The Core and National Geographic

[Rue]

A quote from the article by the director:

"I think of this movie as science faction more than science fiction....I think the audience will come out knowing a little more about the planet they're standing on."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...27_tvcore.html

[g99]

What will they learn? that the earth is not hollow? I can't think of anything else.

[nebularain]

Well, at least the article does have quotes from scientists that explain some reality:

Eddies and currents in this metallic outer ocean produce Earth's magnetic field. "At least we believe that, though we don't understand exactly what the mechanism is," said Richard Terrile, a planetary astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and a science consultant for the film.

So can the magnetic field really shutdown?

"In fact it has happened many times in the Earth's history," says Terrile. "The Earth's magnetic field is not a stable solid thing like a bar magnet—it actually changes, it moves directions, it goes up and down, and it actually reverses."

Don't throw away your compasses just yet. These shifts only occur every few hundred thousand years or so. But that's still enough to make the idea of a magnetic field shutdown at least plausible.

What would happen next is debatable even in scientific circles. In The Core, radioactive particles and microwave radiation literally cooks the planet. In one scene they even slice the Golden Gate Bridge in half.

"I don't want to diminish enthusiasm for the movie, but I don't think anybody would notice if the magnetic field disappeared," said Jack Connerney, a planetary scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"The ionosphere and atmosphere would keep out much of the solar wind and radiation," said Connerney, so although the radiation would increase slightly, life on Earth would not fry.

Connerney also doubts that huge electrical storms would be instantly generated. Both Venus and Mars lack global magnetic fields, he said. "We don't see strange electrical phenomena happening there."

[Ba Witda]

Looks like Ba's got some serious smiting to do in Hollywood.

[g99]

Ba, while your at it could you get me a acting job with Jennifer Aniston? :-)

Heck, gertting me exclusive rights to review The Core would be nice too.

[Ba Witda]

Does Ba look like a miracle worker?

...Oh yeah, that's right, he is, huh? Well, he'll try. He's more of a smiting deity, though.

[g99]

Well smite on than! Start with the critics that give the movie a good review.

P.S. Played a little to much Black & white lately? :-)

[gethen]

Could Ba also inflict some simple disease like oh, say, rickets, on some Hollywood personalities to be named later? And if it would rain fruit pies just one day.....

[Val Trottan]

The Aaron Ekhart character, when asked about the interior of the Earth, says everything right. He is not mistaken at all.

He says it layered. He says there are discontinuities. He says the relative sizes and depths and temps of the layers (from what I recall) and says it is totally impossible for anyone to think they can get there.
He is resolved to the fact mankind is doomed 'cause we can't get there to fix anything ... as if we could.
The real bad science comes into it when Stanley Tucci's character says: "What if we could?"

Ha!

Unobtainium rules.
(Buckyballs and titanium's love child.)

[gethen]

Val, unobtanium, as I'm told, is a term used among bike geeks for the perfect (but non-existent) bike material--unbelievably strong, light, etc. The bike geek thought it was pretty funny that the film makers had borrowed the term, and that it might be an inside joke.

[Kaptain K]

Val, unobtanium, as I'm told, is a term used among bike geeks for the perfect (but non-existent) bike material--unbelievably strong, light, etc. The bike geek thought it was pretty funny that the film makers had borrowed the term, and that it might be an inside joke.

The first reference to unobtainium that I recall was back in the late 60's when driver Mark Donahue was asked what the all-conquering Penske-Porsche 917-30 was made of. He replied "unobtainium".

[irony]

I'd been under the impression that 'unobtanium' was a generic word for the 'magic' metals that show up in comic books and stories to do... well, to do exactly what the unobtanium does in The Core; something absolutely impossible that must nevertheless happen for the sake of the plot. Off the top of my head, I can think of two varieties of unobtanium - adamantium and mithril. Anybody know any others?

[David Hall]

How about scrith? Can't build a ringworld without it.

[g99]

How about that magic energy from Stargate: SG1?

I think it is called naquida.

[Kaptain K]

General Product's hull material. Transparent, but opaque to all harmful radiation. Indestructible, except when exposed to anti-matter.

[tracer]

Off the top of my head, I can think of two varieties of unobtanium - adamantium and mithril. Anybody know any others?

(Does anyone else think that standard smiley needs to pluck its eyebrows? )


Unobtainium has been a fascination of mine since I was a teen-ager. The forms that come to mind immediately are:

• Arenak, Dagal, and Inoson, from E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark series.
• Biphase Carbide, from Steve Jackson Games' Ogre and GEV series.
• Tri-Helical MBS (a.k.a. Plasteel 1000), the stuff they made K.I.T.T. out of on Knight Rider.
• Vibranium, from Marvel Comics, which has the ability to stop mutants like Kitty Pryde who could otherwise walk right through it.
• Duranium, from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• The planet-eating horn of plenty from the original series Star Trek episode "The Doomsday Machine" was said to have a hull made of solid neutronium. If Mr. Spock meant the same thing by "neutronium" that modern physicists do -- a solid mass of neutrons, packed together as tightly as an atom's nucleus, like what a neutron star would be made of -- then that doomstay machine was one bad-a** mo' fo'.
• In addition to mithril, Tolkien occasionally mentions a substance called "adamant." (I have no idea how strong something would be if it were made of Silmarils, though.)
• In one of my own stories where I wanted people to walk around on the sun wearing space suits (!), I conjured up a substance called "hyperdiamond", made of iodine atoms in some funny arrangement. It was flexible like a fabric, yet temperature resistant to over 6000 degrees Kelvin and a damn near perfect insulator. (Maybe they should've used this to make the E.V.A. suits in The Core.)

I tend to measure such mythical metals by their "unobtainium index", the number of times stronger and harder they are than the strongest and hardest steel. Arenak's unobtainium index was stated as 500 in the books, while Inoson's was stated as 2000. Most of the rest you just kinda have to guess at.

A guy by the name of Rodford Edmiston has written an article about a form of unobtainium that might actually be possible to make, called "ring carbon": http://www.lexfa.org/text/joht10a.htm.

[r0ck3t]

Look, you really can't properly explain the Unobtanium Index without presenting a table of Bubba's Constants for Non-metallic Metals at Temperature Below Absolute Zero.

Everyone knows that! LOL

[RickoniX]

What will they learn? that the earth is not hollow? I can't think of anything else.

I learned that all expeditions of a scientific nature need a quirky black guy to die first

[tracer]

If that's the case, then this was an important life lesson that The Core FAILED to teach.

Because in the movie, the quirky black guy dies third.