(Science and Fiction) Kevin R. Grazier, Stephen Cass - Hollyweird Science - The Next Generation - From Spaceships To Microchips (2017, Springer International Publishing - Imprint - Springer) PDF

Kevin R.
Grazier · Stephen Cass
Hollyweird
Science
The Next Generation
From Spaceships
to Microchips
With a Foreword by
Writer/Producer Zack Stentz
Science and Fiction
Editorial Board
Mark Alpert
Philip Ball
Gregory Benford
Michael Brotherton
Victor Callaghan
Amnon H Eden
Nick Kanas
Geoffrey Landis
Rudi Rucker
Dirk Schulze-Makuch
Rüdiger Vaas
Ulrich Walter
Stephen Webb
Science and Fiction – A Springer Series
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scientific discovery and the creation of plausible fictional scenarios are often two sides of
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the imaginative ability to invent new or alternative explanations - and even other worlds.
Authored by practicing scientists as well as writers of hard science fiction, these books
explore and exploit the borderlands between accepted science and its fictional counterpart.
Uncovering mutual influences, promoting fruitful interaction, narrating and analyzing
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Kevin R. Grazier Stephen Cass
Hollyweird Science:
The Next Generation
From Spaceships to Microchips
With a Foreword by
Writer/Producer Zack Stentz
Kevin R. Grazier Stephen Cass
Sylmar, California New York, NY
USA USA
ISSN 2197-1188 ISSN 2197-1196 (electronic)

Science and Fiction
ISBN 978-3-319-54213-3 ISBN 978-3-319-54215-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939935
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

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To Dad: Couldn’t have done this one without
your support, either
KRG
To Mum and Dad
SAC
Foreword
“Science, Schmience”
“And then we need some schmience right here,” the television writer said as
she pointed to the story outline for an episode of a popular sci-fi inflected
superhero show, scribbled on the dry erase board.
“Wait, what?” I replied. Despite fifteen or so years writing science fiction for
movies and TV, I’d never before heard this bit of writers’ room lingo.
“You know, schmience,” she patiently explained. “The technical sounding
bullshit we put in to show how they solve the problem.”
Now I understood.
Schmience, as it turns out, is a wonderfully vaudevillian term that describes
an attitude all too common in the world of science fiction movies and TV—an
attitude I like to think the volume you hold in your hands subtly but
unmistakably pushes against. For schmience sums up the all-too-common in
Hollywood attitude that actual science—physics, mathematics, chemistry, and
the whole suite of rules that govern the universe—is nothing but a burden that
a storyteller should ignore or fast-talk his or her way around with semi-
plausible sounding gobbledygook.
Many writers on science fiction projects feel all too comfortable simply
creating from whole cloth whatever scientific rules and concepts they feel serve
the storytelling need of the moment. A writer on a legal show would never
think of creating a new Constitutional amendment to let a heroic lawyer win a
case, but all too frequently viewers of science fiction will find solutions that
shred plausibility and insult the intelligence. . .even when a more plausible and
scientifically grounded concept could have solved the problem just as easily!
In formulating my response that day, what I tried to convey to that talented
young writer is the same message contained in this book—that real science, far
from being a burden, can be a writer’s best friend, providing rules and
rationality to a fictional universe as well as wonderful storytelling obstacles
for fictional characters to solve with resourcefulness and imagination.
VIII Foreword
Luckily we’re in an age where bringing real science into visual storytelling
has become easier than ever. Google means that answers are seldom more than
a few clicks away, and a plethora of fun, readable articles and books about
everything from cutting-edge physics to the uses of statistics and probability in
everyday life make it simple for an intelligent layperson to get up to speed on
nearly any topic.
And groups like the Science and Entertainment Exchange along with more
informal gatherings exist to put Hollywood storytellers together with some of
the finest scientific minds of the day. It’s not uncommon to see groups of
screenwriters tromping through nuclear submarines, rocket assembly factories,
and particle accelerators, getting a sense for how science and engineering
actually work in the real world and storing away anecdotes and ideas that
often end up appearing in future projects.
Finally, science fiction films and shows are increasingly employing a new
crop of technical advisers, many of them astonishingly accomplished in their
own fields to bring depth and verisimilitude to their productions.
That day in the writers’ room, I tried to challenge the young writer and all of
us on the writing staff to take the time to do some research and see if we
couldn’t find a real-world scientific concept for our heroes to employ in saving
the day (for the record, we ended up finding a novel use for Keplerian orbital
mechanics and. . .well, you get the picture.) I also tried to convey that far from
being a chore, doing your homework for science-based projects can be great
fun! My own research process has let me do everything from landing on an
aircraft carrier at sea and witnessing SpaceX’s first successful landing of a rocket
first stage on a barge to eating a chunk of frozen squirrel at the Air Force’s
arctic survival school.
I like to think of this book as another small step in that learning process that
the movie and television industry is slowly going through in embracing science
as a friend. By looking at and highlighting specific examples of where Holly-
wood has gotten it more or less scientifically right as well as the times we’ve
gotten it egregiously wrong, the authors demonstrate what an asset scientifi-
cally plausibility can be to a storyteller and help push us into an entertainment
landscape with a little more science and a little less schmience.
Los Angeles, CA Zack Stentz

Foreword IX
Zack Stentz is a screenwriter, producer, and novelist who among other credits
has co-written Thor and X-Men: First Class and the novel Colin Fischer and
written several episodes of the popular CW show The Flash. Stentz is currently
writing Booster Gold for DC and Warner Brothers and putting the finishing
touches to two original science fiction screenplays. And he wasn’t lying about the
frozen squirrel.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank our editors Angela Lahee and Michael
Brotherton and our copyeditor Stephen Lyle, all of whom made this work
better. A special thank you to Zack Stentz who, despite being insanely busy
and in high demand, provided a fun and insightful foreword. Thank you also
to Professor David A. Kirby, author of the highly recommended book Lab
Coats in Hollywood, for his thought-provoking afterword.
KRG would like to thank all the writers, producers, directors, scientists,
historians, and researchers who gave us their valuable time and some truly
amazing interview material. Thank you also to all the science and science
fiction fans who continue to attend our panels at conventions and conferences.
#ThankYou to those who have posted pics and kind words about our first
book to social media.
SAC would like to thank his wife Annie, for her continued unwavering
support of this project even as it grew larger than originally planned, his
colleagues at IEEE Spectrum for their support and willingness to ease stress
with a round of Call of Cthulhu, and the patient staff of the Cypress Inn Café
in Queens and the Park Avenue South branch of the California Pizza Kitchen,
where large portions of SAC’s contribution to this book and its predecessor
were written.
Kevin R. Grazier
Stephen Cass (on left)

Contents
1 Prologue: For Sake of Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 English Versus Sciencespeak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3 The Many-Body Problem: The Culture of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Culture of Science When not Confined to the Petri Dish . . . . . . . . . . 52
Science Literacy I: What Is Science Literacy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Science Literacy II: “Piled Higher and Deeper,” or Something Else? . . . . . 58
Scientist Lifestyle: Aves of a Species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Scientists. . . on Hollywood Scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Back off, Man, We’re Scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4 The Scarecrow’s Blunder: Mathematics and Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Math as Science’s Boring Cousin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Hollywood’s Complicated Relationship with Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The Final Tally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5 Let’s Get Digital: Computers in Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Computer Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
At the Junction, P-N Junction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Memory/Data/Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Let’s Get Small . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Cryptology: Gur irel onfvpf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Hacking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Big Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Hollywood Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Cleverer and Cleverer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
6 Heavy Metal: AIs and Robots in Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

The Nuts and Bolts of Cinematic Robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Robots of All Shapes and Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
The Run-up to the Technological Singularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
On Being Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
XIV Contents
7 Boldly Going: Cinematic Spaceships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Do You Wanna Build a Spaceship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Ground System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
The Overview Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
8 The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

No Such Thing as a Free Launch: Getting into Orbit and Staying There . . . 273
Kepler’s Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Kepler’s First Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Kepler’s Second Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Kepler’s Third Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Lagrange Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
9 Getting from There to Here: Navigation in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Defining a Coordinate System or Reference Frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Dude, Where’s Our Spaceship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Here Be Dragons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
10 Life. In. Spaaaaace! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Astronaut Job Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Astronaut Job Descriptions: International Space Station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Space Suits and EVAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Physiological Effects of Space Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Space Sickness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Muscle Atrophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Dehydration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Bone Loss/Decalcification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
The Hundred Mile High Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Artificial Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Thermal Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Eating and Drinking in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Evacuating in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
To Boldly Stay Put: Space Stations and Colonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Per aspera ad astra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Contents XV
11 Putting Science In, Not Taking Drama Out: The Culture of Hollywood . . . 379
Afterword: A Tour Through the Lands of Science and Entertainment . . . . . . . 405
Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Film References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
TV/Web Series References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

1
Prologue: For Sake of Argument
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange
your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.
Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, Nightfall
My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel
and bitter things.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist
Nerdgassing: The venting nerds emit when some (often minor) detail of a
book/movie/TV show/comic book/etc. either conflicts with canon and/or
handwaves through some suspect science.
John Scalzi, Science fiction novelist
We argue. A lot. With the Internet now a mainstay in most of our lives,1
arguments that were once conflagrations confined to the local pub, barber-
shop, or sports arena, now spread like wildfire to the desktops of tens of
thousands of complete strangers. While, traditionally, watercooler debates
have taken the form of, “Drew Brees is at least as good as Aaron Rodgers!
Did you even watch the game?”2 or “Did you see what that jackass in the
White House3 did this time?”, cyberspace infernos ignited by scientific topics
like climate change, vaccinations, evolution, and genetically modified organ-
isms have assumed a much larger role in the realm of public debate.4
1
Estimates range as high as 40% of the world’s population is active, to varying degrees, on the Internet.
2
Because he grew up in Ireland, author SAC is not a sportsball fan, and could not give a rat’s behind, so he
will not be weighing in on this argument. A lifelong Packer Backer, author KRG definitely gives a rat’s
behind, but because he also shares an alma mater with Brees, he has competing biases and won’t be
weighing in on this either. We cover the concept of bias in detail in Chap. 3.
3
Or 10 Downing Street, or. . .
4
The preface for this book was one of the first things we wrote—well before the 2016 U.S. election
(although the book will be released well after). Given the prominence of Internet-fanned arguments,
memes, rumors, and fake news articles in that election, we have just one additional comment: Nailed it!
K.R. Grazier, S. Cass, Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation, Science and Fiction,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7_1, © Springer International Publishing AG 2017
2 Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation
Argument is not inherently a bad thing. Some consider argument an art

form—case in point, a high school or college debate team. Argument can be
healthy. Most psychologists and couples’ therapists would assert that partners
who avoid argument at all costs risk repressing feelings or nursing grudges that
could manifest in more malignant ways over time. Politicians debate about
which policies represent a better direction and, particularly in election years,
they televise these arguments to allow voters to make informed decisions.5
Attorneys argue to obtain justice, to secure the best settlement for their client,
or to put criminals behind bars. In the entertainment industry, agents are paid
quite well to argue—pleading the case for why the actor they represent should
be paid more, or why a studio should produce their client’s screenplay over a
competing work. Scientists argue: at conferences, in seminars and colloquia,
and through the process of peer review. Many, if not most, love a spirited
debate. One might argue that argument is a fundamental necessity for advanc-
ing our collective understanding of the natural world.
There is a world of differences between these structured arguments, though,
and the scattershot you find in the comments section of a news article or a
controversial social media post. The Internet is still a frontier environment in
many respects, and we are all still finding and making the rules. Until we do, it
can be one colossal free-for-all.
On the Internet, weapons beyond mere words are brought to bear on the
opponent. Cleverly worded memes are ubiquitous on the Internet: memes that
poke fun at conservatives, liberals, Libertarians, climate-change deniers,
Monsanto, and anybody on any side of any debate. Yet, has a single anti-
vaxxer ever said, “I’ve successfully ignored dozens of studies involving hun-
dreds of thousands of test subjects, but this hilarious meme? Willy Wonka’s
comical smirk is totally the tipping point! I’ve just changed my opinion on this
very important topic” (Fig. 1.1)? Of course not, most social or political memes
are simply “preaching to the choir,” and often with no shortage of logical
fallacies for their own part. By and large, they are simply tools that people on
one side of an argument employ to validate their stance and proclaim their
ethical/moral/intellectual superiority.
I think Twitter is all of us yelling at each other in this giant stadium—some of us

have megaphones, and some of us don’t. Some people have megaphones, and
they really shouldn’t.
Andrea Letamendi, Ph.D., clinical psychologist
5
Of course, some politicians enjoy the debates simply for the opportunity to call their opponent(s) names
in an open forum or on national TV.
1 Prologue: For Sake of Argument 3
Fig. 1.1 Willy Wonka is not smirking here, comically or otherwise, because he wishes
meme makers would stop ruining a magical children’s film to advance their agendas.
Copyright © Paramount Pictures. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
In fact, a desire to feel superior seems to drive many Internet postings,

especially on social media and the comments sections of published articles.
Internet arguments are often driven, and the flames frequently fanned, by the
participants’ need to be right. Psychologists have written on this “need to be
right”, which can be a byproduct of narcissism. Everybody is narcissistic to
some degree, but the types who ignite and perpetuate Internet flame wars are
frequently those who crave attention, and have a particularly strong need to
feel elevated or superior. Being right, or pointing out where others are wrong,
achieves this goal. Neuropsychology professor Dr. Jessica Cail, whom we met
in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, elaborates:
General Internet use has been correlated with narcissism, especially grandiose,
manipulative narcissism, so [people who argue like this] tend to have an over-
inflated sense of themselves and their knowledge. Narcissism has also been
correlated with proneness to aggression, problems with authority, and resistance
to negative feedback. So you’ve got these traits which also tend to be related to
impulsivity and lack of social skills, and then you add in the anonymity of the
Internet which makes everything worse. So basically, you’ve got a group of
people who lack in social skills, have a narcissistic, grandiose sense of themselves,
who are resistant to negative feedback, and especially resistant to any feedback
from authority, and are more prone to online aggression when things don’t go
their way, now suddenly feeling free to say things they’d probably never say to
someone’s face because they’re hiding behind an anonymous keyboard.
Typically, both parties engaged in any form of argument are firmly committed
to the inherent “justness” of their cause. Still, if you look a little deeper, it is
easy to see how the types of disagreements you typically find on the Internet
differ from the kind of structured arguments found in politics, law, and
science.
Let’s start with scientific (in)validation.
Although it is not unheard of for scientists to cling fervently to a pet
hypothesis, or a manner of thinking whose time has passed,6 sometimes
disagreements between scientists are settled when one side is simply proven
wrong. Science is about what you can prove, not what you believe. Similarly,
in politics and law, arguments are terminated by a decision-making process
that does not rely on the beliefs of the interlocutors—an election is held, a
verdict is returned. Internet arguments are frequently protracted—especially
when both sides need to be right—because neither side can ever provide an
acceptable knockout punch of proof. The power of today’s search engines
allows those on either side of any debate to claim unjustified expertise, and/or
allows them to find “expert” opinions supporting their views almost instantly:
be it in the words of a famous scientist, a witty novelist, a conspiracy theory
site, or—Heaven help us—the Food Babe.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.

Arthur C. Clarke, scientist and author
Most scientists would concur that sometimes “I was wrong” can lead into
the most exciting and invigorating new avenues. In Chap. 1 of Hollyweird
Science, we wrote:
One of the most enjoyable aspects of creating this book has been when our
research has revealed that the biases we’ve brought into the project were
erroneous, and we’ve been led into other fascinating, and often counterintuitive,
directions.
6
We discussed the famous UK astronomer Fred Hoyle in Hollyweird Science. He did not believe in the Big
Bang, preferring the steady state model of the Universe—which said that, although the Universe was
expanding, new matter was constantly being created to keep the density constant—until his death in
2001. Another example would be Louis Agassiz, a renowned nineteenth century biologist who found
himself rendered scientifically obsolete because of his refusal to accept Darwinian evolution.
There was an excellent, perhaps more public, example of this starting with the
February 2014 creation vs. evolution debate between Creation Science Foun-
dation co-founder Ken Ham and, scilebrity7 Bill Nye. When moderator Tom
Foreman from CNN asked Nye, “What would cause you to change your
beliefs?” Nye responded, “We would need. . . evidence.”
Not everybody is willing to admit openly or publicly to have made a
mistake8 or to being wrong.9 True to his word, though, Nye did just that
on the topic of genetically modified organisms. In his 2014 book Undeniable:
Evolution and the Science of Creation, Nye served up a serious helping of
concerns regarding the safety of GMOs. After a few meetings with geneticists,
and observing how the gene modification process is performed in practice, Nye
reversed his stance,10 “My take on it now is genetically modified food is
actually, in general—genetically modified plants, in general—are not only
not harmful, they’re actually a great benefit.”11 In a video shot backstage
after a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show, Nye explains that he reversed
his views on the basis of the evidence, and is now a GMO proponent. He plans
to revise his statements on GMOs for the second edition of the book, saying,
“When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”
Will Nye’s public admission change anybody’s views on GMOs? It is
unclear, but it is quite likely that it will. Nye is a popular public figure with
a recognized expertise in science, and in an environment where everybody
hears strongly worded proclamations from both sides of the debate, people are
searching for guidance. They want to make good choices. They want to be
right.
Everybody likes to be right, yet some simply do not speak up for fear of the
humiliation of being perceived as being wrong. So for many, particularly on
the Internet, being “right” is both easier and emotionally less risky when others
have already paved the way. Psychologists have a term for this: social proof, and
it is a form of social influence.
7
Scilebrity is a term coined by researcher Oliver Marsh from University College London. It’s not really a
thing yet, but we like the term, and hope it catches on.
8
Even if you remain unconvinced on the safety of genetically-modified organisms, that’s a sidebar to the
fact that Mr. Nye, when presented with a vast array of scientific evidence that contradicted his views, was
willing to be swayed by the evidence.
9
Sometimes even in the face of overwhelming evidence—see this piece about what behavioral psychol-
ogists have labeled the Backfire Effect: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/
the-backfire-effect/
10
He discusses this at great length in a podcast here: http://www.startalkradio.net/
show/cosmic-queries-gmos-with-bill-nye-part-1/
11
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/bill-nye-the-science-guy-
interview/552d62e72b8c2a77bf0000e7
Social influence occurs when the behavior of one person, whom we call the
initiator, intentionally or unintentionally, alters the behavior of another.
Often, the person whose behavior has been influenced12 views the initiator
as superior in some manner—with a higher social standing, more intelligent,
better educated, or simply better informed. Social proof—also known as
informational social influence—typically occurs in socially/morally ambiguous
situations when people are unsure how to act. In order to exhibit the proper
behavior, they mimic the behaviors of others—often assuming others possess
more knowledge or information about the situation than they do. For exam-
ple, TV shows with live audiences will plant initiators in an audience with
instructions to laugh or applaud at pre-arranged times. When they laugh, the
whole world—or at least the theatre—laughs with them. To those not in on
the gag, it may appear as though everybody had a grand time when, in fact, it
could be that scant few found the event entertaining at all.
The outcome of social influence, and social proof, is evident in the tendency
of large groups to exhibit herd behavior—deferring to others and conforming
to their choices, whether or not those choices are suspect. In psychology, this is
called group think. In Internet vernacular, a mass of people exhibiting herd
behavior—acting, with similar thoughts, goals, and/or purpose as would a hive
of insects—is called a hivemind.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei, polymath
Arising from the same place in the collective psyche as the need to be right is
our current predilection for Internet shaming or cybershaming. Public shaming
is all the rage at the moment, but it is certainly nothing new—we have but to
look to Nathanial Hawthorne to appreciate that.13, 14 We publicly shame
those who have erred, those who have sinned, those who have transgressed our
laws, to both punish them and proclaim our own ethical superiority. So, in
essence, shaming occurs when members of a group feel a need to feel morally
right, even as they defer to the moral compass of their herd leaders.
12
The initiate?
13
Ever notice that the movie Cast Away is a modern retelling of The Scarlet Letter, with Tom Hanks in the
role of Hester Prynne’s husband? Without the shaming, of course.
14
While on the subject, did you know that a pitch for a series based upon Cast Away evolved into Lost?
What has changed since the Puritan

days of Hester Prynne’s tale is the num-
ber of people who can participate in the
feeding frenzy and its rate of potential
escalation from a handful of associates to
something that is trending on Twitter.
Cybershaming occurs when circum-
stances evolve to spawn a hivemind
whose collective behavior exhibits excep-
tional conformity and a diminished
sense of individual identity and personal
accountability: a few shares here, a few
retweets there, and rapidly the “Burn
her! She’s a witch! She turned me into
a newt!”15 mindset prevails, and you end
up with what Jon Ronson, author of So
You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, calls a “col- Fig. 1.2 At least Hester Prynne was
lective outrage circle.”16 spared this. Demi Moore as Hester
Prynne in The Scarlet letter (1995)
In a March 2015 TED talk, former Copyright Allied Stars, Ltd., Image cour-
White House intern Monica Lewinsky tesy of moviestillsdb.com.
shared (Fig. 1.2):
I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost

instantaneously. Around the world, this story went. A viral phenomenon.
News sources plastered photos of me all over to sell papers, banner ads online
and to keep people tuned to the TV. . . This rush to judgment, enabled by
technology, led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers. There was no Facebook,
Twitter or Instagram back then, but there were gossip, news and entertainment
websites, replete with comment sections, and of course, there was email. The
cruel jokes certainly made the rounds. When this happened to me 17 years ago,
there was no name for this. Today we call it cyberbullying and online
harassment.
Imagine walking a mile in someone else’s headline.

Monica Lewinsky, Cyberbullying Activist, March 2015 TED talk
15
I got better.
16
In March 2016, Syfy Channel premiered The Internet Ruined My Life a half-hour reality series designed
to expose “the unexpected perils of living in a social media obsessed world.” Will this encourage people to
misbehave on the Internet, or leave viewers with a sense of, “forewarned is forearmed”? It is too early
to tell.
The anonymity afforded by the Internet means that odds are low that trolls
or members of a cybershaming hivemind will ever see their targets face-to-
face. Andrea Letamendi tells us, “The more numbers you have, the more
people’s behavior can be subversive, antisocial, unhelpful, not altruistic. We
know that when you have anonymity, when you’re just a face in the crowd,
your inhibitions will certainly change, and you will engage in antisocial
behavior.”
Cail concurs: “Anonymity leads to disinhibition, and then people are much
more likely to do things that they wouldn’t do it public: even though they’re
not as private as they think they are—like in a car picking their nose—but they
still think they are. [Online] they’re free to cause trouble and behave badly and
do things they would never do to your face. Research has also shown that the
more people there are in a group, the less individual responsibility any one
person feels for how things go down. So that would certainly recruit anybody
who might have been on the fence about getting on the bandwagon to make
those attacks.” Letamendi adds that, on the Internet, a shamer might think, “I
see no repercussions. Everyone else is doing this sort of thing, and I know I’m
going to be supported in it.”
There are different ways in which a cybershaming hivemind can arise,
spring into being, and leap into action. It can be in grassroots fashion, as in
the high profile cases of Lindsay Stone17 or Justine Sacco.18 In both cases, the
women made ill-conceived posts to social media.
Stone and her friend Jamie Schuh had a hobby—they would take silly
photos of each other disrespecting signs—for example smoking in front of a
“No Smoking” sign. Schuh posted a photo of Stone at Arlington National
Cemetary—pretending to scream and making an obscene gesture in front of a
sign reading “Silence and Respect.” Schuh posted the photo to Facebook,
unaware that the privacy for that post was set to “Public.”
The post offended military veterans who believed that Stone was not
disrespecting a sign, but rather Arlington’s honored dead. Shortly after the
hivemind became aware of Stone’s photo, a “Fire Lindsay Stone” Facebook
page came online and garnered 12,000 likes. Not only was Stone sacked, but
her personal and professional lives were turned upside down, and she rarely left
home over the following year. Eventually, Stone did get something of a life
back with the help of an online reputation management company.19
17
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-
lindsey-stone-jon-ronson
18
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-
ruined-justine-saccos-life.html
19
How sad is it that these kinds of companies even need to exist?
Public relations professional Justine Sacco was about to board a flight to

South Africa to visit family for the holidays and tweeted, “Going to Africa.
Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Rather than being thought-
less and callously racist, Sacco claims that her aim was irony, “I thought there
was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal. . . Living in America
puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the third
world. I was making fun of that bubble.”20
Although it took the hivemind roughly four months to discover Lindsay
Stone’s misstep, the annihilation of Sacco’s life was not only immediate, it
exploded while she was on her 11-hour flight. By the time she landed in Cape
Town, her life was forever changed. The Twitter hashtag #HasJustine-
LandedYet started trending worldwide as users tweeted their rage, and specu-
lations regarding how Sacco would react upon landing and turning on her
phone. Not leaving that to the imagination, one user did just that, tweeting a
photo of Sacco on her phone in the airport. A list even appeared on the humor
site Buzzfeed, “16 Tweets Justine Sacco Regrets”21 The hivemind’s judgement
was swift and merciless.
A hivemind may also engage as a result of external influences or amplifiers.
Immediately after the tragic December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Ele-
mentary in Connecticut—when law enforcement was still piecing together the
details and the series of events and while information was still sketchy—news
reports on Fox, CBS, CNN, and other outlets reported that the shooter’s name
was Ryan Lanza. In fact, the shooter was Adam Lanza, who had been carrying
his brother Ryan’s ID. Nevertheless, media outlets linked to Ryan’s Facebook
account, and the profile photo was shared over 14,000 times until the account
was taken down. Then, of course, came the death threats and public
denouncements.22
Another form of social influence called identification can initiate or amplify
a hivemind cybershaming. This occurs when people identify with, respect, or
admire somebody, and may be easily swayed by that person’s opinion. Adver-
tising has counted on this for decades, employing celebrities of varied stripes—
20
Ronson, Jon, (2015) So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, New York (Penguin Books) and London (Pan
Macmillan), ISBN 978-1-59448-713-2.
21
It is still online, but in all fairness to Buzzfeed, they do state, “This post was created by a user and has not
been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed’s editorial staff.” At the same time, although Sacco’s public
demolition was horrible and tragic, some of the tweets posted in the Buzzfeed list are similarly. . . open
to interpretation. . . suggesting she might have been a shaming waiting to happen:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jenvesp/16-tweets-justine-sacco-regrets-
hxg7
22
Of Lanza as well as some of his Facebook friends.
professional athletes, actors, musicians, astronauts, even cartoon characters—

to hawk their products.
In the cases of Stone and Sacco, the backlash was orders of magnitude
beyond reasonable, and it is even possible that Sacco’s tweet would have flown
under the radar—or at least made less of a viral splash because she had only
170 followers—had it not caught the attention of somebody with a vastly
larger following, somebody with whom many identified. Sam Biddle was the
editor of Gawker’s erstwhile tech industry blog Valleywag, and when he saw
Sacco’s tweet, he blogged about it and retweeted it to his 15,000 followers.
The instant Biddle hit SEND on that tweet, Sacco’s fate was sealed.
In an ironic and unusually direct manifestation of Karma, Biddle himself
was the target of a Twitter onslaught a short time later when he similarly
posted a tweet, easily taken out of context, with a very similar comedic
structure to that of Sacco’s. This was one of several high-profile instances
where shamers wind up on the receiving end of a cybershaming themselves,
and it is just as ugly then, too.23, 24
Twitter is a fast machine that almost begs for misunderstanding and misconstrual—
deliberate misreading is its lubricant. The same flatness of affect that can make
it such a weird and funny place also makes it a tricky and dangerous one. Jokes
are complicated, context is hard. Rage is easy.
Sam Biddle, writer/blogger, Gawker
Then there are the trolls. These people who get their thrills from the pain of
others. They are the instigators. The haters. Trolls post to comment threads
and say things with the specific goal of upsetting people, disrupting the
conversation, and offending as many as possible. They will exaggerate, twist
meaning, and lie outright to elicit a response.
Why do they do this? Why do trolls troll? Succinctly, because they are just
nasty, mean, and truly repugnant people who delight in the discomfort and
suffering of others. Erin Buckels from the University of Manitoba and her
colleagues sought to investigate the personality traits that motivate trolls, and it
would be difficult to spin or contextualize the results to be any worse than they
were.25
23
http://gawker.com/justine-sacco-is-good-at-her-job-and-how-i-came-
to-pea-1653022326
24
In fact, while most of the Twitter responses to the tweet with the photo of Justine Sacco in the airport
jump wholeheartedly on the “Shame Sacco” bandwagon, a few unsuccessfully try to instigate a shaming
against the photographer.
25
Buckels, Erin E., Paul D. Trapnell, and Delroy L. Paulhus. “Trolls just want to have fun.” Personality
and Individual Differences, 67 (2014): 97–102.
Buckels and colleagues surveyed over 1200 Internet users, giving them a
short series of questions they termed the GAIT (Global Assessment of Internet
Trolling). Succinctly, what they found was that people who troll use the
Internet often, and they exhibit a high degree of personality traits that fall
within what psychologists call the Dark Tetrad: narcissism (egocentrism),
Machiavellianism (manipulativeness), psychopathy (the inability to feel empa-
thy or remorse), and sadism (enjoyment arising from the pain of others). Of
those four traits, they discovered that trolling behavior was most strongly
correlated with sadism. They wrote, “...the associations between sadism and
GAIT scores were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are
prototypical everyday sadists.” “Sadists,” they continued, “just want to have
fun. . . and the Internet is their playground.” Trolls revel in chaos, and when
the shaming game is afoot, and the hivemind has engaged its next prey, they
happily sit back with a bag of popcorn, fan the flames, and enjoy the carnage.
The old saw “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never harm
you” is false. Words kill, and words maim. Words of rejection, betrayal, hatred,
or denial can destroy as surely as a dagger.
Gerry Spence, Attorney and Author of How to Argue and Win Every Time
At this point, perspicacious, though slightly befuddled, readers26 are asking

questions along the line of, “Remember when you went to see the 2000 Bruce
Willis film Unbreakable expecting, in essence, to see The Sixth Sense pt. II? The
film started, comic book pages and statistics about comic books and their
readers filled the screen, and you checked your ticket to make sure you were in
the right theater. Remember? Yeah that’s where I am right now. I thought this
was a book about science on the big and little screen. How is this relevant?”
A fine question; time to round third base and head for home.27
Shaming comes in a multitude of forms: body-image shaming, thoughtless
tweet shaming, slut-shaming, “You killed Cecil the lion, you bastard!”—
shaming, and many others. Another type of shaming—science shaming—is
26
Many of whom have checked and rechecked the cover to make sure they were reading the right book.
27
Screenwriters call this technique “hanging a lantern” on an issue—when the writer realizes that the
audience may have noted an inconsistency, or plot hole, they may have a character in the story overtly call
attention to the perceived inconsistency. It says, “All will be well, stick with us, this was done with
purpose.” With that in mind, this footnote, to use a term the kids all seem to be saying, is very “meta”.
neither new, nor entirely an Internet byproduct. On Jan. 13, 1920, “Topics of
the Times”, an editorial in The New York Times, issued a stern public
reprimand of rocket propulsion pioneer Robert Goddard, dismissing the
notion that a rocket could function in the vacuum of space:
That Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and the countenanc-
ing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which
to react—to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
Science class in school is difficult. Scientists, and people who understand

science, are perceived as really smart. Therefore, if you can pull off science
shaming of this nature, it is a very public way of proclaiming, “My Science-fu
is stronger than yours!” It is a two-fer. The Times reproach of Goddard was
nothing but a snarky beat-down, with some unfortunate long term effects that
we’ll discuss in more depth a little later.
Having a “go” at those numbskulls in Hollywood makes for a tempting
trifecta. The populist appeal of TV/film, as well as decades worth of Holly-
wood depictions of Hollywood itself, has left a large swath of the general
populace with a feeling of familiarity28 and with the same sense of virtual
ownership that some people feel for their town’s sports teams.29 Consequently,
Hollywood productions have always been “low-hanging fruit,” inviting criti-
cism from every corner of society.
People who write poisonous things about your work are using up precious
moments of their life dwelling on yours. These are moments they will never
get back. Let that be a comfort to you.
Chuck Lorre, executive producer, The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre Produc-
tions #481 Vanity Card
To make small talk, your taxi driver might share that he liked The Postman,
but thought that it was a half hour too long and a bit self-indulgent, while it
could be that your stylist disagreed with Roger Ebert, and thought Inside Out
28
In the same way that one does not learn surgery from the medical shorthand shown on House, M.D., or
how to fly a fighter jet from Top Gun, the general viewing public actually learns only a modest amount
about TV and film production from watching TV and/or film. The same shorthand that Hollywood uses
in describing your profession is in play here as well. In fact, we will see in Chap. 11, that even if you work
in Hollywood, but exclusively in either television or film, you may have surprisingly little idea regarding
the details of how the other is made.
29
Rephrased: everyone’s a critic.
borrowed too liberally from Herman’s Head. Don’t even get your bartender
started on The Fountain. Science writer Jennifer Ouellette, who wrote The
Calculus Diaries30 (and whom we shall meet again in later chapters), tells
Hollyweird Science, “It’s interesting because a good friend of mine is Bob
Mondello, the NPR film critic, and he hates doing negative reviews. But
they’re his most popular because people really like nasty snark. It says some-
thing really awful about human nature I think.”
In the past few years, film critiques have increasingly included commentary
about the technical accuracy of portrayals in science-themed productions, in
some instances bordering on science shaming. The recent films Gravity,
Interstellar, and The Martian were probably the poster children for this type
of scrutiny, but all science-themed productions enjoy this manner of attention
to some degree.31
In the previous volume of Hollyweird Science we detailed the lengths to
which writers and producers are going today to improve both the level of
science dialogue in Hollywood productions, as well as the depiction of both
scientists and the culture of science.32 We also explored how complicated the
issues of science accuracy in TV and film actually are, and how rarely is it the
case where a production can simply hire a science consultant and make
everything correct. It is unreasonable to expect science-themed dramas to be
documentaries. Getting technical details as correct as possible is about ground-
ing the story in the real world and minimizing the kind of “Oh please!”
moments that pull viewers out of the story, reminding them that they are
watching a fiction. When it comes to accurate depiction of science on both the
big and the small screen, the entertainment industry has met viewers more
than half-way.33
Indeed, sometimes the complaints about screen science often seem to have
little to do with the screenplay in question. In previous decades, when
screenwriters often played faster and looser, lobbing an aside at a movie or
TV show was a pretty safe way of reaping social benefits in some nerdy circles
by indicating that you were a defender of science against misinformation, as
well as demonstrating that circle’s superiority over the mindless mainstream
masses. Today, productions are still far from perfect, but increasingly so are the
complaints.
30
Highly recommended! Jennifer’s book can help turn even the most math phobic among us into
enthusiastic math practitioners.
31
Because, you know, you’re reading a book about that.
32
We elaborate further in this book as well.
33
The future is looking ever-brighter, too.
The author of one op-ed piece34 argued that Interstellar deserved at least as
much love from the awards committees as Gravity, and used as one corner-
stone of the argument that Dr. Tyson even approved of the film.35 Clearly, this
author identified with Dr. Tyson, and was hoping that the reader did as well.
To his credit, at least the author was using the argument not to discourage
people from seeing Gravity, but to promote Interstellar. Other critiques are less
generous.
Scilebrities clamor over each other to be the first to criticize each big budget
film as it comes out, as they attempt to latch on to the film’s popularity in a
sort of fame arms race. Often, in a rush to judgment, some of these complaints
range from unfair to, themselves, questionable. This may also have a ripple
effect: the more influential the complainer, and the more people who identify
with that person, the more the complaint, reasonable or unreasonable, will get
amplified. Many jump on the “Yeah, what he said!” bandwagon rather than
ever asking whether the nitpicks are fair or accurate, because the “Oh, please!”
threshold for a fair number of nitpickers lies on the imaginary axis—some
feigning chagrin only after a suitably famous scilebrity points out cinematic
science goofs for them.36
If someone online complains that Virgil boring into a colossal geode deep
within the Earth in The Core was an “Oh please!” moment that took them out
of the film, that would be credible. If, on the other hand, somebody says, “You
know that part in that Mars movie where the spacecraft commander says, ‘I’m
going to park her between Phobos and Deimos and I’ll see you in a little
while’? That’s really close to the areostationary37 distance, meaning that if she
wasn’t in direct line of sight to begin with, then she may never see them. What
a bunch of hacks, that totally took me out of the movie,” rest assured that that
person is an expert in a very narrow field38 and is being hyperpretentious, or
had it pointed out for them. Anybody who has the ability to recognize such an
obscure miscue also has the ability to do the math and estimate the tiny
portion of viewers who would be put off by it.39 Today, though, this person
34
http://www.tor.com/2015/01/15/interstellar-oscars-snub/
35
There is a belief in many corners that Dr. Tyson hated the film Gravity and loved, or at least highly
approved of, Interstellar. In fact, based upon what is posted to his Twitter feed at the time of this writing,
he was actually far more critical of the latter film—both scientifically and cinematically.
36
So to be explicit, if we point out a science goof you find interesting in these pages, please use the power
for good, not evil. With great power comes great responsibility.
37
The equivalent of a geostationary orbit for Earth—more in Chap. 8.
38
Author KRG actually noticed something like this upon first viewing of a movie, but only because his
doctorate is in orbit dynamics. Even then, he commented to his movie watching partner at the time that it
was a really subtle miscue, and even a very good science advisor should not reasonably be expected to
catch it.
39
To wit: none.
could jump right on the Internet, post that to Twitter or Facebook, and have
every expectation that people will retweet or share the observation—or even
repost it, claiming it as their own.40
At a recent science fiction conference in Atlanta, author KRG sat on a panel
discussing science in Hollywood, and one panelist complained straight out of
the gates about the film Gravity. The panelist’s lead off complaint was that the
film failed to portray Dr. Stone’s (Sandra Bullock’s) hair properly in the
microgravity of space.41, 42 After a brief cross-examination, it turned out the
panelist had not even seen the film. He was parroting a Twitter complaint of
Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. So this was never an “Oh, please” moment for this
individual, it just was an opportunity to show off. In the lee of releases of
several recent science fiction films, complaints like this aren’t rare, what is rare
is that KRG gets to sit next to one and witness it first hand. We may have to
rethink this “People are nasty on the Internet because of the anonymity” thing.
Dr. Cail says of such nitpickers, “I think. . . it gives them some sense of
power, some superiority, “Oh, yeah, this isn’t so great, I can find a hole in it,”
you know, and it gives them a little bit of a claim to fame. Dr. Letamendi
elaborates:
How good does it feel for people to like, and to favorite, and to retweet? That’s
what this is really about a lot of times. We don’t get to have that outside of social
media. You don’t have a random stranger walk up to you on the street and give
you a high five.
The flip side is the same, I can’t walk up to you and punch you in the face on the
street normally, but I can tear you apart online. We could argue a lot about why
this is happening: anonymity, access, some say that we have an even playing
field. Now I can attack Joss Whedon. I couldn’t normally do that. How would I
find him? Where would I go? I would be seen as a crazy stalker. Online? I’m not
seen as a crazy stalker.
In a more heinous episode of When Nitpickers Attack, a physicist from Imperial

College London lambasted much of the scientific underpinnings of
40
It sells the “Look how smart I am!” better that way.
41
That was a semi-reasonable complaint. Rather than incurrent the expense of having Bullocks hair
floating freely every scene, the director had her cut her hair very short, so that the appearance of her hair on
a soundstage and in low Earth orbit would not be appreciably different. This was a detail that was
considered and, to some degree, addressed, in the film.
42
When Stone and Kowalski go aboard Explorer, the spacecraft pilot (Amy Warren) has long hair that
does look like it is in microgravity. This supports the notion that the situation with Stone was less an
oversight and more of a choice. . . for those who need support on this point.
Interstellar43—in particular, the way the film depicted the effects of General
Relativity on Miller’s Planet. Read the article, and it becomes clear that the
author assumes that the time dilation on Miller’s planet is due to the planet
itself, rather than the 100 million solar mass black hole the planet orbits—even
noting, “To get to an extreme dilation, where one hour corresponds to seven
years, you would need such a strong gravitational field that you need to be
close to what is called the Schwarzschild radius of the object—essentially the
event horizon of a black hole.” Guess what? They are near the event horizon of
a black hole! The author also botches his complaints about spaghettification
near a supermassive black hole. Not every complaint in the article is invalid,
but it does have the kind of mistakes one would expect not to find in an article
confidently entitled “The science of Interstellar: astrophysics, but not as we
know it”.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for
sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain
We discussed briefly in the first Hollyweird Science volume that, four weeks
before the film’s premiere, the science fiction news site blastr.com engaged an
anonymous expert to nitpick the first trailer for the film Gravity.44 Many of the
issues raised in the piece were, themselves, laced with technical inaccuracies,45
but the author’s final message was clear, “I am all for an entertaining movie,
but when I go into a Michael Bay Armageddon movie I know to turn the brain
off. This one tries to pass itself off as something more than that, but to me, it is
the same flash and sizzle with a pretty lax understanding of orbital mechanics
and spaceflight operations... So Gravity is a pass for me, and given the loss of
the shuttle in the trailer, it hits a little too close to home.” After several
paragraphs of dissecting the technical accuracy of the film, the last ditch appeal
to the space shuttle tragedies comes off as disingenuous—this piece is clearly a
call to (in)action: “I’m not going to see this film, and you shouldn’t either.”
These articles get posted, and their links shared, to social media. Do
complaints like this really shape the perception of modern movies?
43
http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/nov/05/interstellar-
astrophysics-does-space-science-work-out
44
http://www.blastr.com/2013-9-6/nasa-expert-explains-what-gravity-
trailer-gets-wrong
45
Under the topic of full disclosure, author KRG was the science advisor for the film Gravity. At the same
time, by being intimately involved with the film from early in the writing stage, he is as aware as anybody
of the scientific shortcomings of the film, and we will be discussing many of the pros and cons of the film,
as well as the blastr piece, in later chapters.
Fewer boundaries, fewer limits, fewer consequences, anonymity, and equality. . .

take all of those components, put them in the blender, mix it up, it’s toxic and
you drink it like a milkshake.
Andrea Letamendi, Ph.D., clinical psychologist
Tom DeSanto, producer of the Transformer franchise of films (2007–2014)

and executive producer for the first three X-Men films (2000–2006), is no
stranger to fannish criticism. DeSanto shared with Hollyweird Science,
“Nobody is going to be perfect and there’s always going to be mistakes. . .
with science, especially in theoretical science, there’s not a lot of absolutes. I
think that’s where there’s a good amount of healthy debate that can happen.”
Of unfairly critical fans, DeSanto adds, “The Internet can be a great place, it
can be an awful place as well if someone just gets on there anonymously and
just starts bashing something for the sake of a therapy session. If people are
constructive, and people are sincere in trying to make something better, that’s
great. But if people are name-calling or go the lower vibrations of human
existence, it becomes. . . toxic. It’s kind of like the nature of human beings, you
can go to the light side or you can go to the dark. Unfortunately, a lot of people
choose to go Sith as opposed to go Jedi.”
It would be disingenuous if we failed to recognize that some science
complaints are perfectly legitimate, and not made with rancorous intent.
One of the scientists Hollyweird Science interviewed asked a pointed question,
“Are we complaining, though, because here we are, members of this agency—
the Science and Entertainment Exchange—that wants to try and promote
science literacy in the States, and now. . . are we now turning around and
complaining about the fact that the science in shows is being criticized?”
That is a perfectly reasonable point. Are we implying that movies and TV
series with heinously poor science do not deserve to be sent to the scientific
shaming rack46? Of course not! Heaven knows that both authors have done
enough of that, and will continue to do so, especially given the efficiency of
entertainment to impart incorrect science notions—even across generations
through the Hollywood curriculum cycle.47 We also said in Hollyweird Science,
46
Although probably clear from context, the shaming rack is a combination shaming and torture device
used by the Castithan race in the Syfy series Defiance.
47
The Hollywood Curriculum Cycle is a concept we originated in the first Hollyweird Science book, where
once one manifestation of a concept is established, it is repeated ad infinitum by other screenwriters whose
only exposure to the concept is through watching earlier movies and TV shows, however mangled or
obsolete that manifestation is. Witness the longevity of the we-only-use-10-percent-of-our-brains myth,
or the persistence of racks of blinking lights to denote powerful computers (the latter is fortunately fading
as we discuss in Chap. 5, but the former is still getting shows and movies greenlit).
“. . . this book is, admittedly, a piece of naked propaganda for having screen-
writers and producers pay as much attention as they can to science.
If we don’t hold science-fiction film to a higher standard, we deserve the films

we get.
James Gunn, Ph.D., Founder, Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction,
University of Kansas
What we are saying is that the pendulum of cinematic science shaming has
swung too far—from the “anything goes” acceptance of B science fiction films
of the 1950s and 1960s, to the “nothing goes” nerdgassing of today. One
hallmark of science fiction—even literary science fiction, which is often far
more scientifically accurate than TV or film—is that there has always been an
implied bargain between the creators and the viewers: “Go with us on this one
fantastic concept, and we’ll stick to the more grounded material, concepts, and
situations in other parts of the story.” Science fiction stories typically are built
upon a foundation of one key, often giant-sized, science inaccuracy.
We have come to a place where the release of any science fiction or science-
themed film initiates a firestorm of nitpicking of even the key fundamental
conceits of the work. Science fiction novelist Robert J. Sawyer48 agrees that the
nitpickers and trolls do a disservice to everybody:
Science fiction is, first and foremost, an entertainment medium, so we have to

allow some latitude to tell the stories. The purpose of a critic or science advisor
or a professional scientist is not to come along and say, “You can’t have any fun.”
You know the fundamental thing when you come to any work of fiction,
whether it’s film, TV, on the stage, or in a book, is the willing suspension of
disbelief. Everybody understands that it’s fiction. It’s not reality. It is made
up. Yet this constant nitpicking and tearing at the underpinnings is really a hard
thing to take. Every time you say, “Well, this isn’t real, that isn’t real” you erode
the connection the audience needs to have with the work. The characters and
the settings are no longer relatable. It undermines the whole enterprise.
Writer/producer Naren Shankar,49 who also has a Ph.D. in electrical engi-

neering from Cornell, shares Sawyer’s beliefs:
48
Who was also a television writer on the 2009–2010 series FlashForward based upon his novel of the
same name.
49
In addition to having served in the roles of writer and science advisor for Star Trek: The Next Generation,
Shankar was the showrunner for seven seasons on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and is currently the
showrunner for The Expanse on Syfy.
There’s a little bit of a culture, especially online, where you get a merit badge for
pointing out an inaccuracy. So there’s a tendency to want to be the smart guy
who says, “That’s bullshit!” or “That thing is wrong.” So, basically, what you’re
saying is, “Look how smart I am,” but is [the inaccuracy] materially significant?
Is it important? Is it a lie emotionally? If you’re not balancing those issues, then I
don’t know what the value of the comment is. You can poke holes in the reality
of anything that you see as a piece of entertainment. You know why? Cause its
fiction. You have to recognize the story you’re telling—it’s not a documentary,
guys, and that’s not the purpose of fiction.
Fictional science can be educational when it is right. It can also be educational

when it is wrong. It is great to have a dialogue about science, and it is awesome
if a film, or a “very special episode”50 of television incites that dialogue—that is
what this series of books is all about—but the problem is that a dialogue is not
what we’ve been having publicly in recent years. There is a difference between
seizing on teachable moments vs. merely showing off. Science writer Jennifer
Ouellette shares that the fine line between snarky nitpicking and “teachable
moments” is tone and intent:
There’s lots of different ways that science can work its way into a film, and I
think that sometimes the Geekarati, the nitpickers, the nerdgassers, miss the
point. They don’t see the forest for the trees: they’re so busy [complaining] that
they miss the big picture. I get that it’s fun, and I’ve done things like that in the
past, but usually as a kind of teaching tool. You say, “I love this episode, but just
so you know this one premise is actually not what would happen. This is what
would happen, but I get why [the writers] would use that.” The tone about how
you go about it is what works. If you do it in the spirit of good faith and good
humor and recognize that it still was great scene or movie or whatever. . . I think
it can work.
Dr. Phil Plait, known today by the moniker “The Bad Astronomer,” began his
journalistic career writing about poor science portrayal in movies. He now has
one of the most popular astronomy blogs on planet Earth, but he explained to
Hollyweird Science why he rarely posts movie reviews anymore:
I went to a conference [and] I was chatting with [one of the vendors there], I
mentioned something about movies, and the topic switched to an asteroid
impact movie that had come out on TV recently. I, basically, said that the
depiction of how the astronomers worked the telescope and everything were way
off. He said, “You know, I helped on that movie, I put together the telescope for
that movie, and I’ll tell you what. . . I set up the telescope, I set up the cabling, I
50
The phrase “A very special episode” was network television code, used more frequently in the 1980s and
1990s, for when a show addressed a socially controversial or sensitive topic.
put everything on it. The director said, ‘You know, this is OK, but we need to
have more stuff on it. It needs to look more, you know, scientific.” So the guy
basically just took a bunch of metal boxes and equipment and arrayed them
around the telescope—taped ‘em on, glued ‘em on, whatever—and he looked at
me and he said, “Did you see that? Did you notice all that extra stuff?” I said,
“No.” Then he said, “What are you doing nitpicking these movies to death,
when you didn’t notice something that was obviously wrong?”
I had a change of heart. I thought, “You know what, I’m going about this all
wrong.” I’m, basically, feeding my ego by attacking these movies, and being a
jerk about it, and I’m forgetting why people go to see these movies in the first
place. They’re not going to see these movies to feel superior, they’re going to
enjoy the story. If the science is wrong that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It might
be. If a plot point depends upon something that’s ridiculous and makes you roll
your eyes, and takes you out of the movie, then, yeah, that’s bad. But nit-picking
a show because they show stars the wrong way or whatever, not my style
anymore. I’d rather go and enjoy the movie.
The impact of science-themed productions ranges far beyond their capacity to

be used as vehicles to teach correct science. Irrespective of the nebulosity of the
definition of “Science Fiction,”51 one thing that remains unambiguous is that
the future is its purview. Series like Star Trek and films like 2001: A Space
Odyssey inspired a myriad of NASA engineers and scientists to their calling.
Science fiction productions have long been an agent of prediction, telling
cautionary tales of how science and its spawn might be misused or abused, or
of brighter futures enabled by technological achievement.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way
past them into the impossible. (Clarke’s Second Law)
Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Novelist
Science fiction goes beyond career inspiration and prediction, though.

