“Knowing” How Solar Flares Don’t Work

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“Knowing” How Solar Flares Don’t Work


Posted by Ian O'Neill in Featured Articles, Movies, Pseudo-science on August 23rd, 2009 at 4:27 am | Comments | 13,923 views



My wife turned to me as the credits rolled and asked, “Can you sue a production company for inaccurate science in a movie?”

“Hmmm… good point!” I said. “Unfortunately, though, I think it’s just called ‘being creative.’”

But that got me thinking.
Knowing not very much

We’d just sat through the Nicholas Cage disaster movie Knowing after heavily criticising the last hour of magical solar flares, prophecies, silly religious undertones and complete disregard for a little thing called “science.” Oh, and there were aliens. Who would have guessed?!

I would say that apart from these things, it was actually a pretty good film… but I’d be lying. Well, a little. I was actually quite impressed by the assorted disaster CGI and the acting (I’m glad Rose Byrne is getting some big roles, as I think she rocked in Damages), but generally, I was disappointed. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the director Alex Proyas didn’t have such a contempt for asking a science advisor for… I dunno… “advice.”

In fact, I’m not even going to bother researching whether there was a science advisor in the production crew or not, because either a) the rest of the crew didn’t listen to him/her,B)the science advisor was lying about his/her credentials or, c) the science advisor was stoned/drunk while on the set. Therefore, in my mind, there wasn’t a science advisor involved in the making of this film.

Putting the stupid plot, aliens (double-facepalm), Byrne’s character’s death (there should be a “she’s too pretty to die” policy) and no science advisor to one side, I still cannot understand how they got solar flares so wrong.
Kaboom! Whoooshhh! Fizzzzz….

I’m not being funny, it’s as if Proyas didn’t bother to Google “solar flare,” just to check to see how solar flares really do work. Hell, go to the self-explanatory HowStuffWorks.com and do a search for “Sun.” If either one of these things were done during pre-production, the science may actually have been plausable.

In a totally forgettable scene, right toward the end of the movie, the uber-scary solar flare waits to be blasted at Earth. Cage gets on the phone to his Dad saying something like, “You know it’s been pretty hot lately? Well, it’s about to get hotter!” That’s an epic solar fail already. For some reason, the world had gotten hotter and everyone just shrugged it off as a warm October? I’m thinking the Sun would need to be whacking out a huge increase in energy, and in which case, those bumbling solar physicists or the N.O.A.A. (or “EN-Oh-Ay-Ay” as the cast painstakingly spells out) might have noticed?

I’m a stickler for realism in movies — so this is just a personal gripe — but why weren’t real images of the Sun from SOHO, TRACE, Yohkoh, Hinode or STEREO (let alone the countless ground-based solar observatories) used at all through the entire film? Instead, we see a strange blob of CGI graphic, shimmering like a corporate logo on computer screens, being referred to as “our Sun.” I’m pretty sure NASA would have happily provided some real pictures of “our Sun” if they were asked.
Solar flares or cosmic death rays?

But the best part of the entire movie is when we get hit by the super flare. Oh dear lord. If you weren’t terrified of the Sun before, you will be now. That thing can incinerate cities! It’s radiation can penetrate the Earth a mile deep! Holy cow, it is like a trillion-billion atomic bombs all going off at the same time!!!

Ah, I stand corrected. The production crew obviously did Google “solar flare,” but only read the bit where it says “…an energy of 100 million Hiroshima bombs is released…” That’s big right? Yep, Earth is toast!

Unfortunately, they didn’t read the bit which points out that this huge explosion occurs deep in the solar corona, 100 million miles away (that’s a long way away).

Also, they didn’t realize that even the biggest solar flares and coronal mass ejections (the latter wasn’t mentioned once for the whole movie) are deflected by our planet’s magnetosphere and thick atmosphere.

The only science that was mentioned was that the “flare” would hit our atmosphere, destroying our ozone, thereby killing everything on the planet. In actuality, if you watched the “flare” hit Earth, I’m not sure what the ozone had to do with anything! That “flare” was like a cosmic ray gun, ripping through the atmosphere and the Empire State Building (oh yes, there was a lot of “famous landmark shredding”) as if it was a hot knife slicing butter. I don’t think we need to worry about excessive UV exposure due to lack of ozone when Earth is on fire.

