been part of the plan since Iron Man in 2007, and it worked out beautifully for them. A lot of people were entertained, and a lot of people made truckloads of money.

I loved The Avengers (4.5 out of 5 stars), and there is a good chance I'll see it again before it's gone from theaters. Specifically, I want to see it in IMAX where the sound and visuals are certain to kill. I missed the IMAX show on the midnight release (I was in the AMC Theaters Marvel Marathon) but I'll try to catch it this week before it's displaced by Dark Shadows.

The only question now is ho long it will remain on top. Looking at the competition, I'm betting it will be #1 for three weeks, maybe four. I'm hoping that Prometheus in June will be far away enough from The Avengers' shadow to perform well.

Did you see The Avengers this weekend? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Concerning Time Travel

After watching the trailer for Looper, the upcoming film in which a young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is tasked with assassinating the older version of himself (Bruce Willis) who travels back in time, I started thinking quite a lot about the concepts of time travel. This led me to two major thoughts.

First, I really am a nerd for spending so much time pondering the practicalities of time travel.

Second, I am convinced that time travel will never become a reality, at least not as it’s depicted in the movies.

The first major problem involves the challenges of moving mass across time and space.

In the trailer for Looper, we see JGL standing in a field smoking a cigarette. In an instant, Bruce Willis, the older version of himself from the future, appears before him. Poof! There he sits. Not only is he there, but he has the wherewithal to instantly recognize the danger he is in and react quickly enough to save himself from being shot. He is seemingly unfazed by the ordeal of traveling back in time 30 years. The question arises: how did he get there?

One way is to fire him into a wormhole. We’ve seen this in several movies such as Timecop, Terminator, Back to the Future, and even Contact, which was based on real-life physicists Carl Sagan’s novel. In each of these films there is some way to connect the endpoints of the wormhole and some device that actually transports the person through it. It’s a cart in Timecop, an energy field in Terminator, an alien construct in Contact and the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

Your ride awaits!

On paper, creating a wormhole is a reasonably sound concept. The Einstein-Rosen Bridge seen in Thor is a real concept of physics, and it is theoretically possible to connect multiple points in space and time. You can’t just send a man or demi-god hurtling through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge with nothing but the clothes on his back as Thor did, unless you want to vaporize him with intense energy bursts and pressure, but you can at least theoretically build the bridge. Work with particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is solidifying many small-scale concepts of particle physics. The physics community is developing a rich understanding of both the large-scale theory and small-scale properties that could result in the formation of artificial wormholes. We know that small wormholes do exist for brief time periods, and it is possible that devices that create wormholes could be developed in the near future. Issues of stability, size, and duration would need to be addressed, but as science progresses, these are the types of things that usually sort themselves out. Once you find a way to create the wormholes, the rest are just details.

An Einstein-Rosen Bridge

One of the major details then becomes how to position the wormhole. In Looper and Terminator, the person or robot (excuse me - cybernetic organism) being moved through the wormhole is placed precisely in no less than four dimensions. And, who can say how many dimensions were actually navigated by the wormhole since one of the common theories of physics is that there are a number of ‘hidden’ dimensions that we simply don’t notice. It would require very precise information to hit a specific mark on the planet at a specific point in time. Such highly refined data doesn’t exist.

We’re not talking about punching in a set of latitude and longitude coordinates and a date. It’s vastly more complicated than that. Remember, our planet is rotating on a tilted axis, which is moving in an elliptical orbit around Sol, which is in turn moving around the Milky Way, which is in turn expanding across the cosmos. How hard will it be to precisely place your wormhole with all of that motion? There probably isn’t a system available to match up all that movement in both time and space to just drop somebody down where you want them. Simply punching in a lat and long in the year 1861 would very likely drop your Terminator or DeLorean into deep space, because the Earth wasn’t anywhere near its present location in space 150 years ago.

The good news is that, if you were to somehow find a way to position it, there is a class of wormholes that are traversable. The earliest theorized were not. Early theories recognized that black holes could connect multiple points in time and space. Of course, you can’t travel through a black hole. Once you cross the event horizon, you are pulled, stretched like taffy, by an immense gravitational field that ends in a singularity at the bottom of the hole. You can enter a black hole, but you can’t come out the other side.