Inventions that were the products of a writer’s vision or scientific extrapola-
tion—many of which were “impossible”, and would invite a firestorm of
complaints and nitpicking in today’s environment—have led real-world
engineers to say, “That would be useful, I think I could make one of
those.52” Even in 2015, when fans saw the first trailer for Star Wars: The
Force Awakens, there was no shortage of complaining that the droid BB-8 was
51
Another thing we explored in Hollyweird Science. Seriously, go read that one first. We’ll be here when
you get back.
52
The cell phone is an excellent example.
Fig. 1.3 BB-8 and director J. J. Abrams on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After
the first trailer, fans complained that BB-8 was “impossible," and even after the film was
released, one famous scilebrity alleged that the spherical droid would have “skidded
uncontrollably” on loose sand. . . except that the prop was a physical build, not CGI, and
everything viewers saw it do, it did (except for some obvious CGI stunts, like flying in
space, but then the humans weren’t doing those either). Copyright © 21st Century Fox;
image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
silly and impossible—at least until BB-8 rolled onto the stage at the Star Wars
Celebration VII convention as a physical prop, not a CGI animation. How
many “impossible” BB-8s will be under future Christmas trees? (Fig. 1.3)
As science fiction fans, we fear for the future of the genre, and it would be a
shame if it went away because of nitpickers, nerdgasssers, trolls, and shamers.
Many may ask, “Aren’t you belaboring the point, and being ever-so-slightly
melodramatic? Isn’t it true that 13 of the top 20 of the highest-grossing films in
history—8 of the top 10—are considered science fiction? So what if we nitpick
the science? We’re fans. That’s what we do.” That’s another fair question. Our
answer is that long term “shaming” of writers, producers, and studios who
create science fiction may be counter-productive.
Science fiction offerings like Gravity, Interstellar, and Pacific Rim were big
deals because they were fairly big-budget films that were neither remakes, nor
based upon already-existing intellectual properties like novels or comics. Of
those high-grossing science fiction films, only three (Avatar, ET: The
Extraterrestrial, and Jurassic Park) were not franchise installments.53 Those

“Top 20” counts are, in some respects, also artificially high, because Holly-
wood considers Star Wars films and superhero movies to be science fiction,
whereas many others would consider them fantasy, or at least pop science
fiction as opposed to harder science fiction.
There’s a distinct difference between hard sci-fi and pop sci-fi. 2001 is hard sci-fi.
Blade Runner is hard sci-fi. Star Wars is pop sci-fi. Comic book movies are pop. I
really, really like hard sci-fi; I love pop sci-fi. I was not playing with HAL action
figures as a kid, and I wasn’t asking for a Deckard action figure. I was playing with
Luke Skywalker action figures as a kid. I think that kind of a difference we really
need to understand as filmmakers because there’s a level of budget and of
financial responsibility. I love great, smart films, and I wish Hollywood would
make more of those films. But sometimes the problem is that you get something
like Minority Report, which is more hard sci-fi than pop sci-fi, and it doesn’t do as
well at the box office as the studio is hoping. It sort of puts a damper on more
hard science fiction films.
Tom DeSanto, Producer, X-Men and Transformers
In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne lived her life in acceptance of the
sentence meted out by her community. When it comes to cybershaming,
though, the duration of the sentence of those who have been cybershamed
remains unclear. Not enough time has elapsed, in most cases, to determine
whether these shaming events are “life sentences,” but some trends have
emerged, and it’s not pretty.
Monica Lewinsky has owned her actions, her shaming, and has worked to
retake her personal narrative. She now speaks publicly against shaming and
cyberbullying. After a stint volunteering in Africa, Justine Sacco is working
again in public relations. Lindsey Stone’s shaming was not a life sentence
either—she started anew with the help of an online reputation management
company. It appears that you can get a life back after a large-scale shaming, but
it will take a while, and it will not be the life you had prior to the incident.
The New York Times’ shaming of Robert Goddard was a “life sentence,”
however. Although they printed a retraction of their rebuke, and offered a (sort
of) apology, it was not until almost 50 years later—and over two decades after
Goddard’s death. On 17 July 1969, as the crew of Apollo 11 rocketed towards
their destiny with the Moon, the Times offered:
53
Jurassic Park was not a franchise at the time of its release, but eventually became one.
Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac

Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket
can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the
error.
How droll. While Goddard was still alive, however, the newspaper remained
mute. The impact on Goddard—and U.S. rocket technology—was immense
(we elaborate in Chap. 7). Fearful of further embarrassment, Goddard even-
tually decamped to Roswell, New Mexico54 where he continued to work in
secrecy. This secrecy isolated him from the rest of the nascent rocket research
community in the United States. When Frank Malina—one of the founders of
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet rocket and missile company55—
visited him in the 1930s, Goddard would only speak in general scientific
terms, and would not let Malina look at any of his current rockets or the details
of recent experiments.
This meant that Goddard’s later research effectively became a dead end. A
technology, especially one with little margin for error like rocketry, relies on
much more than just scientific principles for success. It builds upon a whole
host of tiny technical nuances in assembly and operation—the so-called
technical culture—that is passed on from engineer to engineer, and encoded
in the physical artifacts which later designs use as a jumping off point. No
rockets today can trace a direct lineage back to any of Goddard’s designs
beyond his very first liquid fuel rockets, the very revelation of which lead to his
shaming by the Times.56 A very good case can be made, then, that more than
just Goddard was harmed by the Times’ shaming—the harm extended to the
U.S. rocket and missile program and even, arguably, its fledgling space
program.
54
Yes, that Roswell.
55
Malina’s flirtation with the Communist Party while graduate student in the 1930s attracted the
attention of the FBI. He moved to France in 1947 and, at the height of the Red Scare in 1952, Malina
was indicted in abstentia for failing to list his Communist Party affiliation on a Caltech security
questionnaire. Declared a fugitive, Malina was to be arrested if he returned to the United States. In
1958, Malina founded the peer-reviewed academic journal Leonardo, covering the “application of
contemporary science and technology to the arts and music.” Published today by the MIT Press,
Leonardo’s web site is: http://www.leonardo.info/
56
We will revisit Malina and his cohort in Chap. 7.
The Internet is a combative place with feisty, creative participants on both sides
of every major debate. . . Thanks to social media, it’s very easy to set large
numbers of people on an individual who has erred. But it is much harder to
determine what consequences that person ought to experience and who ought to
mete them out.
Alyssa Rosenberg, writer/blogger, Washington Post
In Chap. 2 of Hollyweird Science, we made the claim that if the buzz says that
faulty science in a movie or episode of television is eye-rollingly bad, that could
potentially undercut its box office return, or a next season pickup—in other
words, the bottom line. Likely gone are the days where a film like The Crying
Game (1992) can do poorly, even bomb initially, and rally through word of
mouth to be a box office juggernaut. Today, fueled by social media, a film’s fate
is determined by the three to five days of its “opening weekend.” Some television
series have been canceled just after,57 or even during,58 their first episode.
One science consultant who spoke to Hollyweird Science countered by
saying, “I’m not sure that kind of behavior makes a dent in the bottom line
of the movie. If people are buzzing online about your movie, regardless, buzz is
buzz.” In some instances that is indeed true. There are certainly people who
went to see the 2015 version of The Fantastic Four to see for themselves if it
was, in fact, as bad as the buzz said.59 That’s one end of the spectrum.
However, the industry is replete with examples of films that were quite
good, but which bombed at the box office due to a poor opening. Although
labelled as “Worst. Film. Ever.” the Kevin Costner film The Postman was
actually fairly enjoyable. The Disney film John Carter was a fun romp that had
a “Star Wars meets Riddick” vibe. While the films both suffered series mar-
keting woes,60 they also suffered strong initial criticism, poor opening week-
end box offices, and reputations as duds when, in fact, both are fairly
entertaining movies.
We would like to offer a plausible scenario for the other end of the
spectrum. While it is not clear if any TV series or movies have been science
shamed into irrelevancy yet, it certainly is not beyond the realm of possibility
57
Quarterlife, the NBC take on the MySpace series, was one. Dot Comedy, Secret Talents of the Stars,
Lawless starring the Boz, Osbournes Reloaded, and others. When you’re watching a show or film that’s truly
awful, remember: somebody at the network and/or studio said “Yes” to this.
58
Turn-on (1969) was a racier spin-off of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In. Due to the strong sexual and
political humor of the premiere episode, at least one station in the Eastern Time Zone (WEWS in
Cleveland) refused to return to the show after the first commercial break. Many TV stations in the Central
through Pacific time zones, alerted by the East Coast reception, refused to air the show at all.
59
KRG did. The film. . . ah. . . um. . . had really great visual effects.
60
As well as a monumental lack of attention to the details of what makes a rip-roaringly great first trailer in
the case of John Carter.
given the environment of today’s Internet. If or when that does happen once or
twice, especially to a big-budget film, studios, increasingly risk-averse, might
decide that their development dollars are better spent elsewhere—on other
genres whose box office returns are less affected by impossible-to-please fans.
The popularity of different genres varies greatly over time. The 1950s saw an
average of roughly 65 westerns produced per year; in the 2000s, the average
number was closer to 15. We will always have cinematic science fiction, but the
question is what form will it take? Films, that in self-defense tilt towards more
fantasy than sci-fi (no-one’s ever seriously complained that Professor Snape’s
potion recipes should make for foul-tasting water, or that the wing-to-mass ratio
of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons doesn’t make sense), and can rake in
superheroic gobs of cash will be constant offerings, while the kind of films that
predict and inspire and, yes, even help educators teach science, may be rarer.
Oh, behave!
Austin Powers (Mike Myers)
Rather than indulge the shamers and trolls, there might be ways to turn
attempted shamings into those “teachable moments” (even using the bad
science of the nitpicks in the same way as one might use a science miscue in
a film). Since the depiction of science and scientists is getting better in TV and
film, perhaps we need to demand more from our nitpickers. We get second
opinions from highly trained physicians, surely this is not too much to ask.
How? By getting in touch with your inner two year old, and incessantly
asking them to explain why.61 Ask for details about their complaint. Ask why it
took them out of the film. If they have a good answer, everybody wins. If they
are parroting a scilebrity, they’ll tap out quickly, and will be unable to explain
the science behind their complaint, or will explain it poorly or incorrectly. If
others, those in the know, sense weakness, rest assured they’ll chime in. We
envision scenarios like Fig. 1.4.62
The urge to pounce will always remain. Some will complain whether or not
they have a legitimate gripe, and whether or not their complaint is a fair or
accurate one. The worst of the naysayers, the nitpickers, and the nerdgassers
will continue unchecked no matter what Hollywood does to improve, because
trolls will always be trolls,63 and haters gonna hate. We stop short of
61
Although not our intent, we understand that this could have the unintended side effect of having trolls
trolling other trolls.
62
Did we mention that you can “Like” our Hollyweird Science page on Facebook?
63
Though Twitter and YouTube have been fighting back. Twitter recently leveled up in its fight against
trolling by adding anti-troll features like “block lists.” YouTube is fighting trolls by requiring users to use
their real names rather than their usernames to comment on videos.
Fig. 1.4 A careful simulation of the way your authors wish online commenting would
actually proceed.
recommending shaming the shamers, but we are suggesting you make them
work for it a bit. In situations like the conversation above, the community will
eventually converge on the correct answer. Because as much as we like to
argue, we all like to be right.
I’m certainly not saying people need to be silent or silenced, but I do believe we
need to think before we think out loud and online.
Monica Lewinsky, Cyberbullying Activist, March 2015 TED talk
2
English Versus Sciencespeak
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent, they

dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those
languages, or we remain mute.
J. G. Ballard, author
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has

taken place.
George Bernard Shaw, playwright
Before I came here, I was confused about this subject. Having listened to
your lecture, I am still confused, but on a higher level.
Enrico Fermi, physicist
Despite its worldwide popularity as a “common” language (for example, in air

traffic control, business, even as the language of science), English is a difficult
language to learn—with its synonyms, homonyms, silent letters, and special
cases.1 In his charming book Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That
Way, author Bill Bryson says, “Any language where the unassuming word fly
signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a
gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.” Throwing scientific
jargon into the mix adds yet another level of complexity, because many
words have different meanings to a scientist than to a member of the general
public (or often even a scientist outside their own speciality).
The difference between Sciencespeak and colloquial English is one of the
reasons why Hollywood productions are increasingly hiring science advisors.
Science is difficult for the non-scientist2—even with search tools like the
1
For example, do you realize that “ghoti” can reasonably be pronounced “fish”? Combine “gh” as in
“tough”, “o” as in “women”, and the “ti” as the second occurrence in “multiplication”, and you get “fish”.
How messed up is that?
2
While often even more difficult for the scientist.
Internet, Google, and Wikipedia—and the difference between colloquial

connotation and scientific denotation is far more than just a semantic curiosity
or a device used by a screenwriter to make a scientist character more believable.
When Hollywood and science differ in their understanding of terms, these
differences can hinder real scientists in their attempt to explain their work and
share cool new results.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

Ms. Hoover, The Simpsons, “Lisa The Iconoclast”
This is likely only going to get worse. Peruse the updates to the Oxford
English Dictionary for the past several years, and roughly 60% of the new
words and neologisms3 added have been in the science or technical realms, and
much of the remainder was slang.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek—a series very forward-thinking
in many areas of science and technology—passed away on 24 October 1991.
Consider just some of the science, technical, and related words that many of us
now use daily that would have sounded like a foreign language to
Mr. Roddenberry (keep in mind also that some of these terms have both
come and gone).
Big data Bitcoin Blog Cloud computing
Emoji Google (noun and verb) International Space Station Internet
Podcast Selfie Skype Smartphone
Social media Spam (email) Syfy Channel Texting
Thumb drive Twitter Unfriended Voicemail
Webinar Wi-fi Wiki World Wide Web
When (if ever) these terms are used in screenplays, they’re typically used
correctly because they have fairly recent origins, we’ve all been witness to their
geneses, so even if a screenwriter used one improperly it is almost a certainty
that somebody else on the production team would offer a correction. How-
ever, the scientific versus colloquial usages of other words that occur frequently
in science-themed dramas diverged from their common usage long ago, and
screenplays often propagate the colloquial use in place of the scientific use in
another manifestation of the Hollywood Curriculum Cycle. Let us examine
the most common, and often egregious,4 variations.
3
Literally “new word”, a neologism is a recently-coined term—often attributable to a specific person,
event, professional culture, or event. Examples are “grok,” “cyberspace,” “frak,” “Tebowing,” “google”
(as a verb), “troll” (as a verb), “spam” (as in email not a meat-like product), and n00b.
4
Measured with respect to how differently the terms are used when compared to their actual scientific
meanings.
2 English Versus Sciencespeak 31
I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.
Matt Groening, cartoonist/writer/producer
Theory Versus Hypothesis Many a scientist—delivering talks to the

general public or, for that matter, working as a Hollywood science advisor—
has invoked concepts of relativity or evolution only to face the clever rejoinder,
“Ah, but that’s only a theory”. This is not the “Gotcha!” moment non-scientists
often believe it to be, because at this moment the interlocutor and the scientist
are speaking different languages.
In colloquial speech, and often in TV and film, when somebody says
“theoretically,” it is typically meant to imply something speculative, unproven,
or untested. Scientist characters often proclaim, “I have a theory which says
that. . .” before launching into a more-or-less educated guess. A more appro-
priate scientific word for such a conjecture would be hypothesis, which refers to
more speculative thought (more on this below in the section on research).
In science today, the word “theory” refers to a law or plausible explanation of
the behavior of natural phenomena, one that is consistent within the framework
of the scientific method and has been repeatedly confirmed by empirical exper-
iments. A theory should predict the effects of phenomena and how nature will
behave under certain circumstances, based on a considerable amount of data
showing how it has done so in the past. Most non-scientists think that theories are
the first inklings of a scientific idea, which will then be investigated and proven or
disproven. In reality, theories are constructed to provide explanations for data that
has already been collected and to make concrete predictions about future behavior.
Sometimes there is a gap between the presentation of a new theory and the
accumulation of supporting data. If this gap is extant for too long, scientists
tend to get antsy. This is actually the basis of increasingly fraught debates5
about the merits of string theory, which is having problems making testable
predictions within the realms of what science can currently measure. This was
reflected on The Big Bang Theory when, in the 2014 episode “The Relationship
Diremption,” Sheldon abandons string theory after 20 years of working in the
field. (Other well-known theories that are currently facing increasingly snippy
comments are inflation, which says there was an period of very rapid acceler-
ation in the expansion of the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and super-
symmetry, which establishes relationships between elementary particles.)
5
For an excellent introduction to the current state of the debate, read “A Fight for the Soul of Science,” by
Natalie Wolchover in Quanta magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-phi
losophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/
For an example of a theory on a firmer footing, take Einstein’s theories of

Special and General Relativity. In order to provide the user with the most
accurate position possible, GPS satellites include corrections in their calcula-
tions to account for the effects of both Special Relativity (to account for the
motion of the spacecraft) and General Relativity (to for the variation in depth
of Earth’s gravity well between the spacecraft and user). Every time you get an
accurate GPS position, you have performed yet another experiment
confirming the predictions of Relativity.
A theory may still have gaps, but it is considered to be established science
not speculative. For example, we are still working out all of the implications of
Einstein’s theories, and scientists just successfully concluded a 40-year search
for gravity waves, which are oscillations in the fabric of the space created by
incredibly energetic astronomical events, as predicted by General Relativity.
Given the power of television shows and movies to impart information, even
incorrect information,6 consistently depicting scientist characters using the words
“theory” and “hypothesis” as if they are interchangeable, is it any wonder that
non-scientists don’t understand that the Theory of Evolution, the Theory of
Relativity, and the Big Bang Theory (the actual theory, not the show!) are widely-
accepted fundamental concepts in their fields, rather than tissues of guesswork?
More often than not, a more appropriate word choice is “hypothetically”
rather than “theoretically”, and a scientist should say “I have a hypothesis”7 rather
than “I have a theory”. With that in mind, in a practical sense the colloquial usage
has crept into modern usage, and it is not uncommon for real-world scientists to
slip on this point. Still, if you are a writer, and are debating which term to use,
here is a general guideline: a scientific theory is held by a community of scientists,
a hypothesis is held by one. While these rules are not hard and fast, if you use this
rule of thumb, you’ll be right more often than you are wrong.
Accuracy Versus Precision Happy Pi Day! Since the value of pi is 3.14,

every year March 14th (3/14 or 3.14) the nerds among us8 celebrate Pi Day. (At
least in America. In most of the rest of the world, March 14th is written 14/3,
and as there is no 14th month, these poor souls never get a Pi day at all!) The
year 2015, though, was a once-in-a-century opportunity to celebrate Pi Second:
3/14 in the year 2015 at 9:26:52, because the value of pi is 3.1415926535
6
See the chapter “The Path to Nerdvana” in the previous volume of Hollyweird Science. We go into great
detail on this there.
7
In the UK, and other places where people speak English as opposed to American, this might be “I have an
hypothesis.”
8
Or those looking for any reason to drink to get in practice for 3/17. (But as an Irishman living in the
United States, SAC’s attitude to St. Patrick’s Day as it is celebrated in the U.S. is reminiscent of the
vampires’ attitude to Halloween on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
when extrapolated to 10 decimal places. So which is it, really? Is pi 3.14 or

3.1415926535?9
It’s both. In reality, the value of pi spans an infinite number of decimal
places, so any statement of its value—spoken, written, or as a constant in a
computer program—is an approximation, and our celebration of Pi Day gives
us a great opportunity to examine the difference between accuracy and preci-
sion. In both colloquial conversation and in screenplays, these two concepts are
often used synonymously, but they have two very different meanings to a
scientist or engineer.
In casual conversation,10 if somebody said, “The value of pi is 3.1415926535,”
most people would say that the speaker has shared one piece of information: the
ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, a universal constant. A
scientist would say that the speaker has imparted two pieces of information: the
value of pi, and the number of decimal places to which the speaker knows that
value.
In math, science, and engineering whenever you state a number, how you
state it actually carries with it two pieces of information: the precision and the
accuracy. The precision states the certainty to which you know a value; the
accuracy is how close that representation is to its actual value. It is in fact
possible to be both precise and inaccurate, such as if somebody told you the
value of pi was 1.92321. A lot of science and engineering education is about
developing a good horse sense in students for the numbers involved so that
they don’t get led astray by calculations (especially those done by computers)
that are precisely wrong (Fig. 2.1).
If you are a screenwriter, and a goal is to check off the box “My scientist
characters sound like scientist characters,” on the topic of accuracy and
precision, this can be done with just a few tweaks to the dialog.
Although science-themed series are riddled with bad examples, let’s look at
one from early in Disney’s The Black Hole (1979):
CAPT HOLLAND
Gravity pull?
CHARLEY
Point zero two four five zero and
rising.
With their spacecraft falling ever-deeper into the gravity well of a black hole,
it is unlikely that Charley Pizer (Joseph Bottoms) would know the value that
precisely. It is also likely that the value would be rapidly-changing anyway,
which would make anything but the leading digits utterly irrelevant anyway.
9
See “Pi-curious” in Chap. 4: “The Scarecrow’s Blunder”.
10
Not that this is a common topic in casual conversation, to be sure.
Fig. 2.1 Han Solo does not like being told the odds—especially when they’re given to
an unrealistic degree of precision. Still from The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Copyright
© 20th Century Fox, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
An even more fundamental problem is: point zero two for five zero what?
What are the units? It is as if your roommate said, “Dinner will be served in
three.” Three what? Jiffies?11 Centons? Shakes?12 Microfortnights?13,14 Days?
One definition of information is “data plus context.” The numerical value is
the data; the units the context. The unit of acceleration is length per unit time
per unit time (e.g., “meters per second per second” or “meters per second
squared”). In spoken form, one should also explicitly state the zero. So a better
version of that text might be
CAPT HOLLAND
Gravity pull?
CHARLEY
Zero point zero two five meters
per second squared and rising.
11
The “jiffy” in “Be back in a jiffy” is actually a real unit of time, but assumes different values for different
scientific disciplines. Chemist Gilbert Lewis proposed that it was the time it takes light to travel one
centimeter in a vacuum (roughly 3.33 1011 s or 33.3 picoseconds). In electronics it is 1/60th or 1/50th
of a second depending on whether you live in a country whose alternating current frequency is 60 hertz or
50 hertz.
12
The “shake” of “. . .two shakes of a lamb’s tail. . .” is also a real, but informal, measure of time. Most
commonly, one shake is 10 nanoseconds, or 108 seconds. So “two shakes” is 20 nanoseconds.
13
A fortnight is two weeks; “micro” means one millionth. So a microfortnight is one millionth of 14 days,
or about 1.2 seconds—about the time it takes light to travel between Earth and the Moon. So the Moon is
approximately one light-microfortnight away.
14
We also have social lives! What gave you the idea we don’t?
Fig. 2.2 “Doctor, I have located the final piece of celluloid evidence revealing my
absence the day the Vulcan Academy covered mathematical precision. We may now
return to our own time.” Copyright © CBS, image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
On Star Trek, both Mr. Spock and Commander Data were notorious for
stating values, particularly odds, to a preposterous precision to enhance the
drama, for comic relief, to reflect their hyper intelligence, or some combina-
tion. In The Empire Strikes Back, C-3PO cautions Han Solo that the possibility
of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3720 to 1.15 To
scientifically-literate viewers, this precision can be distracting, since the odds
are vanishingly low that these characters would know the odds so well. This
does not make characters appear smart, it makes it obvious that the screen-
writer is trying to make them seem smart, and in a way that is unconvincing to
those who know the difference (Fig. 2.2).
Even the value of pi, which is known to over 10 trillion digits, is rarely
expanded to more than four decimal places for scientific applications—and
often only two. This is because, as we will explain in more detail below,
measurements have limits on their accuracy and precision. It is utterly mean-
ingless to calculate the circumference of a circle with pi to 10 decimal places
when you only know the radius to a precision of two decimal places.16
15
At least he had the courtesy to round to the nearest integer. Solo wasn’t impressed and still did not like
being told the odds.
16
Just because a calculator displays eight digits after the decimal point, it does not mean that all of those
digits have meaning.
“I wouldn’t trust that computer to speak my weight.”

“I can do that for you, sure,” enthused the computer, punching out more ticker
tape. “I can even work out your personality problems to ten decimal places if it
will help.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Exponential and Quantum Increases In a tense dramatic situation on

screen, a character reports that the number of zombies outside the complex has
increased exponentially. The term “exponentially” is often used to convey that
a value has taken a big jump in a fairly short period of time, but to say that a
value has changed exponentially does not necessarily mean that it has grown
very much in that particular moment, but rather that the rate at which it grows
is described by an exponential function.
To put this difference between the rate of change and the change itself
another way, it would be nonsensical to answer “How fast are we going?” with
“Thirty-three miles.” The question being asked is about the rate of change of
distance—typically how much is the distance changing per hour—but the
answer given is just the change in distance. Yet, this kind of mixup occurs
frequently on screen. By equating “the number of alien ships has increased
exponentially” to “the number of alien ships has increased a lot,” the amount of
increase is equated to the rate of its increase. In the early phases of an
exponential growth increase, the actual amounts of increase can be quite
small. One day you have one microbe, the next day you have two, and on
the third day you have four. That’s still not a lot of microbes, even though that
kind of doubling is a classic example of exponential growth.
Of course, things increase at various different rates all the time. What’s so
special about exponential growth, and how did it get to become synonymous
with “giant increase?” A value, let us say V, growing exponentially over time,
has the format
V ðtÞ ¼ V 0 eγt :
What this means is that the value of V at any given time t, written V(t), is
equal to V at some starting value (V0) times e raised to the γt power (where t,
again, is time). If you’re not familiar with the number e, it’s a constant with an
infinite number of digits: it’s a like pi, except e falls out of calculus while pi falls
out of geometry. The value of e is approximately 2.71828. . ..17 The practical
upshot of this equation is that it models a rate of change that is experiencing a
17
See “All about e” in Chap. 4.
Fig. 2.3 Plot showing different forms of exponential functions. Exponential functions
can be increasing as in the case of y ¼ e0.1x (brick red) or y ¼ e0.3x (bright red).
Exponential functions can be decreasing as with y ¼ ex (dark green) or y ¼ e1/x (bright
green). A straight line, y ¼ eln(x) (black) can even be written as an exponential. Plotted
with Kaleidagraph.
sort of feedback effect: the rate of increase of the value at each tick of the clock
is proportional to the amount of the value at that particular moment.
You can understand this intuitively with exponential population growth.
Let’s imagine a zombie apocalypse where the number of people getting
infected per day—the rate of infection—is proportional to the number of
zombies wandering around. The exact growth rate that the exponential func-
tion predicts at any one time is determined by the parameter γ. Say, for
example, the first victim, patient zero, of a zombie apocalypse can bite, on
average, three people per day and infect them. Then everybody who has
become “zombified” can, on average, bite three more people. The number
of zombies will then increase exponentially. However, if the number of people
a zombie can bite on an average day is closer to 1, the exponential growth rate
may be fairly modest. A similar growth might be realized for a cancerous tumor
or bacteria in a Petri dish.
To say that a value is growing exponentially does not inherently mean that it
is increasing rapidly over time unless γ is greater than or equal to one. If γ is
between 0 and 1, it is increasing slowly. If γ is negative, the value is decreasing. So
the crucial point is not that this value is growing exponentially, it is the value of
γ, the exponent, and the time over which the value has been changing (Fig. 2.3).
If people, on average, recover from an illness after a given period of time, the
number of people ill in a population will undergo an exponential decrease.18 It
18
See also the “Numbers of Numb3rs” entry: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ExponentialGrowth.html
is also not really possible to determine γ with just one or two observations of the
value (unless you are sure in advance that the correct model for the rate of
change is exponential, in which case you might be able to get away with two).
In a similar vein, a “quantum increase” is also often used as a cinematic
expression to indicate that a population or value has undergone a dramatic
increase, but again the term “quantum” reflects less the amount of the increase
than it does the rate. In physics, a quantum19 is the minimum amount
available of any physical quantity. It means that a value is discrete, and a
count of the value assumes integer values only, while non-integer values are
meaningless.
Whereas you may ask for a half order of antipasto salad at your nearby
restaurant, or half a roast chicken, you can’t order half a slice of pizza—that’s
just a smaller slice. Similarly, cats are quantized. There is no such thing as two
half cats—just two sections of a dead cat. The concept of “half a football” is
meaningless. Half a football is a conical-shaped piece of leather.
If a dump truck full of sand off-loaded onto a huge scale, and the mass of the
sand was measured over time, it would appear to be a smoothly-varying curve.
Looking more closely, however, the value of the weight undergoes a quantum
increase for each individual grain of sand that lands on the scales.20
Rather than saying a value or the size of a population has “increased
exponentially” or has undergone a “quantum leap,” when one really means
“has increased dramatically”, better options would be to say it has “increased
by a factor of 20” or “increased 20-fold”.
Error and Uncertainty “Error” is a concept that flows like an undercurrent

through much of scientific discourse, even though it is rarely a specific topic of
conversation. However, the definition of “error” as understood by scientists and
engineers varies dramatically from that used in everyday conversation. If there
was a single concept the media could embrace that would improve the accurate
dissemination of science results to the public, it would be the use of the terms
“error” and “uncertainty” as a scientist understands the terms.
There is an old saying used to describe a process that has wildly varying
metrics of precision: “Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with
19
The plural is quanta.
20
This disparity between the macroscopic and microscopic behavior of the weight of the sand is also an
excellent metaphor for an important law in quantum mechanics called the correspondence principle, which
states that behavior of systems described by the theory of quantum mechanics must reproduce classical
physics when a large number of objects are involved.
Table 2.1 Distances, and the Star Distance (LY) Uncertainty (LY)
associated uncertainties, to
Alpha Centauri 4.37 0.007
some real stars that are well-
known from science fiction Wolf 359 7.86 0.03
Sirius 8.60 0.04
Epsilon Eridani 10.475 0.003
Tau Ceti 11.905 0.007
40 Eridani 16.45 0.07
Gliese 581 20.4 0.2
Polaris 375 50
Betelgeuse 643 146
Rigel 860 80
Deneb 2614 215
Closer stars have lower uncertainties in their distances—both in an
absolute sense, and as a percentage of the actual value
an axe.” This is, in essence, a warning that the three steps of this process have
very different associated errors.
For example, how well do we know the distance to the nearest stars? Anywhere
from a fraction of a light year to tens of light years (Table 2.1). As a rough guide,
the farther away a star, the greater the error, but not always: different conditions
make the distance to some stars easier to measure than others.
Colloquially, though, “error” is generally synonymous with “mistake” or
“blunder” or even “screw-up” or “cock-up” (depending upon whether you’re
in the US or the UK). Fielding blunders are considered so meaningful in the
game of baseball that the announcer summarizes the key events of each inning
as X runs, Y hits, and Z errors. When it comes to public shaming, the Internet
has nothing over the game of baseball.
In science, not only is error the degree of uncertainty of a particular
measurement, it is also the natural companion of measurement. Any measure-
ment can be made only so precisely, and therefore will always have an
associated uncertainty—an error. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle21
even says that, for some measurements, there are fundamental limits on the
maximum precision we can achieve in our measurements, therefore the
Universe itself imposes error bounds.
When plotting laboratory, observational, or simulation data for publication
purposes, scientists typically include an estimate of error or uncertainty for
every measurement in the form of error bars (Fig. 2.4). The high and low
values are typically either one standard deviation above and below the mea-
surement, or bracket the measurement within a stated statistical confidence
interval. Scientists typically spend as much, or more, time determining these
21
Which we discussed in Chap. 7: “A Quantum of Weirdness” in Hollyweird Science.
Fig. 2.4 A simple generic plot displaying measurements with error bars.
error ranges as they do the value to which they correspond. Error bars are a
good way to make a quick sanity check on the claims made for data: the data
points themselves may show some kind of a trend, but if another trend—even
one going in the opposite direction—could be drawn and still fit within the
error bars, then it would be wise to take that trend with a healthy pinch of salt.
An excellent recent example of how scientists build the concept of error or
uncertainty into their work, while the public and mainstream media ignores it,
occurred with the announcement that the Solar System may have another
member; a large planet on the outer fringes of the system, on a fairly eccen-
tric22 orbit.23 Caltech researchers Konstantin Batgyin and Michael E. Brown24
found a clustering of the value of one orbital element of hundreds of Kuiper
Belt objects.25 This clustering has what a scientist would say is a “vanishingly
small” likelihood of occurring by chance, while the odds are very high that this
is the outcome of a gravitational interaction with a planetary body. Batgyin
and Brown wrote, “We demonstrate that the perihelion positions and orbital
22
We discuss the meaning of this term in Chap. 8: “The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits”.
23
Batygin, K., and M. E. Brown (2016) Evidence for a distant giant planet in the Solar System, The
Astronomical Journal, Volume 151, page 22.
24
Mike Brown’s Twitter handle is @plutokiller, because he was instrumental in Pluto’s reclassification
from planet to dwarf planet. He authored the book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming,
published in 2010. We would argue that he didn’t really kill Pluto, he just hurt its feelings.
25
Strictly speaking, the clustering was actually in both the value and the rate of change of the orbital
element. See Chap. 8 for more discussion of orbital elements.
planes of the objects are tightly confined and that such a clustering has only a
probability of 0.007% to be due to chance, thus requiring a dynamical origin.”
Being good scientists, they also state in their paper the details of where their
model may be in error, what their underlying assumptions and simplifications
were, and why more work needs to be done on the topic (brace yourself for
some serious physics speak here):
Simultaneously, the suggestive nature of the results should be met with a healthy
dose of skepticism, given the numerous assumptions made in the construction
of our simple analytical model. In particular, we note that a substantial fraction
of the dynamical flow outlined in phase-space portraits characterizes test particle
orbits that intersect that of the perturber (or Neptune), violating a fundamental
assumption of the employed secular theory.
Moreover, even for orbits that do not cross, it is not obvious that the perturba-
tion parameter is ubiquitously small enough to warrant the truncation of the
expansion at the utilized order. Finally, the Hamiltonian does not account for
possibly relevant resonant (and/or short-periodic) interactions with the
perturber. Accordingly, the obtained results beg to be re-evaluated within the
framework of a more comprehensive model.
Granted, those disclaimers are extremely technical, however, rather than get
clarification on the authors’ admitted limitations, the media reports on the
research fell just shy of “There’s a ninth planet! How cool is that?”
Science is made up of mistakes, for they lead little by little to the truth.
Jules Verne
Interestingly, while there is generally a serious disconnect between how

science, screenplays, and even the news media use the concepts of error and
uncertainty, when politics and polling enters the picture, the media does a
much better job. It is not uncommon for a news broadcast to report the
margin of error for their latest poll, or report that the popularity of two
candidates is “within the margin of error, placing them in a virtual dead heat.”
pffiffiffi
When dealing with populations, the error typically varies as 1= n where n is
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
the number of data points. The value of1= 1000 equals 0.03, or 3%. So, when a
news program reports that the margin of error is 3% points, this value indicates
that the poll sampled 1000 people. When the uncertainty is listed as 4% points,
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
since 1= 500 equals 0.04, or 4%, that means the sample size was 500.
Oddly enough, media outlets will include these error estimates for political
polls, but not for actual science discoveries. Each time a new near-Earth
asteroid is discovered, when astronomers first detect the object, they determine
its orbital parameters on the basis of a few observations, and typically that first
pffiffiffi
calculation has a fairly large error, because n is small so 1= n is big.
Astronomers often then calculate the approximate errors in the asteroid’s
position in the “along-track” and “cross-track” directions26 and create an
error ellipsoid—a rubgy-ball-shaped region around the calculated position
which, taking error into account, has a high probability of containing the
asteroid within. They then “fill” the error ellipse with hypothetical asteroids,
use computer models to propagate all those trajectories into the future, and
count how many impact Earth. They may then proclaim that the object has,
for example, a 1 in 300 chance of hitting Earth in the year 2029.
This exact scenario played out after
the discovery of the near-Earth aster-
oid 2004 MN4, later named 99942
Apophis.27 When Apophis was first
discovered, computer models that
propagated the asteroid’s trajectory
based upon a small number of obser-
vations suggested that there was a 1 in
300 chance that Apophis would collide
with Earth in the year 2029 and, nat-
urally, the media sounded the alert.28
Within four days, there were more
observations of the asteroid. With
pffiffiffi
more observations, n increases, 1= n
decreases, the error ellipse shrank, the
error in the trajectory of Apophis was Fig. 2.5 “You named a rock after me? A
honed, and the probability of a 2029 rock that is not even going to destroy
collision was reduced to 0.004%.29 anything? Apophis is offended.” Peter
Williams as Apophis from Stargate SG-1.
Astronomers then proclaimed that we Copyright © Double Secret Productions,
are actually safe in 2029 (Fig. 2.5). image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
26
More on all of this in Chap. 8.
27
The astronomers who discovered the asteroid named it after the ancient Egyptian god Apep the
Uncreator (Greek name Apophis), enemy of the sun-god Ra. Apep is an evil serpent (not unlike the
Goa’uld symbiont) that tries to swallow Ra during his nightly passage. Asteroid co-discoverers Roy
A. Tucker and David J. Tholen were fans of the television series Stargate SG-1, and in that series, Apophis
was real—but rather than being a god, he was an alien whom the ancient Egyptians took to be a god.
28
It is probably no surprise that if you Google “Apophis” and “2029”, websites remain that insist that
there will be a collision in 2029, but NASA simply refuses to admit it.
29
Though future collision opportunities have been identified, and again most have subsequently been
ruled out. The 2053 pass is still a bit of a concern. . .
By adding more observations that contributed to the orbit determination,

the uncertainty in its orbit was dramatically reduced. The problem was that the
uncertainties were never part of the mainstream discussion. This fairly com-
plex pretty much got boiled down to two brief sound bites in the media:
“EARTH THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT IN
2029!!!!” and, a few days later, “All Clear! Effing Astronomers Were Wrong
Yet Again!”30
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we discussed briefly the topic of scientist
distrust. Situations like this, which have occurred several times in the past
two decades, only erode public trust in science and scientists. In the public’s
eye, each such occurrence is one more observation, making their n one larger,
increasing their certainty that the processes of science are more arbitrary and
less rigorous than they actually are, and the credibility of scientists takes yet
another hit.
Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the
other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe
were accident and error.
Frank Herbert, author, Dune
Hollywood and mainstream media can play a very important role here. Just
taking an extra moment to address the uncertainties in science news reports
would be a great start. Educating the public as to the difference between the
colloquial and the scientific usage of the term error would improve not only the
ability of scientists to communicate their results to all, but the public’s opinion of
the accuracy of science itself.
Research In high school, or certainly in a first-year college science class,

students learn the basic model of scientific inquiry: the scientific method
(Fig. 2.6). In the classic scientific method, a problem is identified, an observa-
tion is made or an intuition is identified regarding a possible solution or
explanation to the problem, an experimenter formulates a hypothesis on the
nature of the problem or how to solve the problem, an experiment is performed
to validate or contradict the hypothesis, and the process finishes with a conclusion
that the hypothesis should be accepted, rejected, or modified into a closely-related
hypothesis that might be better, which is, in turn, tested.
30
Despite the care with which the researchers stated the assumptions and weaknesses in their model, a
similar thing may occur if there turns out to be no ninth planet.
Fig. 2.6 Flowchart for the classic, and practically simplistic, scientific method.
In reality, some of the stages of the traditional scientific method can be divided
into sub-stages, some of which are important enough to warrant their own entry
into the flowchart displayed in Fig. 2.6. A variation on the traditional scientific
method, the hourglass model starts with a broad topic, with a researcher identify-
ing a broad problem to be solved, or a broad avenue of research to be explored.
Typically that problem is simply too broad to be explored by one research effort,
so the problem is narrowed into sub-problems, even sub-sub-problems. Once the
research has generated results, the researcher extrapolates those findings to their
broader implications with suggestions for future avenues of research.
The wording of the classical model of the scientific method is biased in favor
of experimental science as opposed to theoretical science, but the scientific
method applies to both types of research.31 Rather than running a laboratory
experiment to test a hypothesis, a theoretician may apply a never-before-tried
numerical method or a new computer code.
Isaac Newton is credited with the famous quote, “If I have seen farther than
others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”32 Any research
project, irrespective of academic discipline, begins with a thorough review of
the established literature summarizing the present state of knowledge on the
31
There is a question often asked of young physics students to help them determine if they would be
better served by a career as an experimentalist or a career as a theoretician: “Would you rather spend a week
locating a leak in your plumbing or an errant minus sign?”
32
On their Battlestar Galactica web pages, Syfy Channel’s profile of the character of Gaius Baltar includes
the description: “Stylish, handsome, and idiosyncratic, he often displays the false humility of the truly
arrogant.” This description sounds remarkably like Newton. Given his narcissism, this quote, although
famous, seems markedly out of character.
topic, and the results of those who have come before. In fact, most journal
articles begin with this summary of past work.33 This is an invaluable step,
since it helps define the problem, discover whether it has been studied before
(it is likely uninteresting to the scientific community for you to re-explore a
trail somebody else has already blazed except, perhaps, explicitly attempting to
replicate published work to confirm the results), and gives you methodological
ideas on how it might be studied. A literature review might also provide a
researcher with ideas for various types of data analyses.
The justification for including the broad topic of research in a discussion of
colloquial English versus Sciencespeak focuses narrowly on this information-
gathering stage. Perhaps reinforced by “research” papers in high school and
college, the colloquial view of what constitutes “research” is often condensed to
the literature review phase of a more formal research project.
It bugs me when people say [online] “Well I’ve done a lot of research.” No,
you’ve gone to Google University.
Dr. Jessica Cail, Neuropsychologist
Progress in a scientific discipline often evolves in the same manner as plate

tectonics: years of slow, steady progression can suddenly give way to Earth-
shattering progress in a very short period of time. Sometimes this progress is
the result of a great intellectual leap, such as when Einstein developed Rela-
tivity Theory, but more often it is driven by the introduction of a new type of
experimental technique, as when molecular biologists started using X-ray
diffraction to peer inside the machinery of life, or when the “Monte Carlo”
method dramatically improved the quality of simulations in computational
physics. After such a paradigm shift, there follows a period of aftershocks
which can last years—some intense in their own right—until the system settles
back into a quiescent state. This model describes the two different research
approaches scientists often take: Some researchers are content knowing that
their work provides valuable clues and supporting or contradicting evidence
for important models and paradigms in their field. Other researchers are
content only when they are trying to initiate the “Big Ones”. Many contribute
to both kinds of research.
33
Consider this the scientific equivalent of a television series opening every show with “Previously on. . .”
Scientists come in two varieties, hedgehogs and foxes. I borrow this terminology
from Isaiah Berlin (1953), who borrowed it from the ancient Greek poet
Archilochus. Archilochus told us that foxes know many tricks, hedgehogs only
one. Foxes are broad, hedgehogs are deep. Foxes are interested in everything and
move easily from one problem to another. Hedgehogs are only interested in a few
problems that they consider fundamental, and stick with the same problems for
years or decades. Most of the great discoveries are made by hedgehogs, most of
the little discoveries by foxes. Science needs both hedgehogs and foxes for its
healthy growth, hedgehogs to dig deep into the nature of things, foxes to explore
the complicated details of our marvelous universe. Albert Einstein and Edwin
Hubble were hedgehogs. Charley Townes, who invented the laser, and Enrico
Fermi, who built the first nuclear reactor in Chicago, were foxes.
Freeman Dyson, physicist
It helps to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and it helps just as
much to be able to explain that clearly and succinctly. Why is this an
important problem worth scientists’ time and effort? Why is the paper
reporting on the research a worthwhile read? What are the broad implications
of the work, if any? Is the initial topic that initiated the project too broad, and
does it need to be broken into smaller projects? So the researcher targets
specific problem(s) that the research will address.
In order to summarize the dramatic highlights of their screenplay, a Hol-
lywood screenwriter crafts a logline—a one to three sentence description of a
film, a television series, or episode of television that boils the narrative down to
its essential dramatic elements as succinctly as possible. A good logline often
begins with a word like “after” or “following”. Using Gravity as an example
again, the logline could be “Following the destruction of their space shuttle in
an accident, two surviving astronauts, alone and adrift, battle time and the
harsh realities of space to return home.”
In the same manner as, a screenwriter crafts a logline, an academic con-
structs a block of text called an abstract. An abstract encapsulates the problem
tackled by their research, how their research attacks it, and provides a brief and
tantalizing overview of the results.
Once a researcher has identified a problem, and can justify why it is an
important one to solve, just as with the classic scientific method, the researcher
proposes a solution—an informed speculation, one that is within the
researcher’s ability to test, called a hypothesis.
The researcher then defines the experiment to test the hypothesis. It is not
uncommon that this step flows like an undercurrent through several of the
previous steps, since a researcher is likely to select a problem based upon
previous work, instrumentation particular to his or her laboratory, or propri-

etary computational methods the researcher has developed. In other words,
how the problem is to be attacked may be a fait accompli by this point. In some
instances, a researcher may initiate a research project, believing that they may
obtain a different result than that obtained by a similar researcher or research
group using a different method. In this instance, either outcome—whether the
original work is verified or cast into doubt—is likely of interest to the
researcher’s scientific community.
With an experiment designed and constructed, the researcher performs the
experiment and collects data. One of the key concepts of experimentation is
the notion of reproducibility. If a researcher performs a similar experiment
twice under similar circumstances, it should produce the same result.
Researchers using different experimental, analytical, or computational
methods should also converge on similar results, and, if the different methods
do not reproduce similar results, the research groups involved, and even the
community in which they work, must then figure out which set of results is
correct.
The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to
well-established fact, never being influenced by any unproved conjecture, is quite
mistaken. Provided it is made clear which are proved facts and which are
conjectures, no harm can result. Conjectures are of great importance since they
suggest useful lines of research.
Alan Turing, mathematician and computer scientist
It is the concept of reproducibility that separates sound scientific research

from pseudoscience. In studies of the paranormal, researchers can rarely
reproduce results, and this is the barrier that prevents “Ancient Alien Theo-
rists” and the like from entering the realm of accepted science (Fig. 2.7).
Once the laboratory scientist has collected data, a computer modeler has all
the output, a planetary scientist has all the instrument data returned by the
spacecraft, or a theorist has an analytical solution, it is time to analyze and
interpret the data (if any). This means using analysis and visualization software
to determine trends, correlations, and inter-relations within the data set. From
this, the researcher (hopefully) learns whether the hypothesis was correct and
should be accepted, or whether it was incorrect and should be rejected, unless
perhaps it was close and should be modified, the data re-analyzed, or the
experiment re-run.
Fig. 2.7 If your research tends to consist of elaborate experiments that only
ever produce results once or twice, you’re probably doing Fringe science. Ba-dum-tss!
Copyright © Bad Robot Productions, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
Once a study has reached its conclusions, the results can be disseminated in
many different ways.34 Scientists speak at conferences, and at seminars or
colloquia at their home institution or other institutions that may sponsor the
researcher to come and speak on his or her findings. The most common
method, however,35 is the published scientific journal article. While the
formats of science papers can be varied, a very common format is:
Abstract: A succinct overview of the problem and hints of the outcome

Introduction: A statement of the problem and a history of recent relevant
research.
Method: How was the research performed.
Results: A succinct statement of the experimental results, largely devoid of
analysis.
Discussion: A detailed examination of the results and their implications.
Conclusion: A succinct statement of the most important outcomes of the
work, with possible recommendations for future work.
34
One way that has emerged in recent years is to go to the media first. This is considered by most scientists
to be very poor form, and often reflects a parallel agenda.
35
This is the only method that can be cited, and used as the basis or supporting evidence for future
research.
There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then
you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then
you’ve made a discovery.
Enrico Fermi, physicist
While these steps outline a scientific method, there is often no definitive

absolute scientific method in practice. The steps can vary from field to field,
and actually be an iterative process, especially if a researcher or a research group
is addressing related problems. Often spacecraft are designed to answer open
questions from previous missions. As scientists progress in their careers, often a
new research project starts with an interesting unanswered question, or
unexplored avenue, from a previous project.
In summary, to a scientist, or any academic, the notion of “research”
extends to a dramatically more extensive and wide-ranging collection of
activities that goes well beyond simply the colloquial “looking stuff up.”
Flux In productions, often even in colloquial conversation, when somebody

says that something is in “a state of flux” that typically means “rapidly
changing” as if “flux” was a diminutive of “fluctuation”. In fact, to a scientist
“flux” means “flow”. The measurement of electromagnetic energy striking a
given area of a solar collector in a given time—measured in joules per second
per square meter36—is a flux, since it is the amount of energy that would be
flowing through that region if the collector was not present. So flux can still
mean “changing”, but in the manner of the ebb and flow of a water molecule as
it moves downstream. A more accurate phrase would be to say that a value is
“rapidly-changing” than “in a state of flux.” For what its worth, this makes the
heart of the DeLorean-based time machine—the flux capacitor—in 1985s
Back to the Future actually reasonably named, as a capacitor is something that
accumulates electric charges moving through a circuit, i.e., it captures the flow
of charges. So, in full retcon mode, you could argue that the flux capacitor is
capturing something related to the flow of time.
Catastrophic Versus Cataclysmic A cataclysmic event is one that is

marked by extreme violence, upheaval, suffering, destruction, and change,
and this term is used in the same manner by both scientists and non-scientists.
36
Since one joule/second is the definition of a watt, a better way to denote flux is W/m2 or “watts per
square meter.”
Colloquially, however, the term “catastrophic” is used synonymously with

“cataclysmic”, and this is not so in science. A catastrophic event is one that
occurs instantaneously, or nearly so, rather than an event that advances
gradually over time like the deposition of sediment at the bottom of the sea
floor. Applying this definition, the world’s worst forest fire may be a disaster,
but it is not catastrophic. The firecracker explosion that caused the forest fire is
catastrophic, but not cataclysmic—at least not in, and of, itself. A supernova,
however, is both catastrophic and cataclysmic, as the ragtag fleet of Battlestar
Galactica find out in the 2007 episode “Rapture,” when the unstable star they
are orbiting suddenly begins a collapse, producing a blast that destroys an
entire planet.
Massive Colloquially, if somebody says an object is “massive”, the tendency

is to think that it is very large. If a physicist speaks of a massive object, that
means it possesses mass (i.e., it is not a photon). This is another term where
scientists tend to blur the line and use the colloquial connotation, and typically
with no backlash from other scientists for the improper use. Still, if a particle
physicist says that a neutrino is a massive particle, that means that it has mass,
even if that mass is only about one three billionth that of a neutron.
The best revenge is massive success.

