- The latest space thriller, "Deep
Impact," hits movie theaters this weekend and according to experts
at NASA, it's fairly realistic.
-
- "Deep Impact" (Dreamworks and
Paramount Pictures) was among five movies recently ranked by NASA based
on their accuracy.
-
- The film is about an object a few miles
in diameter that's headed for earth. As the planet prepares for disaster,
astronauts try to use nuclear explosives to deflect the object, but they
succeed only in breaking it into two pieces, one of which strikes in the
Atlantic ocean and wipes out coastal cities by a spectacular tsunami that
engulfs the entire U.S. eastern seaboard. We won't tell you what happens
to the larger fragment.
-
- Technically, "Deep Impact"
is reasonably accurate. The idea of a comet being spotted about 2 years
before impact is plausible, and the strategy to deflect it with nuclear
explosives is also appropriate. The special effects on the surface of the
active comet are realistic, as is the tsunami produced when the smaller
fragment hits the Atlantic, according to NASA's Ames Space Science Division.
-
- Experts say the idea of a nuclear-powered
spacecraft to take astronauts to the comet is fiction, of course, at least
in terms of current technology, but NASA gives the film high marks for
understanding the nature of the impact threat and for the quality of its
special effects imagery.
-
- Coinciding with the opening of "Deep
Impact" are the results of a real-life impact simulation conducted
at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-
- Using one of the world's fastest computers,
Sandia performed 18 hours of calculations to postulate a rock almost a
mile wide slamming into the Atlantic Oceans off the coast of Brooklyn.
-
- According to the computer simulations,
Sandia experts suggest the movie's vision of rising oceans and falling
cities is dead-on.
-
- Frame by deadly frame, the simulation
created by Sandia scientist Dave Crawford and his colleagues shows a fireball
of superheated steam erupting over Long Island. Within 3 seconds, the fireball
blows across Long Island, generating winds so hot and fast Long Island's
6 million-plus residents wouldn't know what hit them.
-
- "It is essentially instantaneous
to the people on the ground," Crawford says.
-
- Another asteroid thriller due out in
July, "Armageddon," is quite a different story, according to
NASA. The film depicts an asteroid "the size of Texas," headed
toward impact with the earth in a matter of weeks.
-
- An asteroid of this size would be about
a million times larger than any Earth-crossing asteroid, and scientists
say they would have a much longer warning time than in the movie.
-
- NASA experts say no experts were consulted
when making the movie.
-
- Instead of entrusting planetary defense
to trained astronauts or the military, a bunch of amateurs is recruited,
given a week of training, and blasted off in two Space Shuttles to intercept
the asteroid. Apparently no one told the producers that the Shuttle is
limited to low Earth orbits, says NASA.
-
- The job of the astronauts is to drill
into the asteroid and plant nuclear explosives. Scientists say the asteroid
set for "Armageddon" does not look at all like an asteroid, and
strangely the hole they drill glows orange as if there were magma just
below the surface. The world may be saved in "Armageddon," but
the credibility of the movie is a casualty, NASA says.
-
- "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon"
aren't the only movies made about the impact hazard posed by asteroids
or comets.
-
- First came the 1979 Hollywood film "Meteor,"
staring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, in which a joint US/USSR effort
is made to intercept an incoming asteroid and disrupt it with nuclear explosives.
The major tragedy is averted, although several smaller hits demonstrate
the destructive power of impact.
-
- The initial premise of the film, with
an asteroid knocked out of the main belt and into the Earth's path, is
ridiculous, but most of the rest of the film is reasonably plausible, according
to NASA.
-
- "Meteor" was not well received
at the time, however, in part because reviewers did not take the impact
possibility seriously.
-
- The next film, "Fire from the Sky,"
was made for television in the late 1980s. Here a comet takes out Phoenix,
Arizona. There is no attempt to intercept the comet, and most of the drama
concerns issues of when to warn the populace and how to evacuate Phoenix
in time.
-
- Third was the 1997 TV miniseries "Asteroid."
As in "Meteor," the film starts implausibly with a comet diverting
a main-belt asteroid into a collision course. This time the target is Dallas,
Texas, with a smaller impact near Kansas City.
-
- The special effects are weak, the efforts
to stop the incoming asteroid with airborne radar are ludicrous, says NASA.
After the impact, the film settles into a generic disaster format, with
people trapped in collapsed buildings, lost children, and the like.
-
- These five films can be ranked according
to their realism and technical accuracy in portraying the threat of a
cosmic impact.
-
- From best to worst, according to NASA,
they are: "Deep Impact," "Fire from the Sky," "Meteor,"
"Asteroid," and "Armageddon." But whatever their technical
strengths or weaknesses, say scientists at the agency, they should sensitize
the public to the existence of an impact danger, and perhaps also to the
fact that we could mount a defense against an incoming object and thus
avert the disaster entirely.
|
Sightings HomePage