SCIENCE MOMENT

Science Moment by E.C.McMullen Jr.

PANDORUM - 2009 Story: Travis Milloy, Christian Alvart Screenwriter: Travis Milloy Director: Christian Alvart Producers: Paul W.S. Anderson, Jeremy Bolt, Robert Kulzer, Martin Moszkowicz Studios: Constantin Film Produktion, Impact Pictures I Get Email

Science and technology aren't always the same thing. Science can be about theories and ideas that have no real world applications. Technology on the other hand, deals with solving scientific engineering problems that produces actual material results. I'd like to focus on a major plot device in PANDORUM which employs the ever present use of Chem-lights.

Chem-lights or Chemiluminescence (chemically created light), patented by Omniglow and manufactured in 1986 under such names as Cyalume and Snaplight (to name a few), is an old technology based upon chemical reaction. You break a chemical containing capsule, which is floating in another chemical, and when the two touch they produce light for a short period of time. Eventually when the chemical reaction stabilizes and becomes inert, the light goes permanently "off".

Would this old tech still be around in 175 years? Unlikely as the tech is already moving into obsolescence by recent advances such as Electroluminescence, from companies such as CK Krill light sticks. Krill take up no more room than chem-lights, and produce illumination that can last as much as 27 times longer than chemlights - and you don't break anything. But even those will soon be obsolete due to the type of old fashioned battery it uses.

Modern advances in longer life battery storage (since 2005 we've had batteries that can be ink-jet printed onto paper), ever advancing nanotechnology, and even the ability to genetically and safely make animals produce their own light, makes the idea of future astronauts, nearly two centuries from now, having to rely on something as quaint as a chem-light, amusing in a mocking-your-movie kind of way.

Imagine watching a movie about the ISS space station. The power goes out and the researchers onboard have to rely on light from a... whale oil lantern? Seriously, wouldn't it still seem out of place for researchers on a modern day space station to rely on candles or the more relatively modern tech of a kerosene lantern? And yet in PANDORUM, there they are, almost 2 centuries into the future, aboard an intergalactic starship, and running around with something as anachronistic as Snaplights.

It made sense in DESCENT, but that film takes place in the now, not the nearly 200 years from now.

As for the beginning of PANDORUM and our earth having too many people and so, running out of resources?

Consider that the film makes plain from the very start that in the future, we are flying all over the solar system.

All Over It.

Then we are flying around OTHER solar systems. In our solar system alone, there is enough minerals, gases, and even water to amply supply the needs of as many people as could be living on earth. In fact, there is so much that you could build several more entire earths! Earth, if you haven't noticed, is quite tiny when compared to other planets in the solar system. And even with all of this abundance of resources within in our solar system? That doesn't even include the massive resources on the outer reaches of our solar system in the Kuiper Belt~, which surrounds our planetary solar system. And even the Kuiper Belt is within the larger Scattered Disc, which surrounds that.

What's more, there is the hypothesized massive Oort cloud^ that may contain our relatively disc shaped solar system, and its belt, within its sphere. In fact, the Oort cloud may extend about 3 light years in all directions. Even if it should turn out that the Oort doesn't exist, between the planets, the debris, and the Kuiper and Scattered Disc, we may leave our solar system to colonize other planets, but there will never be a reason to leave our solar system because we ran out of resources.

Also, we have the technology to terraform planets and build spaceship colonies Right Now (actually we've had it since the 1970s). The problem isn't technology, the problem is justifying cost. In fact, the Chinese government is planning, Right Now, to colonize and terraform the Moon and Mars (they've been very public about it*). So why, nearly two centuries from now, would we need to search far into our own galaxy or others to find an "earth-like" planet?

Finally, and this is the most painful lapse of science, the Elysium is supposedly in another solar system. No solar systems near us have earth-like planets. They don't even have Sol-like stars. Yet the spaceship is also supposed to be 500 million miles away.

Ahem.

Which puts the Elysium somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter (483 million miles from the sun) and Saturn (837 million miles). I swear, there are no other solar systems in that area.

Including the hypothetical Oort cloud, from end to end our solar system alone is well over 17 TRILLION miles across. And whether or not there actually is an Oort cloud, for a fact there are no other solar systems in that whole region. Any other star within 3 light years of us would be plainly visible in the daytime sky, as well as having a profound effect on our own solar system.

~
Discovered in 1992 by MIT astronomer David Jewitt and then-graduate student Jane Luu, and named after Dutch born, American Astronomer, Gerard Kuiper.

^
The Oort cloud is named after Dutch Astronomer, Jan Hendrick Oort.

*
How Terraforming Mars Will Work

China's ambitious plans in space

China may set up moon base camp by 2030


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This article copyright 2009 E.C.McMullen Jr.



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