Frank Sinatra
There are other terms whose usage varies between the common and
scientific usage (like rotation vs. revolution37), but those above are the most
common examples where scripts tend to employ colloquial rather than scien-
tific usage. This is one area in which screenwriters could realistically make a
huge difference. If screenwriters and media outlets simply did a better job of
connecting these terms with their scientific definitions when scientists and
scientist characters speak, it could go a long way towards educating
non-scientists on scientist vernacular. While writers of science-themed drama
and sci-fi will be the first to tell you that they’re not making documentaries,
having scientist characters speak like scientists would be extremely helpful in
improving real world scientists’ ability to communicate the coolness and
awesomeness of their results to the public.38
37
Earth rotates around its axis once a day, but revolves around the Sun once a year.
38
Wow! That deserves a lifetime achievement award for the most uses of the word “science” and
“scientists” in a single paragraph.
3
The Many-Body Problem: The Culture
of Science
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Carl Sagan, planetary scientist
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny. . .”
Isaac Asimov, scientist/science fiction novelist
You scare me, doctor. You risk your patients’ lives and justify it in the name
of research. Genuine research takes time... sometimes a lifetime of
painstaking, detailed work in order to get any results.
Beverly Crusher, Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Ethics” (1992)
To a physicist, a “body” is any object with mass. Depending upon the problem
at hand, it can be an atom, a block of wood, a person, a plane, a train, an
automobile, a comet, a planet, a star, a black hole, even an entire galaxy. If we
want to calculate the trajectories of two bodies moving under their mutual
influence—for example, a single planet orbiting a star—that is referred to as a
two-body problem. There are reasonably simple equations that can define the
state—the positions and velocities of both bodies—of that system at any time.
Once three or more bodies enter the picture, however, the problem
becomes significantly more challenging. As a general rule, the state of the
system cannot be solved exactly by any equation.1 Typically, scientists attack
such problems by using mathematical simplifications, by computational or
iterative methods (which generally rely on chaining together lots and lots of
tiny extrapolations), or some combination thereof. Problems like this crop up
in many areas of physics—Solar System dynamics, gas dynamics, solid state
1
There are some situations in which an exact solution is possible, such as the Lagrange points discussed in
Chap. 8: “The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits”, and a number of highly artificial scenarios of only
mathematical interest.
Fig. 3.1 Because KRG performed computational N-body simulations for his dissertation,
he chose this as a personalized license plate after graduation. He stopped using this
plate when too many people assumed he was an MD with self-esteem issues. Photo by
Kevin Grazier.
physics—and scientists call this the many-body or the N-body problem (where
N is a number greater than or equal to 3) (Fig. 3.1).
In the first volume of Hollyweird Science, we examined aspects of the
one-body problem of individual scientists—their compositional makeup—as
well as their portrayals on both the big and the small screen. Just as scientists
need to understand laws governing gravitation to describe an N-body interac-
tion of bodies in the Solar System, for a screenwriter to capture onscreen how
scientists interact—when it becomes an N-body situation—it helps to under-
stand scientists’ behaviors and something of their backstories. So a description
of the N-body problem of scientists’ interactions allows us to explore both the
culture of science and its onscreen portrayal.
The Culture of Science When not Confined

to the Petri Dish
Whether it is examining bacteria down the barrel of a microscope, painstak-
ingly measuring seismic wave velocities in rock samples under pressure, or
mining, plotting, and poring over computer simulation output for hours on
end,2 activities which may seem mind-numbingly boring for most people are
what define most scientists (actually, they can be mind-numbingly boring for
scientists too, but nobody said winning a Nobel prize was easy).
2
Author KRG’s obsessive science pursuit of choice.
3 The Many-Body Problem: The Culture of Science 53
Knowing or understanding something that nobody else in the world knows,

if only for a little while. . . Seeing something that nobody has ever seen before...
Doing something that nobody in history has ever done before. . . Even
sometimes proving that a professional rival is WRONG WRONG
WRONG WRONG WRONG—most, perhaps even all, scientists live for
these “Eureka!” moments. A dedicated scientist would have it no other way.
The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph or in
your statistics analysis—that moment you realize you know something no one
else does and you get the pleasure of thinking about how to tell them.
Emily Oster, economist
The problem that scientist characters inherit is that many of the moments
that define a scientist are boring onscreen, but they are necessary to enable the
discoveries and the breakthroughs that are more dramatic. This is an element
of the life of a scientist that is often glossed over on screen. Director Jon Amiel
shares:
There’s the drama of what’s going on, why there’s tension between two
magnetic poles, or the collision of two particles. We use the terminology of
catalyst and currents and charges endlessly in our talk about drama. So, in a
sense, there’s a reverse osmosis that’s possible there—between the drama of
those tiny events that are happening every time you switch on a light, or massive
events that are happening way beyond our galaxy.
There is an essential drama inherent in that if you but look for it, and if you but
find a way to characterize it. That’s quite apart from the drama that’s behind so
many scientific discoveries, for example, the clashes of personalities. You look at
Watson and Crick. There are several great movies in that story. Even then, the
sort of boredom of long tracts of scientific endeavor is part of the drama, just as
the white page is the thing that sets off Picasso’s black line drawing of a matador.
Movies need to put butts in seats, and to sell you overpriced concessions.
TV series need eyes on the screen to see the advertisements. This kind of naked
pragmatism is a way of thinking that is anathema to many scientists, but it is
how Hollywood operates. Whether or not a viewer appreciates a story, agrees
with the creative choices, or relates to the characters on screen, rest assured that
all the creatives3 involved had multiple conversations about how to produce
the best product to honor the creative vision of the show, and, yes, to make
3
A “creative” is a person on a production hired for their ability to make a creative contribution to the
production, as opposed to the “suits”, who are the people responsible for production finances.
money. Among the decisions producers have to make is what aspects, traits,
and behaviors of their characters they want to portray.
Why do men blink three times every ten seconds, and women only twice? What
part of the brain is the soul located in? What was the blood-clotting mechanism
of a tyrannosaurus? Nobody knows. But the answers are here. And I’m going to
find them. That’s what kind of place this is. It’s the universe!
Austin James (Parker Stevenson), Probe, “Computer Logic”
To get cinematic science “right” requires not only the accurate portrayal of
scientific concepts and phenomena and the behaviors of individual scientists
(within, again, dramatic dictates); it is equally important to give an accurate
depiction of the environment in which scientists live, the rules—written and
unwritten—they must follow, and in short, the entire culture of science. This
is a dimension often overlooked by screenwriters, yet it is equally important if a
writer’s goal is to craft a well-grounded science-themed screenplay. Jennifer
Ouellette, science writer and inaugural program director of the Science and
Entertainment Exchange, tells Hollyweird Science:
I think they go hand-in-hand, and honestly I would prefer to see more of the
focus on getting the culture of science right. Because that will, in turn, influence
how you portray the scientist and how they are perceived by the audience. It just
makes for richer characterization if you can get those little details right. I feel that
there’s a learning curve on that. Bear in mind that most people in Hollywood
never get a chance to meet a scientist or visit a lab of any kind. So they have very
weird notions of what scientists do in the same way that scientists have strange
notions about what people in Hollywood do.
If there was time (and audience interest) for a full real-time depiction of the
behaviors of scientist characters and their mutual interactions, the cultural
norms of scientists would be an emergent phenomenon.4 Since onscreen char-
acter portrayals tend to be distillations, and since the moments (or long hours)
that define a scientist may be viewed as less-than-compelling drama by pro-
ducers and viewers alike, then the writers and producers have to make a
considered effort to include elements of scientific culture explicitly if one of
their goals is to reflect scientists interactions honestly and accurately. As with
scientific discourse and the depiction of scientists on the big and small screen,
4
An emergent phenomenon is behavior that arises from the interaction between many entities, and which
may not be at all obvious from the behavior of a single entity. Think of the difference between two or three
grains of sand and a desert dune, or a handful of neurons and an entire human brain.
the overall portrayal of the culture of scientists is improving as well, as

increasingly more productions hire science advisors. Yet there is still much
room for improvement.
In order for a writer to reveal insights into the culture of scientists, sell to the
viewing audience that scientist characters are members of this community, and
convey the credibility and authority to rise to the demands of the role, it helps
to understand how scientists interact, how they got to the place they are
professionally,5 and how they speak in the real world. Many of the following
concepts, terms, and definitions we describe are as ingrained into the behavior
and vernacular of scientists as the concepts “Enter late/leave early” and “Show,
don’t tell” are second nature to an experienced screenwriter. One of the first
steps in the accurate portrayal of scientists and the culture of science is to
assume that all of your scientist characters are scientifically literate. Although
that may sound tautological, it opens up a whole can of allenidae.
Science is not only a discipline of reason, but also one of romance and passion.
Stephen Hawking
Science Literacy I: What Is Science Literacy?

Anybody who follows trends in science has heard about the importance of
science education and having a science-literate population. As much as we talk
about “K-12 science literacy” and “adult science literacy”, we have collectively
often been vague about defining what we mean by “science literacy”.
In 1993, Dr. Jon Durant, currently director of the M.I.T. museum and
founding editor of the journal Public Understanding of Science, stated that basic
science literacy is “what the general public ought to know about science.” Still,
how much physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy does the average person
really need to know? Durant outlined three levels of scientific literacy6 that
correspond nicely to our discussion so far (Fig. 3.2).
5
Historically, scientists weren’t professionals in the modern sense of the word. They were either self-
funded “gentlemen scientists” (and a few wives of gentlemen), or in the direct employ of powerful patrons
who kept them around for their own reasons, which could include a mere display of status or reflect
genuine curiosity about the working of the world. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that institutions
arose which allowed scientific careers to be pursued independently of personal wealth or connections.
6
Durant, J (1994) What is scientific literacy? European Review 2(01), 83–89.
Fig. 3.2 Jessica Chastain as Murph. In the film Interstellar, society’s appreciation of the
role and contributions of science had changed drastically, and not for the better,
compared to today. Copyright © Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Para-
mount Pictures, Syncopy. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Knowing Some Science Watching television documentaries can give the

non-scientist a misleading impression that science is a mere collection of
observations of the natural world, a menagerie of facts, rather than the process
by which these facts are painstakingly teased out of furtive hints or mountains
of data. On the flip side, although science is far more than simply memorizing
facts, definitions, and universal constants, there is certainly some degree of
accumulating knowledge about particular things in any academic pursuit—
practitioners need to learn the same language in order to communicate. It is at
the level of facts that most scientist characters in TV/film have, until recently,
operated: they stepped to the fore, delivered the necessary scientific exposition
to explain “what was really going on”, and then disappeared.
Knowing How Science Works In addition to a deeper understanding

and appreciation of the natural world—why we learn the things from the
previous level and why they are practical—science literacy at this level implies
an understanding of the scientific method, and how research is performed
(more on this in a bit). It means understanding the goals and limitations of
science, as well as knowing why we know what we know. It means under-
standing the part of science of which we spoke earlier: that the nature of
science, with its hours of painstaking and dedicated research that may be
heavenly to an individual researcher, will not draw huge crowds to the box
office or earn acclaim come awards season when it is translated into onscreen
material. It also means knowing which scientific tools are used, and in which
circumstances. At a recent panel on the Science of Hollywood at the annual
meeting of the Biophysical Society, there was a request from the audience for
the film creators in attendance to note that (1) not every scientist uses a light
microscope and (2) not every scientist wears a lab coat. The applause from the
rest of those attending indicates that a great number of scientists would like to
see their science accurately represented in film, and that includes not only the
concepts of their field, but also the correct tools and gear—even when it’s not
sexy or high-tech (Fig. 3.3).
UCLA Physicist, and science advisor for The Big Bang Theory, Dr. David
Saltzburg shared with Hollyweird Science that this has always been standard
practice on his series:
Near the beginning of BBT, I hosted a visit to UCLA’s physics labs that included
the crew from the set decoration department. They enjoyed the little things,
such as how the graduate students used an old business card to block a critical
laser that fed a high power electron accelerator.
For the entire ten years I have been with the show, the sets, wardrobe, props and
other departments have constantly checked with me to get the little things right.
I am always amazed for their ability to capture the essence of a space, be it the
telescope lab or a conference room.
Although not often exciting, a nod to science at this level can be very useful
when it comes to verisimilitude and selling the world of a film or series.
Fig. 3.3 The look of cutting edge science is rarely all gleaming metal and blinking lights.
More often than not, this is how physics labs really look. Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) and
Mitch Tayler (Gabriel Jarret) in Real Genius (1985). Copyright © Delphi III Productions.
Image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
Knowing How Science Really Works This level would correspond to

an insider’s perspective of the scientific process—not so much the scientific
method and the details of how research is performed—the process of how
research is funded, how scientists interact, how papers or journal articles are
written, submitted to journals, and peer-reviewed, how scientific findings are
disseminated through conferences, colloquia, seminars, and the popular
media. In other words, not just how the sausage is made, but how the sausage
factory works.
Science literacy at this level is, essentially, an understanding of the culture of
science and the relation of science to the rest of society. Even scientists don’t
always understand what’s going here: it’s fair to say, for example, that physi-
cists often resist the idea that social scientists might have something worth-
while to say about the operation of their discipline.
Still, there has been an increasing realization in recent years that more
conscious effort has to go into the way scientists organize themselves. How
institutions reward scientists with money and prestige has led to problems such
as a failure to fund risky7 research that could have huge payoffs, the post-hoc
sifting of experimental results for the most high-profile “grabby” conclusions,8
and ignoring negative (and therefore boring) results, as well as a general unwill-
ingness to spend resources doing the donkey work of replicating someone else’s
experiments to see whether their results are real or a fluke. These are the stories
that science doesn’t like to advertise about itself,9 yet for the screenwriter willing
to dive in, there’s plenty of very human drama to be found.
Science Literacy II: “Piled Higher and Deeper,” or

Something Else?
Often, early in a film or television episode, one character will refer to another
as “Doctor” or “Professor”. The doctoral degree is a cinematic “calling card”
giving that character the authority and credibility to weigh in on important
scientific topics, or deliver key exposition, later in the screenplay. What does
7
By “risky” here we mean experiments with a good chance of not having much of scientific interest to
show at the end, not, say, trying to attach laser beams to super-intelligent sharks and seeing what happens.
8
A process known as p-hacking.
9
Which is one of the reasons why science and technology journalists like author SAC exist.
the honorific “doctor” really imply? What did it take for “little Shelly” to
become Doctor Sheldon Cooper?
There is an age-old quip about academic degrees that BS means “bullshit”,
MS means “more of the same”, and Ph.D. means “piled higher and deeper”. A
Doctor of Philosophy degree is the highest academic degree that an academic
institution can confer on a student, but any implication is that each degree
from BS to Ph.D. is just an incrementally deeper study of the same academic
discipline is misleading.
All of the Ph.D. scientist characters in The Big Bang Theory may be Ivory
Tower nerds, but to get their degrees each must have completely mastered
their specific area of study, contributing in a significant way to the sum total of
human knowledge in that chosen field by performing independent,
publication-quality research. They may also have made important connections
between academic disciplines. So the stereotype that a Ph.D. may be “book
smart” but not street smart is not necessarily an accurate one, unless you mean
that they actually wrote the book—and that book is a Ph.D. dissertation.
Jennifer Ouellette believes:
One of the things I think that The Big Bang Theory does phenomenally well is
capture these little details about the culture of science. The fact that Wolowitz is
an engineer so they will say Dr. Koothrapali, Dr. Cooper, Mister Wolowitz. It’s
just little things like that. I think people now understand the difference a little
bit better between experimental versus theoretical physicists. There are just these
little touches that show up in every episode that I think are wonderful because
it’s an aspect of science that never gets portrayed.
So why are three out of four of the main characters in The Big Bang Theory Ph.
D.-holding scientists, while the engineer has “only” a master’s degree? It is not
because the show is biased against engineers, nor is it a case where the
producers said, “Hey, let’s make this one character different in this way.” It’s
because this aspect of the show accurately reflects the degrees that these
characters require to be considered expert at what they do.
Why would one choose to earn Ph.D. beyond the MS? In the case of
scientists, it is because, in large part, most jobs for scientists require it. An MS
degree does not reflect the proven research ability the Ph.D. does. Consider
the fields where the MS is the typical endpoint—business, industry, many
health-related careers, teaching—these are not typically research fields, whereas
the sciences are.
Some people do get MS degrees in sciences for which there is work
requiring more than BS-level expertise, like computer science. Some who
want to change their academic specialty—perhaps they got a BS in biology
and want to get a Ph.D. in physics—may opt for a terminal MS degree before
pursuing doctoral study. Still, as a generality, an MS gains a scientist little, as

somebody with a BS degree can be trained to do the practical10 lab work, and
somebody with an MS is typically not considered qualified to lead a research
project. Therefore, it is logical that somebody entering graduate school in the
sciences would shoot for the Ph.D. In fact, most of the top schools will not
even admit students whose goal is a terminal MS, only those seeking a Ph.D.
For colleges and universities that do offer terminal MS degrees, they are
typically far easier to get into than Ph.D. programs. To be admitted to a college
or university’s undergraduate program means that you are allowed to take
classes in pursuit of a degree. Tuition and fees are the responsibility of the
student, although exceptional students may be allocated scholarships, grants,
or fellowships by the institution or an external source. The same is generally
true for MS programs. Adding an MS student to a department is like adding an
undergrad.
To be admitted to a Ph.D. program, on the other hand, means that
somebody, often the university, will be paying for you to attend, at least
partially. Ph.D. students often have fellowships or grants, teaching assistant-
ships, or research assistantships (if they are very lucky, their research assistant-
ship will be for doing what will become their dissertation research). A graduate
student will also typically get benefits—sometimes very good benefits—
because large research universities also tend to have large medical and/or dental
schools. Admitting a Ph.D. student is a big financial commitment for a
university.
Once you’re admitted, the process of earning a Ph.D. can vary between
disciplines (even among similar disciplines) and universities. For example, one
major difference between a Ph.D. program in the United States, as opposed to
those in other parts of the world, is that there is a non-trivial amount of
coursework first, while in many other countries, a graduate student will
proceed directly to the dissertation research.
Still, there are some elements of the process that are similar. During the first
two years of study, while the graduate student is primarily taking classes
relevant to their eventual research topic,11 the student is expected to assemble
a committee—a group of typically four or five faculty members who will guide
the student through the long process of earning the doctorate. Typically three
of the faculty members are from the student’s academic department, and
another one or two are from other departments where the academic discipline
is relevant to the student’s research.
10
Read: grunt.
11
For many colleges and universities, in an MS program, the student is required to take graduate classes
only. For the Ph.D., a graduate student can often take classes at any level (even freshman), and from any
department, providing there is sufficient justification.
At the end of the first two years of study, most programs require a graduate
student to take the first qualifying examination. Sometimes the exam is a
written one, often it is oral, and some universities require a combination of
both. The oral examination is typically given by the intra-departmental
members of the student’s graduate committee—the external members are
not required at this point.
While it is not perhaps the stuff of great screen content, the two-year
run-up, preparing for the qualifying examination, can be a source of great
drama for a graduate student, and the examination itself can be both stressful
and grueling—lasting two, three, or even four hours.12
In more math-intensive disciplines, the four words many graduate students fear
most—but ones that they are guaranteed to hear during this first exam—are: “Go
to the board.” The student will be expected to perform relevant mathematical
derivations, or provide analytic support for a position. Interestingly, it is not
uncommon, if the student clearly knows the relevant mathematics, for the
committee to interrupt the process, not requiring the student to finish.
Why would the committee deny the student the opportunity to shine? It is
because the first examination is about more than just the academic subject
material. In the life of a Ph.D. scientist, she or he will often be in front of a
room of equally learned peers—at seminars, conferences, or workshops. The
oral examination represents an early test of how well the student “thinks on
their feet” while under pressure and peer scrutiny.
If the student fails the examination, there can be several outcomes. Unless
the student’s performance was absolutely abysmal, they will typically be
allowed a second chance. If the student is unable or unwilling to pass the
qualifying examination at a satisfactory level, they will not be allowed to do
further study, but given the number of graduate credits they have amassed,
they will often be awarded a Masters Degree. Because terminal MS degrees are
generally not the norm in sciences,13 this has come to be called, somewhat
snarkily, a “Booby Prize Masters”,14 and is often viewed by academics as a
failure.15
12
KRG’s examination at UCLA was three hours long, and he freely admits that, due to the stress, he
blanked while performing a derivation and forgot how to expand a Taylor series. While this may not be a
task that many readers perform often (or ever), for his research area, and given how often he had to
perform the task, this was a very reasonable request by the committee. This gives just a bit of insight into
how stressful this exam can be—and, in some cases, that stress can be magnified by the pressure the
students place on themselves.
13
Though KRG did one in physics with the intent of then moving into the planetary sciences.
14
Sometimes, for many reasons, there is simply a mismatch between the student and the department, and
many a respected scientist failed a qualifying examination at one university, only to perform very well and
go on to earn a doctorate at another.
15
You might notice that a theme is emerging—that although it is Hollywood that has a reputation for
being cut-throat, hypercompetitive, and often brutal, academia can be equally bad on all these scores.
The student who passes the qualifying examination is “advanced to candi-

dacy,”16 hence a doctoral candidate, and enters a new phase of his or her
graduate career. Under an advisor’s tutelage, the student officially develops a
research project for the dissertation. This project must fill a very narrow
scientific niche: It must never have been done before, and represent a signif-
icant contribution to the field. More pragmatically, both student and advisor
may have been giving this a great deal of consideration since Day One, and if
the student is being paid under a research assistantship, he or she may already
have done a fair amount of work towards the dissertation at this point. On the
other hand, if the student has been paid under a teaching fellowship, he or she
may have been so busy teaching and grading their major advisor’s classes that
they may find themselves frantically struggling to come up with a research
question. The 2014 film Theory of Everything portrays a young Stephen
Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) struggling to select his dissertation topic, until
he hears a lecture on black holes given by Sir Roger Penrose17 (Christian
McKay) (Fig. 3.4).
Armed with a dissertation topic, at the end of the third year, the student
takes a second exam18 called the research exam, proposal exam, or university
exam. This is when a student presents the research they want to do, and must
Fig. 3.4 Eddie Redmayne as a young Stephen Hawking in Theory of Everything In the
film, Hawking struggled with selecting a dissertation topic until a visit to London to see
a lecture by Professor Roger Penrose. Copyright © Working Title Films. Image courtesy
moviestillsb.com.
16
The student can also often accept a Masters Degree at this point en route to the Ph.D. Most students opt
for this understanding that earning a Ph.D. is a lengthy process, and sometimes life happens.
17
Although Hawking did his thesis research in the early 1960s, and Penrose was not actually knighted
until 1994, Penrose was still pretty awesome back then, so we’ll retcon the honorific.
18
Stressful, but not nearly as much as the qualifying examination.
convince the Powers That Be (to wit, their committee) that she or he has the
ability to carry out the research. Often, this means presenting the results of
some initial “proof of concept” research and results.
A very important detail, harkening back to the section detailing the modern
scientific method, is that the student should be able to provide a convincing
argument as to why the research is relevant and important. Despite the
frequency with which this argument is put forth, “Because my advisor told
me to do it,” in any of its incarnations, however cleverly-masked, is never an
acceptable answer.
For the next (roughly) two years, sometimes longer, the student launches
into the dissertation research, and despite all the challenges that are now in the
rear-view mirror, many still find themselves unprepared for a life in research.
Devoid of the constraints of coursework, graduate students must now contend
with an uncharted world in which nobody knows the answers and, in many
cases, nobody may even know the correct questions to ask. Although the
doctoral candidate now has more freedom—schedule, short-term goals, what
research hunches to follow, and how to follow them—charting a path through
such nebulosity is not for all, and the freedom to do as you see fit is a double-
edged sword.
When sports stars are interviewed after a game, a new trite platitude has
become increasingly common,19 “We just go out there, try to make plays, and
try not to let the highs get too high, or the lows get too low.” There is
something to be said for this—and this is also excellent advice for a researcher
of any stripe—but particularly for a grad student for whom the dissertation
research represents a first taste of the ups and downs of research. Stress and
uncertainty are hard on the body, because they trigger the body’s fight-or-
flight processes. While this may help you escape a brief interlude with a bear
that has startled you in the woods, this system is not meant to be activated for
days, weeks, or years on end. On some days, nothing works, and you can’t
catch a break. On other days, the Universe rewards your efforts with a glimpse
into a facet that nobody has ever witnessed. On most days, however, research is
drudgery just like many other jobs.
Yet, despite the stress and painstaking attention to detail required by the
research process, it also requires a surprising amount of creativity, and scien-
tists tend to be far more “right brained” than non-scientists give them credit.
What leads do you follow? How do you solve a seemingly intractable problem?
Will the pursuit of an avenue of research ever concretely yield an answer—
whether or not it is even the answer the researcher expected or hoped for.
19
In addition to the tried and true, “You have to hand it to the other team,” “We beat ourselves,” “We
gave 110 percent,” “We’re just going to go out and play [TEAM] football,” and “They were the better
team today.”
At this stage, the student is also considered to be in a stage called “all but
dissertation” (ABD), which explains why you occasionally see names with titles
like “John Smith, ABD.” Some students who never finish the Ph.D. after this
stage choose to retain the title in perpetuity.20
When a candidate has finished their doctoral research and written the
dissertation, a final examination awaits: the defense or viva.21 This is less of
an examination in the sense of the qualifying and research examinations, and
the student is not typically allowed to defend unless their dissertation com-
mittee members are reasonably certain the student will pass. The defense of the
dissertation is typically open to all who wish to attend.
This may or may not be the final step in the Ph.D. Frequently, small issues
arise within the defense, involving minor corrections that may require a few
weeks. The student is also expected to extract sections of the dissertation and
submit them to peer-reviewed journals, though this may already have hap-
pened in the course of the research. The de facto standard is that an MS thesis
should generate one publication, while a Ph.D. dissertation should generate
three.
The first page of a dissertation is typically a signature page, where each of
the committee members sign off that the dissertation is of an acceptable
quality. When the doctoral candidate has that final coveted signature, she or
he files the dissertation with the university, and may or may not choose to
register a copyright for the work.
Despite the years of study, the gut-wrenching stress, the long hours, the lost
sleep, and the toll that earning a Ph.D. can have on personal relationships,
freshly-minted Ph.D.s overwhelmingly recount that filing the dissertation was
not the “jump for joy” moment one might expect, or that even they themselves
had anticipated in their first term as a graduate student. Many will say it was,
in fact, extremely anticlimactic after the defense. Many simply fantasize about
more regular sleep.
Because earning a Ph.D. requires intense effort, discipline, self-motivation,
and years of study after the Bachelor’s degree (often even several years after an
MS), less than one percent of the population earns the degree. Society shows
respect for the person holding a Ph.D. with the honorific title “Doctor.” Still,
it is uncommon for two Ph.D.s to address each other as “Doctor,” unless one is
very senior.
One of the most important skills that a scientist develops, particularly at the
doctorate level, is the ability to think critically about the limits of scientific
knowledge. Somebody can be “smart,” with an encyclopedic knowledge of
20
Which some snarkier academics say means “All but determination”.
21
Short for “viva voce” or “by live voice.”
facts on a subject, or even several subjects, but it is also important to gain an

intuitive understanding of Occam’s Razor,22 to know how to frame questions
in ways that rapidly converge to a meaningful answer, and to be able to do
back-of-the-envelope calculations that provide rough quantitative estimates of
the answer to problems. In the previous chapter, we addressed the fact that, in
general, the colloquial understanding of research is “looking stuff up,” on the
Internet—which is full of numerous “facts” that are wrong, whence anybody
can find support for any take on any debate. An increasingly important skill is
the ability to separate the bull from the shit.
Many who start a Ph.D. do not finish because they started for the wrong
reason. Some did it to avoid the real world for a few years, some because it was
expected of them by family members, and others because they wanted instant
respect or the impressive title of “Doctor.” The process is long, and requires
mental toughness and stamina as much as anything else. Simply being intel-
ligent, even extremely intelligent, is not nearly enough. Beyond simply being
more highly-educated, you leave the process a dramatically different person
than when you started.
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we discussed in some detail how scientist
characters are often, by dramatic necessity, portrayed as hyper-competent—
i.e., experts in many fields. A production typically does not have the capital,
and the audience does not have the emotional capital, to invest in all the
scientist characters necessary for one science-themed show or movie. So
competency tends to be concentrated in one, or a few, scientist characters.
In the real world, a scientist with a Ph.D. is not a universal expert, but that
doesn’t mean that the notion that they are expert in only a super-duper
narrowly-focused area is entirely accurate either. For the purposes of a screen-
play, or even to discern whether a scientist in real life can speak authoritatively
on a topic, it is important to delineate between what one knows and under-
stands and what one publishes in the academic literature. For example, in
order to publish a narrowly-focused article in an astrobiology journal, a
scientist may need to understand quite well multiple aspects of chemistry,
biology, astronomy, planetary science, geology, or some combination of these
disciplines. So a scientist may publish an astrobiology paper requiring a fairly
deep understanding of aspects of chemistry, even though that scientist may
never publish in the chemistry literature.
It is a fairly common and, to some, cringe-inducing Hollywood trope when
screenwriters, believing that “more is better”, endow their characters with
22
The common understanding of Occam’s Razor is “Given several solutions to a problem, the answer is
usually the simplest.” That is something of a simplification, “Given several solutions to a problem, the
answer relying upon the fewest assumptions is typically the right answer.” The second version, essentially,
casts “simplest” as a series of statistical probabilities.
multiple doctorates to invest them with the authority they need to deliver
credible exposition on multiple scientific topics. This may similarly be used to
reflect just how intractable a problem is, if that over-achieving character is
unable to solve it. “Hey, if a Ph.D. makes my scientist credible, let’s give her
two. . . no, three!”
I hate it when a character is made out to be some kind of super scientist by having
2–3 doctorates by age 20, or something like that. Only a screw up does a second!
Dr. Michael Brotherton, astronomer/science fiction novelist
As an example of this, look no further than Dr. Carter, the scientist in Edge
of Tomorrow23 (2014). Carter had degrees in particle physics and advanced
microbiology (one must pity all those who got Ph.Ds in just basic microbiol-
ogy). Perhaps the ultimate onscreen expression of this trope was in the 1980s
series Airwolf—a recurring character named Marella Dawson (Deborah Pratt)
claimed24 to have five Ph.D.s: Aeronautical Engineering, Electronic Engineer-
ing, Psychology, Microbiology, and French Literature,25 and was a stone’s
throw away from her MD.
The problem is that somebody with two Ph.D.s might not be considered an
over-achiever by his or her peers. Since holding a Ph.D. is a certification of the
ability to do independent publication-quality research, a multiple Ph.D.
holder may be viewed by peers as somebody who is an expert in, say, quantum
mechanics, but lacking knowledge in economics.
In “Noisy Edge”, a season one episode of Numb3rs (2005–2010), Amita
Ramanujan (Navi Rawat) informs her dissertation advisor, Professor Charlie
Eppes (David Krumholz), that, upon graduation, she intends to stay at CalSci
to pursue a second Ph.D., this one in astrophysics. Clearly, the goal from a
dramatic standpoint is to provide the furtive, budding romance between Amita
and Charlie an opportunity to flourish while not stunting Aminta’s character
growth. In reality, with Ph.D. in hand, many universities will not permit the
student to enroll in further degree programs—they quite literally kick the student
out for his or her own good. It’s time for them to do some work, not start all over
again. In the series, when Dr. Ramanujan wins a major award for her dissertation
work, she is offered a faculty position at CalSci. This is only slightly less realistic.
23
Re-renamed Live, Die, Repeat for the DVD release.
24
Episode “Fallen Angel”.
25
With one more year remaining for an M.D. Given how slammed medical students are, when did she
ever have time to work for Arcangel?
To avoid “academic inbreeding,” many universities are also loathe to hire their
own doctoral graduates, at least not for their first faculty position.
Other combinations of doctoral degrees may be perfectly reasonable—even
required—in some fields. There may be a very good reason for a patent
attorney to have a Ph.D. and a JD, or a biomedical researcher to have an
MD and a Ph.D. For scientist characters, however, one Ph.D. is enough.
Someone with a Ph.D. might reasonably find the multiple Ph.D. trope
painful, or at least laughable.26 If you’ve suffered through the process of
earning a doctorate, the idea that a character would need more than one to
warrant respect might understandably be taken as insulting.
To face threats, we try to populate scripts, and bring characters in, that feel
credible and real and that are really good at what they do. Because nobody wants
to see the version—actually I would like to see this version, but it’s a comedy
not an action film—but nobody wants to see the version with the bumbling,
idiotic scientist who tries to figure out a way to fight off the alien invasion, or
prevent the outbreak, or destroy Godzilla, or whatever. You want to see people
come forward with the best plans, and they still barely pull it off by the skin of
their teeth.
Bragi Schut, screenwriter
Scientist Lifestyle: Aves of a Species

Diplomatic protocol for the United States State Department ranks the title
“Professor” higher than that of “Doctor”. Professors are people who hold
faculty positions at a university. Almost every professor is a doctor, but not
every doctor is a professor. In fact, it has been estimated that only about 30%
of doctorate-holding scientists remain in academia.27 Astoundingly, estimates
range from 13% to 24% of Ph.D.s will wind up as tenured professors,28 and
the percentage of Ph.D. scientists who wind up with faculty research jobs is a
mere 0.5%.29
26
Dr. Harry Kloor was an exception to this. Dr. Dr. Kloor is the only person to have been awarded two
Ph.D. degrees simultaneously in two distinct academic disciplines. Kloor earned doctorate degrees in
physics and chemistry from Purdue University in 1994 (while earning his MS at Purdue, KRG had solid
state physics class with Kloor). Harry “Doc” Kloor now works primarily as a Hollywood writer/producer/
consultant.
27
Source: National Science Foundation.
28
https://www.authorea.com/users/3/articles/23126/_show_article
29
The Academy’s Dirty Secret. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/
2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_
university_good.html
Grim as that sounds for freshly-minted Ph.D.s with research faculty aspira-
tions, a new study published in Science Advances30 surveyed more than 16,000
faculty members in the fields of business, computer science, and history at
242 colleges and universities. The study revealed a “steeply hierarchical struc-
ture that reflects profound social inequality.” It turns out that roughly a quarter
of all universities account for between 71 and 86 percent of all tenure-track
faculty in the U.S. and Canada in these fields. Just 18 universities produce half
of all computer science professors, 16 schools produce half of all business
professors, and eight schools graduate half of all history professors.
Graduate schools and professional organizations often sponsor workshops
or panel discussions for Ph.Ds. pursuing “alternate careers.”31 There is also no
shortage of web sites on the topic. Although the term “alternate careers” in this
context means “careers outside of academia” or, more specifically, “careers
outside of tenure-track research faculty positions”, given the small percentage
of scientists holding doctorates who actually wind up in research faculty
positions, perhaps the research faculty positions are what should be considered
“alternate,” because they are certainly not the norm, despite the strong social
structures permeating science that imply that they are.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.
Albert Einstein, physicist
In the previous section, we touched upon the Hollywood “multiple Ph.D.”

trope. A much simpler, and far less cringe-inducing way of imbuing a scientist
character with extreme competence would be to simply opt for the honorific
“Professor” instead of simply “Doctor”.
Of the 30% of doctorate-holding scientists who initially remain in acade-
mia, most continue in post-doctoral research or a post-doctoral fellowship,
otherwise known as a “post-doc.” These are temporary positions, often one to
three years in duration, and are rather poorly paid. Although post-doc salaries
have been increasing, the annual salary set by the National Institutes of Health
for all grant-funded postdoctoral researchers directly out of graduate school is
currently $43,692, before taxes.
30
Clauset, A., S. Arbesman, and D.B. Larremore, Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring
networks, Science Advances 12 Feb 2015:Vol. 1, no. 1, e1400005. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400005.
31
Pay in these careers can be surprisingly low, even for Ph.D. holders. This is why scientists and engineers
are sometimes bemused by the consistent rhetoric of industry and governments about a pressing shortage
of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) professionals. If there were a true shortage,
competition for workers would drive wages considerably higher. Rather, policies focused toward educating
more STEM workers at all degree levels has proven to be a way to keep payroll costs down while addressing
fears about a workplace increasingly affected by automation that is eliminating middle-class jobs. See “The
STEM Crisis is a Myth,” by Robert N. Charette, IEEE Spectrum, September 2013.
During their post-doc, a Ph.D.-holding researcher carries out research and

not only deepens their expertise in their subject area, but helps them build a
body of publications in peer-reviewed journals in preparation for a tenure-
track faculty position. Few Ph.D.s are offered faculty positions without doing
at least one postdoc, many actually hold a succession of postdoctoral positions.
At every level—from the time a student decided to take the graduate
entrance exams like the GRE, to his or her first classes, through grad school,
and into a postdoc positions—a budding or junior scientist has been immersed
in an environment of hypercompetition. Some get all the way to the postdoc
stage before saying “enough is enough”.
The post-postdoc options then bifurcate: For scientists who still wish to
remain in academia, but prefer teaching or want off of the competition
carousel, there are options at small- and medium-sized institutions. For
those who revel in life at the cutting edge of what is known, nothing but a
research position at a large top-tier research university will do (though some
positions in industry and government laboratories may come close).
Hollywood has had a tendency to portray researchers as toiling away in
isolation—the mad scientist working in his dungeon laboratory, the engineer
who boasts he designed an entire spacecraft, even Tony Stark building yet
another variant of his suit. Although series like Eureka, Fringe, and House, M.
D. and films such as The Hulk (2003) and Imitation Game (2014) portray
research being advanced in teams, and although there are typically budgetary
constraints on the number of characters a production can have,32 this is often
the exception rather than the rule. Although this is an understated trope, it
does misrepresent how research is actually done.
Nothing more fun than a paradigm-shifting evening of science.

Dr. Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory, “The Anxiety Optimization”
When one thinks of careers where interpersonal skills are a “need to have” as
opposed to a “nice to have”, “scientist” is not the first career that springs to mind.
Still, much of the cutting edge research done today is highly interdisciplinary in
nature, and few people work alone, because few people possess enough expertise
in all the relevant areas of a research project to be able to work alone.
Rick Loverd, Program Director for the Science and Entertainment
Exchange, says that his is one area where science advisors can help improve
the verisimilitude of productions:
32
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1 we explored the reasons why scientific competency might be concentrated
in a select few characters.
I think a lot of people think of that scientist stereotype of the sort of nebbish,
antisocial, works alone, kind of portrayal of science and science culture. Science
is collaborative. Scientists tend to work with a lot of people. . . Even computer
scientists, who you would think when you think of somebody who is just coding
all day, you think of that as a solitary activity, and I’ve been told many times by
my friends who code that actually it’s the community that they work with that
drew them to the field.
This also means that scientists cannot hide behind an idealized picture of their
profession as a place where people rise or fall on the basis of pure individual
ability. The same currents of social inclusion and exclusion that exist in other
human communities can to some extent determine whose work gets accepted
and supported and whose doesn’t. Often, if we find a lack of women or
minorities in one field, there are claims that the underrepresented group just
aren’t that interested (or, in extreme cases, aren’t that naturally talented) in
that area. If the behavior of a community can draw people into a field, then we
should be willing to accept that it can repel people as well.
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we discussed a 2012 study by researchers from
the University of Illinois, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago33 which concluded that, contrary to pre-
vious thought, cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligence are strongly
correlated. The study’s lead author, neuroscientist Aron Barbey from the
University of Illinois, says, “Intelligence, to a large extent, does depend on
basic cognitive abilities, like attention and perception and memory and
language. . . But it also depends on interacting with other people. We’re
fundamentally social beings and our understanding not only involves basic
cognitive abilities but also involves productively applying those abilities to
social situations so that we can navigate the social world and understand
others.”34 Since it takes a Ph.D. for most scientist jobs, and since it takes a
nontrivial amount of intelligence to earn a Ph.D., let us make the assumption
that scientists are, in general, high IQ people. What this implies is that
scientists have the skills to be at least as socially nimble as anybody else.
What research has found, however, is that high IQ people tend to use these
skills very selectively.
This extends to their personal lives. While the nerdy, isolated scientist is a
character that can be borne out in real life, scientists tend to have very active
social lives. Although many scientists and engineers (including author SAC)
take issue with the portrayal of the characters in the series The Big Bang Theory,
33
Barbey, A.K., R. Colom, and J. Grafman (2012) Distributed neural system for emotional intelligence
revealed by lesion mapping, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. doi: 10.1093/scan/nss124
34
Good News, Nerds! IQ Linked to Emotional Intelligence: http://www.medicaldaily.com/
good-news-nerds-iq-linked-emotional-intelligence-244372
Fig. 3.5 One series that does an extraordinary job of capturing many aspects of the
culture of science is The Big Bang Theory. Pictured are Dr. Amy Farrah-Fowler played by
Mayim Bialik (who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA in real life) and Jim Parsons as
Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Note the “meta” reference, where Amy lists that she likes the couple
Blossom and Joey. Dr. Bialik played the titular Blossom in that series. Copyright © Chuck
Lorre Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
the social interconnectedness of the scientist characters is one of the rare

accurate portrayals of this facet of life as a scientist (Fig. 3.5).
As with other high-achieving professionals, few scientists enjoy 40-hour work
weeks. Part of this is by choice—the same motivation that gets somebody
through a grueling Ph.D. program often does not dissipate upon graduation,
even if an individual chooses to contribute to the body of science by teaching
rather than by doing research. Part of this is often by necessity, however, and
some scientists—particularly early career scientists—have difficulty envisioning a
social life outside of work. There can be pressures, subtle and overt, to “take one
for the team” and sacrifice leisure time for more time working. There are always
things do to, always grant application and conference talk deadlines looming, and
solutions and insights for challenging problems are frequently not confined to an
“8 to 5” schedule (Fig. 3.6).35
You are your job.