A paper in the American Journal of Physics by Morris and Thorne in 1988 described traversable wormholes. The central challenge of traversing their theorized wormholes lies at the center of the wormhole. At this point, the pressure is immense and there is a huge energy cost on material passing through it. However, they postulated that there could be some heretofore-undiscovered material that could withstand the challenge. Essentially, you could shield your passenger with this exotic material and send them on through. Their class of wormholes avoided the many pitfalls of black holes, such as eliminating the event horizon and offering stability, small tidal gravitational forces, and short time of transit. Also, they don’t end in singularities and allow material to emerge unscathed on the other side.

To summarize, to pass through a wormhole, you need to create one very precisely in time and space and shield your passenger with material that is not known to exist so that he isn’t obliterated in transit.

That’s not to say that tranport through wormholes can’t happen, but it doesn’t seem very likely that all of these elements come into place any time soon. There is still a lot of physics ground to cover between now and then. However, it is impossible to reject the possibility of time travel through wormholes. Maybe physicists will get there one day.

Steven Hawking, a much smarter man than me, and someone who knows a thing or two about physics, believes time travel is possible, but only in one direction. Time travel into the past cannot happen; we can only go into the future. As we know, gravity has the ability to slow time. The Theory of Relativity predicts this. If you orbit a black hole just outside the event horizon, the time experienced by those in orbit is less than that experienced by outsiders. So, if you spend five years orbiting a black hole, the rest of the universe will have experienced ten years of time. Upon leaving the vicinity of the black hole, our orbiters would enter a universe that is five years into the future. Unfortunately, there is no theoretical way to make this work in the opposite direction and go backward in time.

Steven Hawking, a guy who actually knows what he's talking about. 

You can also achieve the same effect by traveling at or near the speed of light. If you traveled at such high speeds, you would experience only a brief amount of time while others in the universe would experience a much longer amount of time. Again, this lets you travel into the future, not the past.

Click here to read what Hawking thinks about time travel.

However, the Morris and Thorne (1988) theories on wormholes do postulate two-way travel. So, maybe there is a way to go forwards and backwards in time.

It seems the most likely method for time travel would be to develop ‘portals’, centers that provide an anchor point for your wormholes. Think Stargate. These gateways would provide stable, known points in the universe where wormholes could be opened, material could pass through, and then the wormhole closed in a controlled environment. Actually, that sounds exactly like Stargate. Such areas would be developed in the future and would only allow time travel from the time of their completion on.

Step into the wormhole.

Let’s imagine that scenario.

You are a high-level physicist working at an ultra-top-secret military installation (because who else will pull this off but the military, and you know they’re going to keep it secret from everyone for as long as they can). In the bottom of a bunker deep underground, you build some crazy contraption that is designed to open a wormhole with itself in the future. All the diagnostics and simulations have passed their tests, and you’re convinced that your technology will work. You flip the switch to turn it on and a wormhole opens, a high-energy time-tunnel that connects the device with that very room one week further in time. You send a message through to yourself saying that all systems are go. A few minutes later and the system fires up again. This time it receives a message. One sent by you from the future saying, essentially, “Hell yes it works!”.

How awesome would that experience be?! You would know instantly if it worked because you would be able to tell yourself all about it from the future. Sweet!

I imagine that this point, when we render time itself obsolete, that we will declare a new era of civilization. Events will be recorded in terms of “before time travel” (our current era) and “after time travel”.  It may sound grandiose, but let’s face it, the ability to bounce back and forth in time is a major deal. The ramifications of time travel are immense (and beyond the scope of my current ramblings).

Ultimately, it seems like the only way that time travel happens is if we send stuff into the future or build wormhole machines at some later date.

I do not believe that we can send things back to the past without first inventing the correct portals.

Which leads me to my second point about time travel.

If time travel allowed us to jump backwards as is seen in Looper or Back to the Future, then we would already know that time travel was possible. If people had traveled back in time to our past, then there would be signs of their visits. Weird, unexplained technology would litter the landscape. Haven’t you seen Terminator 2?

Did you leave something behind, Arnold?

In that film, remnants of Schwarzenegger’s first visit as a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 are recovered by the Cyberdyne Company and used to make the very technological breakthroughs that would lead to the development of the Model 101. Paradox alert! In fact, there would currently be lots of these paradoxical quandaries if time travel existed. Even if time travelers took great care to leave nothing behind, nobody is perfect. Artifacts of all sorts would be lying about causing us to puzzle over their origins. We may at first think the technology as alien, but as soon as we find a scrap of paper written in a language we understand, we would catch on. Then all future technological research would be geared with time travel in mind. What would happen if someone forgot their iPhone in the 1750s? Ben Franklin would play Angry Birds and then direct all of America's top scientists to figure out how this crazy device actually worked.