There’s a list of things that annoyed me about this movie, and I don’t have the patience to mock all points, but after my wife wondered about suing a movie for bad science, I got to thinking what damage movies do to the perception of science. Oh yes, I know it’s sci-fi, I know it’s “just a movie,” I really do know that it’s not real, but wouldn’t it be fun to have a disaster flick that uses some real science for a change?
Real science is sexy too

As I was discussing with solar physicist Alex Young in last week’s filming of the Discovery Channel 2012 documentary, the real threat of a massive solar flare is actually pretty daunting. Granted, the Sun isn’t about to fire a cosmic death ray at us (and let’s face it, the Sun isn’t going to do anything any time soon), setting the planet on fire, but the real physics would be awesome if used in a disaster movie.

Just imagine if we had a disaster movie that depicted a solar flare erupting on the surface of the Sun, just above a highly active region of clustered sunspots and stressed coronal loops. We could see real movies of intense magnetic activity, and then suddenly the blinding burst of electromagnetic radiation. This flare could be the biggest the Earth has seen in modern times. The X-rays from this event knock out solar observatories, stunning the delicate light-collecting CCDs in their cameras. These X-rays immediately slam into our ionosphere, causing a massive surge of electrons, blocking global communications. This may have the knock-on effect of causing our atmosphere to heat up and swell, increasing the drag on our orbiting satellites.

In the first moment when we see the flare, already we see global problems. But this would only be a precursor to something a lot worse…

I can imagine the scene in the perfect movie: Our brave, and smart solar physicists are looking at live data streaming from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a multi-instrument telescope sitting between the Earth and the Sun. They see an expanding bubble growing well beyond the disk of the Sun. An alert is sent out to the authorities; a CME is coming… and it’s headed straight for us… it will hit in a few hours. Cue the countdown to CME impact (the suspense will be tangible, you won’t be moving from your seat). But wait! Communications are patchy, the ionosphere just blocked the satellite link to the US President… time is running out! Bruce Willis, our hero heliospheric expert, steps in and volunteers to notify the president himself (with a gun in his pocket, as there’s bound to be an assassin or terrorist out there to shoot at).
Planetary mayhem

But the fun would really begin when the CME slams into our magnetosphere. The magnetic field of the CME and that of the Earth’s hit in such a way that they reconnect, flooding the magnetosphere with high energy particles. The Earth’s Van Allen belts become supercharged like radioactive reservoirs. Satellites are overcome by high-energy particle impacts. Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) go offline. Communication satellites suffer drag and literally start to drop out of the sky.

And it gets worse!

The solar particles are deflected toward the poles, but the solar storm is so intense, particles penetrate deeper, generating vast aurorae at low latitudes. Even equatorial regions would see vast light shows as the particles flood in from space. Although amazingly beautiful, this has yet another side-effect, our atmosphere just became a huge conductor, where vast currents flow as electrojets. These electrojets generate massive magnetic fields, in turn overloading our national grids.

We now have no power and no means to communicate. We’re blind and unable to function. Governments are overwhelmed. Imagine Katrina-scale events all over the USA… all over the world. Who can help? Suddenly the $2 trillion damage estimate made by NASA seems too small… after all, we’d be plunged back into the dark ages, how can you count costs in dollars when a financial system no longer exists?
Conclusion

I don’t expect movies to be totally scientifically accurate. However, if you are basing an entire storyline on one harbinger of doom, at least get that right.

A solar flare will hit Earth in the future, there’s even a very good chance that we’ll get hit by a “big one” that could cause some collateral damage. In fact, if we are very unlucky, a large solar storm could be considered “civilization ending.” Yes, asteroids pose a clear and present danger to life on Earth, but don’t forget the Sun, it has a history of getting angry when the Earth is in the orbital firing line.