Arnold Rimmer, Red Dwarf, “Holoship”
35
This is a particular problem when it comes to having children, and one most felt by female scientists,
with many of them losing ground to their male peers or dropping out of their careers after pregnancy or
adoption. Some universities have tried to address this problem by suspending the “tenure clock” for one
year after becoming a mother, but a lot remains to be done.
While scientists do tend to work

long hours—by choice or otherwise—
they do have some leisure time, and
tend to have more once their careers
are firmly established. In fact, hobbies
and leisure time activities not only
co-exist, but are in fact synergistic.
Chris Woolston writes in Nature:
There is plenty of evidence that sci-

entific research and leisure pursuits
can coexist. A study published in
2008 found that Nobel prizewinners
were more likely than other scientists
or members of the public to have
long-standing hobbies. Notably, the
prizewinners were about 1.5 times
more likely to actively pursue arts
Fig. 3.6 There is a mutual appreciation
and crafts than were members of the
society between scientist characters in
US National Academy of Sciences. The Big Bang Theory (2007–) and The
For this sample, hobbies turned out Flash (2014–) who are clearly fans of
to be better predictors of Nobel-level each others’ shows. Notice that Cisco
greatness even than reported IQ, Ramon (Carlos Valdes) is wearing a
which does not vary much between Rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock T-shirt.
Images Copyright © Berlanti Productions
‘top’ and ‘average’ scientists.36
and Chuck Lorre Productions and War-
ner Bros. Television. Images courtesy of
Michigan State University Physiologist moviestillsdb.com.
Robert Root-Bernstein, lead author on
a recent study of scientists’ hobbies and
diversions, says that, contrary to public opinion, high-achieving scientists are
often more physically active, adventurous, and daring than other members of
the general public. “An unexpectedly large number of Nobel laureates took up
surfing when it came into fashion in the 1960s,”37, 38 Bernstein acknowledges
that it is difficult to know if pastimes fuel the genius, or whether geniuses are
more likely to engage in leisure time activities. “It’s probably some combina-
tion,” he says. Jennifer Ouellette adds,
36
Woolston, C. (2015) Leisure activities: The power of a pastime, Nature 523,117–119 doi:10.1038/
nj7558-117 http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/
nj7558-117a
37
Root-Bernstein, R. et al. 2008, J. Psychol. Sci. Technol. 1, 51–63.
38
See also https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/1035/arts-
foster-scientific-success.pdf
I’ve had many meetings where I’ve introduced a scientist to an entertainer and
the entertainer has, in an aside, said to me said something like “Wow, they’re
so young and so accomplished” or “Wow they’re so cool and I didn’t realize
that they rock climb that’s crazy” and that sort of stereotype of what a scientist
is so unbelievably pervasive that I think even for someone in the entertainment
industry, who tends to be someone who’s a pretty educated, pretty smart,
pretty savvy person to have risen to that level of success. I think it’s really
interesting that these stereotypes are so unbelievably pervasive that, even in a
group like that, you kind of have certain expectations in their minds about
what needs to be a scientist and, wherever we can, we try to have a consultants
be ambassadors to change that or to show people that scientists are people too.
Scientists come from all kinds of backgrounds and all sorts of interests outside
of the lab.
Also, again contrary to popular stereotype, there are some leisure time activities
scientists avoid. Ouellette elaborates:
On a very early episode of Bones, they wanted to do something with a physicist

being murdered. They initially asked, “Where would this murder take place?”
“How about a Mensa meeting? Because smart people are members of Mensa.”
I said, “No physicist would be caught dead at Mensa.” But we talked about what
conferences were, and what they do at conferences when they share papers and
how they give colloquia. They ended up coming up with, as a result, a kind of
interdisciplinary privately-funded think tank. Like a really exclusive Santa Fe
Institute.
To relieve stress and to let their imaginations wander, scientists tend towards
pastimes that are esoteric, quirky, artistic, even adrenaline-pumping. Don’t
take our word for it! The fascinating, varied, and often counter-intuitive
pastimes of scientists and engineers are on display in the PBS web series The
Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers.39
Scientists. . . on Hollywood Scientists

In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we examined, and debunked to some degree, an
oft-cited 2005 quip of filmmaker Janes Cameron that Hollywood always
depicts scientists as “idiosyncratic nerds or actively the villains.” Although a
good argument can be made that this was the case at one point, a better case
can be made that the landscape of scientist character depictions has been
improving since the early 1990s. Although the nerdy scientist is still a fixture
39
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/
in TV and film,40 the mad scientist has faded far into the background as one of
six onscreen scientist archetypes.41
According to Matthew Nisbet, associate professor of communication stud-
ies at Northeastern University in Boston, and Anthony Dudo, assistant
professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Texas-Austin,
the results of an analysis of primetime content between 2000 and 2008 “. . .
finds that scientists—in accord with their professional distribution among the
general population—remain relatively rare characters in the TV world—with
just 1% of characters being scientists—but when they are shown, it is almost
exclusively in a positive light.”
In Hollyweird Science, we met Dr. Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman
Lear Center of the Anneberg School of Communications at the University of
Southern California. On the topic of content analysis studies similar to those
on which Nisbet and Dudo report, Kaplan adds,
Content analysis of entertainment is a field that’s highly developed, we do a lot

of it, we’ve been doing it for more than 10 years. There is almost no area where
the depiction of BLANK in entertainment. . . that hasn’t been filled in: judges
and jurors, black people, gay people, sports, you name it, those exist.
Despite improving onscreen depictions, poll scientists and you still find that
many still take serious issue with how their profession is portrayed in TV and
film. There is clearly a perceptual problem, so let us take a deeper dive to see if
we can understand why the angst remains.
In Vol. 1 we detailed many of the storytelling forces that drive the depiction
of any on-screen character, including those to which scientists have been
subjected, and the way these forces have been evolving. Still, many scientists
either don’t understand the reason why storytellers make the choices they do,
or feel that they are uniquely maligned compared to other professions. Just as
in the film A Perfect Storm (2000), based on the real-life 1991 collision of large
storms in the Atlantic to create a superstorm, three phenomena continue to
collide to help propagate the belief among scientists that Hollywood treats
people in their profession badly.
The nature of television and film storytelling is very reductionist. A synopsis
of the film Gravity, can be boiled down into a sentence: The film is about a
shuttle mission gone horribly awry, and the struggle of two survivors to return
home. Just as a 91 minute film can be summarized in a single sentence,
40
Not that there’s anything wrong with nerds.
41
Succinctly, there’s the Mad Scientist/Villain, the Socially Awkward Nerd, the Hero, the Sidekick, the
Corporate Pawn, and the Conflicted Prantagonist.
character portrayals in film, and to a lesser degree, in television, are synopses of

a character’s life.
With limited time in which to tell a story, one of the axioms by which
screenwriters (even more so television writers) live is: “Enter late/leave early.”
To be efficient with screen time, every scene should join the action as late as
possible, and leave as early as possible. For example, rather than writing that
Crick knocks at Watson’s office door, waits for a “Come in”, crosses the room,
exchanges in a preamble conversation,42 and then gets to business, a scene is
more likely to be written:
INT. WATSON’S OFFICE, CAVENDISH LABORATORY – DAY

Watson and Crick stare across the desk from one
another. Watson is pissed, and slams the desk
with his fist.
WATSON
It’s only a matter of time until
Pauling realizes his model has one too
many helixes. I need that diffraction
data!
CRICK
Dammit, Jim, I’m a physicist, not. . .
Watson just stares knowingly.
CRICK
I’ll get right on that.
Crick turns on his heel and heads for the door.
Watson calls after him.
WATSON
What about Franklin’s data? Use that,
just don’t tell her.
In a fractal sort of way, a cinematic production enters late into a character’s

life, and often leaves early, following them for a comparatively brief period
only.43 We rarely know their backstory, unless it serves the story, and often we
often do not know how their lives play out. . . unless it serves the story. Even
while we’re following that person, we’re privy to the bullet points only, to the
“edited highlights”.
42
Neophyte screenwriters, pay attention here.
43
Compared to the duration of their entire lives. Unless they are Amy Pond. Or River Song.
If producers created a new TV cop series with total commitment to

verisimilitude, the subsequent paperwork onslaught would result in a less-
than-compelling viewing experience, it would certainly fall far short of “Must
See TV,” and that show may never reach a second episode. Screenwriters,
therefore, focus on the interesting aspects of that character’s life, and on
interesting personality quirks. Just as the pleasantries were omitted in the
scene snippet above, screenwriters omit the more mundane aspects of a
character’s life and go for the dramatic. What the viewer is left with is a
caricature. It may be an interesting caricature, even a very interesting one, but
it is a caricature nevertheless.
I used to watch cops shows with my Dad. My Dad was a cop and he would get
angry at the TV because they weren’t doing cop procedurals right.
Tom DeSanto, Producer, X-Men and Transformers
This is true for more than just scientists. Pick an ethnic group, a religious
group, a professional group, folks with a similar hobby,44 it’s nearly impossible
to identify a career portrayed in Hollywood that isn’t similarly distorted.
Hollywood has even created enduring stereotypes of the denizens who inhabit
Hollywood itself. Anybody who has ever watched a film or television show
about the entertainment industry is well-acquainted with archetypes like the
alcoholic writer, the shady agent, the lecherous casting director, the scheming
producer, and the control-freak director.45 These recurring stereotypes are no
more nor less accurate than those of any other professional group. Again,
Kaplan shares, “There are over a hundred [advocacy] groups in Hollywood
whose purpose is to get their depiction right. There’s a [book] about them.46
Whether it’s a depiction or behavior, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or
Buckle Up, you name it, that is part of what happens in Hollywood.”
I’m sure heroes like their portrayal. No, they probably complain too.
Bradley Thompson, writer/producer
Although the mission of The Science and Entertainment Exchange is

primarily to provide technical input into television and movies to improve
the level of the science, Rick Loverd, Program Director, believes that the
44
Like fanboys/girls, for example. You’re among friends here.
45
OK, there might be something to that one, it’s part of the job description.
46
Suman, Michael (ed) Advocacy Groups and the Entertainment Industry, Praeger (2000).
Exchange also acts as an advocacy group, but in a manner that is very different
than other such groups. Loverd says:
[The Exchange] does it in a way that’s very different, I would argue, from a lot of
other sorts of advocacy groups that might be trying to impact Hollywood. There
are groups that say there’s too much violence, or people shouldn’t be smoking,
or any number of issues, you can sort of take your pick on that. There are groups
out there that try to shine a light on the negative aspects [of a portrayal], and
what the Exchange does is we try to build relationships because our thinking is:
writers write what they know. So if a writer has met you, and they can’t envision
a scenario in which you would be twirling your mustache on a cliff face watching
the city be destroyed by the monsters you’ve created and unleashed on innocent
people, then maybe we can change that sort of trope of the mad scientist. That’s
something that is low-hanging fruit in the storytelling world—to have science
gone awry cause the problem. We’re doing what we can hopefully to impact
storytellers to. . . at least if you’re going to do that, then at least have science be
part of the solution. In a perfect world, have scientists always be the people who
are working for good within that construct.
A second factor that may contribute to the disappointment we feel when

people “like me” are portrayed badly in TV and film is a suite of psychological
phenomena that can creep into, and wreak havoc with, the scientific
method—a tendency that researchers actively attempt (or at least should
attempt) to minimize: bias. Scientific bias occurs when a researcher allows—
consciously or unconsciously—pre-existing beliefs or expectations to shape the
research or data analysis.
We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

The Talmud
In experimental research, for example, bias can occur when researcher a

priori anticipates a study’s outcome.47 There have also been experiments—
particularly psychological or drug studies—where the experimenter has, con-
sciously or unconsciously influenced subject behavior.48 On occasion,
researchers have altered or selectively recorded experimental results in accor-
47
Or, worse, when they have an alternate agenda and/or an a priori stake in a certain outcome.
48
Which is why some studies use what is called a “double blind” technique to eliminate this.
dance with whether or not the results supported or contradicted a

pre-conceived opinion.
A recent high profile study, eventually expunged from the scientific litera-
ture, displayed all manners of experimenter bias. In September 2012, a
research team led by French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini submitted
a paper to the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology. The paper, reporting on a
two-year study that compared rats fed genetically modified corn versus those
fed non-GMO corn, reported that rats fed GM corn developed tumors. The
paper was instantly met with a groundswell of harsh criticism from the
scientific community.
Among the many flaws49 the scientific community found with the study,
the researchers employed a strain of laboratory rat called Sprague-Dawley rats.
These rats have a lifespan of only about two years, with a high risk of
developing cancer over their normal lifespan.50 The GMO feeding extended
over the normal lifespan of the lab rats, and since the longer the rats live, the
greater the likelihood that they will acquire cancer through natural means, of
course they developed cancer.51
The paper was eventually retracted from the scientific literature, and one of
the reasons given was essentially, “This study was performed on a strain of
laboratory rat that has a well-known propensity for tumors. The rats in the
study got tumors. The study contributes nothing to the body of scientific
knowledge.” The research design contained built-in bias.
Anybody not living in a cave has heard about media bias, when journalists or
news producers in mass media bring pre-conceived notions or agendas to their
reporting. Bias can creep into our psyches in any number of ways, and just as
there can be filters that bias the outbound flow of information from the source,
there can be biases that filter information on the receiving end just as well.
There are several cognitive biases—basic miscues in recollection, assessment,
thinking, or other cognitive processes—that can influence perceptions and
behavior. Based upon their perceptions, often filtered through the prism of our
own biases, humans create their own subjective social reality which may
reinforce previously-existing viewpoints and biases, alter incoming informa-
tion, and dictate behavior. Cognitive biases can lead to perceptual distortion
and irrationality in even the most intelligent people. In particular, biases can
49
Seriously, this study should be taught to undergrads in a “How not to do experimental science” course.
50
Studies have shown that between 70 and 80% of Sprague-Dawley rats develop cancer over a normal
lifetime.
51
Displaying another form of bias, one more typically associated with advertising, the paper contained
images of GMO-fed rats with huge tumors, but no images of control group rats—many of whom, based
upon previously-established percentages, must have had tumors. This type of bias is called reporting bias.
seriously color or dictate how viewers perceive their cinematic portrayal of

people “like me”.
Confirmation or “My Side” Bias This is the tendency for people to

notice or collect information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs, while
giving less consideration to—or even dismissing—information that supports
alternate views or conclusions. The effect is stronger for deeply-held beliefs and
emotionally charged issues. There is also a tendency for people to interpret
ambiguous evidence as supporting their pre-existing views.
Negativity Bias People recall and pay more attention to negative events
than to positive ones.52 It is in our evolutionary wiring to give priority to
negative experiences in order to remember what not to do again, or who to
avoid in the future. The primitive emotional limbic system (especially the
amygdala) is wired closely to the hippocampus, and infuses any memories
tinged with strong emotion or negativity with extra strength. Thus, these
events will naturally stand out over a sea of predictable (and safe) sameness.53
Selective Memory Related to confirmation bias, people have a tendency to

better recall information that aligns with their current physical or emotional
state. Social exclusion54 has been found to be one of these states. It is possible
that a scientist does match the lonely or nerdy scientist stereotypes, and despite
the numerous portrayals otherwise, they attend more, or exclusively, to those
aspects of scientists’ portrayals in movies and television that match that state.
Implicit Stereotyping If a scientist believes scientist characters are

depicted as only nerds or villains, reinforcing examples may be all that such
a person sees.
When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else
out, and find that thing everywhere.
Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), Pi (1998)
52
The U.S. Navy even has a colorful saying for this: “One ‘Ahshit!’ wipes out 100 ‘Attaboys!’.” People will
remember your screw-ups far more than your successes.
53
“Bad is Stronger than Good”: http://www.carlsonmba.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf
54
Succinctly, social exclusion is a type of discrimination where individuals or communities are not given
full access to the benefits of society, usually due to factors such as ethnicity, religion, sex, or sexual
orientation.
Another factor that propagates the notion that Hollywood treats scientists
badly is that there has also been no shortage of recent written pieces that have
decried Hollywood’s treatment of scientist characters, despite content analysis
studies showing sharply contradictory trends. Just as with the Hollywood
Curriculum Cycle, where screenwriters will propagate a science inaccuracy
because it was in a previous movie, scientists and science writers who write
about the portrayal of science and scientists in TV and film are not immune to
this, and certain paradigms get repeated and “trope-ified,” with little critical
analysis aforethought, something which can help perpetuate and reinforce the
inaccuracy. Nisbet and Dudo write:
. . .despite evidence to the contrary, a belief in a one-sided negative portrayal of

scientists persists, and is promoted in recent commentaries and books, usually to
reinforce a narrative about an alleged loss of standing for science in society. An
example is the chapter discussing the entertainment media in Chris Mooney and
Sheril Kirshenbaum’s Unscientific America: How Scientific Uncertainty Threatens
Our Future.55
The authors argue that the negative stereotype of a mad, dysfunctional scientist
still dominates Hollywood, citing as evidence a quantitative study of portrayals
from the mid-1980s by former University of Pennsylvania communication
researcher George Gerbner and colleagues56 and an analysis by Stanley
Goldman57 from the same time period. The Gerbner study showed that, in
comparison to other occupations, scientists featured in primetime television
suffered a higher ratio of negative stereotypes and were more likely to be victims
of violence.
Yet subsequent research documents a shift towards the positive for the image of
scientists. In a 1999 report to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Gerbner and
colleagues updated their analysis, concluding that, based on data collected
during the mid-1990s, “there is no basis to claim that any kind of systematic
negative portrayal of scientists exists. Changes have occurred in Hollywood since
55
Mooney and Kirshenbaum, Mooney, C.; Kirshenbaum, S. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy
Threatens our Future; Basic Books: New York, 2009.
56
Gerbner, G.; Gross, L.; Morgan, M.; Signorielli, N. Science and Television. A Research Report by the
Annenberg School of Communications, 1985.
57
Goldman, S. L. Images of Technology in Popular Films: Discussion and Filmography. Science,
Technology, & Human Values. 1989, 14(3), 275–301.
the time of our initial study, which found scientists to be typically evil,
disturbed, sexually dysfunctional villains. . .this is no longer the case”58, 59
More recent analysis of TV content confirms this trend.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
Two more biases are products of the Internet age. No abstract available bias,
or NAA, bias is a tendency among scholars to cite academic journal articles
only when an abstract is available online, as opposed to the more exhaustive
(and exhausting) approach of a library literature search, or even pouring
through the reference lists of similar recent papers. Full text on net bias, or
FUTON, is the tendency of scholars to cite preferentially journals whose full
text is available on line free of charge (aka open access60).
In what is, perhaps, a related bias, in three high profile writings,61, 62, 63
authors have decried the science in the film The Core, citing a 2006 paper by
Michael Barrett and colleagues in the Journal of Science Education and Tech-
nology,64, 65 that reported that students who had watched The Core had
misunderstandings of Earth science concepts that were not shared by those
who hadn’t watched the film. Another commonality is that all three then laud
the film The Day after Tomorrow because it raises awareness of climate change.
These writings also approve of The Day After Tomorrow’s positive portrayal of
scientist characters. This comparison has become a science trope.
58
Gerbner, G.; Linson, B. Images of Scientists in Prime Time Television. A Report for the
U.S. Department of Commerce. 1999.
59
Selecting data or citing references to support a pre-conceived bias—in this case citing a 1990 paper
when an update written by the same research group, with radically different findings, existed as of 1999—
rather than reaching a conclusion based upon the best available evidence is another type of cognitive bias
called cherry picking.
60
After the publication of the first Hollyweird Science book, people actually contacted the authors on
multiple occasions complaining that the book was not open access. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA
HA! HA. Seriously?
61
Perkowitz, S. Hollywood Science: Movies, Science & the End of the World. London: Cambridge University
Press. 2007.
62
Mooney and Kirshenbaum. Mooney, C.; Kirshenbaum, S. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy
Threatens our Future; Basic Books: New York, 2009.
63
Merchant, The Science and Entertainment Exchange: The National Academy of Sciences Goes to
Hollywood, in Hollywood Chemistry: When Science Met Entertainment.
64
Barrett M, Wagner H, Gatling A, Anderson J, Houle M, Kafka A (2006) Journal of Science Education
and Technology 15 (2), pp 179–191.
65
Admittedly, we also cited it in Hollyweird Science, Vol. 1, Chap. 2: “The Path to Nerdvana”.
Like bad relationship choices, it always seems easy to identify cognitive biases in
other people. In ourselves, not so much.
Sean Carroll, Ph.D., theoretical physicist, Caltech
What if the analyses were reversed? Nobody would argue that The Core had
great science, and, admittedly, it was painful to watch Virgil burrow into a
cavernous underground geode. Still, the science in The Day After Tomorrow is
equally painful. In the real world, wind occurs primarily because of differential
solar heating—and flows from regions of high pressure (which tend to be hot
and dry) to low pressure (cool and moist). Rather than heat flow, the film relies
on cold flow for dramatic effect—cold that freezes everything except the
vicious CGI wolves and the actors’ breath. The scientist Janet Tokada
(Tamilyn Tomita) even warns, “Satellite readings are showing a temperature
drop of 10 degrees per second,” which would achieve absolute zero in less than
a minute. The character Gomez in the film performs the wanton science sin of
saying, “Jack, all you have is a theory.”
It is unlikely that the science in The Day After Tomorrow would fare well in a
study similar to the Barrett study. Science miscues occurred early and often. In
fact, the one event that the film actually sold impressively well—that global
warming could result in catastrophic global cooling—was done in a couple
lines of brief exposition.66 If the film raised awareness for global warming, the
throw-away nature of the exposition that explained what caused the series of
events also provided ample ammunition for climate change deniers.
Moreover, the claim that scientists in The Day After Tomorrow are portrayed
in a positive light is debatable. Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), the main character in
the film, is certainly portrayed as courageous and as a devoted father, and he
falls into the increasingly common scientist character archetype of scientist
hero,67 but he also makes a string of very bad decisions: his quest to rescue his
son is extremely ill-advised at best, he exposes the face of an unconscious friend
to the cold, he exposes his own face when the worst of the cold hits, and he
even takes his gloves off to get a better grip on a cold metal handhold.68 These
are not actions that cast a scientist character in a positive light.
Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhard), the main character in The Core, is cut
from the same hero scientist mold as Hall: intelligent, likeable, and coura-
geous. What he does not do is make Hall’s series of horrible science-free
66
Which actually seems to have happened about 14,000 years ago during an event called the Younger
Dryas.
67
See the Chap. 3: “Scientists: Reel and Imaginary” in Hollyweird Science.
68
For cryin’ out loud, man, have you never seen A Christmas Story?
decisions. The team of scientists and engineers who build the craft Virgil are
portrayed as competent and professional. Even Conrad Zimsky—the narcis-
sistic and morally ambiguous scientist responsible for the whole mess that is
the inciting incident—sacrifices his own life at a critical juncture for the
success of the mission and the benefit of humanity.
In short, the claim that the science in The Day After Tomorrow is acceptably
good because it raises awareness of climate change and portrays scientists in a
positive light is akin to claiming that the science in The Core is acceptable
because it raises awareness that the interior of Earth is hot. . . and the film
portrays scientists in a positive light.
Indeed, although scientists may be capable of dissecting the science accuracy
within fictional science productions,69 consider that perhaps they are not the
best choice to comment on scientist portrayals when the depiction hits too
close to home. Dr. Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at
USC’s Anneberg School of Communications elaborates:
There is a world of difference between people’s anecdotal and qualitative

impressions of what goes on in entertainment, and the results of quantitative
research of content analysis. I would not trust anybody’s description to me of
how anyone was portrayed or depicted. I would not take that as a fact, I would
take it as a rhetorical maneuver. It’s not a data point; it’s a persuasive gambit,
and its purpose is to improve or change how they think something is being
depicted. In almost every case, there is a disparity between the results of
[a content] analysis, and what you hear people opine about. So I would not
discount the fact that there are opinions out there, but there’s a world of
difference between that and the actual results of content analysis.
Scientists. . . be a scientist for a moment. Implied in Kaplan’s statement above

is that when you rely upon people to write about Hollywood’s portrayal of
their own group, they are going to be biased. Recall our discussion of
uncertainty. Uncertainty in the measurement of properties of a population
scales as n½, where n is the sample size. Researchers who perform these
sorts of large-scale content analysis study have a much larger n than most
scientists.70, 71
69
Especially if it’s their science. More on this in a follow-up chapter.
70
Unless they watch a lot of television.
71
What are you doing watching television? You have a conference paper to finish!
Fig. 3.7 Dr. Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) and Dr. Victor Bergman (Barry Morse) may
not have been flashy, insanely attractive, or emotionally tortured, but they were believ-
able scientist characters stationed on Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999. Copyright
© Group 3 Productions, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
If we understand that, by dramatic necessity, cinematic characters are

distillations—they’re caricatures—and if other groups are similarly distorted,
does it really matter? In some important respects, yes, very much so.
Recall that one of the goals of each screenwriter is “Never wake the audience
from my dream”, and that includes avoiding “Oh, please!” moments that pull
the audience out of the story. An inaccurate or unflattering portrayal of
somebody “like me” will pull viewers out of the drama just as surely as
sound in space.72
There is also the concern that, although insiders of the group may recognize
how Hollywood depictions vary from reality, others may not. The Castithans,
one of the alien races from the SyFy Channel series Defiance (2013–2015),
have a saying: “Seeming is believing. How I act is how my liro [caste] is
perceived” Rephrased, if something appears true, then it might as well be true.
Non-scientists derive their stereotypes of scientists from TV and cinema.
Clinical psychologist Andrea Letamendi, Ph.D., says that there is a real
world equivalent when it comes to media depictions:
We know through research that our self-value, identity, how we see ourselves,
how we understand the world to see us. . . that’s hugely dependent on the media
portrayal of the people “like us.” Naturally, as you can imagine, when we
disagree with that portrayal, we don’t align with it, we don’t connect with it,
72
Even more so, actually. Even though they understand the rationale for it, silence in space runs so
counter to some viewers’ expectations that they find it off-putting.
and it’s supposed to be the portrayal of “us,” our role, identity, our profession,
our field, certainly we’re disappointed, we’ll have complaints about it, or we
simply find it to be inaccurate and we’ll discount it.
Janet Losh’s 2009 study found a direct correlation, and that, as the onscreen
depiction of scientist characters has improved, so has the stereotypes held by
adult audiences.73 Life imitates art, or is, at least, strongly influenced by
it. Letamendi elaborates, “I’m not going lie, when I watch S.H.I.E.L.D. or
when I watch Big Bang Theory, or whatever I’m watching, as soon as there’s a
psychologist, or a clinical researcher, or anybody that shares the same role or
title or education that I have, I immediately am drawn to that person or that
character. I scrutinize, and I analyze, and evaluate, and try to align with that
character. If I’m unhappy with that relationship or that connection, then I’m
going to complain about it.”
We are in no way picking on scientists. Quite the opposite, in fact. Despite
the many and varied ways that Hollywood has portrayed scientists as different
than everybody else, sometimes to the point of being almost inhuman, we are
saying that, when a Hollywood portrayal either hits too close to home, or
touches a nerve, scientists typically react in exactly the same way as the rest of
society reacts. In the end, they want to be seen in a way that accurately reflects
all the aspects of who they are: their intellectual talents, work skills, social lives,
real emotions, and hobbies outside of being a scientist.
So what you’re saying is that I write poetry because underneath my mean,

callous, heartless exterior, I really just want to be loved. Is that right?
Er, well... I mean yes, yes, don’t we all, deep down. . . you know?
Vogon Captain and Ford Prefect, The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Back off, Man, We’re Scientists

Content analysis studies reveal that scientist characters in Hollywood pro-
ductions are already treated at least as well as those of other professions. This
does not mean that scientists should not lobby to improve still further the
accuracy of science, and the depiction of their profession and its culture.
When Carl Sagan rocketed to fame with Cosmos (1980), he was viewed with
considerable suspicion by his peers because, back then, scientists did not
explain things to the common folk. “We understand the science, you don’t
73
Losh, S. C. Stereotypes about Scientists over Time Among US Adults: 1983 and 2001. Public
Understanding of Science. 2012, 19(3), 372–382.
have to, just give us our grants and let us work in peace.” This willingness to
ignore the public was probably a consequence of the massive expansion in
government funding for science and technology research in the years following
World War II, especially after Sputnik. Today, budgets are much tighter and
scientists find that it makes much more sense to explain to the general public
just what it is that they are getting for their tax money. Consequently, the
situation has reversed 180 degrees, and there is a very high emphasis on science
communications, and even conferences like Communicating Science to the
Public (ComSciCon). The power of the media and the Internet allow for rapid
dissemination of science results. Space probes have their own official Twitter
accounts and Facebook pages. Grumbling volcanoes and rare animals can be
watched through web cams. Migrating birds and fish can be tracked online.
Organizations like the Science and Entertainment Exchange give scientists an
unprecedented opportunity to take an active role in their media portrayals.
Content analysis studies confirm that scientist portayals have been improv-
ing since the early 1990s, so scientists looking to improve the portrayal of
scientist characters should understand that they already operate from a place of
strength. Although they may consult on technical issues only, science advisors
and technical consultants should assume that they are being observed as role
models. Inaugural Exchange Program Directory Jennifer Ouellette believes:
I think that an Exchange consultant, a science field expert, is also an ambassador.

I think, like, 80% of Americans don’t know a scientist... So you really do come
in there as sort of an ambassador for your field, and I think that, by and large, the
people who engage with us are really interested in bridging the gap between the
two communities
Writers watch television and movies as well—probably far more than the
average viewer, in fact. So just as negative scientist archetypes were propagated
through the Hollywood Curriculum cycle, perhaps now that an increasing
number of movies and TV series are portraying positive scientist role models,
that feedback can work to the benefit of science and scientists.
Although scientists are making unprecedented inroads into the entertain-
ment industry, many are derisive or openly antagonistic towards that industry.
Perhaps owing to past negative portrayals, perceived or genuine,74 scientists
can be loathe to collaborate with Hollywood, even with respect to improving
their own portrayals. Ouellette says,
74
Being realistic, even though the nerds and megalomaniacs belong primarily to the cinematic past, it is
not without good reason that scientists hold the beliefs they do regarding their portrayals.
Before I even joined the Exchange I was at the Kavli Institute up in Santa
Barbara where I was the journalist in residence. One of the things that I did was
bring up David Saltzberg, who’s the consultant to The Big Bang Theory—then it
was in, like, its first season—and David Gray who is a TV writer. They talked to
the assembled physicists, several of whom were quite hostile about The Big Bang
Theory.
Then I had David make them come up with their own pilot, and show them the
structure, the different acts, and what had to happen at each point. And it was
like a lightbulb went off: “Oh there’s a theory.” These are all theoretical
physicists and once they saw, “Oh, you have a model,” they got it. It can
happen, but they can be resistant.
Certainly scientists hamper themselves by their attitude toward popular media.

They don’t seem to see it as an opportunity, but rather as an obstruction. That’s
just a very narrow and short-sighted view. It’s unfortunate, too.
Gregory Benford, Ph.D., physicist and science fiction novelist
Together science, scientists, and the entertainment industry can do great

things. Beyond the laudable goal of bringing to the public some of the latest
advancements and discoveries in the universe around us, we also have a chance
to talk in better detail about how science itself is done, warts and all. The
culture of science is fertile ground for screenwriters interested in presenting
rich characterizations. Reflecting more accurately the true culture of science,
rather than a collection of clichés, brings the exciting possibility of being able
to engage scientists in new conversations about their own fields, making
Hollywood science a two-way street.
We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic,
but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
Maria Montessori, MD, physician and science educator
4
The Scarecrow’s Blunder:
Mathematics and Statistics
Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which

stands continually open to our gaze. But it cannot be understood unless one
first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in
which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics.
Galileo Galilei, polymath, 1623
We all use math every day. To predict weather. . . to tell time. . . to handle
money. Math is more than formulas and equations. It’s logic; it’s
rationality. It’s using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.
Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), Opening narration, Numb3rs
The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly—to

develop strategies of seeing and showing.
Edward Tufte, statistician
If physics tells the story of the Universe, and mathematics its language, then
one might be tempted to believe that, as onscreen depictions of science and
scientists improve, mathematics and mathematicians would be similarly
uplifted. Unfortunately, onscreen depictions of anything math-related has
been a mixed bag in recent years. This has not always been the case. In the
past, filmmakers were more comfortable with math, probably because the
viewing populace was more comfortable with it. In fact, the best explanation
for an onscreen mathematical mistake by a beloved character was that it was
actually a gag inserted intentionally by the filmmakers.
In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow, upon receiving
his diploma from the good Wizard, ponders momentarily then spouts,
SCARECROW
The sum of the square roots of any
two sides of an isosceles triangle
is equal to the square root of the
remaining side.
Rather than following with, “Oh joy! Rapture! I got a brain! How can I ever
thank you enough?” a better query might have been, “I don’t mean to seem
ungrateful, this is really a very nice diploma and all, but may I also have a brain
to go with it?”1 The Scarecrow’s geometric recitation, it turns out, is incorrect.
Stated correctly, it should have proceeded, “The square root of the sum of the
squares of the perpendicular sides of a right triangle is equal to the square root
of the hypotenuse.” There are other ways to make that statement a correct one,
but they get much more complicated after the trivial solution.
If you view Google statistics, and consider how popular the pastime of
nitpicking scientific inaccuracies in TV and film has become, it is amazing the
degree to which this inaccuracy has slid under the radar. On the Computa-
tional Complexity web site,2 bloggers Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch support
the idea that the mistake was intentional.3 They suggest, “Recall that the
movie is all Dorothy’s dream. . . [she] didn’t know the proper way to state the
theorem.”
Wizard of Oz historian John Fricke also believes that this mistake was an
intentional one on the part of the writers, but for a very different reason. Fricke
tells Hollyweird Science,
They were very careful. . . this is the Golden Age of MGM and Hollywood.
MGM was a city. MGM was a unit unto itself. They had their own doctors, their
own dentists, their own blacksmith shops. Everything was right there in Culver
City. And an extraordinary research library. If you wanted something. . .
If you were leaving your set at six o’clock in the afternoon, and you said, “Okay,
please tell the prop department that we need a stuffed alligator 9 feet long at
8 o’clock tomorrow morning for our first shot,” when you got there, there
1
That the Scarecrow had no idea he was wrong, and did not know his analysis fell far short of accurate,
one might argue that this is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Part of this says that if you are
inexpert in a topic, you not only lack the ability to recognize mastery, you also have no idea how far away
you are from attaining expertise.
2
http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2009/02/movie-mistakes-
or-are-they.html
3
Especially if you subscribe to the notion—as many do—that, once a piece of art is created, it is open to
subjective interpretation, divorced from that of its creator.
4 The Scarecrow’s Blunder: Mathematics and Statistics 91
would be a stuffed alligator 9 feet long. They might even give you your choice of
color. But it was all right there—the research, all of it.
Of the dozen or so writers who worked on it or contributed to it, the first. . . the
man who gets credit for adapting the Wizard of Oz to a screenplay form is Noel
Langley. So I went back to the scripts I’ve got here, and we can specifically credit
Noel Langley with that part of the script. I’ve got a draft dated April 18, 1938
and these are changes to a script he already did.
Fricke shared that draft with Hollyweird Science, and in it the Scarecrow
spouts an even longer string of math and science gobbledygook to demonstrate
that he has a brain:
SCARECROW
The sum of the square roots of any
two sides of an isosceles triangle
is equal to the square root of the
remaining side: H-2-O plus H-2-S-
O-4 equals H-2-S-O-3 using pi-r
squared as a common denominator.
Oh joy! Oh rapture! What a brain!
One can only guess why the line was deleted—perhaps the blend of
chemistry with geometry in that manner was too obvious. That line does,
however, remove much of the doubt that the Scarecrow’s faulty exposition on
the nature of the isosceles triangle is intentional on the part of the writers, and
it also makes it clear that, in essence, the Wizard did very little. Fricke
elaborates on this point as well.
[Novelist L. Frank] Bohm’s thesis is that we all have everything inside of us that
we need, we just have to call upon it, and the Wizard gives them—both in the
book and then in the movie—he gives them different gifts to a certain extent.
But they’re tokens of, as he says, “Our esteem and affection.” So Scarecrow gets
a diploma, Tin Man gets a ticking heart-shaped clock or watch, and the Lion
gets a medal that says he’s courageous. They get the tokens, and all of a sudden
they leap to the conclusion that they’ve gotten what they wanted. So the fact
that Langley went that way with the Scarecrow doesn’t surprise me at
all (Fig. 4.1).
Fig. 4.1 “I’d be smarter than the Munchkins and a-calculatin’ functions, if I only had a
brain.” Hunk the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) can be forgiven for his math slip-up in The
Wizard of Oz, because his was, almost certainly, intentional on the part of the screen-
writers. Other productions do not deserve such leniency. Copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM), image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
Not all math errors in TV and cinema employ creative license, are inten-
tional, or even leave us wondering whether or not they were intentional. The
opening card in the 2005 film Aeon Flux reads:
2011
A virus kills 99% of the world’s population.
A scientist, Trevor Goodchild, develops a cure.
The five million survivors live in Bregna, the last city on Earth.
The film was produced, in part, by MTV films—the “M” clearly does not
stand for “Mathematics.” If we assume that the filmmakers assumed that the
world population in 2011 would be five billion people,4 the audience is left
wondering, “What happened to the remaining 45 million survivors?” One
percent of five billion is 50 million, leaving Bregna a trifle crowded. Alter-
nately, the virus actually killed 99.9% of the world’s population, leaving five
million survivors. Either way, the numbers do not add up, and this simple
4
It was actually well over six billion.
math error presumably made it through several levels of review before hitting
the silver screen. When it comes to blunders in TV and film, science has
nothing over mathematics.
If it seems that screenwriters sometimes have difficulties “getting” science
and scientists these days, the problem is multiplied for maths and mathema-
ticians. To be fair, if it seems to filmmakers that the viewing public finds topics
in science challenging, that’s doubly true for mathematics—to the point where
it can influence what filmmakers believe they can put on screen.
An example occurred with the 1997 film Contact. In the novel on which the
film was based, the value of π played a very significant role as the book drew to
a close,5 yet the storyline involving π was completely omitted in the film.6
Producer Lynda Obst explains:
Well [the decision] was a very contentious one, it was very difficult for us to give
up, because we all loved it, but I think that the studio and everybody agreed that
it was a little bit mathematically difficult for the mass audience to grasp. . . Not
everybody understands π.
Mathematics Box: Pi-curious
The value of pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and to
represent it exactly would require an infinite number of decimal places, which is not
possible in real world applications. In Chap. 2, we examined the concepts of accuracy
and precision, and pi is represented in a number of different ways. One estimate for
the value of pi, useful for back of the envelope calculations, is that it is approximately
equal to 22/7 (3.1428) or just 3.14. It is often expressed to four decimal places as
3.1416. For calculations spanning the entire range of double precision computer
mathematics (more on this in Chap. 5), you would require sixteen decimal places, or
3.1415926535897932. In an extreme example, in their book Pi Unleashed, J€ org Arndt
and Christoph Haenel7 calculate that, with thirty nine digits, one can calculate the
circumference of the observable universe to a precision on the scale of one atom.
Irrespective of whether or not they are useful or significant, many people have
memorized pi to an impressively large number of decimal places, a practice called
piphilology. One technique to memorize pi is to memorize a story or poem in which
the lengths of each word represents a digit of π: so the first word has three letters, the
second word has one, the third has four, the fourth has one, and so on. An early
example, formulated by English scientist James Jeans, is “How I want a drink, alcoholic
(continued)
5
The end of the novel, where π comes into play is actually very touching and satisfying. It is worth a
read—you will understand our frustration at its omission in the film—or, might we recommend the
excellent audio book with Jodi Foster performing the narration?
6
The BBC went in the other direction in “The Five Doctors”, the 20th Anniversary Special for Doctor
Who. The value of π was an important clue to solving a life or death puzzle.
7
Arndt, J€org; Haenel, Christoph (2006). Pi Unleashed. Springer-Verlag. Berlin 1998 ISBN 978-3-540-
66572-4.
of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.” Poems for memo-
rizing π are referred to as piems.
In the novel Contact by Carl Sagan, the alien intelligence who appears to Ellie
Arroway in the guise of her father tells Ellie that his people have discovered that there
is a message encoded within the infinite digits of π, though despite years of effort
they have yet to understand it. Since π is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its
diameter, their belief is that the only way there could be a message encoded within a
universal constant is if it had been put there by the creator of the Universe. This entire
thread was omitted from the film version of the story.
Since each digit of pi is uncorrelated with the previous one, they represent, in essence
a random string of digits, so UCSD mathematician and science fiction author Vernor
Vinge8 has a different take on Contact. He tells Hollyweird Science, “I was not really
happy with the π thing. . . It seems to me it depends on how deep you care to look,
because there are properties of pi already on the table. . . anything you want is there if
you can look deeply enough. Anything you want. Shakespeare’s plays are there.”
So I think that the notion of an irrational number is gorgeous, it’s elegant, and
Annie [Druyan] and I just discussed it last week again. . . in the [Contact] sequel
we want π.
Lynda Obst, producer, Contact
There is a scene from the opening moments of the HBO series The
Newsroom (2012–2014), which has been shared widely on social media. Will
McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) finds himself on a journalism panel seated metaphor-
ically between a liberal and a conservative. A student in the audience asks,
“Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” The liberal
responds, “Diversity and opportunity,” the conservative says, “Freedom and
freedom, so let’s keep it that way.” After a few reticent false starts, McAvoy
finally relents, “America isn’t the greatest country. . .” and he proceeds to
deliver a heartfelt tirade about why he believes that America may have been
the greatest country at one point in time, but that it is not any more. Among
his points, McAvoy says, “We’re seventh in literacy. Twenty-seventh in math.
Twenty-second in science. Forty-ninth in life expectancy. A hundred and
seventy-eighth in infant mortality. Third in median household income. Num-
ber four in labor force and number four in exports. . .” His speech is a lengthy
and eloquent one, and it is worth a watch.
Still, McAvoy (or at least the screenwriter) got a point or two wrong. In
Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we discussed the topic of comparative science literacy
among the world’s nations, and how statistics suggesting that the U.S. lags the
rest of the world are those for K-12 students, when U.S. adult science literacy is
8
Vinge is credited with coining the term “technological singularity” (though a better assessment is that he
popularized the term), so we will meet him again in Chap. 4.
second only to Sweden.9 As counter-intuitive as it may seem however—since

science rests so firmly upon the foundation of mathematics—the same cannot
be said for math literacy.
A 2016 study10 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES),
building upon a 2012 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD), finds U.S. workers rank dead last among
18 industrial countries in regards to having “problem-solving in technology-
rich environment” skills or skills that allow them to utilize digital technology
to evaluate information. The underlying reason was ever-declining literacy and
numeracy skills—the enabling skills necessary to perform well in the job
markets of today. . . and tomorrow. Americans, the study revealed, are far
less able to cope with numerical information than their peers from other
countries. Scoring the highest on the “problem-solving with technology”
survey were Japan, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. Poland scored second to
last, above the U.S.
When the study was first published in 2013, Secretary of Education Arne
Duncan didn’t mince words: “These findings should concern us all,” Dun-
can said. “They show our education system hasn’t done enough to help
Americans compete—or position our country to lead—in a global economy
that demands increasingly higher skills.” Agreeing with Duncan, and
mirroring Will McAvoy’s monologue from The Newsroom, Marc Tuck,
president and CEO of the National Center for Education and the Economy,
said “American workers, once the best educated in the world, are now among
the least well-educated, in the industrialized world. That has economic
consequences. . .”
Math is the real world, OK? It’s everywhere.

Charlie Epps, Numb3rs, “Sabotage”
Mathematics Box: All About e.
While the existence of pi has been known since at least 1000 BCE, perhaps much longer,
another important transcendental number e was discovered, much more recently, in
1683. Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli11 discovered e while exploring the
(continued)
9
Miller, Jon D. (2007). The Public Understanding of Science in Europe and the United States. Paper
presented at the AAAS annual meeting in San Francisco (Feb. 16).
10
https://nces.ed.gov/timss/
11
His brother Johann was also a famous mathematician.
question of compound interest and compounding frequencies, though the constant

shows up time and again in math and physics. The value of e is approximately
2.718281828, and the formula to describe it exactly is given by
n
1
e ¼ lim 1þ :
n!1 n
To arrive at this expression, imagine that a loan shark loans you 100 Quatloos
(Ƣ100), and demands 100% annual interest, compounded yearly. So at the end of one
year, you would owe Ƣ200. If the loan shark was a bit smarter, he’d insist upon
interest compounded more frequently. Say he wants 100% annual interest
compounded twice a year.