There also would be accounts of strange people with crazy tales of the future.

In 12 Monkeys, Bruce Willis (that guy must like time travel films) plays a character from the future warning of a catastrophic global disease outbreak. He comes to the past (our current day) and warns us of our impending doom. He is promptly thrown in the madhouse. Everyone thinks he is crazy. Coming back to Terminator 2, Sarah Conner warned everyone she could pin down for five minutes about the threat of global thermonuclear annihilation, but nobody would listen to the ramblings of one crazy woman. But, what if we sent back lots of people across many generations, all telling the same wild stories? We might eventually start to believe that a global catastrophe was coming. It would become part of our culture and might actually prevent disaster. The fact that there isn’t some impending doom on our minds means that we either haven’t done a good job of alerting ourselves or that nobody has actually traveled back in time to warn us.

So, the fact that we don’t know if time travel is possible means that time travel is not possible.

Ultimately, time travel may or may not be a reality. We are still too far away from the solutions to the myriad problems surrounding time travel. If it does come to pass, we won’t be going back to visit ancient Rome. We will either be going forward in time or back and forth to a point when the technology is finally available.

That’s kindof too bad. It could be a lot of fun to travel back to Greece, Egypt, feudal Japan, or Tenochtitlan when those civilizations were in their primes. Or, how sweet would it be to see New York City in the year 2100? So many possibilities for travel, yet no way to get there.

Do you think time travel could happen? How far back or forward would you go? Do you agree or disagree with my ramblings? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Movies of the Month: May 2012

It may be easy to write off the month of May as belonging solely to The Avengers. That particular juggernaut has been building steam for the past five or six years and will finally be unleashed to U.S. audiences in the first week of May. There’s little doubt that The Avengers will be huge and will probably dominate the box office for the better part of the month. However, there are several other potentially great films coming out in May from guys like Tim Burton/Johnny Depp, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Wes Anderson, among others. The summer season gets longer and longer each year, and this May sees a bounty of films at your local Cineplex.

Week of May 4, 2012

The Avengers

The plot: Our ace team of superheroes assembles to stop worldwide domination from Loki and his minions.

Who’s in it? Every superhero from Marvel’s universe. *deep breath* Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlet Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Stan Lee. Enough star power for you?

Ultimate Fate: It’s funny to think that a movie about stopping worldwide domination will soon be dominating the world. All word out of the press reviews says that this is a fun, well-made, memorable adventure that lives up to the hype. It’s been released in a few global markets, and it’s going gangbusters and pleasing crowds across the globe already. I bet it kills on IMAX, which is where I’ll be at midnight on Thursday.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The plot: A group of retirees wind up in an “exclusive” resort in India.

Who’s in it? Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson

Ultimate Fate: Wait, there’s another movie coming out this weekend? This one is aimed at the grandparents of the kids coming to The Avengers. Parents are supposed to drop the younguns off at the big show and slide on over to the theater next door where real actors and actresses will properly entertain. It does have a quality cast, and it looks cute enough. I’m sure my Mom would love it.

Where I’ll be this weekend: No questions about this week. The Avengers all the way. Marvel has been building this sucker up for a long, long time. It’s unprecedented how they have approached this film by building up the major characters with their own films, culminating with this film. I’ll be there opening night (in my Captain America t-shirt).

Week of May 11, 2012

Dark Shadows

The plot: The vampire Barnabas awakens from a two hundred year slumber in 1972 and sets out to restore his family’s name and honor.

Who’s in it? Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfieffer, Helena Bohnam Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Christopher Lee

Ultimate Fate: Tim Burton and Johnny Depp reteam to adapt the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows into a feature film. This has been a passion project for he Burton-Depp duo for a number of years, and they finally got it off the ground. They look to have retained the shows, let’s just say, unique style and characters. They’ve turned this from a melodramatic melodrama into a quirky comedy that actually looks pretty good. Burton usually gives Depp free reign to act all weird and stuff, and that’s on full display in the trailers. Should be a fun time if you like the director’s/actor’s stuff.

