Comment by Stephen Fisher on May 10, 2009 at 5:47pm

Haven't seen it yet but plan to. Hopefully it hasn't gone the way of Episode I. The "science" will probably kill me too, but i'll just turn off my brain and watch the pretty lights.

Comment by Richard Spencer on May 11, 2009 at 12:54am

Stephen, I wish I could have turned off my brain. The problem was this: With any fiction, especially futuristic sci-fi, suspension of disbelief is required. Fine. I can handle that. The whole beaming up and down of people is absolutely scientifically next-to-impossible but they never attempt to explain it. They just assert it, you accept it as part of the Trekkie mythos, and on we move. However, with the notion of singularities, it was as if they were attempting to insert some scientific jargon to make the plot semi-plausible. However, every time they did it, it was like a slap in the face. And, in the face of such assault, it was difficult to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

It would be on par with an action movie that was awesome, and then at some crucial moment in the plot, someone fires a gun at Chuck Norris, he catches it in his mouth and swallows it, then shoots it back at his enemy through his pee pee. Okay, maybe that's a bad example since Chuck Norris could really do that, but someone else, like Jeff Speakman or Dolph Lundgren.

There comes a point where credulity is stretched beyond an acceptable limit and you find yourself unable to simply be entertained. Perhaps having debated cosmological arguments for years has heightened my sensitivity towards bullshit regarding certain cosmological principles--and singularities, given that it was once claimed that the universe emerged from the singularity at the Big Bang, often come up in those arguments. "Where did the singularity come from?" for example.

Anyway, I don't mean to hate just for the sake of hating. Overall the movie had redeeming aspects that I would say outweighed my qualms with it.

Comment by Nelson on May 11, 2009 at 2:17am

*********POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN THIS POST**************

my understanding is that Hawking-Penrose "proved" that a singularity was present at the Big Bang (The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology 1970) and then, yes, Hawking later repudiated his proof (A Brief History of Time 1988) with Penrose agreeing, but that only concerns whether or not a singularity was present at the Big Bang NOT black holes. no one disputes that there are singularities in black holes. in fact, strictly speaking, that's not really correct language because a black hole is our name for what a singularity does to space-time so it's not really accurate to say that a singularity is in a black hole. plus, we should note that there are physicists who disagree with Hawking's "unboundedness" ideas about the universe and still believe there to have been a singularity at the Big Bang.

in the movie, the "red matter" forms black holes by apparently collapsing in on itself, like a supermassive star does at it's death, so that it ends up a point of infinite density but zero volume-- the red matter creates a singularity, a black hole.

that said, i do agree with your objection to the way time travel is treated, far too unrealistically convenient. furthermore, anyone and anything falling into a black hole would be spaghettified (yes, that's a real term!) by the gravitational tidal forces. the ship and even you yourself would be stretched into spaghetti thin strands before the chemical bonds that hold your cells together are eventually torn asunder.

as for the silly dialogue of logic and emotion, i always grind my teeth at the way Hollywood portrays rational logical people; as if they're emotionless, cold, and unsympathetic. it's stupid. another perfect example is the character Temperance Brennan on the FOX show Bones.

but, all in all, i quite liked the movie. it did a better job with the physics than most sci-fi flicks do-- remember at the beginning when the woman got sucked out of the ship after the explosion? did you notice how things were loud from the explosion and then when she got sucked out into space and the "camera" followed her out everything went silent? not air in space to transmit sound waves! that's something that so many sci-fi movies get wrong. Star Trek got it right.

Comment