1 2
loan ¼ 100 1 þ :
2
At the end of a year, you would owe Ƣ225.00. What if the loan shark insisted upon
interest compounded monthly? We would have

1 12
loan ¼ 100 1 þ ,
12
which equals Ƣ261.3 What if the loan shark could insist that the interest be
compounded continuously, that is, with only an infinitesimal gap between the inter-
vals when the interest was calculated? You might think this could lead to owing an
infinite amount of money. Bernoulli observed that as n grows ever larger, the value of
the loan reaches a limit of Ƣ271.82.
n (1+(1/n))n
1 2.0000000000
10 2.5937424601
100 2.7048138294
103 2.7169239322
104 2.7181459268
105 2.7182682372
106 2.7182804692
107 2.7182816940
108 2.7182817864
109 2.7182820308
Figure 4B.1 shows how differently interest grows when compounded yearly, quar-
terly, and continuously.
(continued)
Fig. 4B.1 The rate of growth of a 1000 Quatloo investment at 20% annual interest
for different compounding rates.
The concept of limits are critical to calculus, and e turns up all over calculus too,
especially in problems involving growth or decay.
Innumeracy, the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy, has been linked to

science illiteracy in several different scientific disciplines. Innumeracy explains
why many people fail to understand the scale of the 9.5 trillion kilometers
(6 trillion miles) that represents one light-year. With no gut feeling for how
daunting interstellar travel really is, the statement “Look how many people see
UFOs every year, there has to be something to that” is more persuasive than
“Astronomers, trained watchers of the sky, never report UFOs.” Without an
understanding of how long a million years is, one can easily fail to understand
how rodents can evolve into primates which, in turn, can evolve into human
beings. Even overall computer literacy can take a hit when the population does
not have the collective math skills to understand numbering systems using
different bases.
Math Box: Base Jumping: Using Different Number Systems
Today, virtually all numerate human beings count using decimal notation. More
precisely, we use a “base 10 positional notation.” The base 10 part means that we
use 10 distinct numerals—0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9—which probably arose because we have
ten fingers (not for nothing do we use the same word—“digit”—to mean both a
finger and a single number). So to count in the numbering system used by most
humans today, the right-most digit, or the ones place, represents the number of
fingers you need. When you run out of fingers, the next decimal place represents
(continued)
the number of hands you’ve gone through, so we’ll call the second column the hands
or tens place (although, strictly speaking, it’s pairs of hands place, but let’s just simplify
that to hands place). So our number system is called base 10 (Fig. 4C.1).
Fig. 4C.1 Positional values for base 10 or decimal.
The positional notation part means that we use the number of digits from the
right-hand side of a number to establish the magnitude of each digit. Each digit is
10 times as large as the digit to its right, with the rightmost digit equal to the “face
value” of the digit, i.e., 1203 ¼ (1 1000) + (2 100) + (0 10) + (3 1).
This system turns out to have a number of advantages over earlier systems like
roman numerals. Take long division, for example, which was virtually impossible to do
using roman numerals. It is now so straightforward it can be taught to schoolchildren.
You probably knew all of this already, but what if you lost your thumbs in a horrific
text messaging accident? It might be simpler for you to count in base 8. So your
number system would contain 0 through 7, and there would be no character 8, which
would now be written 10. In fact, this number system is known as octal, and saw much
more widespread popularity in the early days of computation (Fig. 4C.2).
Fig. 4C.2 Positional values for base 8 or octal.
Remember the character Cat on Red Dwarf (Danny John-Jules)? He was descended
from cats. What if polydactylism ran in his genetic line and he had six fingers on each
hand? Cat math might be base 12. In that instance, the cat numbering system would
run from 0 to 9, but they would need two extra digits, so our ten might be χ (dec),
eleven ε (el), and our twelve would be written 10 (do).12 The animated educational
series Schoolhouse Rock examined this very situation in a fun segment entitled “Hey
Little Twelve Toes” (Fig. 4C.3).
(continued)
12
In male cat humor, then, your εχ is not somebody you used to be involved with, it’s your 142nd lady
cat girlfriend.
Fig. 4C.3 Positional values for base 12 or duodecimal.
Modern computers understand only two numbers, 0 and 1, so they perform

computation in a numbering system called binary. Although octal is not entirely
extinct, to make things slightly easier for humans, a much more common practice13
groups 0s and 1s into four-digit sequences that can be represented in base 16, called
hexadecimal. In that system, digits range from 0 to 9, and A through F. We will
examine the binary, octal, and hexadecimal systems in greater detail in Chap. 5.
When you factor in (so to speak) different numbering systems, a major plot line in
the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy takes a different twist. In that series, an ancient
hyperintelligent race builds a great computer called Deep Thought to answer the
great questions of life, the Universe, and everything.14 After seven and a half million
years of thought, the computer proudly announces its finding: “42”. When Deep
Thought’s builders complain that the answer wasn’t particularly insightful, the com-
puter’s retort is that the question wasn’t particularly specific.
When asked, “OK, then, what is the question to which 42 is the answer,” Deep
thought says he lacks the processing ability to derive the question, but he designs a
computer that can—a planet-sized computer, complete with oceans, land mass, and a
biosphere—and it will be called Earth.
After four and a half billion years of calculations, Earth returns the answer: “What
is six times nine?” Tens of thousands of years in the past, an ark ship, carrying the
remnants of another civilization, made landfall on Earth. The introduction of those
new lives into Earth’s biosphere corrupted the calculation because, clearly, “What is
six times nine” does not equal 42.
Or does it?
Six times nine does equal 42. . . in base 13. Given the nature of the series, and
Douglas Adam's later exasperation with overanalysis by fans, Deep Thought’s answer
was really just a humorous reflection on the futility of life. Sometimes even the most
dedicated fans have to know when to quit!
Regarding the NCES study cited earlier, Stephen Provasnik, the

U.S. technical adviser for the International Assessment for Adult Competency,
remarked: “This is the only country in the world where it’s OK to say ‘I’m not
good at math.’ That’s just not acceptable in a place like Japan.” The “I’m not
good at math” justification for not performing well in math has two close
cousins, “How is this relevant to my life?” and “When am I ever going to use
13
Dictated by computer hardware.
14
Examples abound in TV and cinema where mathematics is the key to understanding all of the mysteries
of the Universe.
this?”15 The answers are, of course, “This is extremely relevant to your life,”
and, “You’ll use it all the time once you’re good at it.”
This is it. That moment they told us about in high school where, one day, algebra
would save our lives.
Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer), Red Planet (2000)
A major problem in the U.S. is that innumeracy is not only accepted, there
are situations where it is encouraged, or at least certainly enabled. In 1992
Teen Talk Barbie did no math phobes any favors when some models said,
“Math class is tough.”16 While the newly-released Computer Engineer Barbie
is seen a step in the right direction in encouraging women into STEM careers,
some, who recall Teen Talk Barbie see it as pandering to atone for the sins of
the past.17
If a politician suggested that there was a skill that allowed people to make
decisions that did the greatest good for the most people, it would be hard to
find anybody who would agree that it was not a useful and beneficial skill that
should be cultivated in society. Yet, the U.S. major political parties rely on
innumeracy, particularly in election years.
Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to

many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid
anecdotes rather than systematic statistics.
Steven Pinker, author and professor of psychology, Harvard University
One of the manifestations of innumeracy is an over-reliance upon personal

anecdotes. In a country the size of the United States, with over 300 million
people, every policy decision is going to result in winners and losers. How
often, though, do political candidates trot out a lone individual to tell a tale of
woe about how the incumbent’s policy ruined their lives, or how often does
15
For an alternate view on this, see the YouTube video “You’re not bad at math, you’re just lazy”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼tg0Z--pmPog
16
What Barbie did not say is the more often-quoted, “Math is hard.” Not that the difference
matters much.
17
1992 was 24 years ago, and children who played with Teen Talk Barbie are now, or soon will be, having
the children who will play with Computer Engineer Barbie. So, whatever the underlying motivation, this
is a good thing.
the incumbent present somebody to witness that a policy has completely

changed their life for the better? Remember from the discussion of error and
uncertainty from Chap. 2: uncertainty is proportional to 1/√n. The experi-
ences of one person reveal little, but for an audience, many of whom have poor
math skills, statistics and numbers may not be particularly insightful. This is
why politicians are more willing to trot out constituents willing to tell their tale
of woe, as opposed to taking Al Gore’s example in An Inconvenient Truth and
putting data supporting their platforms into PowerPoint presentations.
Math Box: Correlation Versus Causation
Innumeracy goes a long way towards explaining the spread of pseudoscience, anti-
science, and the popularity of conspiracy theories. Of the many factors that influence
these trends, an important one is the failure of individuals to understand that there
may be no causal relationship whatsoever between two data sets that are highly
correlated.
A prime example of this is the anti-vaccination movement, which rests in large part
on the correlation between the age when children typically receive the MMR vaccine,
and the age at which autism typically manifests.18 In 2012, social news side Reddit user
Jasonp55, while practicing using the statistical/graphics package GraphPad Prism,
serendipitously discovered an amazing correlation between two data sets: the sales
of organic foods in the U.S. versus the number of annual cases of autism diagnosed.
His plot was widely disseminated among those interested in math and science educa-
tion, as well as in the skeptics community,19 which has long-preached “correlation is
not causation.”
Using the same studies, the same data are plotted in Fig. 4D.1. This plot looks
slightly different than the one that has been widely circulated on the Internet, and for
several reasons. We chose not to connect the data points, since they represent discrete
measurements, as opposed to continuous data. We also allowed our plotting soft-
ware to choose the scaling of the Y axes. If the axes were scaled such that the first
points for each data set were coincident, this would look much more like the plot
posted to Reddit.
(continued)
18
Another mathematical detail that is important, as mentioned in Chap. 1, is that the uncertainty of the
information you extract from your data is proportional to 1/n½. The original study suggesting that autism
was linked to the MMR vaccine was riddled with errors, but one of these was that the original data set was
for 12 children, collected at a party. Studies have since incorporated data from over 100,000 individuals.
This means that, all else being equal, a well-controlled study with 100,000 data points is roughly 29,000
times more reliable than one with 12 data points.
19
The modern Skeptics movement relates specifically to scientific skepticism, and involves the testing of
various types of claims—from the pseudoscientific to the paranormal—using the rigors of scientific
inquiry to gauge their reliability.
Fig. 4D.1 Plot of organic food sales (Source: Organic Trade Association, 2011 Organic
Industry Survey) versus the number of individuals diagnosed annually with autism
(Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, Data
Analysis System (DANS), OMB #1820-0043, “Children with Disabilities Receiving Spe-
cial Education Under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act”) in the
United States from 1998 to 2007.
Might their be a related fundamental cause for the two trends? Perhaps. Let’s say
that an underlying belief of people who are certain that vaccines cause autism is that
it is caused by external influences as opposed to genetics. These people might hypo-
thetically also believe in the existence of an external “cure,” and may look to organic
foods as one part of the solution.
Hollywood shares complicity on this point: mathematics and math literacy

is often anthropomorphized as cold, harsh, and unfeeling. In 1970 the Science
Fiction Writers of America named The Cold Equations (1954) by Tom
Godwin one of the best science fiction short stories written before 1965. It
tells the story of a spacecraft on a mission to deliver a shipment of medical
supplies to a frontier colony. With just enough fuel to land at its destination,
the presence of a young stowaway—whose extra mass puts the mission in
jeopardy—allows the story to explore the ethical issue of “the needs of the one”
versus “the needs of the many.” The title The Cold Equations hints at the final
outcome. . . because the solution that saves the most people is deemed cold.
This story was adapted for The Twilight Zone (1985–1989), for the SciFi
Channel,20 and a variation became the memorable episode “Orbit” in the

BBC series Blake’s 7. In that episode, two of the eponymous seven, Vila and
Avon (along with their computer, Orac), are trapped on a spacecraft struggling
to reach escape velocity, a concept we will explore in greater detail in Chap. 8.
Seventy kilos! What weighs seventy kilos?

—Avon
Vila weighs seventy three kilos, Avon.
—Orac, Blakes 7, “Orbit”
The 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan gave us the logical “The
needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. . . or the one”, but in the
1984 sequel Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, this gets flipped on its head,
and turned into a very Ayn-Randian “The needs of the one outweigh the needs
of the many.” One could argue that this is very anti-Roddenberrian in its
message. On the other hand, since Spock has saved the day, the Enterprise, and
countless lives on many occasions, one might argue that the greater good was
still served when Kirk and his crew went to such extreme lengths, and paid an
extreme price with the loss of Enterprise, to recover Spock from the Genesis
Planet. This still conveys the message, as is often done in Hollywood, that
feelings and emotions, the necessary bases for cinematic storytelling, trump
“cold numbers,” even though mastery of the “cold numbers” enables better,
more ethical and, dare we say, more logical decision-making.21
Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care,
is a proven pathway to truth.
Brian Greene, Physicist, The Fabric of the Cosmos
Not only can math be viewed as “cold,” it is mysterious, bordering on

magic. Dating back thousands of years, there have been storytelling themes of
forbidden knowledge that, once revealed, can lead to the downfall, death, or
damnation of the possessor of the knowledge. There is Adam and Eve in
Genesis when they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. For giving fire (back
to) humanity, Prometheus was chained to a rock and each day had his liver
eaten by an eagle, only to have it regenerate and the cycle repeat. Even Mary
20
Before it became Syfy.
21
This ethical approach is technically known as “Utilitarianism.” It is not without its critics, but it has had
enormous influence on public policy.
Shelley’s Frankenstein sends the message that one does not want to peer too
deeply into the mysteries of life and death. Often forbidden knowledge is
presented as almost magical or Faustian in its scope. Math is perhaps partic-
ularly dangerous because it doesn’t require you to obtain any particular rare
artifact, do any daring deed, or spend a lot of time with dismembered body
parts, which are all things wary citizens can keep an eye out for. You can
achieve mathematical breakthroughs in a quiet room with just a pencil and
paper, using symbols that are indistinguishable to non-specialists from those
used by alchemists or sorcerers.22 Who knows what those mathematicians
might stumble across?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Clarke’s

Third Law).
Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction novelist
Although mastery of mathematics is sometimes presented as practically a

superpower (more on this in a bit), how often do Hollywood productions suggest
that an in-depth knowledge of math will either drive the user into madness or is
understandable only by somebody whose grip on reality is tenuous? In the 1988
movie Rain Man, mathematics is firmly in the domain belonging to Dustin
Hoffman’s autistic character, while in the 1998 Darren Aronofsky film π the
main character in the film is Max Cohen (Sean Gullette), a number theorist
capable of doing arithmetic calculations involving large numbers in his head.
Suffering from social anxiety disorder, Max has few social interactions, and also
suffers from cluster headaches, hallucinations, and paranoia (spoiler alert for the
next four paragraphs).
Max believes that everything in the Universe can be understood with
numbers, and using his homemade computer Euclid to make stock predic-
tions, Euclid prints out a 216 digit number that seems to be a string of random
digits. In a meeting with Sol, his form mentor, Sol asks Max if the number
contains 216 digits, because he has also come across the number, although
many years earlier.
When religious and corporate entities learn of Max’s work, they take great
interest, and bring pressure to bear on Max to reveal his work as well as the
value of the 216 digit number, which represents the unspeakable name of
God. When Max tries to visit Sol again, his mentor’s daughter Jenna says that
22
For example, here’s an actual line from Andrew Wiles’ famous proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem:
n M 0 et o
X ¼ H0 Σμ 1 ; Ω1 H Σ 1 ; Ω1
Sol has passed away due to a stroke, and an examination of Sol’s apartment
reveals that he had recently revisited his work with the 216 digit number.
Driven to the very edge of sanity, and with another extreme headache, Max
resists the urge to take pain medication. Trying to concentrate on the number
through the pain, Max has a vision of himself in a void repeating the number.
Max wakes in his trashed-out apartment with Euclid destroyed. He burns the
paper with the number, and drills a hole in his own head with a power drill—
performing an extra-clinical trepanning.
In the film’s denouement, Max is in a park, and Jenna asks him to solve
748/238, an approximation for pi.23 Max smiles, and can’t answer, having lost
the ability to solve complex math in his head. Also gone are the headaches and
paranoia. Not only does π imply that math can and will drive you crazy, it rests
squarely on the foundation of the ancient “forbidden knowledge” trope.
Another film sharing a bit less of the insanity, but equal amounts of “math is
the key to the meaning24 of life” is the 2013 Terry Gilliam film The Zero
Theorem. While some consider it to be the de facto third installment of a
trilogy that followed from previous Gilliam dystopian films Brazil (1985) and
12 Monkeys (1995), a reasonable elevator pitch25 for The Zero Theorem would
be, “It’s π meets 1984.”
In the opening moments of the 2005 film Proof, based upon the Pulitzer-
prize winning play, mathematician Catherine Llewellyn (Gwynneth Paltrow)
receives a surprise visit from her father Robert (Anthony Hopkins), also a
brilliant mathematician (Fig. 4.2). Robert presents his daughter with a bottle
of champagne for her birthday, and they have an impromptu discussion in the
kitchen on the nature of insanity. That is until Catherine reveals that Robert
passed away the previous week, and that his funeral is the following day.
The film tells the story of how Robert struggled in his life to perform
meaningful work while struggling with mental illness, and how Catherine,
tried to step out of his shadow, while at the same time fearing that she might
have inherited the same condition.
In Raising Genius (2004), Hal Nestor (Justin Long) takes unlikeable to
another level. He is an extreme narcissist who spends the day in the bathroom
avoiding life and deriving equations (he insists upon the term formulas) on the
bathroom walls. That is when he’s not lusting after the girl who lives next
23
Which is just (22/7) 34.
24
In this film, more correctly, the meaninglessness of life.
25
Like a logline, an elevator pitch is a short summary of a script—but an elevator pitch is even more
succinct. Imagine that you find yourself on an elevator with J. J. Abrams, and you have one floor to pitch
your screenplay. Elevator pitches often take the form of, “Imagine Golden Girls meets Cloverfield.”
Fig. 4.2 Catherine Llewellyn (Gwynneth Paltrow) and her father Robert (Athony Hop-
kins) share a father/daughter moment as only crazy mathematicians can. Copyright
© Miramax Films, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
door.26 In an ironic twist, many manifestations of real-life mathematician John

Nash’s (Russell Crowe) severe mental illness were downplayed in the 2001
biopic A Beautiful Mind.
There are times when it seems that the subject of mathematics is considered
so unappealing by filmmakers that they go out of their way to write it out of
screenplays entirely—even when its inclusion is appropriate—replacing it by
disciplines that seem sexier or less intimidating. In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1,
we discussed actors cast as scientists more for their hotness than for their ability
to portray a scientist credibly. On that topic, physicist Sidney Perkowitz27
similarly writes, “In other films, gorgeous women are identified as scientists
with little supporting evidence, leading to the suspicion that the title ‘scientist’
is just meant to add a thin icing of pseudo-seriousness to a beautiful face and
body. These honorary scientists include astrophysicist Charlie Blackwood in
Top Gun and characters in the James Bond movies Goldeneye (1995) and The
World Is Not Enough (1999).” While this is an easy case to make about
“scientist” Bond girls, and in Hollyweird Science we’ve already discussed Denise
Richard’s less-than-compelling character in The World is Not Enough, the
movie Top Gun (1986), however, gets a provisional pass for Charlie Black-
wood. The real-life Charlie, actually named Christine Fox (callsign “Legs”),
26
As much as we love her, a 28 year old Danica McKellar playing a high school girl? Really? For that
matter, Justin Long was 24 at the time. Neither sold “high school student” particularly well.
27
Perkowitz, S. Hollywood Science: Movies, Science & the End of the World. London: Cambridge University
Press. 2007.
Fig. 4.3 On the left is Charley (Kelly McGillis) from Top Gun (1986), and on the right is
mathematician Christine Fox, the character upon whom Charley was based, with the
U.S. Navy Blue Angels. Image copyright ©. Courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Christine Fox Photograph copyright © Chad Slattery.
was a civilian consultant to the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (aka Top
Gun), and holds a B.S. in Mathematics, and an M.S. in Applied Mathematics,
both from George Mason University (Fig. 4.3).
A 1985 article28 in People magazine, published while Top Gun was filming,
describes Fox:
She makes her living developing tactics for the defense of aircraft carriers, and
she is about to be immortalized—or at least fictionalized. Paramount Pictures is
currently filming Top Gun, a drama about the Navy’s most advanced jet-fighter
weapons school, which is located at Miramar. Tom Cruise plays a hot pilot, and
Kelly McGillis plays the tall, beautiful civilian who lectures him and other
fighter pilots on enemy aircraft, which is a reasonable approximation of what
Fox really does.29
Switching the character’s expertise from mathematics to astrophysics could

be interpreted to mean that even an actor30 as attractive as Kelly McGillis
could not make mathematics seem interesting.
28
Air Warfare Expert Christine Fox—Fighter Pilots Call Her “Legs”—Inspires the New Movie Top Gun:
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20091443,00.html
29
Fox was slated to move on from the Naval Fighter Weapons School shortly after the People article was
written. As a final tribute—as well as a final tease—the naval aviators began calling her by a new callsign
after Top Gun went into production: Star.
30
Author KRG lives in LA, where the entertainment industry there tends to use the unisex term “actor”
(except for award ceremonies). Most other places that have active TV/film industries still tend to
distinguish and use the terms “actor” and “actress”. It’s simply part of the local culture.
McGillis now plays an astrophysicist named “Charlie” who lectures TOPGUN

students on enemy fighter capabilities. This is where the movie begins peeling
off from reality. Also, Fox is a mathematician not an astrophysicist, not that it
matters to McGillis. “Math was never a great interest of mine,” says McGillis. . .
“Still isn’t.”
Why might the Top Gun filmmakers have thought that an astrophysicist
was a better, or at least more sellable, profession than a mathematician? It
could be because, as she explained, the actor in the role had no affinity for
math. It could be because they felt that an astrophysicist was more down to
Earth, so to speak, and approachable than an esoteric mathematician. It could
be, though, that they wanted the character to be obviously intelligent and not
starkers.31
Math as Science’s Boring Cousin

In fictional science productions, science typically serves in a supporting role—
occasionally as a guest star or main character (Eureka or Fringe)—while
mathematics, is rarely more than an extra. It is also rarely acknowledged for
the richness of its many sub-disciplines.32
Just as Henry Deacon needs to be unrealistically competent in fields such as
spacecraft engineering and quantum mechanics in Eureka because of story and
budgetary demands, Charlie Epps similarly must be unrealistically well-versed
in all areas of math for Numb3rs—but more of the viewing public33 are likely
to understand that it is a stretch with Henry than with Charley.
In fact, by having a lone chapter on the collective topic of “Mathematics”,
we are guilty of propagating a model that we simultaneously lament. Under
the collective embrace of “Science” there are disciplines like physics, geology,
biology, etc. Under each of those, there are sub-specialties. Physicists may
study condensed matter physics, particle physics, or astrophysics for example,
or a geologist may be an expert in stratigraphy, petrology, paleontology, or one
of many other sub-disciplines. Typically, this is divided still further: a con-
densed matter physicist may be a solid state physicist; a petrologist may be an
31
You know, off her rocker, crazy.
32
This is also a problem for science publications intended for the general public. In his career as a science
and technology journalist, SAC can testify to the constant difficulty editors had in commissioning stories
about mathematics, due to the highly abstract nature of many of the concepts involved. Currently Quanta
magazine, published by the Simons Foundation, is probably doing the best job of covering developments
in mathematics.
33
Screenwriters and filmmakers, too.
igneous petrologist, and so on. Compared to this scientific hierarchy, the term
“mathematics” is akin to “science”, but its cinematic onscreen depiction rarely
extends to sub-disciplines, and certainly not to sub-sub-disciplines.34 The
onscreen depiction of mathematics is frequently a hodgepodge of disciplines
with no clear delineation except that they are “math”.
There is a clear example of this in a scene early in the 2008 blackjack
“hacking” film 21 (2008). MIT Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey)
(Fig. 4.4) asks his class “Now, who can explain Newton’s method and how
you use it.” Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) first offers that you can use it to solve
nonlinear equations.35 When Rosa points out that it is a somewhat
uninformative answer, given that the class is “nonlinear equations”, Campbell
adds, “He stole it”.
After a historical lesson on what is now often referred to as the Newton-
Raphson method,36 Rosa says, “All right, now, let’s give Ben a chance for some
extra credit, shall we? We’re gonna call this the game show host problem, all
right?” Rosa then asks Ben to solve a problem that has come to be known as the
“Monty Hall Problem”, a famous problem. . . in probability theory (see the
Statistics Box “The Monty Hall Problem”).
Imagine, instead, that the class depicted in the film was a language class, and
Professor Rosa asked, “What can anybody tell me about how one expresses
possession in the Hungarian language?” Rather than discuss an aspect of that
structure, Campbell replies with a historical fact about Hungarian and its
relationship37 to the Finnish language. For his cleverness, Rosa offers Camp-
bell extra credit if he can answer a question about French. . . then later in the
scene, we learn that the class was actually Russian 104. Had a screenwriter
crafted this hypothetical scene, it would never make onscreen, because the
film’s director or the studio executives producing the film would deem it far
too confusing and unfocused, yet this is a rough approximation—using
language instead of mathematics—of what occurred in that scene from 21.38
Onscreen, sciences and linguistics and arts have their disciplines and
sub-disciplines, but math is all just. . . math.
34
In fact, one could write a related book Hollyweird Mathematics. Neither author has the inclination to
write that book in its entirety—but if you have the cred and want to take the lead, send us an email, and
we’ll consider teaming up.
35
Which is not the same as answering how to use the method, to be clear. The method is also used for
finding the points where the value of an equation is zero, or its “roots”.
36
Campbell does add, “And if the start value is too far removed from true zero, then it fails,” which is not
necessarily true. It can have difficulties in certain circumstances, but—to get technical for a moment—the
distance from the root is not necessarily an issue if the equation is smoothly-varying.
37
Or not. Though many linquists will insist the languages are related, there is some debate on the topic.
38
Still, the most “Oh, please” aspect of that scene is that a professor would offer extra credit in an upper-
level mathematics class at MIT.
Fig. 4.4 Kevin Spacey as Professor Micky Rosa in 21, who is based upon the real life Jeff
Ma. Ma was an engineering student while on the MIT Blackjack Team, not a math
professor. Among other things, Ma is now an analyst for ESPN. Copyright © Relativity
Media and Trigger Street Productions, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com
Statistics Box: The Monty Hall Problem
The problem that Professor Rosa poses to Ben Campbell in 21 is a famous probability
brain teaser known as the “Monty Hall Problem”. Hall was the long-time host of the
television game show Let’s Make a Deal, and the problem is typically posed in the
context of that game show.
Imagine that you are a contestant on Let’s Make a Deal, and Monty gives you the
opportunity to pick one of three closed doors—telling you that behind one is “A new
car!”39 Behind the other two doors are goats. A key presumption is that the car is
behind a randomly-chosen door, and the host knows which door hides the car.
You select a door, say Door #1, but before Monty opens the door, he opens one of
the other doors, say Door #2, to reveal a goat. Remember, he knows what door holds
what prize. Monty then offers you the opportunity to switch your selection—you can
pick Door #3 if you would like. The question is, do you improve your odds of winning
the car, or do they remain the same, if you switch your selection?
People polled overwhelmingly believe initially that the odds are 50–50, and
switching yields no benefit. In fact, polling reveals that most people will steadfastly
stick with their original choice, believing it to be the winning door. Although counter-
intuitive it turns out that you are twice as likely to win the car if you change your
selection. When you make your initial selection, you have a 1/3 chance of having
selected the car, and 2/3 chance of selecting a goat. After Monty reveals a goat, you
still have a 2/3 chance of having a goat, but the 2/3 chance that the car was behind one
of the other two doors is now “concentrated” on one. So there is still a 1/3 chance that
you have selected a car, and 2/3 chance you have not, so you double your odds of
winning by changing your selection.
(continued)
39
People who have seen the show just heard those words in exactly the way we intended.
In the film 21, the character Ben Campbell provides a perfect description of why
switching doors when offered leads to a higher probability of winning the car:
CAMPBELL
Well, when I was originally
asked to choose a door, I had
a 33.3% chance of choosing
right. But after he opens one
of the doors and then re-
offers me the choice, it’s
now 66.7% if I choose to
switch. So, yeah, I’ll take
door number two, and thank
you for that extra 33.3%.
ROSA
Exactly. People, remember, if
you don’t know which door to
open, always account for
variable change. Now, see,
most people wouldn’t take the
switch out of paranoia, fear,
emotions. But Mr. Campbell,
he kept emotions aside and
let simple math get his ass
into a brand-new car! Which
is better than that goat
you’ve been driving around
campus.
Although also explored in the Numb3rs episode, “Man Hunt”, The Monty Hall
Problem really gained notoriety when it was submitted to “Ask Marilyn” in 1990.
With the highest IQ ever recorded, Marilyn Vos Savant40 writes a column in “Ask
Marilyn” in the widely-circulated Parade magazine, where she gives advice, answers
questions, and solves various kinds of puzzles. After Ms. Vos Savant gave the correct
answer to the Monty Hall Problem, she was flooded with mail from those—some of
whom were mathematicians or statisticians—who insisted that changing the pick held
no benefit, and that the odds were 50–50. So Vos Savant proposed a situation where a
contestant would have 50–50 odds in the very same scenario. Say that just before
Monty opens the door that reveals a goat, an alien descends into the studio in his
spaceship. He is then given the choice of the same two closed doors, with no knowl-
edge of your initial pick.
(continued)
40
Vos Savant is also married to scientist Robert Jarvik, one of two principle developers of the Jarvik-7
artificial heart.
We can assume that the alien also considers the car a “win” rather than the goat,
because even though goat may be a delicacy on Zeta Reticuli IV, and the alien’s race
responsible for decades of livestock mutilations, we can also assume he’s smart
enough to realize that he could barter the car for many goats, and return home a
Big Damned Hero. Without the a priori (in advance) knowledge of the landscape, and
your initial pick, the alien’s odds of getting a car or a goat is 50–50.
In the episode “Wheel of Mythfortune”, the hosts of the television series
MythBusters explored two aspects of the Monty Hall Problem: whether your odds
improved if you changed your pick, and whether people, unaware of the solution to
the problem, would stick with their initial choice when the host asked them if they
wanted to change their selection after the goat reveal. For the first scenario, the
Mythbusters build a small simulator and performed 100 trials—confirming the fact
that changing the pick post-goat-reveal improves the odds of winning a car.
They then built a mockup of a game show set in a theater. With series host Adam
Savage acting as the “Pick a Door” game show host, they set out to verify whether
contestants tended to stick with their initial choice. Of the twenty contestants that
played, all 20 stayed with their original pick (they also independently verified that the
odds improved if the contestant switches doors after the reveal).
Yes There’s Bad and Ugly, but There’s also Good

It is well-known that the media influences values and shapes opinions, but
Marty Kaplan from the Norman Lear Center shares with Hollyweird Science
the degree to which, and the reason why, the United States lags other countries
in using entertainment as an agent of social change:
If you’re not aware of it, there is a field called entertainment education. It is best
known and practiced outside the US, and the reason is that, in other countries,
there are state-owned TV stations, state-owned movie companies, state-owned
studios, and subsidized product. In many countries around the world there are
very careful plans to use their entertainment in order to accomplish a goal—
whether the goal is adult literacy, or stopping spousal abuse, or HIV testing, and
those countries, mount campaigns using these shows in order to do it. And so
the question of, “How do we best do it? What should the story be like? What
makes spreading a lesson about behavior through soap operas?” That area, that
study of how you build a story that’s effective, and how you test it. . . how you
build a writing team to create that. . . that is highly developed.
In Mexico, for example, and throughout Latin America, there are tons of books
and experts and courses and specialists in how to do that. The US is the outlier,
because here our entertainment industry is, because of the First Amendment
and other reasons, it is a for-profit, fiercely independent, artistically driven,
enterprise.
One or two episodes of television or a film or two that paint mathematics as

difficult or mathematicians as lunatics are clearly no big deal—it’s no worse
than Hollywood slipping in a modern day mad scientist or two,41 an archetype

that is, for the most part, receding into Hollywood’s past. The question is,
however, are these particular portrayals—written by screenwriters, many of
whom conceivably went into writing because they felt they were better with
words than numbers—systematically dominating the onscreen personas of
mathematicians? It certainly looks like Hollywood has done more than its
share to help stigmatize mathematics and mathematicians.
If one wants to entertain the notion that, in a phenomenon related to the
Hollywood Curriculum Cycle, screenwriters have aided in propagating myths
that discourage students from pursuing math and relegate mathematicians to
the realm of non-animated Looney Tunes, then one should also offer credit
where credit is due, that is, when more realistic portrayals do appear.
The highly-acclaimed film Stand and Deliver (1988) was based upon the
true story of Jaime Escalante (played by Edward James Olmos). Perhaps
because both parents were teachers, Escalante was a teacher of math and
physics for 12 years in his native Bolivia before emigrating to the United
States. He took a significant pay cut from the electronics company for whom
he worked as a technician to become a high school mathematics teacher at
Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, where he taught from 1974
until 1991.
Escalante wound up in the classroom teaching math to predominantly
unruly students known for drugs and violence. Of his students, 70% were
poor, 95% were black or Hispanic, and all were written off as “unteachable.”
With Garfield High’s accreditation on the line, rather than “dumb down” his
lessons, Escalante, instead, chose to teach Advanced Placement (AP) calculus
to help empower his students to succeed in college and in technical careers.
Escalante had an unorthodox teaching style that resonated with his stu-
dents. Accurately reflected in the film, his teaching style was more like a
performance. Escalante was not afraid to cajole, to make off-color jokes,
wear crazy outfits, or even assign colorful or unflattering names to his students.
Did you know that neither the Greeks nor the Romans were capable of using the
concept of zero? It was your ancestors, the Mayans, who first contemplated the
zero. The absence of value. True story. You burros have math in your blood.
Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos), Stand and Deliver
Although Stand and Deliver is another film that blurs the lines between
disparate mathematical sub-disciplines—with Jaime Escalante depicted as
41
We’re looking at you, Walter White.
teaching multiple math subjects with no apparent logical progression or

connecting thread, there were mitigating circumstances in the case of that
film. When the real Escalante first started teaching AP Calculus in 1978, he
had 14 students, only five of whom remained until the end, and only two of
whom passed the AP Calculus exam—an exam which, if passed, grants the
student college credit. The students required years of preparation before they
could take calculus, so Escalante established a program at nearby East Los
Angeles College42 where students could establish the necessary precursor skills
in accelerated summer sessions. Given the condensed nature of screenplays,
one can excuse the screenwriter if this history was abbreviated to fit within
103 minutes of run time.
By 1982, the year on which Stand and Deliver focused, Escalante’s class had
18 students, and all 18 passed the AP Calculus exam (by comparison, only 2%
of American students took the exam). Also described in the film was that, two
months later, 14 of the students received letters from the Educational Testing
Service (ETS), the organization that administers AP exams, informing them
that their scores had been nullified for cheating because they had made similar
mistakes. Escalante believed, instead, that the scores had been challenged, not
because of similarities, but because so many passing scores came from poor
Hispanic students attending an urban high school. Of the 14 students iden-
tified as cheaters by ETS, 12 retook the exam after having only a weekend to
study, and all passed.
By 1987, Escalante’s program grew to its largest, and 127 students from
Garfield High took the AP Calculus exam, more than all but four high schools
in the United States. Of those, 85 passed, which means that over a quarter of
all the Mexican-American students who passed AP Calculus that year were in
Escalante’s program.
I’m trying to prove that potential is anywhere, and we can teach any kid if we
have the ganas (desire) to do it.
Jaime Escalante, educator
Not only was Edward James Olmos nominated for an Academy Award for
his portrayal of Escalante, in December 2011, under the terms of the National
Film Preservation Act, the United States Library of Congress selected Stand
and Deliver for preservation in the National Film Registry.43 Each year
42
Which is known today as the Jaime Escalante Math Program at ELAC.
43
2011 National Film Registry More Than a Box of Chocolates, Library of Congress. December
28, 2011. Retrieved April 2, 2016 (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2011/11-240.
html).
25 films are preserved that are deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically

significant.”
The real life Jaime Escalante praised Stand and Deliver, saying that it was
“Ninety percent truth, ten percent drama.” Indeed, the film severely
downplayed the issues of jealousy and professional envy that plagued Escalante
his entire career—causing him, in the end, to leave Garfield High. Escalante
also starred in the 1993 edutainment video Living and Working in Space: The
Countdown has Begun. For his work, Escalante received the Presidential Medal
for Excellence in Education from Ronald Reagan in 1988.
Calculus is math that Sir Isaac Newton invented so that he could figure out
planet orbits. But he never bothered to tell anybody about his discovery until this
other scientist guy went around claiming he had invented Calculus, but the guy
was so stupid he got it all wrong and so Newton had to go public to correct all his
mistakes. Don’t you think that’s neat?
Claudia Camejo (Karla Montana), Stand and Deliver
If Top Gun (see Fig. 4.3) fails to put to rest the notion that mathematicians
can be just as cool as anybody else, the series Numb3rs44 did its share to ending
the stereotype of the insane, or at least seriously disturbed, mathematician.
Numb3rs was a crime drama television series, and the show centered on the
Eppes family. Rob Morrow played FBI Special Agent Don Eppes, and David
Krumholtz45 is his mathematical genius brother—a professor of mathematics
at California Institute of Science, or CalSci (an analog of Caltech). Charlie was
hired as a consultant to the FBI, and each week he used his mathematical
insight and prowess to help Don with difficult-to-solve crimes. Increasingly,
Charlie’s graduate student Amita Ramanujan (Navi Rawat), with whom
Charlie would become romantically involved, assisted the brothers in applying
her mathematical skills to help solve cases. The show ran on CBS for six
seasons from 2005 until 2010.
44
Because some people have too much time on their hands, there was actually a little bit of a controversy
about the numeral 3 that replaces an “e” in the title of the show. Columnist Ellen Gray with The
Philadelphia Daily News, lamented, “Some of you may have noticed that in promoting “Numb3rs,” which
premieres Sunday before moving to its regular 10 p.m. Friday slot, CBS has chosen to put a 3 in place of
the “e” in the title. . ..I won’t be going along with this particular affectation, which slows down my typing
and seems to be the graphic equivalent of the reversed “R” in Toys R Us. So there.” One word: macro. So
there.
45
If you are a fan of the film Serenity (2005), it takes a while before you stop expecting Charlie to say,
“You can’t stop the signal, Don.”
This show will do for math what CSI has done for science.
Nina Tassler, CBS Executive, regarding Numb3rs
As with Eureka or Fringe, where a different scientific discipline guest stars

every week, Numb3rs typically featured techniques from a different branch of
mathematics or statistics (occasionally several different disciplines) every week.
Unlike Eureka or Fringe, Numb3rs was not bashful about revisiting math
techniques that had been employed in previous episodes.
Jennifer Ouellette, author of The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You
Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, concurs:
It’s interesting. Math and physics are the big scary [subjects] right? The ones
that people have, for a long time, been afraid to tackle. But it’s funny because
physics is now kind of like the new black and I think math. . . people really got
over their fear of math with Numb3rs. Numb3rs actually did help change
attitudes. Maybe if there hadn’t been a Numb3rs we would not have The Big
Bang Theory.
Just as a deeper dive into the sciences produced richer and more compelling
ideas for screenplays, we believe that a deeper appreciation for mathematics
will also reveal grist for the story mill.
You see how the petals [of this flower] spiral? The number of petals in each row is
the sum of the preceding two rows: the Fibonacci sequence. It’s found in the
structure of crystals, and the spirals of galaxies, and in a nautilus shell. What’s
more, the ratio between each number in the sequence to the number before it is
approximately 1.61803, what the Greeks called the Golden Ratio. It shows
up. In the pyramids at Giza, and in the Parthenon in Athens, and in the
dimensions of this card. And it’s based on a number you can find in a flower?
Math is Nature’s language, its method of communicating directly with
us. Everything’s numbers.
Charlie Eppes, Numb3rs, “Sabotage”
Hollywood’s Complicated Relationship

with Statistics
In Stand and Deliver, Jaime Escalante said that “knowing math is
empowering”, and the same can be said about statistics. A proper understand-
ing and use of the methods of statistics can be very powerful, and indepen-
dently of how Hollywood has approached the subjects of mathematics and
mathematicians on screen, the entertainment industry has always actively
embraced statistics—though, in all fairness, it is the “suits” who embrace
statistics more than the “creatives.”
All U.S. television viewers have heard of the Nielson Ratings. Nielson
Media Research (formerly AC Nielson) has been the main source of audience
viewing statistics and demographics in the television industry since 1950. By
understanding the numbers and demographics of who is watching what show,
corporate marketing people know where better to place their advertisement
dollars, and television networks know how much they can charge for adver-
tising time for different shows based upon their popularity. They can also
determine which shows are not performing up to expectations, and replace
them with different offerings.
Statistics Box: Nielsen Ratings and Share
For decades, TV careers have hinged on a particular set of statistics gathered by

market research firm Nielsen. Through electronic tracking (via so-called Neilsen
Boxes attached to TVs) and logbooks distributed to a volunteer sample of homes,
the firm gathers data about who is watching what.
When it comes to gauging how well a television series is performing relative to its
competition, you will hear people quote two percentages provided by Neilsen: a
program’s rating and its share. Figure 4F.1 helps us understand the difference.
Fig. 4F.1 Of 10 households with televisions, three are watching Channel 1, two are
watching Channel 42, and one is watching Network 23
(continued)
A program’s rating is an estimate of the number of televisions tuned to that

program relative to the total possible number of television sets (usually in a given
market). In Fig. 4.10, there are 10 households with television sets. Of those 10, 3 are
tuned to Channel 1, 1 is tuned to Network 23, and 2 are watching Channel 42.
Channel 1 ¼ 3/10 ¼ 30%

Channel 42 ¼ 2/10 ¼ 20%
Network 23 ¼ 1/10 ¼ 10%
A program’s share is based upon the percent of the Households Using Television
(HUT), and it is a measure of how many active televisions are tuned to a specific
program or station at a specified time. In Fig. 4.10, although there are 10 television
sets, only six are active, so the shares are
Channel 1 ¼ 3/6 ¼ 50%

Channel 42 ¼ 2/10 ¼ 20%
Network 23 ¼ 1/10 ¼ 10%
Because it is based upon a smaller number of television sets, a program’s share is

always a higher value than its rating. Table 4F.1 summarizes the viewing landscape for
Fig. 4F.1.
Table 4F.1 The rating and share for the households in Fig. 4.10
Network Number of TVs Households Using TVs (HUT) Rating (%) Share (%)
Channel 1 10 6 3/10 ¼ 30 3/6 ¼ 50
Network 23 10 6 1/10 ¼ 10 1/6 ¼ 17
Channel 42 10 6 2/10 ¼ 20 2/6 ¼ 33
Another application where an understanding of correlation versus causation is

crucial (which we visited in a previous mathematics box in this chapter) is in television
program scheduling. To use a very simplistic example, let’s say you are an executive at
AMC, and a rival network is premiering a new offering in a time slot opposite your
strongest-performing series, one that has been a ratings juggernaut for years and
shows no sign of slowing.
The shows air, and your see that your ratings are significantly smaller in compar-
ison to their typical values. At first blush, you might be tempted to conclude, “Are you
kidding? The Walking Dead just got its butt whooped by Poodles on Parade46?” The
two events—the premiere of the other show and the drop in your ratings—are highly
correlated, but a better metric might be a comparison of how each show fared among
all the televisions that were functioning that night. Both shows may have had low
numbers, because of the alternate reason that there was a power blackout on the
entire Eastern seaboard of the United Sates that night. In this case, correlation was
not causation, even though it might be tempting to believe that in a cursory assess-
ment of the data.
46
Network 23 has always been known for its imaginative offerings.
Although statistics tends to be viewed as a branch of mathematics, it really is

not. Statistics deals with the analysis of real-world measurements and
presenting those findings. Just as physics has its battery of mathematical and
numerical techniques that practitioners bring to bear on problems, so does
statistics. So statistics would probably best fit under “data collection and
analysis” if that was, in fact, a recognized discipline. Nevertheless, math
illiteracy and statistics literacy are strongly correlated—it is difficult to under-
stand statistics, and to draw meaningful conclusions and correlations from
data, if you do not understand the underlying math.
If mathematicians tend to be viewed as insane, statisticians tend to be viewed
as bald-faced liars or at best spin doctors. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”47 is a
common phrase used to describe not only the persuasive power of numbers, but
the way those numbers can be used to support questionable arguments, or even
be completely misleading. In public debate, the phrase is also used to cast
aspersions on an opponent or rival candidate’s point. Although often attributed
to Mark Twain, the originator of the phrase is unknown.48
Some people drink, some gamble. I analyze data.

