"The Martian" and Other News of the Solar System

If you've seen, read, or heard about "The Martian" film or novel, you may know that it's a story by an engineer about survival on Mars. If you'd like some background on how author Andy Weir tried to make the story realistic, using known science, check out his talk at NASA's Ames Research Center at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBtXuBuZPpQ

The image accompanying this post is a selfie of a real "martian" -- the Curiosity Rover on Mars, which took the pictures from which this great Mars image was assembled in August. If you click on the picture, you get a bigger version.

For a listing of other Mars science fiction stories with reasonable astronomy, you can download my one-page resource guide at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282505754_Mars_Science_Fiction_with_Reasonable_Science

A fantastic new image and movie of Pluto's giant moon Charon (with its mysterious red polar cap) can now be seen at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20151001 

For those of you who are in the Northern California area, or have friends there, there are two exciting events coming up this week:

1) Dr. Carolyn Porco, the head of the imaging team for the Cassini mission at Saturn, is giving a free public lecture (with fabulous pictures) at Foothill College Wednesday night: http://www.foothill.edu/news/newsfmt.php?sr=2&rec_id=3852

2) The Astronomical Society of the Pacific and Chabot Space Science Center are sponsoring an all-day Family Astronomy Festival in Oakland Saturday Oct. 10. See: https://www.astrosociety.org/education/asp-annual-meeting/

A Wonderfully Scientific Science Fiction Film

Last night, thanks to the Wonderfest organization in San Francisco, I got a chance to see a science fiction film that was in theaters for so short a time that if you blinked, you probably missed it. It's called "Europa Report" and it is the story of a crewed expedition to Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa. This world, one of the four large moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo, is an ice-covered ball that may well have a large liquid ocean under its surface.

You can see Europa's cracked surface on the picture I have posted above. (This is actually a montage of images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, with additional image processing by Professor Ted Stryk to bring out more detail.) One possibility is that the dark cracks we see are places where material from deeper inside the Moon (perhaps even from the liquid ocean) is seeping up toward the surface.

In the movie (see the poster below), future astronauts (from a private space company) go to Europa to search for evidence of life. The complex story is told by interweaving the view from cameras in their suits and in their cabins, with footage they recorded for sending back to Earth and interviews with the mission controllers, who eventually lose contact with the ship. What the surviving astronauts eventually find is far more than the micro-organisms scientists currently hope might exist deep under the ice of Europa.

The film, by Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero, is now available on DVD and various internet film services. If you enjoy somewhat complicated but scientifically reasonable space stories, I commend it to your attention. If not, spend a little time Googling other images of Europa and check out one of the strangest worlds with which we have the pleasure of sharing the solar system.

A Matter of "Gravity"

The new space-disaster movie "Gravity" is very much in the spotlight these days. Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose articulate and good-humored commentary is justly earning him the title of America's public astronomer (a title Carl Sagan used to hold,) recently found some problems with the science in the film and it caused a stir. But two other astronomer-writers have done an even more detailed analysis of what is right and what is wrong with the film.

Before I send you to the web pages where the analysis can be found, let me urge you to see and enjoy the movie first. Those of you with some science background, see if you can spot what is so well done and what is not quite right with the science. Everyone else, please go and enjoy the 3-D spectacle. Then you can come back and read about the issues with the science.

Phil Plait, the "Bad Astronomy" webmaster, gives his articulate analysis at:http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/10/04/ba_movie_review_gravity.html

Jeffrey Kluger discusses the film's pluses and minuses for Time Magazine at: http://science.time.com/2013/10/01/what-gravity-gets-right-and-wrong-about-space/

Neil Tyson's tweets and a response from astronomer Kevin Grazier, the science advisor for the film (and a number of TV shows) can be found summarized at:http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/10/neil-degrasse-tyson-fact-checks-gravity/70234/

As for me, I am always happy when film blockbusters get kids and the public thinking about things beyond the Earth. Some of my favorite films that have good science ideas to recommend them include "2001," "Contact (where Jodi Foster's character was based in part on one of my favorite astronomers, Jill Tarter), and the older (and more philosophical) "Five Millions Years to Earth." 

And I heard it from astronomer Fred Hoyle that the old British horror movie "Dead of Night" was one of the contributing inspirations to the steady-state theory of the universe that he and Hermann Bondi came up with (together with Thomas Gold.)  Hoyle and Bondi saw the film (which has no real beginning or ending -- watch it to see what I mean) and asked themselves, "Could the universe be like this?"