Post by aaronearl on Jun 2, 2007 10:45:15 GMT -5
I was in the U.K. last month and saw Sunshine. It was a visually stunning film.
I didn't get the science, though. Since I have joined this fan forum, I have read the paper on super-symmetric Q-Balls. While the paper is certainly interesting, the film left me with little more than the impression that the "stellar bomb" was intended to "jump start" the sun's nuclear processes with a big blast.
Too bad the writers from Solar Crisis weren't on hand for this one. However questionable that film's entertainment value, that story came right at me with a solar problem that is within our ability to effect. They didn't need to detonate their bomb in the Sun's core, but near its surface--in a sunspot, to prematurely trigger a massive, Earth-threatening solar flare. Freddie the Bomb--five tons of antimatter in containment, monitored by a self-aware mission computer--from Solar Crisis was much more acceptable to me than "all the fissile material on Earth... " in a pile the size of Manhattan, with big giant thrusters.
But, like I said, Sunshine IS visually stunning and I enjoyed watching the film.
I didn't get the science, though. Since I have joined this fan forum, I have read the paper on super-symmetric Q-Balls. While the paper is certainly interesting, the film left me with little more than the impression that the "stellar bomb" was intended to "jump start" the sun's nuclear processes with a big blast.
Too bad the writers from Solar Crisis weren't on hand for this one. However questionable that film's entertainment value, that story came right at me with a solar problem that is within our ability to effect. They didn't need to detonate their bomb in the Sun's core, but near its surface--in a sunspot, to prematurely trigger a massive, Earth-threatening solar flare. Freddie the Bomb--five tons of antimatter in containment, monitored by a self-aware mission computer--from Solar Crisis was much more acceptable to me than "all the fissile material on Earth... " in a pile the size of Manhattan, with big giant thrusters.
But, like I said, Sunshine IS visually stunning and I enjoyed watching the film.