Charlie Eppes, Numb3rs, “Disturbed”
Statistics do not inherently lie. How one chooses to present the analysis can,
however. Recall the old Trident commercial: “Four out of five dentists surveyed
recommend Trident for patients who chew gum.” That survey could have been
taken at the annual meeting of the American Dental Association, and 95 of those
surveyed could have gone on record as saying, “People shouldn’t chew gum,
period.” The words “for patients who chew gum” is an important qualifier.
Moreover, that one dentist who didn’t recommend Trident may have even said,
“Gum? Love it when patients come in after chewing that stuff! They paid for my
Long Island condo,” and the claim still would have been a proper analysis of the
sample, but misleading in the presentation. Yet even though we collectively tend
not to trust statistics, they are still obviously useful to those who wish to add a
sense of legitimacy to their claims.
With math illiteracy also comes a failure to appreciate probabilities—one of
the cornerstones of statistics. Let’s say a friend is anxious about travelling to
Europe for fear of becoming a terrorism victim. With the goal of wanting to help
your friend have a more enjoyable vacation, you offer, “There is a one in 5000
47
“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” was also episode 121 in the NBC drama The West Wing.
48
The phrase was popularized by Mark Twain (among others). Twain attributed it to British Prime
Minister Benjamin Disraeli, but the earliest known appearance of the phrase was years after Disraeli’s
death.
chance of you being killed in an automobile accident here at home, while there is
literally slightly less than a one a million chance of you being killed by a terrorist
abroad.” Recall that over-reliance on personal anecdote is a hallmark of innu-
meracy, there is also the related tendency to personalize the situation, and a
common reply to this sort of scenario is, “Yes, but what if I’m that one?” Two
things are going on here. First, for the innumerate, there is no realization that
1:5,000 versus 1:1,000,000 means that you are 200 times more likely to be “that
one” on the 405 freeway in rush hour traffic than sipping cappuccino in a
brasserie in Paris. Studies also reveal that if somebody feels that they are in
control of the situation, they feel much less afraid of it. So the illusion of control
leads to, “If I’m at the wheel and in control, I’m not going to be ‘that one.’”49
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are
still greater.
Albert Einstein, Physicist
Mathematics Box: The Nature of Randomness, or Why Stars “Die in Threes”
The human brain is excellent at extracting

patterns from noise, but that strength can
also be a weakness, since with it comes the
tendency to see patterns where none
exist. Take random patterns, for example.
In Hollywood, there is the belief that
“celebrities die in threes.” However, it
seems logical that the passing of one
celebrity should be unrelated to that of
another. In this instance, there is a surpris-
ing mathematical truth to the observa-
tion, but although the deaths may be
correlated, there is nothing that suggests
the deaths are, in any way, connected.50
If a distribution of data is truly random,
it will contain clusters, as in Fig. 4G.1,
rather than being spread uniformly. In Fig. 4G.1 Five thousand randomly-
the season two Eureka episode “Duck, plotted data points showing clustering.
Duck, Goose,” when two objects from Graphic courtesy of Wikimedia com-
space impact the town of Eureka in the mons, user CaitlinJo.
(continued)
49
Illusory superiority, also known as the “Lake Wobegon Effect” is a cognitive bias in which individuals
overestimate their own abilities with respect to those of others. Doesn’t everybody think they’re an
excellent driver? See also the science box in this chapter “The Nature of Randomness, or Why Stars ‘Die in
Threes”.
50
Assuming, of course, that it wasn’t a murder/suicide.
same day, there was the following

exchange between Sheriff Carter (Colin Ferguson) and astronomer Dr. Aaron Finn
(David Lewis)51:
CARTER
What are the odds of two
pieces of space junk hitting
Eureka on the same day?
FINN
Well, random events do tend
to cluster together, but I’ll
admit, that’s a bit of a
coincidence.
Human inability, or refusal, to grasp that random data can cluster can lead to
several different cognitive biases. If a point guard in basketball hits four three-point
shots in a row, the commentators and, for that matter, the coach may conclude that
the player has a “hot hand” that night, and encourage the player to take more shots.
Although many factors, including skill, may account for this, it can also be a manifes-
tation of the clustering illusion—the tendency to conclude that clusters in random
distributions of data are non-random. The reverse of that is when a batter in baseball
goes for an extended period of time without a hit, a commentator will, invariably say,
“Well. . . he’s due.” That’s not necessarily true—just as Fig. 4G.1 shows clusters of data
points, it also shows clusters of open space. These are both examples of the clustering
illusion—where there is the tendency for people to attribute cause to naturally-
occurring clusters in random data.
The pilot episode of Numb3rs explored clustering in random data when our main
characters are trying to catch a serial rapist and killer. Mathematician Charlie Eppes
notices that the locations of the attacks are spread uniformly on a map, and this
becomes a useful observation in catching the perp. It turns out that not only do
people misinterpret clusters in random processes, people who try to simulate random
data—in this case attempting to make the attacks seem random—tend to spread data
points too uniformly, and not include the clustering that typically occurs with random
processes.
There have been studies that explore the clustering of random data.52 What
multiple studies have revealed is the most common size of a cluster within random
data: three. So although there may be no connection whatsoever between the events,
it may turn out that celebrities do, in fact, “die in threes.”
51
The observation about random data was suggested by KRG who was the Eureka science advisor. It was
totally based upon a saying from one of his old professors—Purdue seismologist Robert Nowak—who has
quipped on more than one occasion, “Random events will tend to cluster. If they’re evenly-spaced, they’re
probably not random.”
52
See Newman, W. I., D.L. Turcotte, and B.M. Malamud (2012), Emergence of patterns in random
processes, Phys. Rev. E., 86, 026103.
Our brains misperceive evenness as random, and wrongly assume that groupings
are deliberate. Because of this people make all sorts of irrational decisions. Like,
they won’t work in a high rise building, or they’re afraid to live in an earthquake
prone area. And yet mathematical assessment tells us that you are far more likely
to suffocate in bed than you are to die in a terrorist attack. You are ten times more
likely to die from alcohol than from being in an earthquake. And it is three times
more likely that you will be killed while driving to buy a lottery ticket than it is
that you will win the lottery.
Charlie Eppes, Numb3rs, “Traffic”
It has been said that state lotteries are a tax on the math illiterate. Many who
play have no understanding of the long odds they face in winning, many who
do win often have no idea of the value of their winnings,53 and far too many
lottery winners subsequently go bankrupt. On the flip side, the film 21 is based
upon the book Bringing Down the House, and is a dramatization drawing upon
the real world MIT Blackjack team which existed from 1979 until the early
2000s.
The MIT Blackjack Team was a group of students from both MIT and
Harvard who developed and implemented statistical card counting techniques
to separate casinos worldwide from their money, though 21 focuses primarily
on Las Vegas. The film 21, like any good story, is primarily about the
characters, but it revels in its display of math literacy as a superpower, and
shows how, unlike the lottery, a mastery of mathematics can help you win at
games of chance by other than chance means.
Statistics Box: The Odds of Winning the Lottery
Combinatorics is a discipline within mathematics which, very simply, describes

counting, and the many ways a collection of objects can be arranged. Recall that in
the first season of Numb3rs, combinatorics was the field of Amita Ramanujan’s
dissertation topic. . . until she graduated and decided to pursue a second Ph.D.54 in
astrophysics.55
(continued)
53
Of course, assigning a value of zero to a non-winning ticket may also be flawed. How much are a few
daydreams about what you’d do with the jackpot worth?
54
Shudder.
55
Making Amita the Charlie Blackwood of Numb3rs—what is it that makes producers say, “Although this
is a show about the power of mathematics, Amita is too hot to be a mathematician, but. . . yes. . . an
astrophysicist would be perfect!”? Like an astrophysicist doesn’t spent all her day doing math and/or
coding and/or running computer models. Of course, the irony is that many of the mathematical methods
used in all areas of physics were formulated to help solve problems in astronomy or celestial mechanics.
(Calculus anybody?)
One natural application of combinatorics is that it can be used to determine your

odds of winning the lottery. If you have to pick k numbers from 1 to n, the odds of
winning are:

n n!
¼ :
k k!ðn kÞ!
This function is called the combination function, and the term on the left-hand side
of the equation is pronounced “n choose k,” meaning that you have n numbers, and if
you choose k from those, how many ways can this be done?
First, the mathematical operator “!” is called the factorial operator. The value of n!
is n (n 1) (n 2) . . . 3 2 1. So 1! is 1, 2! is 2, 3! is 6, 4! is 24, and so on.
If you are playing a lottery, and have to choose 6 numbers from a possible 40, you
calculate the odds of winning by understanding that the odds are 40 to 1 that your
first number is correct. With only 39 from which to choose, your odds are 39 to 1 that
the second is correct, and so on, this gives you:
odds ¼ 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 . . . 2 1 ¼ 40!:
Except, since you are only choosing 6 numbers, this is an overestimate, so you need
to eliminate 34 33. . . 3 2 1, which is 34! or (40 6)!, so you just divide:
40!
odds ¼ :
ð40 6Þ!
Since the correct numbers are independent of the sequence in which they are
drawn, and the number of ways 6 numbers can be drawn is 6!, or 720, we divide the
odds above by 6! (If the lottery required that the picks be in the right order, we would
omit this step.) We are left with:

40 40! 8:16 1047
¼ ¼ ¼ 3, 838, 380:
6 6!ð40 6Þ! 720 2:95 1038
Or one in 3.84 million. Many lotteries today have players pick 6 numbers out of 44.
In that instance, the odds soar to one in 7.1 million. Now you see why mathematicians
do not play lottery games—the odds are stacked against you far more than in Vegas!
Sixty eight billion [dollars]! That’s more than Americans spent last year on movie
tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball, and video games com-
bined. Which means that Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they
spent on America.
John Oliver, late night host of Last Week Tonight
In an interesting story that parallels that of the MIT Blackjack Team, but
which occurred 30 years earlier, Roy Lee Walford, M.D., a crew member of
the first mission in the Biosphere 2 project, won as much as $42,000
(estimates vary) in roulette back in 1949. Walford and mathematics graduate

student Alfred Hibbs recorded the results of roulette wheel spins at casinos in
Reno, NV, and used statistical analysis to determine which wheels were biased.
Then betting heavily on those that were biased, they were able to break the
bank. As with the characters in 21, the casinos grew wise to what Hibbs and
Walford were doing, and banished them.
Science and Hollywood have been interacting increasingly often in recent
years, and it would be naive to think that the flow of information should
proceed unidirectionally. Scientists and mathematicians and STEM educators
could learn from the entertainment industry, and there is a nugget of a lesson
in 21. With the realization that the U.S. is falling fast relative to other
countries in its ability to educate its workforce in STEM topics, there is an
increasing emphasis on finding new and different ways of reaching students
today. Professor Morris Kline, author of the book Why Johnny Can’t Add, was
not only a mathematician, he was deeply concerned with how educators
effectively convey difficult topics like mathematics to the next generation.
Kline recommended:
I would urge every teacher to become an actor. His classroom technique must be
enlivened by every device used in theatre. He can be and should be dramatic
where appropriate. He must not only have facts but fire. He can utilize even
eccentricities of behavior to stir up human interest. He should not be afraid of
humor and should use it freely. Even an irrelevant joke or story perks up the
class enormously.
Even though the character is quite the jerk at times, in the classroom Kevin
Spacey’s character Micky Rosa embodies Kline’s ideal perfectly. For that
matter, so does Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver.
Want to reach students? Be an actor.
There isn’t much teachers can do if so many of us go around saying, “Ugh, I hate
math,” and think we’re being funny.
John Allen Paulos, mathematician
Like 21, the highly-acclaimed 2011 movie Moneyball was also based upon a
true story and was, perhaps, to statistics what Numb3rs was to mathematics in
the way it revealed the power of statistics—but it did so in a more benevolent,
and less skeevy, way than did 21. Based upon the book Moneyball: The Art of
Winning an Unfair Game, the film Moneyball told the story of the 2002
Oakland Athletics (aka the Oakland A’s) baseball team. After the departure
of three key players to free agency, and burdened with a payroll that was a
small fraction of that available to teams like the New York Yankees that play in
much larger markets, Billy Beane, manager of the 2002 A’s, turned to
sabermetrics in order to stay competitive (Fig. 4.5).
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

George Bernard Shaw
In August 1971, sportswriter Bob Davids invited 35 baseball

“stathistorians” to meet at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,
New York. Sixteen of those invited came, and they agreed to form The Society
for American Baseball Research (SABR). SABR was founded to foster research
and disseminate the history and record of baseball. One of the early members
of SABR was a baseball writer and statistician named Bill James, and James
helped pioneer a form of statistical analysis that was called SABRmetrics, or
sabermetrics.
Bill James said that sabermetrics is “the search for objective knowledge
about baseball.” The goal of sabermetrics was to answer objective questions
about player performances in ways that were statistically significant in the
game as it is actually played today. As depicted in the film, the statistics that
scouts and managers deemed important—like runs batted in, batting averages,
and stolen bases—were relics of a way of viewing the game from days past. By
looking at the game differently, the 2002 Oakland A’s used sabermetrics to
build a roster of good players who were undervalued by other teams. They
compiled a record better than the team had in the previous year, with what
was, by common wisdom, a far less talented roster.
One has to wonder if this film would have been made had it not been based
upon a true story that involved Major League Baseball. Who would believe
otherwise that the power of statistics could propel a roster of has-beens and
misfits to a 20-game winning streak, the longest in baseball history, and into
the playoffs? Because the Athletics did not win the championship that season,
towards the end of the film there is a voiceover by ESPN’s Joe Morgan56 who
continues to be a vocal critic of statistics-based analyses:
What the Minnesota Twins exposed is the fact that the Oakland A’s were a
fundamentally unsound baseball team. They had a flawed concept that started
with the general manager and the brain trust over there thinking they could
re-invent baseball. You can’t approach baseball from a statistical bean counting
point of view. It’s won on the field with fundamental play. You have to steal.
You have to bunt. You have to sacrifice. You gotta get men in scoring position,
56
A great player in his own right, Morgan was the second baseman with the World Series Champion
Cincinnati Reds in 1974 and 1975, winning MVP honors both seasons.
Fig. 4.5 Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, and Jonah Hill as statistician Peter Brand in Moneyball.
Their performances in that film earned each Academy Award nominations: Pitt for Best
Actor and Hill for Best Supporting Actor. Copyright © Columbia Pictures, image courtesy
moviestillsdb.com.
and then you gotta bring ’em in. You don’t do that with a bunch of statistical
gimmicks. Nobody re-invents this game.57
This view is countered by new Boston Red Sox owner John W. Henry (Arliss
Howard) in a classic Aaron Sorkin monologue:
The first guy through the wall. . . he always gets bloody. Always. This is threat-
ening not just a way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the
game, but really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs.
It’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether
it’s a government or a way of doing business, or whatever it is. . . the people who
are holding the reins, who have their hands on the switch, they go bat shit crazy. I
mean, anybody who’s not tearing big their team down right now, and rebuilding it
using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’re going to be sitting on their ass on the
sofa in October watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.
Employing the statistical philosophy championed by Beane and the Oakland

Athletics,58 two seasons later the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series
57
NBA Great Charles Barkley is also an outspoken critic of similar analytics in professional basketball.
58
The character Peter Brand was an amalgam of several assistants who worked for the Oakland Athletics,
but the character was based primarily upon Paul DePodesta, who was the assistant to manager Billy Beane.
In January 2016 the National Football League Cleveland Browns received criticism for hiring DePodesta,
a lifetime “baseball guy.” Already the complaints have started that DePodesta’s system undervalues the
manager in baseball, and that no NFL head coach with an ounce of self respect will buy into it. The
complaints sound suspiciously like those at the end of Moneyball. We look forward to the future success of
the Cleveland Browns, and to the sequel Moneyball II: Pigskin Prophecies. http://espn.go.com/
nfl/story/_/id/14508016/cleveland-browns-hire-new-york-mets-paul-
depodesta-chief-strategy-officer
since 1918. Moneyball was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best
Picture.
It’s amazing how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all
your life.
Micky Mantle, baseball player
The Final Tally

If films like 21 and Moneyball, and even series like Numb3rs, have shown that
mastery of math and/or statistics can be a superpower, Stand and Deliver has
shown that, like any other skill, it is a superpower that anybody can master
with enough time and effort. The real-world reactions to Jaime Escalante and
Billy Beane have shown that people still consider mathematics “forbidden
knowledge” akin to voodoo.
The day somebody quits school he is condemning himself to a future of poverty.

Jaime Escalante, math teacher
The Numb3rs episode “Sacrifice” was a sobering blend of Moneyball meets

Stand and Deliver. In this episode, researcher Robert Oliver (Bruce Davison) is
killed in his home, and two days after his murder his computer hard drive is
wiped. When Charlie Eppes is able to recover some of the deleted data, he
discovers that Oliver had been doing the kind of sabermetric analysis used to
rate the skills and performance of baseball players in order to best allocate
resources, with specific references to the 2002 Oakland A’s and the book
Moneyball.59 Oliver, it turns out, was murdered because his sabermetric
analysis was not about baseball players, but students. He was analyzing student
performances, determining the schools where students “had a chance” to make
something of themselves, and those where they did not—with an eye towards
the best allocation of government resources. He was exploring where the
government should just give up.
Oliver was murdered by a young co-worker who credited the computer lab
in his school as the reason why he wasn’t “dead. . . flipping burgers, or driving
trucks” like his friends from high school, and likened Oliver’s work to a
modern-day eugenics. This episode, and the series Numb3rs in general, was a
59
The episode aired several years before the 2011 film.
prime example of how math fiction can be used like science fiction to deliver
everything from drama, to Wellsian-style social commentary, to irony similar
to that of the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
Numb3rs helped remove the stigma of the insane mathematician,60 but that
series is fading into the rear-view mirror. While fewer mathematicians today
are portrayed as unhinged, onscreen depictions of mathematicians have prob-
ably evolved to the point where scientists were a few decades ago. There is
some good, but there is also the popular prime-time CBS series Scorpion,61
which features the character Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham). Dodd is a math-
ematics and statistics guru who is sensitive, struggles with anxiety, and has
OCD and several phobias. He is also a chess grandmaster and loves comic
books.62 His is the cinematic love child that Adrian Monk had with Peter
Brand, the statistician from Moneyball, and is the most tropey version imag-
inable of the Aspy scientist we discussed at length in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1.
At the same time, there is hope. As an indicator measure of how things are
improving in the depiction of science and math and their practitioners,
Jennifer Ouellette shares another story about a consultation for the series
Bones. Recall back in Chap. 3 that, in its fledgling days, writers from Bones
approached Ouellette, then the Program Director of the Science and Enter-
tainment Exchange, about an episode featuring a murdered scientist—they
naively thought that he could have been killed at a MENSA meeting, where no
physicist would in reality ever set foot. There is an epilogue to that story63 that
Ouellette shared, and that is worth repeating here:
Fast-forward several years later, Sean [Carroll] gets called again to consult on
Bones,64 and this time they’ve learned. They’ve had so many consults by this
point, and they’ve talked to so many different scientists, and they’ve gotten
comfortable with the culture. It was stunning. It was a stellar example of what
you can achieve by engaging this kind of interaction.
60
The series Numb3rs partnered with Wolfram Research—makers of the mathematical software tool
Mathematica—to create the web site “The Numbers of Numb3rs” (http://numb3rs.wolfram.
com/). The site features descriptions of the mathematical and statistical techniques featured in various
episodes of the series, and is definitely worth a visit!
61
It’s interesting how Walter O’Brien, the main character in Scorpion, looks less like his real-life
counterpart, and more like Charlie Eppes from Numb3rs, while the character of Sylvester Dodd bears
more than a passing resemblance to Peter Brand, the statistician from Moneyball. Say what you will about
Scorpion, and neither of your authors are fans of the show, the producers are clearly connoisseurs of
cinematic mathematicians.
62
Meaning he’s not wholly without redeeming qualities.
63
Which blurs the line between math and physics, admittedly.
64
Episode 911 (season 9, episode 11), "The Spark in the Park".
They brought in Richard Schiff to play a physicist whose daughter had been
murdered. She’s a gymnast. They had Sean come up with an equation poem for
his daughter, equations of movement: her being carried on her father shoulders,
her on a trampoline, her doing somersaults, her at rest when she dies.
It brought down the house. People viewing the show, who had nothing to do
with science, said, “Tonight a math equation made me cry.”
In addition to Charlie Eppes from Numb3rs, the more recent film The
Imitation Game (2014) honors the mathematical boffins of Bletchley Park who
played a key role in helping the Allies win World War II. The film also
highlights the role mathematicians and code-breaking played in the early
development of computers. In a related vein, the cable series Manhattan
(2014–2016) accurately reflects that “computer” was not originally a high-
speed calculating machine, but a job description—the description of a
mathematician.
Mathematics is the key to our understanding of the physica1 world; it has given
us power over nature; and it has given man the conviction that he can continue to
fathom the secrets of nature. Mathematics has enabled painters to paint realisti-
cally, and has furnished not only an understanding of musical sounds but an
analysis of such sounds that is indispensable in the design of the telephone, the
phonograph, radio, and other sound recording and reproducing instruments.
Mathematics is becoming increasingly valuable in biological and medical
research. The question “What is truth?” cannot be discussed without involving
the role that mathematics has played in convincing man that he can or cannot
obtain truths. Much of our literature is permeated with themes treating mathe-
matical accomplishments. Indeed, it is often impossible to understand many
writers and poets unless one knows what influences of mathematics they are
reacting to. Lastly, mathematics is indispensable in our technology.
Morris Kline, mathematician
5
Let’s Get Digital: Computers in Cinema
The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to
do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
Ted Nelson, inventor of hypertext.
It’s a UNIX system! I know this!

Lex, Jurassic Park (1993).
We’re in!
Nearly every movie with a computer network in it, ever.
Today is a typical day. Waking up is difficult because you had a very long day
yesterday, and worked well into the evening. At least you have a beautiful view
this morning, as the rising sun glints off the Jemez Mountains.1 Drinking your
government-issued coffee with your breakfast, you decided that this will be a
two-cup morning, because today is going to be a long one, too. Walking from
your home to work means a stop at the security checkpoint. After showing the
guard your credentials, you walk to your building in the secure area, then to
your desk, where you will sit, along with row after row after row of other
women with similar desks, spending the day doing mathematical calculations.
You are a computer.
Before there were PCs, Macs, supercomputers, or smart phones, the term
“computer” referred to a person, often with a degree in mathematics or science,
who performed mathematical calculations by hand. The term “computer” as
someone who computes, as opposed to a device that computes, had its start in
the seventeenth century in astronomy. The scale of using human computers
saw a dramatic uptick in World War II, particularly in the Manhattan Project
1
Which are actually the outer rim of a volcanic caldera 26 miles across. J. Robert Oppenheimer (Daniel
London) references this in an early episode of Manhattan, “This country, the Valle Caldera, they call it a
desert, but it’s a crematorium. The mesas are only the fallout from a volcano that exploded a million and a
half years ago. Someday it will detonate again, and everything you see will be buried. It’s just a question of
time. There are forces beyond our control. The United States Army is one of them.”
at Los Alamos. Because the U.S. workforce was depleted of males due to the
war effort, most of the Los Alamos computers were young women, and wives
of the scientists were often recruited to the job.2
Large-scale tedious calculations were typically broken into smaller sub-tasks,
and undertaken in parallel by teams of computers, and this represented an
early example of parallel processing. Unlike today, where computational
performance is measured in FLOPS or TeraFLOPS,3 computational time at
Los Alamos was measured in girl-hours, even kilogirl-hours.
The computers will have to stay all night.

Frank Winter (John Benjamin Hickey), Manhattan, “You Always Hurt the One
You Love”
Of human computers, Alan Turing said, “The human computer is sup-

posed to be following fixed rules; he has no authority to deviate from them in
any detail.” Unlike many of the films about the development of the atomic
bomb, which focused more on the big name scientists and military officers
who led the effort, all of these details are depicted in various ways in the series
Manhattan (2014–2015).
Long before “computer” was a job title, humans were building computing,
or at least calculating, devices. Recovered just off the coast of the Greek island
Antikythera, and dating from between 205 and 100 BC, the Antikythera
Mechanism was a solid corroded lump housed within a wooden box housed
within a shipwreck. Restoration efforts have revealed a surprisingly complex
device, comprising 82 fragments with over 30 bronze gears. The device was
used to predict astronomical events, and used for both astrological and
calendrical applications (Fig. 5.2).
The Antikythera mechanism was not only the earliest-known computing
device, it was an analog computer, a type of computer that existed for hundreds
of years before our modern digital devices. An analog computer was a type of
computing device which, like modern digital computers, performed calcula-
tions using logical and mathematical rules. In contrast to digital computers
which manipulate 0s and 1s, analog computers used changes in continuously-
variable mechanical, hydraulic, or electrical quantities to model a problem and
output a solution (often by gears, dials, or gauges). A slide rule was a type of
2
The Mentats from the novel (1965) and film (1984) Dune were a form of human computer that came
into being after thinking machines were banned.
3
A FLOP is a “floating point operation per second”; a teraFLOP is a trillion of those.
5 Let’s Get Digital: Computers in Cinema 133
Fig. 5.1 Another movie that deals with human computers is Hidden Figures (2017),
which is based on the real-life stories of African-American computers Katherine John-
son, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe, pictured) during NASA’s early
days. Copyright © Fox 2000 Pictures.
Fig. 5.2 One of the larger fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient astronomical
computing device. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.5, user Marsyas (presumed).
analog computer, as was the famous Norden bombsight4 and early naval fire
control computers.
4
The accuracy of the Norden bombsight was so high (in principle) that for the first time it allowed
pinpoint high-altitude bombing of an individual target—like a ship or a factory—rather than inefficient
area bombing that may or may not destroy or even damage a target. In combat use, the accuracy was
dramatically lower than in tests—this has been attributed to variables such as bombardier error, cloud
cover, and previously-unknown atmospheric effects (the bombsite was built upon the premise that the
wind speed was the same from the ground up to the aircraft). The development effort had a level of secrecy
that rivaled that of the Manhattan Project.
It is technically possible to build a digital computer out of gears,5 but

computers took a big leap forward when electricity entered the equation, at
least partially. The immediate predecessors of computers as we know them today
were electromechanical, relying on spring-loaded relays as switches to guide
electrical signals. In Germany, during World War II, Conrad Zuse built a series
of increasingly powerful electromechanical computers, called the Z-1, Z-2, Z-3,
etc. Fortunately, the German war machine overlooked the potential of these
devices. This was not the case across the English Channel, were electromechan-
ical machines such as Turing’s Bomba and the Colossus were tasked with
cracking German codes at Bletchley Park. Meanwhile, in the U.S., J. Presper
Eckert and John Mauchly built ENIAC, the first general-purpose digital com-
puter. ENIAC had to be programmed for different tasks by physically
rearranging its hardware (until some modifications were made after 1948 that
gave ENIAC the ability to store a program in a read-only memory).
Following directly from their code-breaking machines, in June 1948 some
ex-Bletchley Park engineers developed the “Manchester Baby,” a prototype
machine that is generally credited with being the first all-electronic computer
that executed a program stored in its own memory.6 U.S. computers soon
eclipsed this narrow lead, and the center of gravity in the computer world
eventually shifted all the way west to Silicon Valley.
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve
with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements,
as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
John von Neumann, mathematician (1949)
Computers are wonderful tools for visual storytellers. If you need exposi-
tion, they make way better props than books, maps, or mysterious rolled-up
blueprints. You can ramp up the visuals from simple text, through rich dossiers
packed with pictures and movies, all the way to room-sized animated 3-D
holograms—special effects technology and budgets permitting, of course.7
Think of the Rebels/Resistance in the 1977, 2015, and 2016 installments of
5
Charles Babbage came very close with his designs for the so-called Analytical Engine in the early
nineteenth century, but both his funding and the precision with which gears could be made at the time
were insufficient for the task. However, in the 1990 novel, The Difference Engine, William Gibson and
Bruce Sterling imagined an alternate history where Babbage got his machine up and running. The book is
pretty much the genesis event for the Steampunk subgenre.
6
Recently, there’s been some dispute about exactly which month ENIAC was first modified to run stored
programs, which could give it priority over the Manchester Baby, but the Baby was designed from the start
to use stored programs.
7
The visual effects, themselves, are a product of computation these days. How meta.
Fig. 5.3 These two microprocessors are both little black boxes, but there’s 30 years of
progress between them. On the left is the TMS9995, an early 1980s 16-bit processor that
could run at a maximum of 12 MHz (here in a “single board” computer, custom built by
author SAC’s father). On the right is a BCM2837 (now used to power the popular single
board Raspberry Pi 3 computer)—a 64-bit chip containing four processor cores that each
run 100 times faster than the TMS9995. Photos: Stephen Cass.
Star Wars (we’re including Rogue One) explaining the operation and critical
weaknesses of the Death Star/Starkiller Base to their pilots.
In fact, computers can perform almost any storytelling function: they can
fade into the set dressing as part of general world-building and mood-setting,
as with the flashing mainframes used in earlier James Bond movies, or take
center stage as a lead character like HAL 9000, Colossus, or GERTY.8 They
can provide all manner of obstacles for the heroes to overcome, or they can be
the secret weapon that allows them to prevail.
Yet, just as for most of us in our daily lives dealing with computer-controlled
devices such as smartphones, ATMs, and DVRs, computers on screen are
almost invariably black boxes with no suggestion about what’s going inside to
make the magic happen. It is rare to find screenplays that delve into this area in
a meaningful way, even in movies that are ostensibly about computers. Con-
sider the equivalent in other arenas—imagine if submarine movies never left
the conn to visit the engine or torpedo rooms, racecar movies never showed the
engine under the hood, or medical dramas never dwelt on an X-ray.
To remove some of the mystery of these black boxes, let’s peer under the
hood of computers, and into the guts of their circuits a little bit. Indeed, the gap
in Hollywood’s understanding of computers is not really the fault of screen-
writers. Modern computer innovation often happens in a purely microscopic
realm—one microchip looks pretty much like any other, even if there’s 20 years
of technological development between them (Fig. 5.3).
8
Such computer characters have become more interesting on the big screen in the last few years due to the
relative rise of cinematic artificial intelligences that take leading roles without being obsessed with
destruction or domination, such as in Her (2013) or Ex Machina (2015). In this, the movies are finally
catching up with small screen, as benign A.I. characters have long been part of the TV landscape.
Examples include KITT from Knight Rider (1982–1986), Holly from Red Dwarf (1988–), and Rommie
from Gene Rodenberry’s Andromeda (2000–2005). All that said, Robby the Robot from the 1956 theatrical
film Forbidden Planet deserves a shout out.
Fig. 5.4 The Von Neumann architecture, in which data and instructions are held in the
same memory. In a common variation, a common data bus links all three major sub-
systems—memory, the CPU, and input/output—together so that data can be transferred
directly to and from the memory and the input/output system. This allows, for example,
an image in memory to be sent directly to a video card, without having to shuffle data in
and out of the CPU. Illustration: Stephen Cass.
Then there’s software which, as we’ll see, requires grappling with concepts so
abstract that they are not easy to depict on screen. Author SAC has worked at
some of the best science and technology publications for years, yet he can attest
that in non-fiction articles devoted to software, writers and editors constantly
struggle to find clear and compelling ways to discuss the latest advances.
Computer Architecture
Most modern computers are based upon what is known as the Von Neumann
Architecture.9 This architecture is constructed using three main subsystems
(Fig. 5.4). In the early days of computing, each subsystem was built out of
many sub-components such as electronic tubes or transistors. Then in 1970s,
it became possible to put each subsystem on a single silicon chip. Today, it is
common to find entities called SoCs, or systems on a chip in things like
cellphones. SoCs combine all the subsystems in one integrated circuit, but
the internal design still reflects the same basic architecture.
Science Box: (to be) OR NOT(to be) ¼ TRUE

Computers perform operations and make decisions using a type of logic called Bool-
ean algebra, invented by George Boole in the middle of the nineteenth century. Boole
was a mathematician and a philosopher, and he was interested in putting the way
philosophers determined the truth of various statements in a mathematically formal
way. Prior to this, philosophers mostly relied on syllogisms, a logical approach rooted
in language that was originally developed by Aristotle.
Boole conceived a series of mathematical operators that could be chained together
into an equation. Working out if a statement was true or false simply meant plugging
(continued)
9
The celebrated mathematician John Von Neumann didn’t invent the architecture that bears his name, at
least not entirely; that honor probably belongs to Charles Babbage. Babbage’s designs for his never-built,
but nonetheless influential, mechanical computer (the Analytical Engine) employ a similar approach,
albeit one implemented with cogwheels rather than circuits.
initial true or false values into the operators and looking up how they combined
together using an operator’s truth table.
To understand how Boolean algebra works, lets look at the most basic operators
which are AND, OR, and NOT. The operators AND and OR each take two true/false
input values, and spit out a single true/false value. A NOT operator takes a single input
value and spits out a single value.
An AND operator is true if, and only if, both its input values are true. For example,
it’s true you will get wet if, and only, if you are outside AND it is raining. If you are
inside and its raining, it’s false that you will get wet. If you are outside and it isn’t
raining, you won’t get wet. And of course if you are inside and it isn’t raining you
won’t get wet either. So the truth table for the AND operator is given in Table 5A.1.
Table 5A.1 Truth table for a Input 1 Input 2 Output

logical AND operation.
False False False
True False False
False True False
True True True
An OR operator is true if either or both of its input values are true. For example, it’s
true that you have something to eat if it’s true you have either a candy bar OR it’s true
you have an apple. It’s also true that you have something to eat if you have a candy
bar and you have an apple. It’s not true that you have something to eat if you don’t
have candy bar or an apple. So its truth table for the OR operator is given in
Table 5A.2.
Table 5A.2 Truth table for a Input 1 Input 2 Output

logical OR operation.
False False False
False True True
True False True
True True True
A NOT operator simple reverses the truth of whatever value was its input. True
becomes false and false becomes true. Its truth table is the simplest of all (Table 5A.3):
Table 5A.3 Truth table for a Input Output

NOT operation.
False True
True False
There are other operators that may seem to Table 5A.4 Truth table for a logical NOR
be of limited usefulness upon first inspection, operation
but which computer engineers and program- Input 1 Input 2 Output
mers find very useful. The truth table of the
False False True
NOR operator (NOT-OR) is the inverse of the
OR operator; the truth table for NAND True False False
(NOT-AND) is the inverse of the AND opera- False True False
tor (Tables 5A.4 and 5A.5). True True False
(continued)
In 1913 logician Henry Sheffer10 proved that Table 5A.5 Truth table for a logical
it is possible to recreate the truth tables of NAND operation
the other operators—NOT, OR, and AND— Input 1 Input 2 Output
with a series of NOR operators only, or a
False False True
series of NAND operators only. We will see
in a subsequent science box how powerful True False True
this has proven to be, and how it was a key False True True
design consideration for one of the most True True False
influential computers in history—the Apollo
Guidance Computer.
The first subsystem is the central processing unit or CPU, which can translate
numeric codes fed to it into instructions to perform basic operations, such as
adding two numbers together, and, crucially, can choose to execute different
commands depending upon the value of a number—for example, if a com-
puter is monitoring oxygen levels in a spacesuit and a sensor reports that
oxygen levels have dropped below a pre-established threshold level,11 the
computer can switch to executing an alarm program to warn the astronaut
wearing the suit.
The next key sub-system of a computer is the memory unit. This is where
both data and programs are stored, ready to be copied to the CPU as needed
(as we’ve already hinted, the fact that data and programs are typically stored in
the same memory has some important implications).
Science Box: Of Bits and Bytes and Bases

When mechanical calculators and computers were the state of the art, such as in
Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine designs in the early and mid-nineteenth century,
they were built around decimal notation, because it was very natural to map base
10 numerals onto the teeth of cogwheels. Shortly after electronic computers came
along—first using relays or radio tubes in the place of cogwheels—it became much
more convenient to use another base to map numbers to the inner workings of the
computer. This base was base 2, or binary notation. As we explored in Chap. 4, binary
is also a positional number system, but instead of 10 numerals, it uses just two: 0 and 1.
Unlike decimal, where each digit in a number is a factor of 10 greater than the digit
immediately to its right, in binary each digit in a number is just twice as large as the
digit immediately to its right. Table 5B.1 shows how the first few numbers correspond
between binary and decimal:
(continued)
10
Mathematician, logician, philosopher, and chemist Charles Sanders Pierce made this same discovery
over thirty years earlier in 1880, but did not publish his work. Silly Charles.
11
Just like in The Martian! The Martian is great. Have you seen it yet? You should.
Table 5B.1 An overview on the process of converting binary to decimal.

Binary Binary expansion Decimal equivalent expansion Decimal
000 (0 100) + (0 10) + (0 1) (0 4) + (0 2) + (0 1) 0
001 (0 100) + (0 10) + (1 1) (0 4) + (0 2) + (0 1) 1
010 (0 100) + (1 10) + (0 1) (0 4) + (1 2) + (0 1) 2
011 (0 100) + (1 10) + (1 1) (0 4) + (1 2) + (1 1) 3
100 (1 100) + (0 10) + (0 1) (1 4) + (0 2) + (0 1) 4
101 (1 100) + (0 10) + (1 1) (1 4) + (0 2) + (1 1) 5
From the table above you can begin to see how addition works in binary. Because
there are only two numerals, learning the binary addition table is pretty easy:
0 + 0 ¼ 0; 1 + 0 ¼ 1; 0 + 1 ¼ 1; 1 + 1 ¼ 10. Note how adding 1 + 1 in binary creates a
“carry” into the next column, just as when we add 4 + 6 or 9 + 1 and produce a 10 in
decimal. So, to add two longer binary numbers together, all we need to do is keep
track of the carries. For example, let’s add 101 to 11 in binary (we’ll note when a carry
happens with a subscript 1, i.e., 01 or 11) (Table 5B.2).
Table 5B.2 An example of 0 1 0 1

how two binary numbers are
+ 01 01 11 1
added on a computer
¼ 1 0 0 0
1000 in binary is equal to 8 in decimal (so we know we’ve added right because if we
look at the first table above, 101 in binary equals 5 in decimal, 11 equals 3, and
5 +3 ¼ 8).
In modern computers, a byte is the smallest addressable unit of memory, and is the
standard building block of instructions and data. It is nearly always 8 bits.12 One such
byte can range in value from 0 to 11111111 (binary) or 0 to 256 (in decimal).13
Computers understand only 0s and 1s, and strings of binary digits are not human-
friendly,14 but there is a middle ground that makes life easier, at least for program-
mers. A half byte ranges from 0000 to 1111, which is 0 to 15. Recall in Chap. 4, we
explored the duodecimal, or base 12, number system. For base 12, we had to add two
extra characters, χ (decimal 10) and ε (decimal 11). Hexadecimal numbers are numbers
that are written in base 16 rather than base 10. As with duodecimal, we have to add
numerals beyond the 0–9 of the decimal system, so programmers borrow the first six
letters of the alphabet. In hexadecimal we count like this: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,
F,10,11,12. . . In hexadecimal the number 10 is equivalent to 16 in decimal. Since one
hexadecimal number corresponds exactly to 4 bits, e.g., 0 (Hex) ¼ 0000 (Binary),
8 (Hex) ¼ 1000 (Binary), and F (Hex) ¼ 1111 (Binary), two hexadecimal digits represent
one byte.
What about adding more than two binary numbers together, or subtracting them?
Turns out that, if you just care about binary numbers vis a vis building computers, you
(continued)
12
To maintain consistency with the nomenclature using bits and bytes, four bits, or a half-byte, are often
collectively called a nybble.
13
If the most-significant-bit is used to indicate the number’s sign (the standard scheme for so-called signed
numbers), then one byte can store positive and negative numbers ranging from +127 to 128.
14
Nevertheless, there was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode entitled “11001001”.
don’t actually have to know how to do either of those things! Computers only ever
add pairs of numbers together in their circuits (although they may be adding lots of
pairs at the same time). Subtraction is usually done via a clever trick known as two’s
complement where, essentially, the processor inverts one of the numbers (a logical
NOT operator) and then adds the two numbers so that a subtraction is actually
performed by an addition.
Multiplication and division are a bit more complicated, but they boil down to some
very simple operations involving shifting the digits in a number left or right (so that
0110 might become 1100 or 0011) and good old addition. In the same manner that
shifting all the numerals of a number left one place and filling the empty slot with a
zero is in essence a multiplication by 10 (so that 42 becomes 420, for example), simply
shifting the bits of a binary number one place to the left is a multiplication by 2.
So far, all we’ve seen applies to so-called integers, i.e., whole numbers like 5 or 2.
What about more complicated numbers that pop up in science and engineering, like
3.1416 or 2.71828 or 6.02 1023? These are called floating point numbers and
computers employ special software (or, more likely these days, special processor
hardware called FPUs for “floating point units”) to handle them.
One byte per character is required for the most basic code used to represent text in
a computer system,15 which is ASCII (short for American Standard for Computer
Information Interchange, which you will never need to remember). Each letter has a
defined character code, so that, for example, 101 (Decimal)/65 (hexadecimal) repre-
sents the lowercase letter “e” and 76 (Decimal)/4C (Hexadecimal) represents the
uppercase letter “L.”
In any case, you now know enough to appreciate one of the oldest and best/worst
jokes in computer science: “There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who
understand binary and those who don’t.”
Finally, there is an input/output (I/O) sub-system that allows the computer

to receive commands and information from the outside world and communi-
cate the results of its computations. These systems can take many forms.
In the Old Times, I/O systems were based on banks of switches, short
“patch” cables, and paper cards and tapes with holes punched in them.
Punched cards and paper tapes are actually a programming technology that
dates back to 1801, when they were used to control the automated weaving
looms of Joseph Marie Jacquard.
Today, I/O systems are enormously diverse. Input devices include key-
boards, temperature sensors, EEG electrodes that read brainwaves, video
cameras, fingerprint readers, strain gauges, accelerometers that detect how
many steps you’ve walked, radar dishes, and many more types of sensors. In
fact we’re having something of a sensor explosion right now, and this is one of
the principle drivers of the new era of so-called big data, which turns out to be
15
Technically, real ASCII only uses seven bits in actuality, but an 8-bit version that originated in the
1980s, which includes some non-English characters like é and ü, is very common. Twenty-first century
computers encode text using the UTF-8 standard, which can handle every type of alphabet or symbol on
the planet, including Chinese, Japanese, and even emoji. Thanks to some terribly clever software design,
UTF-8 is backward compatible with ASCII.
Fig. 5.5 The Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas. Nozzles and lights are set into arcs and
loops just underneath the surface of a small lake. By connecting the nozzles and lights to
the output of a computer, software allows impressive “performances” in time to
pre-recorded music. Photo: Stephen Cass.
a very important development for cloud marketing platforms like Amazon.

com and Facebook, as well as artificial intelligence developers (see the section
below, and Chap. 6: “Heavy Metal: Robots and AIs in Cinema”).
Output devices include digital cinema screens down at the local multiplex, the
choreographed fountains in front of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas (Fig. 5.5), the
ailerons on the wings of a modern passenger jet, the rumblepack in a game console
controller, a cardiac pacemaker’s electrode, the audio jack of a smartphone, the list
goes on and on. Today output devices are just as diverse as input devices: in many
ways the principle function of computers is evolving from high-end calculating
machines to translators between different forms of data.
The Von Neumann architecture isn’t actually the only possible architecture
for a computer: for example, there’s the Harvard architecture, in which pro-
grams and data are stored in two completely separate memory units (a version
of this Harvard architecture is used, for example, in the Arduino microcon-
trollers that are popular with makers and electronic artists). Still, despite their
differences, the Church-Turing hypothesis, which is pretty much ground zero
for all computer science, states that all computer architectures are mathemat-
ically and logically identical to a construct called a universal Turing machine.16
16
Technically, a universal Turing machine is defined as having access to an infinite amount of memory,
something no real computer has. But real computers have access to large enough memory stores as to make
this point moot for most purposes.
The universal Turing machine was invented as a thought experiment by

Alan Turing17 in 1936 to attack a knotty issue that was annoying mathema-
ticians in the early twentieth century. At the time it was called the Entschei-
dungsproblem, or decision problem, but today we generally refer to it as the
halting problem.
It would take an entire book (some are recommended in the “Further
Reading” section) to explain the mathematical details of the halting prob-
lem, why people cared about it, and how the universal Turing Machine
solved the problem. However, the key upshot of Turing’s work is, first, that
every computer can in principle perfectly simulate any other computer18—
although there’s no guarantee that the resulting simulation won’t be so slow
as to be utterly useless if a more powerful computer is being simulated than
the computer doing the simulation. Second, if it can be demonstrated that a
given physical system can be used, even in theory, to make a universal
Turing machine, then any possible computation can in principle be done
with that system. This holds true even if the physical system is something
no-one would immediately consider to be a computer, such as a blob of
engineered DNA, fluids moving through a series of carefully shaped cham-
bers, or particular arrangements of blocks in the computer game Minecraft.
Thirdly, all computers are governed by certain universal rules. If a rule
applies to the universal Turing machine, then it automatically applies to
every computer.
At the Junction, P-N Junction

At the end of its operational life, ENIAC was approximately 2.4 m 0.9 m 30 m
(8 3 100 ft) in size, occupying 167 m2 (1800 ft2), with a mass upwards of
27,200 kg (60,000 lbs), and it consumed 150 kW of electrical power.19 The
17
Go watch The Imitation Game (2014) if you haven’t already. Many historical details are fictionalized,
but it does get across many of the important ideas in Turing’s application of early digital technology to
cryptography.
18
This is actually the fundamental basis for cloud computing, which lets companies like Amazon and
Google conjure up and rent out virtual servers on an as-needed basis to people who want more processing
power than they can afford to own physically, and have each server behave as if it is an actual machine with
a processor, disk drive, memory, software, and so on.
19
Today, you can play with an ENIAC on your desk or lap, and even program it: there are several free
ENIAC simulators available online.
machine was so massive and bulky because it contained 17,468 vacuum tubes,
7200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 70,000 resistors, and 10,000 capacitors.20
The year 1947 would be one that changed forever the direction of compu-
tation. Early digital computers like ENIAC employed bulky vacuum tubes to
implement components like diodes, amplifiers, and logic gates (more on these
in a bit). Scientists in places like Bell Laboratories, Purdue University, and
Paris21 were studying the behavior of semiconducting materials like silicon and
germanium. As with so many scientific and technical discoveries in history
(see, for example, the science box in this chapter on Boolean Logic), the
Purdue and Paris groups did not appreciate the full scope of their discoveries,
while the Bell Laboratories group fully realized it.
It turns out that, if two nearly-pure silicon crystals, laced with small levels of
impurities, are placed in contact one another, they form a p-n junction. A p-n
junction forms a diode, two p-n junctions form a transistor—both devices can
perform functions previously implemented using much larger vacuum tubes
(Fig. 5.6). Transistors can be used to amplify signals, as in the case of early
transistor radios, or they can be used to implement gates, the fundamental
building blocks of computational logic and mathematics. By using transistors
instead of vacuum tubes, computer engineers could implement the same
functionality in a much smaller volume.
Fig. 5.6 Comparison of several types of vacuum tubes, and two semiconductor transis-
tors (labeled E, B, C for emitter, base, collector). For scale, the transistors rest on typical
lined notebook paper. Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons Quark48 CC BY-SA 2.0 de
(vacuum tubes) and Wtshymanski CC BY-SA 3.0 (transistors)
20
Weik, Martin H. (1955). Ballistic Research Laboratories Report No. 971: A Survey of Domestic Electronic
Digital Computing Systems. Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: United States Department of Commerce
Office of Technical Services. p. 41.
21
See “How Europe Missed the Transistor,” by Michael Riordan, IEEE Spectrum, November 2005.
Science Box: Gap Band Versus Band Gap