Where I’ll be this weekend: Well, it looks to be a light weekend as far as new releases go. Many films are staying away from The Avengers long shadow. Tim Burton and company are not afraid though and are offering a pretty cool film. It should be fun. If you’re not into Burton (I know many aren’t), watch The Avengers again.

Week of May 18, 2012

Battleship

The plot: Aliens invade! Unlikely navy hero must save the day! Explosions!

Who’s in it? Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker (hot!), Liam Neeson, Rhianna

Ultimate Fate: Explosions!!! This movie has already opened internationally and has drawn in about $175 million so far. Reviews have been less than stellar, but it does feature big action. I doubt that it will be great, but it might at least be a good time-killer over the weekend. Not the most ringing endorsement, I know, but I haven’t seen too much to get me excited about this film.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

The Plot: Five couples experience the joys and pains of pregnancy. Good luck to them, I say.

Who’s in it? Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Lopez, Brooklyn Decker (hot!), Anna Kendrick, oh, and a few guys too

Ultimate Fate: I suppose we were due for another romantic comedy. I guess parents, especially new parents, will find this enjoyable. Not that I can relate to any of this, so I’ll let others decide if they have any interest in this one.

The Dictator

The plot: A ruthless middle-eastern dictator visits New York and gets knocked down a peg by a CIA agent.

Who’s in it? Sacha Baron Cohen, John C. Reilly

Ultimate Fate: This is Sacha Baron Cohen’s take on Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America, which is to say that this film should be offensive and mean-spirited and shine a light on middle-eastern and American stupidity and generally be awesome. I think by now people know if they like Cohen’s style of comedy or not. Since Cohen has achieved a fair amount of fame as an artist, his previous cryptic style of comedy has been curtailed in favor of a more direct and traditional approach. John C. Reilly is a funny guy too. I’m betting I’ll enjoy this one more that Bruno.

Where I’ll be this weekend: Call me shallow, but I’ll be at Battleship. I love dumb movies with big explosions and hot girls. Battleship is the sort of film that needs to be seen on the big screen to be enjoyed, and, since not many seem to be enjoying it, I’ll give it every chance I can to be entertained.

Week of May 25

Men in Black III

The plot: Agent K gets caught up in a time-warp, alien invasion plot that threatens to destroy the universe, and Agent J must travel back in time to save him.

Who’s in it? Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

Ultimate Fate: Nobody really clamored for a sequel after the mediocre Men in Black II, but we have a third film anyway. Give the producers some credit here though. I really like the idea of Josh Brolin portraying a young Tommy Lee Jones in a time-travel film, especially with Jones providing the voiceover of his younger self. It genuinely looks like all the principle actors had a good time making this movie. I’m just hoping that enthusiasm makes its way onto the screen.

Moonrise Kingdom

The plot: A boy and girl run away to a secret spot in the woods.

Who’s in it? Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, two cute kids

Ultimate Fate: The plot may sound a little basic, but keep in mind that this is a Wes Anderson joint. I think his film Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of the best films in ages, and it keeps getting better with repeat viewings. Anderson has a unique style and voice that translates into cute, smart, complex, and heartwarming movies. So when the plot is about two kids who run away together, you can rest assured that it will be an amazing story.

Chernobyl Diaries

The plot: A group of kids go off on an extreme tourism adventure to the ruins of Chernobyl and get more than they bargained for.

Who’s in it? Nobody whose name I recognize.

Ultimate fate: This film is from the guys behind Paranormal Activity, which leads me to expect a lot of the crappy “found footage” shaky-cam extreme closeup shots that I despise. However, the trailer actually looks decent. It looks like the filmmakers show a little restraint with the rapid-fire, quick cut filming techniques that make most “found footage” films nearly unwatchable. Pripyat, the city that housed the workers for the Chernobyl nuclear reactor is a creepy place, deserted for decades due to radiation contamination. There is something inherently frightening about a city whose occupants just abandoned their lives in the middle of dinner. Setting a horror film there could be a stroke of genius or it could all come undone through poor filmmaking.

Where I’ll be this weekend: As a Wes Anderson fan, I’ll be at Moonrise Kingdom.

Pick of the Month: Not much of a surprise here. I’m going to see The Avengers in all its glory on opening night. Odds are good that this will be the best time at the theater in the month of May.

Will you be seeing The Avengers too? Are you more excited by a Tim Burton film or a different film in May? Let me know in the comments below, and follow me on Twitter!