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MSNBC list 10 scientifically inaccurate disaster movies

Opinion and Analysis

In the article, Williamson talks about the making of the movie “Sunshine” in which the Sun is about to die and humans are doomed.

Williamson states, “Sunshine is set 50 years in the future. The sun is dying and is no longer providing the energy that humans need to survive. The global community pulls together to send a team of eight scientists on a mission to reignite the dying sun with a bomb the size of Manhattan. The first group of scientists sent on the mission had failed, and this second team is Earth’s only hope. On their way to the sun, the scientists find the wrecked ship from the previous mission and decide to pick up its bomb to double their chances of succeeding."

She continues, “The premise of the film seems preposterous. While the sun, like other stars, will eventually burn out, scientists calculate that this will take about four to five billion years. If it did burn out, how could a bomb—even one the size of Manhattan—reignite it?”

Physicist Brian Cox was a scientific advisor on the film.

Williams says, “Theoretically, all this could happen, Cox says in a Q&A posted on the movie’s Web site. He helped come up with a back story, not explained in the movie, in which a hypothetical type of atomic nucleus called a Q ball hits the sun and rips its atoms apart, turning them into particles called squarks.”

“As for the bomb, it would use uranium to trigger dark matter, which is thought to make up a large fraction of the universe. This would create enough heat to split the Q balls apart.”

This scenario assumes that a number of unverified theories are, in fact, correct, Cox says. Even if the theories were correct, Q balls might pass through the sun without stopping, or destroy it at a much slower rate than shown in the movie.”

What about "insultingly stupid physics movies"? More on the next page.



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