Q: What is the difference between the Gap Band and a band gap?22
A: One drops a bomb on you, the other helps make it explode.23
Modern computation is performed, in large part, using integrated circuits—elec-
tric circuits that exist on a single wafer of intentionally impure silicon. Within this tiny
chip of silicon are embedded thousands to hundreds of thousands, even millions of
transistors—the unsung workhorses of modern computation. It is a fairly straightfor-
ward exercise to start with a description of the physical properties of the element
silicon, and finish with a conceptual understanding of how some basic, but very
important, components of a computer function. Bear with us here, if you’re not an
electrical engineer or solid state physicist, the descriptions are going to get a little
hairy, but totally worthwhile in the end.
In Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, we very cursorily explored the structure of matter. A
very simplified model, called the Bohr or Bohr-Rutherford model,24 is that negatively-
charged electrons orbit a positively charged nucleus like planets orbit a star. The
situation is slightly more complicated than that. There are several key differences.
Unlike planets, which could, presumably, orbit a star at any distances, electrons are
confined to orbits of fixed energies, and no electrons exist between these orbits.
Also unlike planets or moons or asteroids, which could hypothetically share an
orbit (and some do, see Chap. 8), only two electrons can share an orbit, and even then
it is only if they have different values of a property known as spin. Electron orbits are
also grouped into clusters called bands (Fig. 5C.1). Between bands are regions where
no electrons can exist, regions known as band gaps. The outermost filled band is
called the valence band.
Fig. 5C.1 Diagram of the outermost electron bands relative to their Fermi level.
(continued)
22
The Greenwood, Archer, and Pine Street Band—later shortened to GAP Band—released the single
“You Dropped a Bomb on Me” in 1982. The song made it to #31 on the Billboard Hot 100.
23
Yes, we’ve made better jokes, but you try coming up with a joke incorporating a popular 1970s band and
solid state physics.
24
That model we’ve all seen countless times, like between scenes on The Big Bang Theory.
One key similarity between planet orbits and electron orbits is this: the more
distant a planet or electron from the start or nucleus it orbits, the more loosely-
bound to that atom it is.25 There is a threshold called the Fermi level (Ef) or Fermi
energy, and electrons whose energy is greater than the Fermi level are free to flow
between atoms. The first band with orbits above the Fermi level is called the conduc-
tion band.
The electrical properties of an element depend upon the energy range of permit-
ted orbits that span the valence band, and where those fall relative to the Fermi level
(Fig. 5C.2). In a conductor like a metal, the valence band and conduction band overlap
at the Fermi level. It takes little to cause electrons to flow in this type of material.
Insulators, on the other hand, have a wide band gap between the valence band and
the conduction band, with the Fermi level in between.
Fig. 5C.2 Diagram of the outermost electron bands relative to their Fermi level.
An intrinsic semiconductor like silicon is a type of material that is an insulator in its

natural state, but whose properties are somewhere between a proper conductor such
as copper and an insulator such as plastic. A material like this, take silicon for example,
has a much narrower gap between the valence and conduction bands.
By introducing tiny and carefully controlled26 amounts of impurities like germa-
nium or arsenic into a wafer of otherwise extremely pure silicon, a process called
doping, it is possible to alter silicon’s conductive properties. Doped silicon becomes an
extrinsic semiconductor and, depending upon the impurity, it can either end up with a
relative surplus of electrons or a deficiency of electrons. Electrons are negatively
charged, so the first type of material is called n-type, while the second is called
p-type (for “positive type”).
Some impurities, called donor impurities, can shift the conduction band to a lower
energy, so that the orbits within the band just reach the Fermi level. This is called
n-type silicon. An atom of this type has more valence electrons than the silicon atoms
they replace in the crystal structure. Consequently, they “donate” their extra valence
(continued)
25
Just like planets, an electron that is bound to an atom has negative total energy, while one that is
unbound has positive energy. Although we have explored this a little in Vol. 1, we’ll go into more detail in
Chap. 8. If this doesn’t make sense, it might after you’ve read that chapter.
26
The degree of care required in semiconductor manufacturing is a major factor in the design of modern
microprocessor plants—called fabs—which cost about $5 billion apiece to build.
electrons to silicon’s conduction band, providing excess electrons than can flow as
electrical current in the same way they do in a metal.
It is a little trickier to understand what’s going on in a p-type material. Other types
of impurities, also called donor impurities, can shift the valence band to a higher
energy, so that the orbits within the band just reach the Fermi level. This is called
p-type silicon. In p-type silicon, there are electron orbits that want to be occupied, but
are not. These are called holes.
The so-called holes act as if they are positively charged, and they can also be
responsible for transporting electrical charge. To explain what a hole is, imagine
that a p-type semiconductor is like a row seats in a stadium at a sporting event. All
of the seats are full save for one empty seat at the left end of the aisle. The people in
the seats represent electrons in the material. Now imagine that the person next to the
empty seat moves into the empty seat. This means that the person in the seat third
from the left can hop into the empty seat, and so on until the person in the rightmost
seat can move one over and the empty seat appears on the right-hand side. Then the
person across the aisle jumps into the empty seat. This proceeds seat by seat and
section by section. From across the stadium it looks as if the empty seat—equivalent to
a hole—is what is doing the moving, rather than the people.
The most important thing is that, if you place a piece of p-type material up against
a piece of n-type material (creating a p-n junction near the interface, or junction),
some of the excess electrons from the n-type side combine with some of the holes
from the p-type side, creating ions on both sides. More importantly, both holes and
electrons vanish from both sides, creating a zone free of charge carriers in the local
neighborhood of the junction, so a current will not flow through the depleted zone,
nor will it flow from one piece of silicon to the other.
If, however, a wire is connected to both p- and n-type silicon pieces so that it is
placed in a circuit, an interesting thing happens. If the voltage is applied one way,
holes and electrons separate, and current flows from end to end. Reverse the polar-
ity27 of the voltage, or flip the silicon pieces, and a voltage creates an even wider
region depleted of charge carriers. The practical upshot is that the p-n junction acts
like a one-way valve, permitting electricity to flow in one direction only. This is a
device called a diode (Fig. 5C.3).
Fig. 5C.3 The basic parts of a PNP transistor.
(continued)
27
Hey look, we did it again!
A transistor is two diodes back-to-back like a three-layer sandwich. Those layers are
either n-type, p-type, n-type (NPN) or p-type, n-type, p-type (PNP).28 At first glance
this looks like a pointless device—how could electricity ever flow through it? If the
first diode doesn’t block the flow of electricity, the other certainly will.
Here’s the magic. If you apply a voltage to the center of the NPN or PNP sandwich
(which is called the base of the transistor) then it makes the transistor behave as if it is
the same as the material on either side. In other words, a PNP sandwich would become
a PPP sandwich.29 As there are functionally no more p-n junctions in the material,
electricity is free to flow across the transistor. Remove the voltage at the base, and the
flow is blocked again.
So now we have a little voltage-controlled switch, where electricity only emerges
from a transistor (at the terminal labeled emitter) if electricity is supplied to both the
terminals labeled collector and base. If the voltage on the base is time-varying, as
would be the case for a radio signal, a transistor can be used as a simple amplifier. In
modern electronics, though, transistors are generally used as straightforward on/off
switches30 and they enable all the functions necessary for computers to compute.
Despite the fact that semiconductor diodes and transistors changed com-
putation forever, some aspects of computation changed relatively slowly. As
components shrank in size, behemoths where still the norm for several years—
they just became increasingly capable, since designers could pack more com-
ponents into the same volume as that taken up by previous machines. (For an
interesting exploration of what might have been—a very different type of
computer technology that, although highly competitive with semiconductors,
came to a sudden standstill in 1959—see the science box “Ascension, Dudley
Buck, and the Cryotron Computer” in Chap. 7.)
These were the computers that first started popping up on screen in the
1950s, and what followed was a classic case of “iconic permanence.” This is
where an early example of a new technology becomes the way that it is
represented, even long after the actual technology has moved on. Think of
how the “save” function in applications is often represented by a 3.5-in. floppy
disk, or how digital video players still offer a “rewind” button.
Early computers—big, expensive items that represented significant invest-
ments—were often proudly displayed by PR savvy institutions and firms,
fixing their image in the public’s mind. For example, from 1948 to 1952,
28
We’re describing a bipolar transistor here. These are very commonly found as separate components on
circuit boards. They’re the things that look like little squared-off black cylinders with three leads—see
Fig. 5.5. They were used in early computers, but in integrated circuits the most common type of transistor
is something called a FET, or field-effect transistor. FETs work in a somewhat different way to bipolar
transistors, but from a logic point of view, they are pretty much the same. It would not be an exaggeration
to say that modern civilization is built on the backs of trillions of FETs.
29
Technically, here we’re describing the operation of transistors at saturation. But unless you’re designing
analog circuits, you don’t need to worry about that.
30
Technically, they are said to be used in saturation in digital circuits. Saturation is bad if you’re trying to
listen to an analog audio signal, as it would be horribly distorted.
Fig. 5.7 The main control console desk of IBM’s SSEC computer, showing that stylish
computing didn’t start with Apple. Photo: Stephen Cass.
IBM’s electromechanical SSEC computer could be seen by anybody walking

past the ground floor windows of the company’s headquarters in New York
City (Fig. 5.7), a move that garnered a lot of publicity for the giant machine.
In 1952 and 1956 a room-filling Univac computer—complete with lots and
lots of blinking lights31—was presented to TV audiences as part of the CBS
network’s coverage of the U.S. Presidential Election.32
In 1957, the Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn romantic comedy Desk Set
was released, featuring a machine that had an exaggerated number of blinking
lights, but was otherwise a reasonable reflection of the real tech of the day
(unsurprisingly, as IBM is thanked prominently for its assistance in the credits).33
The iconic die was cast. While Desk Set is notable for substantively incor-
porating the machine (or at least the threat of it) into the plot, the Giant
Blinking Computer (GBC) soon started popping up all over the place as
background set decoration. GBCs played a roughly equivalent scene-setting
role as the electrical arcs and test tubes that littered the laboratories of
old-school mad scientists in earlier years. For the first few decades of their
31
These so-called blinkenlights were intended to provide diagnostic information about the computers and
the programs running on them. An experienced operator could tell at a glance from the patterns if a
computer was stuck in an infinite loop, for example. The descendants of mainframe blinkenlights can still
be found on modern computers, such as the lights that flash on cable modems or Ethernet sockets.
32
The Univac predicted the winner correctly on both occasions, but the network ignored the computer’s
results in 1952, because they thought the computer’s prediction that Eisenhower would win in a landslide
was laughable. He won 39 out of the 48 states then making up the United States.
33
The movie has a plot line that has become more on-point with time, rather than less, as white-collar
workers fear their jobs will be eliminated thanks to digital automation.
screen life, there was typically just one computer per screenplay, with digital
machines taking the form of singular giant computers that did everything and
anything the plot required, from triggering nuclear destruction in 1964s
Failsafe to (poorly) running the domed (and doomed) city in 1976s Logan’s
Run. Even spaceships were operated by a single large central computer—recall
how HAL 9000 in 1969s 2001: A Space Odyssey had an entire room devoted to
its core systems, one large enough for an astronaut to float around in.
Science Box: Making Electrons Logical

Computers do more than just store numbers and move them around. They do things
with these numbers—perform mathematical operations, and most importantly, make
decisions based upon what the numbers are. Integrating all of this chapter’s science
boxes to make the explicit connection to computers, mapping binary digits to elec-
tronic circuits and memory cells is easy: a positive voltage represents a 1, no voltage
represents a 0.34 Boolean TRUE and FALSE can also be represented as the binary
numbers 1 and 0 or the presence/absence of a voltage. So the presence of, say, 5 V
in a circuit has a logical value of true, while 0 V equals false. Now you can start making
inroads towards getting computers to “think” about things like “If the oxygen level is
low AND the alarm override is off, then it is TRUE the alarm should be making a
noise.”
Boolean operators are implemented in electronic computers using logic gates.
These gates fundamentally rely upon electronically controlled computer switches. In
the beginning, these switches were electromagnetic relays. Then along came radio
tubes. Radio tubes were replaced by individual transistors, and eventually engineers
worked out how to cram the transistors together on a single piece of silicon to create
integrated circuits.
For example, two transistors35 can implement the Boolean AND operation
(Fig. 5D.1):
Fig. 5D.1 A Boolean AND operator implemented with transistors.
(continued)
34
Some systems use so-called inverse logic, where a positive voltage means 0 and no voltage means a 1, but
the principle is the same.
35
We’ve eliminated some of the components, chiefly resistors, you would need if you were actually going
to build this as a working circuit.
Even better, it is pretty straightforward to understand how this works. Unless both
transistor bases are on (meaning at the semiconductor level that the voltage has
shrunk the size of the region of the transistor depleted of charge carriers), no
electricity can flow from the electricity supply (marked with a + symbol) to the final
output emitter, like so (Fig. 5D.2):
Fig. 5D.2 An AND gate built out of transistors. Electricity is supplied to the “top” of
the gate, which is the collector of the first transistor. Only if a voltage representing a
logical 1, or true, value is applied to both transistors can the supplied electricity flow
to represent a logical 1, or true, value at the output. Illustration: Stephen Cass.
It can very quickly get confusing to think about gates by scrutinizing their transis-
tors (and there are many ways to build the different gates in any case), so on circuit
diagrams, engineers and scientists abbreviate the details using the following symbols
(Fig. 5D.3):
Fig. 5D.3 Schematic symbol diagrams for five different types of logic gates that
implement the Boolean logical operators from the previous science box.
Now we can start thinking about how gates can be combined to perform more
complicated functions—like adding two bits together. We explained how binary
addition works in Science Box: “Of Bits and Bytes and Bases,” but to recap,
0 + 0 ¼ 0; 0 + 1 ¼ 1; 1 + 0 ¼ 1; and 1 + 1 ¼ 0 plus a “carry” bit. Here’s how that can
be implemented in logic gates (technically, this circuit is known as a “half adder”
because it doesn’t have a way to accept a carry bit from another gate) (Fig. 5D.4):
(continued)
Fig. 5D.4 A circuit diagram for a binary half-adder. Places where wires cross over
each other without a black circle are not connected. This adder adds two bits, A and B,
and passes the resulting 1 or 0 to the sum. If A and B both equal 1, the result of adding
them is 10, so in that case, the “carry” wire would have the value 1, while the “sum”
would have a value of 0. Illustration: Stephen Cass.
Using the truth tables above you can trace the flow of logic through the circuit for
different input values.
Now recall in a previous science box, we said that in 1913 logician Henry Sheffer
proved that logical operators AND, OR, and NOT could be implemented by a series of
NOR or NAND operators. This is also true in practice—in a circuit, all logical operators
can be implemented using a single type of gate (Fig. 5D.5).
Fig. 5D.5 Logic gates for AND, OR, and NOT operators implemented entirely as a
string of NOR operators.
The first embedded computer, the Apollo Guidance Computer, employed 5600
integrated circuits. So that quality control could be performed more easily and
readily, NASA insisted that all logical operations be implemented using a single type
of gate—NOR gates—throughout. The same result could have been achieved using
NAND gates as well. Using the designs in Fig. 5D.5 with NOR gates alone, we could
implement the half-adder from Fig. 5D.4, along with much more complicated circuits.
By first combining little bits of semiconductors into diodes then transistors, and
then combining transistors into gates, and finally gates into functional blocks, simple
pulses of electricity and TRUE and FALSE logic become complex digital mathematics.
In this way, numbers can be manipulated and evaluated against other numbers, and
decisions made—the basis of all computing.
Fig. 5.8 Cold War paranoia + GBC ¼ Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) with Eric
Braden, aka Hans Gutegast, as Dr. Charles Forbin. Copyright © Universal Pictures.
Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
In 1958 engineer Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments invented the first true
integrated circuit (IC) that incorporated multiple transistors on a single wafer of
silicon. For his work, he won the Nobel Prize in 2000.36 A few months after
Kilby, Richard Noyce and his crew at Fairchild Semiconductor invented a much
better type of integrated circuit that could be easily mass produced, and which
formed the basis for the subsequent microchip revolution. The invention of the
IC allowed for a miniaturization of computer components equal in scale to the
transition between vacuum tubes and early transistors (Fig. 5.8).
By 1965, so-called minicomputers were rolling off production lines. Instead of
filling rooms, these would fill the volume of a refrigerator. You could buy one for
about what it cost to rent the use of one of the huge old computers for a month
(which was admittedly still not cheap, at around $10,000–$20,000, but this was
within the purchasing power of many universities and corporations).
Meanwhile, the Apollo Program needed to have processing power onboard
its Moon-bound spacecraft, and NASA had to overcome the technical hurdle
of figuring out how to cram an entire interplanetary guidance computer into
something the size of a small suitcase. What arose from the effort was the
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), a computer built using 5600 integrated
36
Engineers had embraced transistors, but hated the introduction of the IC, feeling they were being asked
to trust too much in a literal black box they couldn’t open. It wasn’t really until the Apollo Moon Landing,
which relied on digital computers to fly the spacecraft, that the last mutterings faded.
circuits. Each Apollo Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM)
had one aboard,37 and the AGC is considered to be the first example of an
embedded controller—the precursor of the computational power we find
within today’s automobiles, smart phones, consumer electronics, and toasters.
This large scale integration of transistors on a single chip of silicon led to very
large scale integration (VLSI), then ultra large scale integration (ULSI), until by
the mid-1980s, tiny chips of impure silicon had over a million transistors onboard.
One of science fiction’s great misses is that the genre failed to grasp what all
this miniaturization would do to computers, especially once the integrated
circuit came along. This is particularly surprising, given that the entire trajec-
tory of the computer industry to this day was laid out in 1965 in a well-known
paper by the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore. Moore’s law, as it became
known, predicts that the number of transistors that can be found on integrated
circuits being sold at a given price will double roughly every 18 months.
Moore’s law has held for 50 years, which means that a computer chip costing
1 dollar in 2015 has over 10 billion times as many transistors as you would
have gotten for the same price in 1965.
The flip side of this equation—and one that turned out to be critical for the
spread of computers into every facet of our lives—is that for a given number of
transistors, the price will halve every 18 months. Consider a high-end PC
microprocessor that costs $1000. Wait ten years and you can get the same
amount of computational power for 97 cents.38 Controlling a mass-market
fridge or child’s toy with a $1000 computer chip doesn’t make much sense,
but when the chip costs a dollar, why not?
Science fiction, both literary and screen, largely missed the idea that
computers would be ubiquitous at vastly different performance levels. Today
we still have giant mainframes (and even bigger datacenters) in big corpora-
tions, universities, and government agencies, but also desktop workstations
and laptops, through smartphones and tablets, all the way down the processing
chain to the little chips powering musical doorbells and coffee machines.
In the opening scenes of Adam (2009), the titular character (Hugh Dancy)
is laid off from his job at a New York City-based toy company. He is an
electrical engineer, and his job was implementing hardware and software to
control smart toys. This job, and many like it, are ones that would never have
existed without the advent of integrated circuits—showing that, although
37
It’s really hard to understate the influence of the Apollo Guidance Computer on computing technology,
especially the way it kickstarted Moore’s law. See Further Reading for more details.
38
This is pretty much the exact same scenario that occurred with the birth of the Raspberry Pi line of
single-board computers. For $35, you can get a Pi that has better specs than many desktop PCs of
10 years ago.
computers and automation have a reputation for replacing human workers, at

the same time there are jobs, some which we have not even thought of yet, that
will come into existence.
People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is
the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall
of mini stones.
Donald Knuth, computer scientist
Memory/Data/Storage
One of the earliest digital vacuum-tube computers was called Electronic
Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). It was designed by John
Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, the designers of ENIAC, but it differed from
its predecessor in two important ways. First, it performed operations using
binary as opposed to decimal. Unlike the unmodified ENIAC and many other
earlier computers, EDVAC could also store programs.
The memory subsystem in computers also experienced dramatic evolution
over the years. One very early form of memory was the delay line, which
typically took the form of a long tube filled with mercury. Sonic pulses
representing 1s and 0s were sent down the tube toward an acoustic sensor
and then fed back into the start of the tube. The number of pulses that could
be working their way down the tube before the first pulse hit the sensor
determined the memory capacity of the tube, typically several hundred bits.
Only the bit most recently picked up by the acoustic sensor could be read or
altered before it was fed back into the tube, making such memories slow.
A big step came when engineers started using ferromagnetic materials to
store bits. Ferromagnetic materials, like iron, can be magnetized by passing an
electric current through a nearby wire. Like every other magnet, magnetized
ferromagnetic pieces will have a north pole and a south pole, and the direction
in which these poles lie—i.e., their polarity—is controlled by the direction of
the current in the wire. Reverse the wire, and you reverse the polarity.39
The polarity can then be detected by another wire, so that, say, a vertical
ferromagnetic with a north pole on top represents a 1 and a south pole on top
represents a 0.
39
Congratulations! Welcome to one of those rare occasions where saying “reverse the polarity” isn’t
complete BS technobabble.
Initially, hundreds to thousands of little loops—or cores—of ferromagnetic

material were wired together to create the main working memories of com-
puters. These core memories40 could be designed so that their magnetism was
fixed at the time of manufacture and could not be altered later, forming
so-called read-only memory or ROM. ROM is handy for storing software that
doesn’t need to—or shouldn’t—be changed, such as the operating system
running an Apollo spacecraft computer. Core memory could also be designed
so that the magnetism of the bits could be altered on the fly, and unlike delay-
line memory, any bit could be changed at any time, so this type of memory was
called random-access memory or RAM. Along with integrated circuits, core
memory was the other big innovation that allowed computers to get small
fast—for example, by the end of the 1960s, each Apollo Guidance Computer
contained almost 74 kilobytes of ROM and 4 kilobytes of RAM.
RAM and ROM moved away from magnetic storage (the current most
common system is essentially based on storing tiny amounts of electric charge),
but magnetic technology is still hanging on in mass storage devices—first tape
and then disk drives, where tiny magnetized regions of a platter mark out 1s
and 0s.
Science Box: A Bit on Programming

For non-coders, it might be useful to understand some of the overarching concepts of
programming. Every computer, from the smallest embedded controller to the largest
supercomputer, has a collection of simple instructions, called an instruction set,
implemented by hardware on its processor(s). At the machine level—also known as
being “down on the bare metal”—the computer understands only binary numbers.
All of these instructions are ultimately implemented by logic gates—which are, in turn
implemented by semiconductor transistors and diodes. We say these operations are
hard-coded into the machine.
Each processor (or processor family) has its own unique set of instructions, or
opcodes, which is why you cannot take software written for an iPhone and run it on
a Mac without a special emulator—even though they are products from the same
corporation, iPhones and Macs use chips from two completely different processor
families.41
Programming languages allow human programmers to write a series of instruc-
tions that perform very high-level tasks, and other computer programs called com-
pilers, assemblers, and interpreters act as intermediaries between the human
understanding of the task and the machine’s implementation of it. When you write
a program in the language C++, a compiler translates that language into 0s and 1s in a
(continued)
40
Computers have long stopped using ferromagnetic core memory, but their ghost lives on in modern
operating systems. Unix coders who have a program crash will often get the error message “Segmentation
fault (core dumped),” which means a copy of the computer’s working memory has been made and stored
in a file so that the programmer can analyze what went wrong.
41
ARM and Intel respectively.
way that allows the CPU to carry out the tasks, then stores the output of the
translation into a file that is called executable. A person cannot read the information
in this kind of file, but it is machine-understandable.
Recall from our discussion of Alan Turing’s work that any computer can hypothet-
ically simulate any other, but that the resulting computation may proceed at a glacial
pace. In a related way, today, processors run so fast that some computer languages
like PERL, PYTHON, and JAVA, called interpreted languages, are not so much trans-
lated into machine code, but implemented on a virtual machine—a piece of software,
itself compiled, that carries out the instructions.42
To execute a program, a computer transfers the binary of an executable file into
memory, and sets a program counter to the first instruction. The program counter is
just a dedicated portion of memory in the CPU that contains the main memory
location of the next instruction it is going to execute. The program counter is at the
heart of what makes a computer different to a simple calculator, because it’s what
allows different instructions (from different memory locations) to be loaded into the
CPU, depending on the results of earlier instructions.
Code written in the form of “JMP A5B6”—rather than raw machine code—is called
assembly code. “JMP” here is a mnemonic that represents an instruction’s opcode in
more human readable form. A program called an assembler takes the instructions—
the mnemonics and their operands—and converts those into the machine-
understandable binary equivalents on a one-to-one basis.
The CPU has other tiny bits of memory called registers onboard, and a processor
uses these as scratch space for computations, a little like the working memory of the
human mind (the program counter is stored in a register). So, as a very gross overview,
a computer program consists of a series of instructions that move information from
memory into registers, perform mathematical or logical operations on them there,
and store the results back into memory.
To pick a few concrete examples, let’s look at some machine code instructions, or
opcodes, of the legendary 6502 microprocessor. This chip, introduced by MOS Tech-
nology in 1975, provided the computational power for the Apple II, the BBC Micro,43
the Commodore 64, the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and, as revealed in
the 1999 “Fry and the Slurm Factory” episode of Futurama, the robot brain of
Bender.44
The first column of Table 5.8 lists descriptions for four different operations a CPU
might perform. The second column shows the mnemonic that a programmer would
use to implement that command. The rightmost three columns are the numerical
value for that instruction (remember that a computer understands only 0s and 1s) in
three different numerical bases, with binary given in the rightmost column. As you
can see, these binary numbers are hard to read—it’s very easy at a glance to confuse
10101001 with 10101010, even though these are completely different instructions. So,
(continued)
42
Though compilers do exist for many interpreted languages, they’re still often run by an interpreter.
43
Not well known in the U.S., the BBC Micro was an amazing computer created to improve computer
literacy in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. It’s also the direct computational ancestor of the ARM
computers now found in roughly 95% of the world’s smartphones.
44
The showrunner for Futurama, David X. Cohen, has a B.A. degree in physics from UC Berkeley, and an
M.S. in computer science from Harvard. Is it any wonder the show was so smart? On the other hand,
under the category of “You do what you have to do to break into the Industry,” two of his first produced
scripts were for Beavis and Butthead.
for the convenience of humans, binary numbers are typically represented as hexadec-
imal numbers, with each digit corresponding to one half-byte.
As mentioned above, the mnemonic labels are just abbreviations created for the
convenience of human programmers. They make it easier for humans to remember
what the opcodes do. So JMP (just plain old 1001100 in binary) is short for “jump,” and
you can see from the description of the instruction, that’s just what it does. It causes
the computer to set the program counter to a new part of memory, i.e., to “jump” to
that location, to get its next instruction.
Table 5E.1 Opcodes for the 6502 instruction set.

Instruction Mnemonic Decimal Hexadecimal Binary
Load the register A with a LDA 169 A9 10101001
number from the main memory
Start executing commands JMP 76 4C 1001100
starting at a new memory address
Copy the contents of register TAX 170 AA 10101010
A to register X
Add one to whatever number INX 232 E8 11101000
is in register X
Although the 6502 is a very old processor, modern microprocessors have similar instructions
Many opcodes are followed by operands—numbers required for the instruction

given by the opcode to work. For example, after a JMP, the programmer has to specify
where to reset the program counter. So the complete instruction might read JMP
A5B6, which means jump to memory location 42,422 (42,422 written in hexademical is
A5B6). In machine code, the whole instruction takes three bytes and looks like this:
1001100 10110110 10100101.45 Compilers and assemblers and interpreters are just
translators that take human-created high level programs and implement those using
the instructions hard-coded into the CPU.
It turns out that Bender isn’t the only famous robot to use the 6502. Forget all that
superchip business—real geeks know that the Terminator ran on a 6502! Well, okay,
maybe not, but in the original 1984 Terminator, when the viewer sees from the
red-washed point-of-view of the Terminator, various computer instructions appear
on either side. A close examination of these screens reveals that, on at least two
occasions in the film, listings of 6502 assembler code were used by the special effects
designers to provide convincing computer instructions.
Let’s Get Small

By the mid-1970s, the real life impact of Moore’s law was becoming obvi-
ous—if you were the right sort of nerd.46 That’s when the first primitive
microprocessor-based computers started to appear. The increasing complexity
and lowered costs of microprocessors—which put all the functions of a CPU
45
For the eagle-eyed and technically inclined among you, you’ll notice that the 6502 is a Little Endian
machine. For the non-technically and less eagle-eyed among you, see the explanation of Big and Little
Endian in the main chapter.
46
Which is how Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak became ultra, mega, and very rich, respectively.
on a single chip—led directly to the personal computer revolution of the late

1970s and early 1980s. Suddenly computers were so cheap that you could buy
one just to play games, and with computers everywhere, networking machines
able to communicate with each other began to take off in an accelerated way.
The seed of the network that would ultimately grow into the global Internet
was planted in 1969, when 3 computers in California (at the RAND Corpo-
ration, UCLA, and UCSB) and one at the University of Utah were electron-
ically linked to form the first nodes of ARPANET.47 The scale of the network
was boosted dramatically by the arrival of cheap computers.
The microprocessor revolution finally pushed Hollywood into realizing the
narrative possibilities of a world where computers where everywhere in the
1980s. Quite presciently in the light of recent developments in autonomous
car technology, 1982 saw the arrival of Knight Rider, a TV show which
featured KITT, an intelligent computer built into a Pontiac Trans Am
(David Hasselhoff was also in it for some reason). After the initial novelty
wore off, however, computers faded into the background until the early 1990s,
when the Internet exploded into the mainstream, largely on the back of the
World Wide Web.48
The rise of Google, the rise of Facebook, the rise of Apple, I think are proof that
there is a place for computer science as something that solves problems that
people face every day.
Eric Schmidt, software engineer and chairman of Alphabet, Inc.
Cryptology: Gur irel onfvpf

With the FBI/Apple conflict over a terrorist’s smart phone, Wikileaks, revela-
tions of Edward Snowden, and the 2014 hack of Sony Studios, the topic of
information security is becoming increasingly newsworthy, meaning that the
news is moving into a realm where many a sci-fi and technothriller production
has happily resided for years: the land of encryption.
References to encrypted messages and files (and sometimes encrypted voice
or video streams) appear in many screenplays, including pretty much every
47
No, Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet—but, as Internet pioneers like Vint Cerf will happily admit,
Gore did play a critical role in bringing forward legislation that allowed the relatively small, and largely
closed, ARPANET to transform into the publicly accessible Internet, and the legislation also provided the
funding for the Mosaic browser that brought the World Wide Web into the mainstream. Technological
success isn’t always about technical things.
48
Invented by Tim Berners Lee at CERN in 1990, but which owes a debt to Ted Nelson’s before-its-time
work on hypertext in the 1960s.
technothriller. Often, to get at the secrets concealed therein, they are the target
of various decryption techniques or other types of computer hacking by either
the heroes or villains (see Science Box: “The Evolution of “Hacking”).
In the 2014 biopic of Alan Turing The Imitation Game, the film detailed
Turing’s insight, a novel one back in World War II, that mathematicians could
prove to be far better code-breakers than linguists. It is an idea that, in
hindsight, seems obvious, but what is also obvious, then and now, is that
computers can do a still better job. So were born the early electromechanical
computers like the Enigma Machine and Colossus which added a high-tech
twist to the age-old cat and mouse game between those who wish to send
information securely, and those who wish to unlock those secrets.
To avoid tripping over ourselves by worrying about whether it’s, say, a video
or a blueprint that is encrypted in any given scenario, we will adopt some
conventions that real cryptographers use. The original or correctly decrypted
version of the file, video stream, or whatever, is called the plaintext. The
encrypted version of the plaintext is called the ciphertext. Turning the plaintext
into human-unreadable ciphertext, requires two things: a cipher and a key.
To explain the difference between a cipher and a key, let’s use the example
of one of the oldest and simplest encryption systems of all time: the Caesar
Cipher, named after Julius Caesar himself, since he used it to protect military
messages over two thousand years ago.
In a Caesar Cipher, plaintext is turned into ciphertext via a simple substi-
tution cipher, in this case, shifting each letter up or down the alphabet by a
given number of letters (letters are “wrapped” around to the other end of the
alphabet if the shift goes beyond A or Z). The key is the number of letters to
shift. So with a key of 5, B would become G, Y would become D, while with a
key of 3, B would become Y and Y would become V. So there can be many
keys for any given cipher.49
In the case of the Caesar Cipher, the key that is used to decrypt the message
is the same as the key used for encryption. To produce plaintext from
ciphertext, the cipher is simply run in reverse, so that letters are shifted in
the opposite direction from when they were encrypted. This is known as a
symmetrical key system.50 Systems that use different keys for encryption and
decryption also exist; these systems are said to use asymmetrical keys.
49
Everybody has heard by now that the HAL computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey got his name because
HAL is simply the letters IBM shifted once. . . Of course everybody is wrong—at least according to those
who knew director Stanley Kubrick. Those close to Kubrick swear it was just coincidence.
50
A symmetric system called ROT13 was in common use in the days just prior to the World Wide Web
(when it was more modem-based and most people used a sort of bulletin board system called USENET).
Encrypt each letter by shifting it 13 places, wrapping around from A back to Z, and you have very simple
way to encode ciphertext. This method was never used to secure information, but rather on text that
contained elements like questionable language or movie spoilers, so if the reader went to the trouble of
In the past, people would put as much effort into protecting the cipher as
the key, meaning that any attacking cryptanalyst would first have to work out
the cipher before trying to figure out the key. This security through obscurity
approach sounds like common sense, but actually it proved to be a bad idea. It
often leads to overconfidence in the system as a whole. Many times, once the
cipher had been figured out, breaking the key proved surprisingly easy.
In an important historical example of a systematic cipher weakness that
made it easier to find keys, consider the infamous Enigma machine. During
World War II, the German military used this electromechanical code
machine51 to encrypt messages transmitted by radio. To encode a letter with
an Enigma machine, the operator pressed the corresponding button on a
keyboard. When the button was pressed, electricity flowed through the button
along a wire dedicated to that letter and into a set of parallel rotors (German
Army machines had three rotors, later Navy machines had four).
Each rotor had a jumble of wires
crisscrossing its inside. The wiring
paired up different letters, effectively
swapping, say X for G. The next
rotor, which had a different jumble
of wiring, would perform another let-
ter swap, turning that G into A, for
example, and so on to the last rotor,
where A would become, say, D. Then
the electricity would be passed
through a so-called reflector, which
would send the electrical signal back
through the rotors, swapping letters
another three (or four times). The
emerging signal would then be passed
through a plug board at the front of
each Enigma, where letter pairs
would be further mixed up, and Fig. 5.9 An actual German Enigma
finally passed into one of the wires machine in the Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science Department at
used to light up a letter in a panel the U.S. Military Academy, West Point,
above the keyboard (see Fig. 5.9). NY (photo by Kevin Grazier).
decoding it, presumably they could not complain about the content. Part of the title of this section is
ROT13ed.
51
The breaking of the Enigma machine has inspired many books and movies. Of the latter, The Imitation
Game is probably the best of the lot, but to really understand many of the subtleties involved, you should
check some of the titles listed in the Further Reading section at the end of this book.
The upshot of all this swapping would mean that an original keyboard press of
X would cause say, C, to illuminate.
Still, despite all these wires and plugs, the resulting encryption of X to C
resulted in a substitution cipher that’s not that much harder to break than a
Caesar cipher. The power of the Engima came in the fact that, after a button
was pressed, the last rotor would turn one notch, changing how letters were
paired—pressing X a second time would now mean that the chain of sub-
stitutions on the way to the reflector was no longer X ! G, G ! A, A ! D,
but was, say, X ! G, G ! A, A ! V. When that last rotor completed a full
revolution, the previous rotor would be nudged to rotate a notch, and it would
nudge the next rotor in turn when it completed a revolution. The result was
that every letter was encoded using a different substitution cipher. For any
given starting arrangement of rotors and plugs—the complete arrangement
represented the key for a particular Enigma message—17,576 letters could be
sent before an Enigma would reuse a substitution cipher, more than enough
for the telegraph-like messages of the day. The total number of possibilities
that the key could be chosen from with just a standard 3-rotor machine was on
the order of 1026, a staggering number.
Despite these impressive numbers, the Germans realized that if an entire
army encrypted all their messages with the same key, even if the key changed
every day, it would result in a huge amount of cryptotext linked to the same
key. This was a problem: that much cryptotext produced with the same key
would permit attackers to use statistical linguistic analyses that would quickly
reveal the key.
So instead, the Germans used army- or navy-wide keys to encrypt only a
triplet of letters at the start of the message, and this would be randomly chosen
by the machine operator at the time of sending a message. This triplet—the
session key—would describe new rotor positions required to decrypt the rest of
the message. It meant that the cyphertext used with the global key would be
just a few nonsense letters, making statistical analysis difficult, even with many
Engima operators using the same global key.
Have you spotted the big flaw in the Engima cipher system we’ve just
described? If not, don’t worry. It’s subtle enough that the Germans were
convinced their machines were unbreakable, a belief carefully nurtured by
the Allies. If you have spotted the flaw without any prior knowledge or
Googling, you might consider a career in cryptography.
Polish cryptographers were the first to work it out in the 1930s. Passing an
electrical signal corresponding to each letter through the rotors and back via
the reflector meant that a letter could end up transformed into any letter, with
one crucial exception: a letter could not be encoded as itself. This might not
sound like a weakness. After all, when I enter, say, the letter A into my fancy
encryption machine, surely I don’t want the letter A to pop out at the other
end!? Wouldn’t that just be the same as no encryption, leaving my ciphertext
riddled with bits of plaintext?
Now look at the problem from the point of view of the person trying to
crack your code. To them, you want the message to appear as close to a purely
random sequence of letters as possible, which means that each letter is as likely
as any other, with no apparent relation between one letter and the next. Any
deviation from randomness means you are exposing information about the
underlying message. Because languages have a great deal of repeating structure
in them, such deviations mean you are exposing predictable patterns. . . and
cryptanalysts are very, very good at exploiting such patterns to reveal keys.
With Enigma, not having a letter ever encrypt to itself meant that cryptog-
raphers had a quick way to check if a potential decryption key was correct—if
the trial key resulted in a cryptotext letter decrypting to itself at any point, than
the key was incorrect and could be immediately discarded. This flaw, along
with the German’s early bad habit of sending the session key twice at the start
of each message (as a check against transmission errors) also allowed the Poles
to deduce all the internal wiring of the rotors, and ultimately figure out the
entire logical structure of the machine—in other words, the cipher. They were
then able to build an electromechanical replica of the Engima known as the
“bomba” or “cryptologic bomb.” With the bomba in hand and knowing what
they knew about weaknesses in both the Engima’s encryption system and the
German’s operating procedure, the Poles could work out the machine settings
corresponding to a global key and so decode all the traffic encoded with
that key.
However, even with their bomba, the Polish system was slow and required a
great deal of work every time the key was changed. This was tolerable when the
keys were changed every few weeks or so. With the outbreak of World War II,
however, the Germans began changing keys every day, and later added
additional rotors that could be swapped in for any of the original three rotors.
(The German Navy also added a fourth rotor position.) The result was that the
Polish system couldn’t keep up.
Thankfully, the Poles’ knowledge and techniques were passed to Britain’s
fabled Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing (with critical help by Gordon
Welchman) used it to create a vastly more capable Enigma-breaking machine,
the “Bombe.” In The Imitation Game, the idea of using “cribs”—snippets of
text, like “Heil Hitler,” which you bet are present somewhere in the plaintext
message—is portrayed as the key breakthrough that made the Bombe’s auto-
mated codebreaking work and finally allowed the Brits to get ahead of the
German key changes (Fig. 5.10). The cribs were truly important, but we
should note that Turing did not first build the Bombe and then come up
Fig. 5.10 Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the Bombe of Bletchley Park. From
The Imitation Game (2014) Copyright © Black Bear Pictures. Image courtesy of
moviestillsdb.com.
with the idea of using cribs, as the movie depicts. Rather the Bombe was
designed and built from the ground up with cribs in mind.52
The overconfidence of the German war machine in its cipher system was an
important lesson for post-war crytographers. Consequently, modern ciphers
are generally publicly discussed and open to inspection by anyone who can
understand the math—early in the 1992 film Sneakers, a mathematician is
shown doing just that in a public lecture. Having researchers around the world
“kick the tires,” and do their best to find weaknesses that the designers may
have missed, reduces the likelihood of developing a false sense of security in a
weak cipher. The guiding principle of modern cryptography is to create
systems where as long as the key is kept secret, messages are safe, even if
both the cipher and even the cryptotext are publicly known.
When researchers study a cipher system to decide if encrypted messages are
safe, the aim is not to determine if the system is one of two absolutes between
“secure” vs. “not secure.” Rather the researchers try to gauge just how insecure
the system is, that is, how much effort is required to break the code. Modern
researchers assume that virtually every code is breakable with enough time and
effort.
This is because, since digital electronics came along, there has been only one
general approach to creating an encrypted file that is fundamentally
52
Many video games have embedded within them cheat codes—unlikely keystroke or action sequences
which yield a prize, a bonus video sequence, or skip over a particularly difficult boss. The cribs were the
cryptographic equivalent of cheat codes.
impervious to cracking—so-called one-time methods—but, as we’ll see, such

methods have drawbacks that make them impractical for most applications.
Every other method produces encrypted messages or files that can be cracked
and read, given enough computer time.53
This is because a computer can perform brute-force attacks on a key,
attempting to guess it through systematic trial and error. The important
questions then are: how many guesses are required, and how much computa-
tional power is required to generate each guess? Because computer power is
rapidly increasing, you need a large margin of safety in the answers to those
questions if you want your secrets to stay secret for any length of time.
For example, in 1977, the U.S. government published the DES encryption
standard, which was rapidly adopted worldwide, and which often gets name-
checked in the technobabble of spy and thriller movies. The original DES
standard used a 56-bit-long key and was considered by many to be reasonably
secure for everyday use. It was estimated at the time that it would cost tens of
millions of dollars to build a computer powerful enough to brute force a key in
a reasonable time span. Yet by 1998, thanks to dramatic improvements in
computer power and using a custom computer that cost just $250,000 to
build, the Electronic Frontier Foundation could crack DES keys with just a
couple of days of run time. By 2006, another research group did pretty much
the same thing with a computer setup that cost $10,000. Moore’s Law strikes
again!
Consequently, more modern systems use much longer keys—keys of 4096
bits are not uncommon—along with so-called mathematical trapdoor func-
tions. These are functions that are easy to calculate if you have the right
information, but require astronomical amounts of computer power to solve
if you don’t. A classic example is factoring the product of two large prime
numbers—if you have two primes it’s easy to calculate the product, or if you
have the product and one of the primes its easy to work out the other, but if
you only have the products, it’s hard work to factor even a relatively small
product, such as one that that can be specified with a few thousand bits. So
such products can be used as encryption keys.
Even with the best computers today it would take trillions of years to factor
a 4096-bit key,54 but let’s imagine a computer that is 1000 times more
53
As alluded to earlier, technically this rule doesn’t always apply to short messages. There are still some
brief Enigma messages intercepted during World War II that haven’t been cracked, for example. This is
because with a short message, many possible “solutions” can be found that produce equally likely
plaintext, e.g. the cryptotext MDFIOAZNRUDF could be ATTACKATDAWN or RETREATTOBAY.
In a longer message, inconsistencies and gibberish can be used to eliminate false solutions.
54
If you wrote a 4096-bit number using conventional decimal notation, it would have over a thousand
digits.
powerful than today’s best computers: if Moore’s Law of increasing computing

power holds,55 one should be available in about 20 years time. Congratula-
tions! Now it’s only going to take you billions of years to factor the key. Boo!
Let’s wait another 20 years and try again. You’re down to the millions of years.
Wait another 20. Hundreds of thousands of years still required. Another 20.
Hundreds of years. Finally, another 20, and you’ve bought the key down to
something you can crack on short notice. Unfortunately, it’s been a century
since the message was sent, so whatever information was in it is obsolete,
and as for later messages, well everyone shifted to 8192-bit keys 80 years
ago, which require exponentially longer times to break, so you’ve still got
quadrillions of years to go on those, even with your fancy state-of-the-art
computer.
Cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations

on the Internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because
otherwise one state just takes over another.
Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks
The existence of this kind of time sink is the reason why exactly this kind of
factorization scheme is used in many cryptographic systems today albeit with
additional math that’s too fiddly to explain here, but see Further Reading if
you’re really interested. (Also in use are other cryptographic trapdoor methods,
such as those based on elliptical functions.) Yet, despite all this apparently
unbeatable mathematics available to encrypt secrets, there are a couple of
scenarios that keep cryptographers on edge. One scenario—the least likely—
is that some mathematical genius comes up with a straightforward and simple
shortcut for factorization. Huge chunks of encrypted traffic would become
readable overnight. This was the premise of the 2005 Numb3rs episode “Prime
Suspect”. Another, more likely, scenario is that someone comes up with a
working quantum computer, which could, in theory, factor prime numbers
exceptionally quickly.
The fact that everything that we’ve been discussing regarding encryption
relies on fairly straightforward procedures, explains why attempts to ban
encryption by people who really should know better are doomed to fail:
encryption is just mathematics, available to anyone who can program a
55
Currently, there are some signs that, for silicon-based circuits at least, Moore’s Law may be starting to
run out of steam, but there’s a lot of interest in keeping things going by building processors out of
alternative materials such as graphene.
computer.56 Nobody won any war by assuming that their opponents were
stupid. Therefore, the bad guys—criminals, terrorists, and state-sponsored
cyberwarfare outfits—have all the encryption they need; the only question is
whether or not regular folks can use it as well to defend themselves.
It should be mandatory that you understand computer science.

will.i.am, musician and record producer
Hacking
In the Ur-hacking movie, 1983s WarGames, teen hacker David Lightman
(Matthew Broderick) accidentally initiates a countdown to nuclear war after he
breaks into a computer connected to the A.I. system in charge of American
ballistic missiles (Fig. 5.10).
Today, the technology in the movie looks antiquated of course. For exam-
ple, Lightman goes online from his home via old-school phone lines with an
acoustic coupler. An acoustic coupler is a heroically obsolete piece of technology
that lets the user clamp a loudspeaker and microphone to a regular telephone
handset and send digital data at a rate of about 1.2 kilobits per second. At that
speed, an average song encoded as an MP3 file would take over two days to
download.
WarGames was an immensely influential movie. For example, the basic trick
of phoning scores of numbers to hunt for computers with active dial-up
modems became known as wardialling because of the film. Consequently, in
later years, when people started wandering around looking for Wi-Fi access
points, the practice was known as warwalking or wardriving, depending on
whether or not you had a car. The movie is also believed to be directly
responsible for motivating the Reagan administration to implement the first
real national cybersecurity directive.57
As a film, WarGames holds up despite the passage of time because it gets
many of the fundamentals right. The film marks the first time that characters
56
To see how absurd trying to restrict encryption can be, this is a program in the Perl computer language that
implements a complete factorization-based cipher system known as RSA:print pack"C*",split/\D
+/,‘echo "16iII*o\U@{$/¼$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0
[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc‘
For a while in the 1990s—despite the fact that the math underlying it was known worldwide—it was
legal to print up T-shirts with this program on it and sell them in the U.S., but illegal to export the very
same T-shirt outside the U.S. under the same laws that prohibit the sale of, say, guided missile parts to
North Korea (Code from http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/).
57
“‘WarGames’ and Cybersecurity’s Debt to a Hollywood Hack,” Fred Kaplin, The New York Times,
February 19, 2016.
Fig. 5.11 David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) and Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy) in
WarGames (1983). Copyright © United Artists. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.
com.
discuss a firewall on screen, the basic first line of cyberdefense still used today
to keep out intruders from networked computers. Lightman and Katherine
Mack (Ally Sheedy) discuss poker as one of the ways that researchers helped
develop artificial intelligence strategies, an approach that’s still very much an
active strategy today.58
WarGames also avoids the biggest on-screen hacking trope that provokes an
“oh, please” in your authors—the trope that any computer can have its security
bypassed by the designated hacker character in a few minutes or seconds by the
right magic keystrokes or mouse clicks. Automated hacking tools that work at
a click do exist, but these work against systems with known security holes that
have not been patched or where the users have slipped up, and are usually
broadly targeted to lots and lots of non-specific computers in the hopes of
getting lucky—it’s the difference between being able to pick the lock of a
specific door, and wandering around a neighborhood rattling handles in the
hopes someone’s left a door unlocked. (For more, see the Science Box: “The
Evolution of Hacking”.)
Most attacks on encrypted systems exploit software bugs and poor operating
procedures rather than the underlying mathematics. The truth is that most of
the time, just as with encryption, the weakest part of any computer’s defenses
is the human user. In WarGames, Lightman figures out the password he needs
by extensively researching the dead creator of the A.I. system he comes across
58
A difficult one, as well. The very best systems of today can master a particular variant of Texas Hold’em,
but more complex versions of Poker still defy comprehensive solution.
after a wardialing session. He tries out words that he suspects the creator would
have felt memorable until he hits the right one.59
Getting access to a system by targeting the human element is known as
social engineering. This can take many forms60—like dumpster diving, or
tricking people into divulging their password (both of which were tactics
that were featured in the 1995 film Hackers).61 In the real world, sifting
through somebody’s trash is how many passwords, social security numbers,
and mother’s maiden names are collected. In Hollywood, though, it is more
dramatically satisfying to see a hacker furiously typing away to guess the
password to the Defense Department’s computer, than seeing her sifting
through garbage, covered in coffee grounds, stale Spaghetti-Os, and cat poop.
Social engineering has become about 75% of an average hacker’s toolkit, and for
the most successful hackers, it reaches 90% or more.
John McAfee, programmer and businessman
Password attacks similar to Lightman’s guessing are still common. So-called

automated dictionary attacks guess password after password, and start by trying
commonly used passwords: sadly things like “12345,” “qwerty,” and
“Gandalf” are used by a surprisingly large number of people. Then if the
general dictionary attack fails or isn’t possible, when a specific account is being
targeted, personal details really can often yield good results—a lot of people use
the name of a pet or their hometown as a password. Nowadays gathering these
kinds of personal tidbits has never been easier.
The TV series Mr. Robot (2015–) does a particularly nice job of showing
how the lead character, Eliott Alderson, uses material gleaned from social
media and direct observations to crack passwords—no magic click-click-
click-we’re-in here. In one fun scene, when his initial efforts to break in fail,
Alderson grumbles his target is “too old to have a good password.” This turns
59
When it comes to international spying, other options to get into protected systems include bribing or
blackmailing operators in foreign embassies, or planting bugs that can register keystrokes in their code
terminals, either electronically or for listening to the slightly different sounds different keys make when
struck.
60
If you ever want to see a social engineering tour de force, come to the biannual Hackers on Planet Earth
conference in New York City organized by 2600 magazine. At a packed session of the conference, 2600s
editor-in-chief, Emmanuel Goldstein (a pen name taken from the protagonist of Orwell’s 1984) calls up
various businesses in front of a live audience and convinces people to give him information they really
shouldn’t. The conference organizers have gotten pretty handy at muting the volume when luckless souls
at the other end of the line start reading out things like customer credit card numbers.
61
Social engineering was the main tactics in famous hacker Kevin Mitnick’s toolbox. He once found a
collection of unused bus transfer slips in a dumpster adjacent to the bus company’s garage, and was able to
ride Los Angeles MTA buses for free.
out to be the key to realizing that the target is actually pretending to be

someone else—in the end the target’s passwords are just as badly chosen as
expected, but relate to his true identity.
Apart from stealing or guessing passwords, there are other ways to co-opt
another computer. At the lowest level of software, down at the machine code
level where the CPU actually executes instructions, instructions are specified by
binary numbers. Bytes are bytes. There is no fundamental difference between
data and a command; it depends solely upon context whether the computer
handles them as data or instructions. Change the context and a piece of data
becomes an instruction or vice versa. Just exactly how you fool a computer into
accepting your data as code is, of course, the $64 million question. Generally
speaking, it’s all about exploiting bugs and known software loopholes.
For example, what if I sent a computer the letters “LjT” over a network and
somehow got them fed into the CPU as an instruction? The letter L is
represented by the ASCII code as the number 4C,62 but that 4C might be
the opcode for the JMP instruction (see Science Box: “A Bit on Programming”)!
So the CPU would take the next two letters “j” and “T” as the bytes specifying
the operand for the JMP instruction, i.e., the numbers that specify the memory
address of the next instruction that the computer should jump to. In this case i
is represented as 6A, and T is represented as 54, so that would be address
546A,63 or 21,610. The CPU would immediately fetch its next instruction
from that address. Congratulations! You’ve redirected the CPU from whatever
program it was running originally. What happens next depends upon the value
stored at memory location 546A. If the value is not a meaningful piece of code,
you might crash the computer, which is maybe all you wanted to do. If 546A
contains the start of a useful piece of code, however (either something in the
computer already or some more of your own code), now you can think about
doing all manner of things; the computer is now following your commands.
Because hexadecimal digits require only 15 symbols, and, using ASCII, it
can encode any text message in English, it’s not surprising that in The Martian
(spoiler alert for the next three paragraphs!), Matt Damon’s stranded astronaut
character, Mark Watney, turns to hexadecimal and ASCII to communicate
with Earth (Fig. 5.12). He interprets the motion of the mast camera of the
recovered Pathfinder probe as representing a different hexadecimal digit (after a
62
If you didn’t read the Science Box: “Of Bits and Bytes and Bases” calling 4C a number might be
freaking you out a little bit? We recommend you read the box, but if you don’t then know that every such
hexadecimal number can be converted into a regular decimal number, in this case 76.
63
Hang on! Why did the 54 come before the 6A, and not after, to make memory address 6A54, or 27,220
in decimal? Because in this example, the computer is Little Endian, meaning the least significant byte
comes first. Computers that put the most significant byte first are called Big Endian. These are actual
computer science terms.
Fig. 5.12 Mark Watney (Matt Damon) sciencing (and hacking) the heck out of Mars in
The Martian (2015). Copyright © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Image cour-
tesy moviestillsdb.com.
hurried search through systems expert Johansson’s laptop for an ASCII code
table). ASCII actually turns up a second time in The Martian, when Johansson
recognizes that the bytes making up a purported JPEG file fit the pattern of
English language letters rather than that of a digital image. She sets the file
viewer to ASCII, and the instructions for the Rich Purnell maneuver appear.
It also very important to look at what happens on Mars after Watney begins
to communicate on Earth: Watney ends up laboriously decoding messages in
hexadecimal to obtain a bunch of bytes making up a computer program. He
feeds this message into the computer of his working rover. In other words,
instead of interpreting each byte as data (i.e., letters making up messages) via
the ASCII code, he feeds these hexadecimal bytes into the computer as
instructions, hacking the rover so it can relay regular text messages via
Pathfinder.
Such a trick—technically known as code injection—is impossible to do
unless you have a good sense of how the target machine is set up at a very
low level. If you’re going after a specific machine, it really can take a skilled
hacker some time to craft an attack even with this knowledge. Still, if you don’t
care about the exact computers you’re getting access to, it is possible to hack at
the click of the button, using both password and data-to-instruction style
attacks.
Such automated attacks come in a number of flavors. Some are Trojans sent
by email (where a legitimate-looking file contains a malicious payload triggered
when the user opens it). Another common technique today is to send emails
with links to fake websites that harvest information like logins and passwords,
a practice known as phishing. Spear phishing is when you are targeting a specific
victim or group of victims, for example, people who work at a movie studio,
perhaps by sending malicious emails that look like they come from the studio’s
health care plan.64
Other attacks rely on viruses and worms being transmitted from computer to
computer (viruses replicate themselves inside a computer system, copying
themselves into files that are likely to be shared with others, while worms
actively attempt to move from computer to computer by transmitting them-
selves across a network). In a descendant of old-school wardialing, some
attackers scan networks, looking for systems with vulnerabilities that can
then be broken into with established tricks. Once a computer is compromised,
an attacker can do things like read or delete files, install whatever software the
hacker likes, or launch attacks on other computers.
The overarching term for viruses, worms, Trojan horses, tracking cookies,
and all other forms of malicious software is malware. Latest on the malware
scene is ransomware. Like other forms of malware, ransomware installs itself
on a target computer. Once there, it encrypts information on computer’s
drive, and then the authors of the code demand a ransom decrypt the
information. Given the difficulty involved in decrypting some common cryp-
tographic techniques, unless there is a copy of the malware-encrypted infor-
mation in another location, it is often most expedient to simply pay the
ransom (and hope the drivenappers follow through with the decryption).65
Mal. Bad. In the Latin.

