Neil deGrasse Tyson Complains That “Dune 2” Isn’t a Shining Beacon of Scientific Accuracy
Neil deGrasse Tyson Complains That “Dune 2” Isn’t a Shining Beacon of Scientific Accuracy
Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has scientific bones to pick with Dune's sand-thumping and worm movements.
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I've never understood why people get so upset when he does this. I like it when someone points out the actual physics behind something that you see in films and what was done right and wrong.
Learning that something in a movie isn't scientifically accurate doesn't ruin the movie for me. I already figured it wouldn't be entirely correct and it doesn't have to be correct (unless it's supposed to be educational).
He's comparing things like known sand on earth, to make-believe drum sand on make-believe planet called Arrakis. He thinks he's being smart, but he's really just being obtuse.
To be fair, if you define “sand” as being silicate particles of a given size, you would expect it to behave similarly in similar conditions.
Sure, I’m nothing to let it get in the way of my enjoyment… but to be honest, part of my enjoyment of Star Trek is ragging on terrible science and engineering. (Sorry, but for example most federation ships do not appear to have their CoGravity line with the CoThrust. How much fuel do you think they wasted keeping the enterprise flying straight?)
Do we know how the addition of melange affects the properties of silicate particles?
That could be a fun debate and would be in the spirit of the Colbert interview.
Yes. Melange is the handwavium of Dune, so however Herbert wanted it to.
Well, there ya go!
I thought it was funny when he argued that the BB-8 droid from Star Wars broke the laws of physics because a rolling mechanical ball can't roll uphill on sand.
He didn't know that the BB-8 shown in the movie rolling up dunes was a physical robot, not CGI.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm pretty sure the BB-8 you see on film is mostly CGI. A working BB-8 prop does exist but it's more of a reference that gets covered in CGI. It's a common film technique that gets used these days and often those articles praising "no CGI" are often PR bullshit that stretches the truth because "practical effects" has become a buzzword.
I can prove a few shots of BB8 are CGI.
Shot4 - Notes in bottom left confirm
I obviously can't prove it but I would assume every BB8 shot is either entirely CGI or uses the practical robot as a reference pass. Relying on a practical robot would introduce a point of failure that could delay shots and force more takes, adding cost and time to the production. The only reason the filmmakers have to use a practical effect is to give the actors a reference, all other shots it's faster and cheaper to use CGI.
TL;DR: BB8 is mostly if not entirely CG and film companies are almost always lying when emphasizing the practical effects used in their film.
Yes much of bb-8 is cgi, but there was a video of a physical bb-8 prop rolling in sand.
When Degrasse tweeted that it was impossible, Star Wars prop artist responded with a video of the physical robot rolling on sand. I'm not going post a link to Twitter on Lemmy but you can Google it.
Yeah fair enough, I just wanted to rant about CGI. hehe
It could have been the stick puppet version, though, for which the sticks were digitally removed after filming. I don't know more about that, but it sounds like you do.
Yes many were stick puppets. Some were trikes.
So did the mechanical ball roll itself uphill?
I was wrong. Despite the official StarWars Twitter claim they had the robot bb-8 on the dunes for filming, a documentary says the full robot version wasn't done until the red carpet. However I have found videos of a large bb-8 rolling on sand. The small toy ones cannot roll on sand. (Which isn't surprising because most toy cars can't run on sand despite full size being able to.)
It is how he does it, not that he does it.
It's just navel gazing at it's worst.
Explaining that getting to the ISS from Hubble's orbit would take way more fuel than shown in the movie Gravity is useful. It can lead to explanations of Delta-V and how far apart things are in space. That's good.
Artificially locking in the definition of the parameters to be the same as on Earth for a fictional planet just so he can say "it's wrong" is just a waste of time. It's like arguing over whether the Enterprise could fight the Death Star. It's all made up, so the answer is whatever you want it to be.
So it's not that's it's he's criticizing things for being incorrect. It's that he's making assumptions about fictional things just to say it's incorrect. It's intellectually dishonest, and there's no real point to it. Nobody is learning anything about anything real if we talk about the relationship between sand worms and how sand trout could be alerted by a nearby sound which then alerts a massive sand worm that comes around to protect it's babies.