If that isn’t a great plot for a disaster movie, I don’t know what is.

http://www.astroengine.com/?p=6270

[ToddTraf]

the best part of that movie is when Cage attempts to put a man on fire out by yelling at him.....

[Easy Skanking]

I thought the best part of the movie was when I deleted that piece of crap from my HD.:D

[Shinobi]

Hmm i'll be watching out now for the attack of the empire state building.
Probably by aliens or some sort of weaponry, well thats what they will convince people with anyhow.
Funny he did mention though about

Quote:Empire State Building(oh yes, there was a lot of “famous landmark shredding”)

We've seen this lots and lots over the years have we not ? Almost too coincidental
the very same buildings we see in movies then maybe 5 or 10 or 20 or 30 years later! Kaboom
" you get the picture "
end up being in some tragic mess orchestrated none other by the powers that be.
Now wouldnt that just stick inside your head for life ? You would never forget it would you.
" Their code is fear and they know what scares (scars!) you "
I wouldnt rule anything out as theres always the possibility that it could well be next.
If you would like to look in to what im saying further start with all the movies where the twin towers
are involved and have something very tragic happen to them or the uncanny mention of them
involving accidents bizarre freak events and you will begin to find many and more.. the list is endless
then once you have done that check out how many times the empire state building has been used
in the same way.. then move on to other land marks much of which have been used in films the same way
and have also been involved in some seriously mind boggling events.
Hmm again.

[Justinfinity]

Movies are always full of crap. Take Independence Day for example: if that ever happened in real life, we'll all be screwed. It's just ludicrous to think that some drunken farmer is going to figure out how to destroy these guys, only after some dude figures out how to infiltrate an alien supercomputer and create a virus in just a day or two. In reality, at the end of the movie, when the guy flies his jet into the middle of one of those ships, that are the size of big islands, and screams, "I'm baaaaaaack!", he would have just went *poof* then we'll all be dead. Same thing with War of the Worlds.

The thing is, people eat shit like this up and that's why it sells. That is, the "brave farmer stands against an alien race, sacrifices himself to save humanity and wins", or "physicist", or whomever, against whatever "threat". The people couldn't care less if the science, or the logic and common sense, is correct/sound or not. Yet, the same people that gobble this up are the same ones being enslaved by a tyrannical force they don't even know exists but is right in front of their eyes... so ironic.

Anyways, that's just my take on pop-Hollywood. As for this movie itself, there were times I liked it, and times I didn't. Apart from the bad science and scare tactics, there were other things that bothered me. They really forced biblical references into this movie in association to ETs and celestial events - which might entice a curious mind to do research. That could be a positive, but I didn't like that they put "angel wings" on the Aliens. Also, who the hell drops kids off on an alien world in the middle of no where, after saving them, to then just get up and leave? The kid and girl probably ate the bunny then starved to death slowly afterward.

If anyone is familiar with Astrotheology, there was tons of solar symbolism in there. One thing the character had to face within himself was the question whether or not all of this (that is the universe and life) was just an accident or intelligently created. Yet, while he doesn't have a damn clue, he was the "guru and savior" in the movie that passes around the solar orb in the classroom around to others supposedly "enlightening" others (kind of like those Discover Card commercials with the talking solar orb floating around a city enlightening others to sign contacts and to get into debt). There was other stuff that stood out, but I can't remember atm. It comes down to that this movie supports and perpetuates religious belief and dogma mentality than it does human logic and common sense.

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I thought the movie was crap but posted this piece more because of the information and speculation about solar flares in 2012 it contains than anything to do with the movie...also why I posted the NASA report on this board.

[Shinobi]

The movie probably is crap lol though I think you know where I am coming from William:D

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Quote:The movie probably is crap lol though I think you know where I am coming from William:D

:DYou know Peter, if the Sun does decide to fry our transformers for a laugh..concener's won't even be able to send postcards to each other nevermind torrents and threads...we should are be getting shortwaving I ask you? Just in case like...:drunk:

[JohnDoe1984]

Quote:I thought the best part of the movie was when I deleted that piece of crap from my HD.:D

ROFL! ... classic