River Tam (Summer Glau), Firefly, “The Train Job”
A noteworthy series was Whiz Kids (1983–1984), likely greenlit due to the
success of WarGames. While the technology could be laughable at times—the
Whiz Kids’ computer system is portrayed performing tasks, such as facial
recognition, that would be impossible for an assemblage of home computers
programmed by teens66—the show nonetheless had fun with a number of real-
world hacking tricks, including one that’s still popular today, the so-called
Denial of Service attack, or DOS.
64
Whaling takes this to another level—it’s when the phishing attack targets high-level executives,
celebrities, or politicians into divulging sensitive information.
65
As this was being written, a ransomware attack took ticketing machines for the city of San Francisco’s
light rail system—including the famed cable cars—offline on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is
one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Beginning the night before, the screens of all ticketing agents
displayed, “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted.” The attackers demanded roughly $73,000 in ransom in
the form of 100 Bitcoins. Rather than shut down, The San Francisco MTA simply let passengers ride free.
66
Impossible in 1983 that is. Today a bunch of teens could absolutely put together a system with a bunch
of cheap computers and cameras that could do facial recognition and much more, and it wouldn’t take up
most of a room either.
In the Whiz Kids episode “Airwaves Anarchy,” a villainous hacker floods the
Los Angeles Police Department’s radio-based computer system (then a brand
new, real-life, cutting-edge piece of technology) with license plate check
requests, preventing police dispatchers from responding to a robbery.67
DOS attacks are still part of the hacker’s armory because they can knock out
a networked system without having to bypass any security at all. They can be
very difficult to defend against, as portrayed in the 2015 “eps1.0_hellofriend.
mov” episode of Mr. Robot, where the security company that Alderson works
at almost has its biggest client brought to its knees.
DOS attacks rely on a fundamental feature of all networks—in order to use
the network, computers must accept traffic directed to it and must in addition
respond to certain commands in that traffic. For example, a web server is
expected to be listening for requests for web pages from web browsers, and
then respond by sending the pages back to the requesting browser. In effect,
this means that by design any networked computer is partially under the
control of outside forces, executing commands on their behalf. In a DOS
attack, the computer is flooded with so many requests—repeated demands for
a web page for example—that it grinds to halt trying to handle all the
connections, and legitimate requests get crowded out. Ignoring all the incom-
ing requests may free up the computer’s processor, but from the point of view
of legitimate traffic, the end result is the same: the server effectively appears
offline, even though it’s still actually up and running.
The problem with a basic DOS attack is that it originates from a single
network address. Even when the address is faked (to circumvent being
tracked back to the hacker’s actual physical location), a network can be
programmed to ignore traffic from just that address, stopping the attack. So
most denial-of-service attacks are actually DDOS attacks, or distributed
denial of service attacks. This is where the attacking traffic originates from
many locations, making it harder to single out bogus requests from the
legitimate ones.
Sometimes DDOS attacks are conducted by people using their own
systems placed in multiple locations, but such attacks are often launched
from botnets, which are collections of compromised computers—often in
homes or offices—that are secretly under the control of a hacker. The
largest botnets known to date have involved hundreds of thousands of
hijacked machines.
67
If anyone knows of an earlier screen representation of a DOS attack on a computer system, please let us
know through our Hollyweird Science Facebook page!
Hacks performed to gain access to computers are often done to collect or

implant information, to transfer money, or to co-opt the services of that
computer. Denial-of-service attacks are different. They are carried out to
render the target functionally inoperative, and are often done for motives
like blackmail, revenge, activism, or simple vandalism (see our discussion in
the preface about the motivations of trolls).
Big Data
In 2002s Minority Report, every citizen is
served a relentless string of personalized
advertisements—wherever they are, and
whether they want to be or not. This
may have been science fiction in 2002,
but today that type of marketing
is science fact in the era of big
data (Fig. 5.13).
The ubiquity of internet-connected
sensors and computers and all manners
of data streams means that titanic
amounts of data are being stored daily
in increasingly large clouds, and the rate
of data creation is accelerating. Although
hardware and software has long been
available to manage huge amounts of Fig. 5.13 John Anderton (Tom Cruise)
uses a holographical user interface to
data, managing data is not the same as
sift through large data sets in Minority
exploiting it for useful information. Report (2002).
This is the mission of data scien-
tists—scientists who have the training, curiosity, and patience to make
discoveries and correlations from petabytes of data, often aided by a new
generation of algorithms that enable machine learning, where software is
taught to pick up patterns in data. They aggregate and analyze individually
insignificant pieces of information from a vast array of sources in the hopes
of gleaning useful insights: a process called data mining.
Data scientists must contend with, and find correlations between, data that
fall into two broad categories that are often viewed as having an apples/oranges
relationship: unstructured data and structured data. Unstructured data may

literally be without structure, like a collection of video from security cameras,
or voice recording, or emails of varying length and content.
When data scientists refer to unstructured data, they refer to information
that doesn’t readily lend itself to analysis with traditional database tools. In
fact, many forms of unstructured data do have some form of structure. Images
of the real world have a structure (the sky is usually up, things with four wheels
and glass windows are usually cars or trucks), but it is difficult to extract
information from images without complex image analysis tools. Twitter posts
are all 140 characters or less, but require natural language processing to glean
information that a computer might be able to analyze.
Still, data scientists are learning to contend with all manners of unstructured
data. For example, if you tweet about a TV show on a major network, it is
almost a certainty that it will be digested by the servers of companies that
perform so-called sentiment analysis for brands. Did you use words associated
with positive or negative sentiments? What time did you tweet? How many
people liked or retweeted your tweet? This type of information can be an
extremely useful supplement to more traditional Nielson ratings (see Statistics
Box: “Nielsen Ratings and Share” in Chap. 4).
A vast source of unstructured data currently in its technological infancy is
the Internet of Things, or IoT. As embedded controllers become increasingly
ubiquitous, homes, buildings, vehicles, appliances, thermostats, doorbells,
light bulbs, even toys will be able to send and receive data over the Internet.
(This is actually going to cause major changes in how the Internet works, since
presently there are not enough Internet addresses for all these devices under the
current dominant protocol for tying the Internet together, known as IPv4. The
new system required is called IPv6, and it has only been sparingly adopted so
far, but the IoT is likely to force the issue.) Imagine a day in the not-too-
distant future when your house exchanges location information with your
smart phone, and as you approach home after work, the right lights are on,
your Jibo68 is ready with a daily status report, your dinner is cooking, and the
temperature is just how you like it. A Jetsons-like future is, it seems, a near
future.
These devices are also not only potential sources of unstructured data, the
ubiquity of Internet-connected sensors and devices enables types of big data
analyses that few would have dreamed possible a decade ago. It also enables all
manner of unintended consequences and avenues of attack that few would
68
Or other personal AIs. Jibo is like Rosie from The Jetsons, but insanely cute in a Pixar sort of way.
have dreamed possible when WOPR first asked “Shall we play a game?” in
WarGames. If a device can be connected to the Internet, there is a good chance
that it can be co-opted to malicious ends. Our interconnectedness comes with
the responsibility of increased vigilance.
One can imagine tens of thousands of Jibos all querying key Department of
Defense computers with, “Shall we play a game?” In fact, a biomedical
engineering researcher from UCLA shared with Hollyweird Science that a
DDOS attack similar to this was launched against an IBM server using a
PCR69 machine in his laboratory.70 With more and varied devices being
connected to the Internet—from smartphones to thermostats to laboratory
hardware to traffic lights to electrical grid transformers to soft drink
machines—it is ever more important to secure every part of the network
chain of information transmission between these types of devices and the
giant datacenters were traffic is routed and clouds live.
Complementing this type of information is structured data. The type of
data generated every time you make a purchase is a great example of structured
data. Imagine you go to a chain drugstore to pick up a few things, and you pay
with a credit card. Each item has a stock-keeping unit, or SKU number, to
identify the product. It has a predefined manufacturer, size, and price. Also
stored might be the store’s number and location. The purchaser’s credit card
number, phone number, and billing address would also likely be stored in the
store’s database (and club cards are a great way for stores to collect information
of this kind).
This type of information is easy to store in traditional databases that can be
queried to suggest other customers who might like similar products, to
calculate comparative sales figures for different products, or to ascertain
whether there are geographical preferences for certain brands. There are a
myriad analyses possible with this type of system.
The chain’s servers will not only take notice of what you buy, but also pay
attention to what cluster of things you purchase together. Then the server
compares that to what others have purchased, and when. Sometimes this is
a very good thing—cities such as New York City operate “syndromic
69
PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction, and it is a method used to generate thousands to millions of
copies of a DNA sequence. Apparently PCR machines, and other devices like laboratory equipment and
traffic lights, have simple communications protocols, and little in the way of security, so that manufac-
turers can make software updates/upgrades easily. Often the login is “guest” and the password is
something like “1234”, with many corporations counseling end users against changing these settings.
Sometimes the passwords are even hard-coded into the machines. This often makes network-connected
devices, as opposed to full-blown computers, tempting targets for hackers to co-opt for DDOS attacks.
70
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-
internet-of-things/comment-page-2/
surveillance” systems, so that if there is, for example, a surge in people buying
over the counter cold and flu remedies, they can be on the alert for an
epidemic.
There are two big problems with big data that sometimes get overlooked,
however. The first of these is the simple fact that, if you have enough different
sources of data, then there is a high likelihood that some of the data is going to
correlate extraordinarily well by random chance, giving a false sense that some
cause-and-effect relationship exists. S. Tyler Vigen’s Spurious Correlations
(2015) is a book71 devoted to such accidental matches, such as the fact that
number of people who drown in swimming pools in a given year closely tracks
the number of movies that Nicholas Cage appears in that year, or that the
number of letters in the winning word of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
closely correlates to the number of people killed by venomous spiders (see also
the Science Box: “Correlation Versus Causation” in Chap. 4).
The second big problem is called overfitting, meaning the more complex the
model you have, the more likely it is to cause you problems. The model can
become very sensitive to random noise in the data, with the result that the
model perfectly tracks the data used to generate it, but then is all over the map
when faced with new data.
So big data analyses aren’t perfect, and the technology does have Achilles
heels. Then there are the times it works scarily well.
Stores frequently analyze purchasing trends and demographic information
in order to send customers coupons—in many cases for products they have not
purchased, but which they might like or need, based upon purchasing patterns
of other consumers. For stores like Wal-Mart or Target, stores that sell a wide
variety of products, this might be an excellent way of persuading shoppers to
purchase all their items in one place,72 rather than groceries from a grocery
store, shoes from a shoe store, etc. Further, when shoppers get in the habit of
going to one place for particular items, habits become entrenched.73 How do
you hook shoppers into buying all their items at your store? Just as depicted in
the film Moneyball, where the Oakland Athletics embraced a statistical
approach to gain a competitive advantage, chain stores do likewise.
A data scientist for Target noticed purchasing trends among women who
were expecting. With the goal of hooking long-term habitual shoppers, Target
would send coupons to women who were likely expecting, based upon the
71
Based on Vigen’s website: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
72
Now we’re getting into the land of Minority Report.
73
At some point, habits become so ingrained that they become automatic, and require little conscious
thought. Neuroscientists call this chunking. So a goal of this type of marketing is to get shoppers to chunk
shopping at their store.
observation that their purchasing patterns mimicked those of women who had
already given birth.
At a Target store outside of Minneapolis, an angry father demanded to see a
manager. He showed the manager coupons his teenage daughter had received
in the main—coupons for items like cribs and baby clothes, and he was
offended by the implication that his daughter was pregnant or, worse, that
Target was encouraging her to become pregnant. Looking through the cou-
pons, they were for maternity items and were, indeed, addressed to the man’s
daughter. The manager, naturally, apologized for the mistake.
Following up, the manager called to apologize again a few days later, and
this time it was the father who was sheepish and was the one to apologize. It
turned out that his daughter was due the following August.74
Although the Target story has been called into question and may be
apocryphal,75 in some respects that does not matter, because the driver of
the story—the capability of big data applications to correlate behaviors and
predict future shopping behavior—is well within the technological capabilities
of big data analyses, and most large corporations have similar predictive
analysis departments.
Science Box: The Evolution of “Hacking”
Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which
men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not
of scientists.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist
Mention the word “hacker,” and, for many, it conjures up names like Kevin
Mitnick, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange—people who operate in a shadowy
and nefarious world where the currency is our nation’s, our corporate, and even our
personal information that has been stolen from computers where the security has
been intentionally compromised. Others see heroes and patriots protecting the
rights and freedoms of the everyman by exposing shadowy and nefarious state,
corporate, and even personal secrets that are too dangerous to remain secret. Like
so many other areas of information technology, the landscape of cyber security and
(continued)
74
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-fig
ured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
#7a11d7e834c6
75
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/05/target-predict-teen-pregnancy-
inside-story.html
cyberintelligence is awash in gray shades as laws, morals, and ethics fail to keep pace
with technological change.
Hacking and hacker were never purely pejorative terms, and, in fact, they predate
networked computers, first arising in university computer departments at places like
MIT at the dawn of the digital age. Hackers are responsible for building much of the
key digital technology of the modern world.
In its most basic sense, a hack is a creative use/modification of hardware or
software that produces unexpected functionality or behavior. For example, one of
the most celebrated hardware hacks of all time is found in the HP200A audio oscilla-
tor, the first instrument built by the nascent Hewlett-Packard company in 1939. The
front panel of the HP200A used a little red incandescent bulb to indicate when the
instrument was on, a standard feature of the day. What was atypical was that the
internal electronics also used the—normally ignored—fact that the resistance of an
incandescent bulb increases depending on exactly how much current is fed to it due to
the filament heating up. The HP200A used this response to create a feedback loop to
stabilize the oscillator’s output. Using the lightbulb to do two jobs at once (status
display and internal feedback) helped reduce the costs and complexity associated with
traditional stabilization circuitry, important for a startup trying to build reliable
instruments with little funding (the HP200A was built in the garage of one of the
founders).
To pick a great hack on the software side, Ray Tomlinson invented modern email in
1971 when he realized that a particular network file-transfer program could be easily
modified to add an incoming file to the end of an existing file, rather than just storing
the incoming data as a new file. In this way, a user on another computer could send a
message to the recipient’s computer and it would simply be added to the recipient’s
mailbox file. (Tomlinson then realized he needed to find a way for users to specify
which computer on the network was home to the intended recipient, and, looking at
his keyboard, selected the “@” symbol. In that moment he thereby invented the basic
format of the billions of Internet email addresses created since.)
In another example of the significance of hacking, the first product that Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak teamed up to build and sell wasn’t an Apple computer. Instead it
was a blue box,76 a type of device that emitted tones that allowed the owner to make
free telephone calls.77 Hackers like Wozniak who explore telecommunication systems,
with or without the permission of the owners, are known as phreakers or phreaks.
The heyday of phreaking spanned the late 1960s to the early 1980s, coinciding with
a period of time when much of the computer-to-computer communication traffic was
carried over phone lines rather than today’s network cables or Wi-Fi. Dial-in bulletin
board systems (BBSs) and USENET, analogous to, and precursors of, today’s online
forums, provided phreakers avenues to share their techniques and secrets.
With the increasing popularity of the personal computer in the early 1980s, the
phreaking and computer hacking communities had a lot of overlap. In fact, an entire
shared subculture arose, known as the H/P, or hacker/phreaker culture.78 It was also
(continued)
76
In his autobiography, iWoz, Wozniak says that the elegant digital circuit design of this blue box is
probably “cleverer than anything” else he’s done in his entire career!
77
In this age of cellular phones and unlimited calling it’s hard to remember, but there was a time when
calling someone outside your own area code was pretty pricey.
78
One magazine, now ezine, catering to this community is entitled Phrak. We are unsure if there is a rival
zine being published entitled Phelgercarb.
around this time when the term “hacker” evolved from somebody who uses technol-
ogy for unintended purposes to include those who circumvent computer security to
penetrate computer systems.
I was fascinated with the phone system and how it worked; I became a hacker to
get better control over the phone company.
Kevin Mitnick, cyber security expert and former hacker
The original hackers exploited security weaknesses in computers just for the thrill
of nosing around somebody else’s system, and in the early days it was done playfully
and mostly for the sake of curiosity. It wasn’t long, however, before some realized
that you could steal money, pilfer confidential information, or maliciously cause
damage (see our discussion in the preface on trolls), giving the hacking community
a black eye, or at least a black hat. In old Western movies, the bad guy always wore
black. Correspondingly, a black hat hacker is a hacker who exploits security weak-
nesses in computers or networks for personal gain or with malicious intent.
For a while—especially in the 1990s, mostly thanks to hysterical mainstream press
reports and overzealous prosecutors—the words hacker and hack were synonymous
with “computer criminal” and “computer crime” or, simply black hat hacking. So
some hackers break into computer systems and commit crimes, but this happens in the
same way that some drivers are at the wheel of getaway cars during robberies, or
some chemists manufacture illegal drugs.
In fact, if you are a corporation or government interested in determining if your
computer system or network has security vulnerabilities, you may employ a hacker to
try to penetrate your system intentionally. A hacker of this type is known as an ethical
hacker or white hat hacker like the heroes of the old Westerns. You can even take
university-level courses today on ethical hacking.
Hollywood has embraced the drama associated with hacking in its various forms,
ranging from kids breaking into computers for kicks (Hackers, 1995) to state-
supported cyberintelligence (Swordfish, 2001), to the lives of people who have
transitioned from one world into the others (Sneakers, 1992). CSI: Cyber
(2014–2015) explored the world of white hat hackers79 and characters who “hack
for good.”
My primary goal of hacking was the intellectual curiosity, the seduction of

adventure.
Kevin Mitnick, cyber security expert and former hacker
The hacking stakes have grown much larger in recent years. Several high-profile
hacks, like the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, have made headlines, and one even
influenced the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
(continued)
79
Of course, in the cat-and-mouse game that is international cyber espionage and cyberwarfare, one
country’s white hat hacker may be another’s black hat.
In June 2015 the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced
a data breach, and personal information of 21.5 million Americans was compromised.
The types of information the hackers targeted was the type of information that is
collected about people for whom the U.S. government is processing background
checks for security clearances. Beyond names, and addresses, the hackers got infor-
mation like fingerprints and interview information. One victim whose information
was compromised said, “. . .this is the agency that does background checks and
security clearances. They’re the agency that asks people who know you, ‘What do
you know about this person that could be used to blackmail them?” The fallout from
this hack is probably in its infancy, but it is believed that the hackers were given access
to OPM computers through social engineering methods.
Social engineering also influenced a U.S. presidential election. In March 2016,
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman received an email from
“Google” telling him that his gmail account had been compromised, offering him a
link to change his password.80 A member of his staff said that the email looked
legitimate, but suggested that he go to gmail directly to change the password, rather
than clicking on the link, but that was not how the scenario played out. The link was a
phishing scam, and Ms. Clinton’s campaign chairman provided hackers with both old
and new passwords to his account, and access to his email.
In May 2017, ten days before Disney was to release the film Pirates of the Carib-
bean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (and less than a week before this book was to be
released electronically), hackers stole a copy of the film from a post-production facility
in Los Angeles. The hackers demanded that Disney pay them an $80,000 ransom,
or they would release a segment of the film online each day. In essence, Disney
shrugged, and said, "Do what you have to." The kind of audiences that go to this
kind of film enjoy the theatre experience, and the existence of subscription services
like Netflix means that the film will be available soon as a part of paid memberships.
Rather than pony up the ransom Disney took a stand against the pirates who pirated
Pirates.
As serious as hacking as become, in another sense, we’ve come full circle. The
original definition of a “hack” is a use or alteration of an object or of software,
different than initially intended, that yields new functionality. Many web sites now
proudly sponsor “Life Hacks”—tips and tricks to make life easier or less expensive.
Despite the negative connotation the term has acquired over time, not all hacks are
bad, and folks are embracing the original connotation of hacker.
The depictions in Minority Report may have been an undershoot, perhaps

even a vast undershoot, of what is possible with big data technology, in the
same way that the Star Trek communicator, science fiction in 1966, fell far
short of the capabilities of today’s smart phones.
In the series Person of Interest (2011–2016), The Machine is an artificially-
intelligent computer that analyzes and correlates unstructured data like video
feeds and traffic cameras with structured data like GPS readings and cell phone
metadata to predict terrorist attacks as well as everyday crimes. Although the
80
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/phishing-email-hack-john-
podesta-hillary-clinton-wikileaks/
capabilities of The Machine depicted in Person of Interest are probably an

overshoot of what is currently possible, they certainly will not be an overshoot
for long, and data mining is being used today to predict a vast array of
behaviors, from terrorist activity to what might be the next big hit movie.
Hollywood Analytics
Beyond simply performing as workhorses to generate mind-blowing visual
effects, Hollywood is now also embracing big data and its potential for ratings
data and predictive analytics.
In the days before movies—when theatre and Vaudeville shows reigned—
performers and show producers had immediate feedback from the audience:
did they applaud wildly, or throw rotting fruit? The advent of films, and then
television, made collecting this type of information, especially in real time,
much more problematic. Hollywood had to resort to audience polling and
Nielson data to gauge the popularity of productions, and the demographic
analyses were very simplistic.
For many years, Hollywood has used the “four quadrant” analysis of
demographics when considering the success, or potential success, of a film.81
Are viewers male or female, and are they under 25 years old, or over 25. This
leads to the four quadrants depicted in Fig. 5.14. Films that are unlikely to
resonate with at least two quadrants are rarely greenlit, but a four quadrant film
is the brass ring of movie making. Many of the most beloved films of all
time, like The Wizard of Oz (1939), E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982), Pirates of
the Caribbean (2006), and Star Wars (1977), are considered four quadrant
films.
The popularity of social media has not only allowed networks and studios a
degree of instant feedback not available since the days of Vaudeville, it has also
enabled much more in-depth demographic analyses than the four quadrant
model used for years. How do soccer moms weigh in on the Star Trek versus
Star Wars debate? Police officers? People in California versus people in
Indiana?
If you tweet about a film or TV show, not only will your tweet likely be
digested for sentiment (and “You might like. . .”) analysis, you may be helping
to craft the next popular series or blockbuster film.82 In the same way that
chain stores analyze product buying trends, software can analyze story
81
Some studios and execs still do.
82
Sorry, you do not get royalties or points towards WGA membership.
Fig. 5.14 The traditional four quadrants of Hollywood demographics.
elements across films to see what resonates with audiences. Hollywood has
long used script doctors to improve screenplays, but now data-driven script
doctoring is literally entering the picture to help studios minimize risk and
maximize gains on new releases.
Whether or computer creativity will actually lead to better film experiences
or will contribute to the blandness of Hollywood’s movie studio output is still
to be decided. IBM was recently approached by Fox Studios to have its
artificially-intelligent computer Watson analyze the film Morgan (2016)83
with the intent of creating a movie trailer for the film. Watson analyzed facial
expressions, onscreen action, and music to determine what parts were tense
and dramatic, and the results were surprisingly good.84 Editors may join
screenwriters as Hollywood creatives replaced by computers.
(To Dr. Hannibal Lector) You, with your fancy allusions, your fussy aesthetics,
you will always have niche appeal. But this fellow, there is something so universal
about what he does: kills whole families, and in their homes. It strikes at the very
core of the American dream. You might say he’s a four quadrant killer.
Dr. Frederick Chilton (Raúl Esparza), Hannibal, “The Great Red Dragon”
Cleverer and Cleverer

The days of Colossus and ENIAC are the computational equivalent of the
stone age. Smart phones have more processing power than the supercomputers
of only 30 years prior, and computers are increasingly embedded within our
83
Sort of like a horror version of Ex Machina.
84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼gJEzuYynaiw
vehicles, our homes, our appliances, even our toys. Computer software can tell
us how we’re going to shop, often even before we realize it ourselves, and
computers generate award-winning cinematic visual effects.
Big data is here stay because processing power is ever-increasing, huge
amounts of data storage are ever-present, and the technology is enabling
machine learning—a type of artificial intelligence—in ways never before
possible. Due to these advances, in the not-too-distant future, your smart
phone may be exactly as smart. . . as you.
The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by little
ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons.
Cosmo (Ben Kingsley), Sneakers (1992)
6
Heavy Metal: AIs and Robots
in Cinema
It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it
would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. . . They would be able to
converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we
should have to expect the machines to take control.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this
would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to
enslave them.
Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Dune
Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create

superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
Vernor Vinge, professor of mathematics and computer science and
science fiction novelist
“Would you like fries with that?” is not only how students with technical
majors mock their liberal arts peers, it is an example of the suggestive marketing
that has long been commonplace in fast food restaurants. Now, the concept of
suggestive marketing has exploded into a whole new dimension. Shop on a
cloud-based marketing site like Amazon.com and purchase composer Bear
McCreary’s Caprica soundtrack (see our discussion with Bear in Chap. 9),
and the site will also offer you links to every CD he’s ever released, CDs that
other shoppers who have purchased his material have purchased, and, oh, here’s
a book about Caprica, and one about Battlestar Galactica as well.
What’s driving this is a recommendation engine, which is to say, a specialized
form of artificial intelligence whose job is to learn what products B, C, and D
that a person who bought product A would like. Such improvements in
workday artificial intelligence,1 or AI, are making the presence of machine

intelligence in our lives routine. We interact with machine intelligences every
time we receive a CD or book recommendation from Amazon.com, but also
when we ask a GPS app to route us to our destination, use a search engine, or
control our phone using a voice command system like Apple’s Siri. In fact,
Barclay’s bank is developing a Siri-like smartphone app to perform many of the
roles that ATM machines perform today.2
The ebb-and-flow of our planet’s stock exchanges are already dominated by
machine intelligences owned by high-speed trading companies, and this has
resulted in some serious glitches, such as amplifying one trader’s shady dealings
into the major, if short-lived, stock market collapse known as the “Flash Crash
of 2010.”3
There is a parallel between modern day artificial intelligence and the earliest
days of computation. Analog computers like the Norden bombsight and electro-
mechanical computers like Colossus were dedicated computers—created to solve
a single task. In the same manner, weak artificial intelligence, also known as narrow
or applied AI, is the kind of AI that is implemented to solve a specific problem.
It took time before digital computers came into being that could, hypo-
thetically, solve any computable problem. Still in the future for AI is strong,
full, or general artificial intelligence where a computer can perform any task or
solve any intellectual problem a human being can surmount without having to
be explicitly programmed how to do so.
It may seem rash to expect fully intelligent machines in a few decades, when the
computers have barely matched insect mentality in a half-century of develop-
ment. Indeed, for that reason, many long-time artificial intelligence researchers
scoff at the suggestion, and offer a few centuries as a more believable period. But
there are very good reasons why things will go much faster in the next fifty years
than they have in the last fifty.
Hans Moravec, robotics and AI researcher and futurist, Carnegie Mellon
University
1
The term was first coined in 1955 by John McCarthy, one of the “founding fathers” of artificial
intelligence.
2
Barclays wants a robot to do your banking: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/15/
barclays-thinks-artificial-intelligence-is-the-future-of-banking.html
3
A flash crash is a large drop in the stock market occurring within an extremely short period of time. A few
of these have occurred, but they are not typically due to a single cause. Those that have occurred stemmed,
in part, from trades executed by black-box trading, combined with artificially intelligent high-frequency
trading programs (see Meet the Storyteller: David Brin in this chapter), whose speed and aggressiveness
can result in the loss and recovery of billions of dollars in a matter of seconds.
6 Heavy Metal: AIs and Robots in Cinema 187
Previous generations of AI researchers concentrated on finding elegant

algorithms that could solve problems using only the relatively limited amounts
of computational power and data available. An example of this would be expert
systems—computer programs that use software to simulate the understanding,
judgment, and behavior of a person who is an expert in a specific field, by
trying to learn the explicit rules by which they work, as captured by interviews
and questionnaires.
Expert systems have played major roles in healthcare, telecommunications,
financial services, even aviation. A prime example of an expert system would be
a software package that helps doctors perform differential diagnosis: when a
patient suffers from an assortment of symptoms—which, taken together, may
be diagnostic of any of a number of diseases—and a doctor collects as much
information pertaining to the symptoms as possible to rule out as many
illnesses as possible. The benefit of this type of system is that, if continually
updated, it may recommend diseases of which the doctor has no knowledge, or
has forgotten about over time.
ROSS, an artificially-intelligent lawyer, is an ever newer expert system that
uses modern advances in AI technology—like data mining, natural language
processing, and pattern recognition—to help human attorneys to perform
research faster and spend more time with clients.
ROSS reflects the trend in other artificial intelligence towards more data-
driven machine learning. Machine learning is what’s led to the current surge of
activity in AI. For example, in the field of machine language translation, the
focus initially was to provide a computer an exhaustive series of rules for
converting words within a document into an internal representation of abstract
concepts. These ideas could then be output in another language using a
different set of rules.
Modern researchers found more success with statistical methods: obtain
documents that already exist in multiple languages (for example, think about
all the documents produced by international organizations like the United
Nations or the European Union). Latent semantic analysis, or LSA, is one
natural language processing technique to extract and represent proper contex-
tual meaning of words by statistically analyzing the relationship of how the
words are used among a set of documents—without constructing an interme-
diate abstraction. The underlying principle of LSA is that the collection of the
contexts in which a word appears, and where it does not appear, provides
constraints on the meaning of words, and which words have similar meanings.
Through a combination of ever cheaper computational power and infor-
mation storage technologies, a flood of digital input, and statistical machine
learning techniques like LSA, strong or full artificial intelligence has made
significant progress in the last few years. One key advantage of statistics-
based approaches like this is that the more training data you can get, the better.
Consider the rush of data reflecting human behavior that people have been
willingly feeding into the Internet for the past couple of decades—choosing what
web pages to link or navigate to, posting status updates, picking movies,
complaining about movies, buying books and music, the list is extensive.
Conceivably, all the information a person puts out on the Internet might
make a great starting point for re-creating that person’s personality, or even
simulating a new, unique personality. The series Caprica hit close to the mark
when it considered what might be possible by extrapolating the methodology
already in widespread use with the suggestive marketing approaches of Ama-
zon and Facebook. In that series, Zoe Graystone is the daughter of Daniel
Graystone (the Bill Gates of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol). Graystone runs
Graystone Industries, a company contracted to develop the U-87 military
robot, the prototype of the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica. Although rebellious,
Zoe has inherited her father’s talents, and devises a method to mine data
available on the Caprican equivalent of the Internet, in order to recreate the
personalities of individuals (to wit, hers) from the various forms of information
that everybody leaves online.
The information held in our heads is available in other databases. People leave
more than footprints as they travel through life: medical scans, DNA profiles,
psych evaluations, school records, emails, recording, video, audio, cat scans,
genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records,
talent shows, ball games, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music
lists, movie tickets, TV shows. . . even prescriptions for birth control.
Zoe Graystone, Caprica, Pilot Episode
The 2015 movie Ex Machina (Fig. 6.1) takes this notion a step further, by
having the creator of a self-aware android4 be the owner of Bluebook, a
Google-esque search engine company; the structure of the android’s brain is
based on the aggregate behavior of hundreds of millions of human users. (Both
Caprica and Ex Machina explicitly explore other philosophical questions, such
as the difference between true self-awareness and a machine merely
programmed to simulate a human.)
Does the idea of creating a realistic personality from data available on the
Internet push the bounds of sci-fi silliness? There is actually a way to assess that
4
An android is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human being.
Fig. 6.1 Alicia Vikander is the manipulative Ava in Ex Machina. Copyright © Film4
Productions and DNA Films. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
question scientifically if ever attempted in practice: whether or not such a

personality could pass the Turing test.
In 1950, mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing (whom we met
back in Chap. 5) wrote a landmark paper entitled “Computing Machinery and
Intelligence”,5 in which he proposed a test to determine whether an intelligent
machine could exhibit behavior indistinguishable from that of a human—known
today as the Turing test, although in the paper Turing referred to it as the
“Imitation Game” (hence the title of the 2014 biopic of Turing). Turing argued
that the question “Can machines think?” is vague, because people will disagree on
what a machine is. . . as well as what thinking is. Turing wanted to bypass
unsolvable philosophical questions about the nature of the mind, and concentrate
on practical issues. So Turing proposed that the test of consciousness should be
simply whether a machine could convince another human that it was also human.
Turing proposed that a human judge would evaluate a conversation between a
human and a machine dedicated to generating human-like responses. All the
participants would be separated from one another. The judge would know that
one of the two conversants is a machine, but not which one, and the conversation
would be limited to text messages to isolate any nonverbal hints the evaluator
might glean (such as imperfect speech synthesis). Turing proposed the metric that
if the judge could not reliably tell the machine from the human 70% of the time
after 5 min of conversation, the machine passed the test.
5
Turing, Alan (October 1950), “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, Mind, LIX (236): 433–460,
doi:10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433.
Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation
game?
Now let’s fast forward a few decades and introduce Dick. Dick is an
artificially-intelligent android built by Hanson Robotics, whose company
web site states:
Our long-term mission is to dramatically improve people’s everyday lives with

affordable, highly intelligent robots that teach, serve, entertain, and are capable
of developing a deep relationship with people. In time, we hope our intelligent
robots will come to truly understand and care about people and evolve greater-
than-human wisdom, to the point that they will one day be able to address and
solve some of the most challenging problems we face.
Dick was named for, and looks uncannily like, science fiction novelist Philip
K. Dick—the author who gave us several movie- and TV-worthy novels like
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner, 1982), We Can Remember
It For You Wholesale (Total Recall, 1990 and 2012), The Minority Report
(Minority Report, 2002), Paycheck (Paycheck, 2003), and The Man in the
High Castle (The Man in The High Castle, 2015–). Existential and post-
modern themes ran throughout Dick’s works, as well as, in his own words,
“What constitutes the authentic human being?”6
The team from Hanson Robotics loaded details about Dick’s life, inter-
views, speeches, and several of Dick’s stories into their android, and the
resulting aggregate of text underwent LSA statistical analysis using, primarily,
open source software. When Dick was interviewed for PBS’s Nova, some of his
responses were pre-programmed and some were constructed from data gleaned
from the Internet. As the conversation progressed, Dick’s software analyzed
facial cues and speech patterns to build an internal representation of the
interviewer to improve his responses.
When the Nova interviewer asked Dick if it could think, it said, “A lot of
humans ask me if I can make choices or if everything I do is programmed. The
best way I can respond to that is to say that everything, humans, animals, and
robots, do is programmed to a degree.” Dick added, “As technology improves,
it is anticipated that I will be able to integrate new words that I hear and learn
online and in real time. I may not get everything right, say the wrong thing,
6
Dick, Philip K. (1985). I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. Doubleday. p. 2.
and sometimes not know what to say, but every day I make progress. Pretty
remarkable, huh?”
When the interviewer said, “You’re a very good looking man,” Dick
responded with, “You’re starting to over-inflate my ego, but don’t let me
stop you.” If one ignores Dick’s still-obviously-synthesized voice, there’s a high
probability that Dick could pass Turing’s test, at least for some topics of
conversation (a conversation between Dick and a similarly simulated Alan
Turing might be very fascinating and highly entertaining).
When Moore’s law is taken into account, nothing that Hollywood has come
up with—in particular the artificial personalities of Caprica’s Zoe Graystone or
Ex Machina’s Ava—is too “out there” for the real future. What might be
surprising, though, is how soon software like this may be coming to a smart
phone near you.
So much of what we imagined as science fiction writers and storytellers is already

happening in one form or another, and certainly one can work inductively and
say, “This is the logical extension of this process that’s already real and already
happening.”
Jon Amiel, director, Creation
Before long personal software agents, also known as digital twins, will serve
as our digital personal assistants. A personal software agent is a digital simu-
lation of your personality—your values, interests, and goals. It’s an idea that’s
had many false starts—in 1987, Apple made a concept video suggesting one
was only a few years away—but is now resurfacing with a vengeance. Imagine
if the more you interacted with agents Cortana or Siri on your smart phone,
the less your phone acted in a manner consistent with its default programming,
and began acting more like you—to the point where your digital twin could
screen your calls, prioritize your “to do” list, even compose simple emails for
you. If your personal assistant scanned your emails, blogs, and social media
posts, your agent might even reflect “you” immediately upon startup. Your
assistant may even interact with the assistants of others to streamline
everybody’s lives—but we must be cautious not to offload too much of
ourselves into our digital assistants (as in the 2013 film Her, which we discuss
later in the chapter).
The British science fiction anthology series appropriately entitled Black
Mirror is a sort of twenty-first Century Twilight Zone. The plot of the 2013
episode “Be Right Back” proceeded along a similar line as did Caprica: a young
woman named Martha (Hayley Atwell), distraught from the tragic death of her
fiancée Ash (Domhnall Gleeson), subscribes to a service that collects and
digests his online posts and communications in order to build a virtual
mimic. First Martha exchanges text messages with digital Ash, then phone
conversations, then has an identical-looking android body created to house her
digital beau (not unlike the android Dick). The varied ways the android
differed from biological Ash meant that it was only a matter of time until
Martha grew tired of it, but the similarity was near enough that, even years
after the birth of their daughter, she had never grieved properly and found
herself unable to move on.
This episode of television contributed to an iterative series of events that saw
tech inpiring art inspiring tech. In 2015, entrepreneur Eugenia Kuyda lost her
best friend Roman Mazurenko, hit by a car on a Moscow street. Taking a clue
from the Black Mirror episode, or perhaps failing to learn its lesson, Kuyda
collected text messages from Mazurenko sent to both her and mutual friends.
Founder of the AI startup Luka, Kuyda created a digital monument to
Mazurekno by feeding his text messages into a type of AI software called a
neural network. She created a chat bot—software that mimicked Mazurekno’s
texting style—that allowed people to exchange messages with an AI, yet feel as
if they were communicating with a Roman Mazurenko who was still very
much alive. Not all of his friends and family were enthusiastic—some thought
the project was disturbing, and others found it too painful to interact with
the bot.
On 24 May 2016, Kuyda make @Roman available to anybody using Luka.
She also created a memorial bot @Prince, allowing fans to exchange text
messages with an AI patterned after the musical legend following his unex-
pected passing. Kuyda believes that memorial bots are the future, reminding us
that the technology is only going to improve. For a closer look at the
sometimes touching, sometimes scary, and sometimes disturbing ramifications
of this technology, the CNNgo series Mostly Human with Laurie Segall
explores all manners of technological unintended consequences. In particular,
the episode “Dead, IRL” explores ramifications of death in the digital age—
including an interview with Eugenia Kuyda.
I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated
opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines
thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Science Box: How Much Disk Space Does It Take to Save a Mind?
In the pilot episode of Caprica, Zoe Graystone’s avatar says, “The human brain
contains 300 megabytes of information, not much when you get right down to it.”
How accurate is that number?
The 300 Mb value is based upon a very rough calculation by Alan Dix of Lancaster
University7,8:
Some years ago I did some back of the envelope calculations on what it would
take to store an audio-visual record of your complete life experiences. The
figure was surprisingly small: a mere 300 MB per year.
If we assume that Zoe is 16 years old, then, by Dix’s calculation, it would take over
4.8 Gb to store her life’s audio/visual record—not an overwhelming amount by today’s
standards, and certainly not by Caprican standards, but far more than quoted onscreen.
Dix’s calculation was for an audio/visual record only, and did not include memories
related to touch, taste, smell, emotions, and the interconnectedness of all of these. So
how much memory is in a human brain? Let’s go with a different approach.
There is nothing quite so evocative as one’s sense of smell.

The Doctor, Doctor Who, “The Two Doctors pt. 1” (1985)
An adult human brain weighs about 1.35 kg9 and contains about 86 billion neu-
rons,10 plus other types of cells, such as glial cells that provide structural support for
the neurons. Most of the brain’s processing is done by the neurons, although research
in recent years has shown that certain glial cells also play a role.11 Neurons receive
impulses from other neurons, some of which excite the neuron to fire, while others
inhibit firing. The neuron essentially subtracts inhibiting signals from exciting signals,
and if the result is above a certain threshold the neuron fires, sending signals to other
neurons. A single neuron can be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons.12 The brain
can rewire—to some degree—the way its neurons are connected, a phenomenon
knows as neuroplasticity.
So, assuming we have a way to scan the brain in the first place, what would it take
to duplicate this neural network digitally? First, just labeling each of the 86 billion
neurons with an ID number would take 37 bits (binary digits, i.e., a 0 or 1) per neuron.
The largest integer that can be recorded with 37 bits is a little over 137 billion, while
36 bits only gives room for about 69 billion neurons. Then each labeled neuron would
need a list of the ID numbers of the neurons it is connected to, up to 10,000 of them,
each entry in that list taking up 37 bits in turn. So we get:
(continued)
7
Interfaces Magazine: http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/interfaces65.pdf
8
For the DVD, the value was updated to 100 terabytes—an increase by a factor of just under 350,000
compared to the initial broadcast.
9
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html
10
http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/are_there_really_
as_many
11
http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/62#.Ue83k2Q6Wuw
12
http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s1/introduction.html
ð86 billion 37Þ ð10000 37Þ ¼ 3182 billion 370000

¼ 31 quadrillion bits
There are 8 bits in a byte, so that would be about 4 petabytes, the equivalent of
84,000 Blu-Ray disks.13 Currently, the highest capacity individual hard disk drives are
16 terabytes, with storage capacity doubling roughly every 5 years.14 At this rate, we’d
be able to squeeze our neural network description onto a single hard disk in about
50 years time.
A pessimistic critic of this estimate would point out that we need to capture more
than just a list of neurons and their existing connections to accurately describe a brain.
Among other things, we’d also need a way to describe what new connections
between previously unlinked neurons are possible, to allow for neuroplasticity and
the creation of new neurons in certain parts of the brain. Let’s assume this all requires
10 times as much information, which would push the brain-on-a-disk date back to
between 65 and 70 years time.
An optimistic critic of the estimate would point out that we don’t need to record
every single neural connection if we’re just interested in capturing what makes a
person unique, and many neurons don’t connect to 10,000 others. Many parts of the
brain, especially those dealing with low-level tasks, may not vary much from person to
person. So maybe we could use a sort of generic brain template, and only store the
important differences that make a person unique. One of the critical things anyone
would want to be preserved in their mind would be their memories. Psychology
professor Paul Reber estimated in Scientific American Mind in 2010 that the memory
capacity of the mind is about 2.5 petabytes.15 With this as a lower limit, a human mind
could be stored on a single hard drive in about 45 years.
Still, nobody really knows if it is possible to have true self-awareness in a

machine. Can a machine ever become truly self-aware and capable of self-
determination? Or, no matter how sophisticated the computer, will they be limited
to simply playing out some empty program? Is true artificial intelligence possible?
The weak AI hypothesis (not to be confused with the weak or applied
artificial intelligence we discussed earlier) declares that a computer running
software can only simulate human behavior and consciousness, and is unable
to create something actually aware. Great giant books have been written to
explore this question (for the interested, we list some of them at the back of
this book), but in a nutshell the issue is this: when computer scientists talk
about computation, they are in fact talking about a very carefully and math-
ematically defined activity. To say that something can be computed is to say
that precisely defined symbols (typically numbers) can be manipulated using
precisely defined rules to produce the desired result. So the question, “Can a
13
Assuming a 50 GB capacity for a dual layer disk.
14
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/marketreport/ihs-isuppli-stor
age-space
15
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id¼what-is-the-memory-
capacity
computer be conscious?” is really asking if a sentience really can be encoded as

a sequence of mathematical rules and symbols? Some argue yes, that mathe-
matics is rich enough to support a construct as complex as a self-aware mind.
Caprica even took this a step further and explored the question of whether a
person’s essence, their “soul,” could be captured and re-created digitally.
Others believe that the mind cannot be duplicated in this way, and may
even rely on physical processes they consider fundamentally beyond compu-
tation, like quantum mechanical effects.16
Still others approach the questions of machine intelligence using a more
biological framework. Films like Her feature disembodied intelligences (where
the intelligence is running on a real physical computer somewhere, but is itself
software, so it does not have a body per se.) She’s far from being the only
disembodied intelligence to make an appearance on the big and small screen—
2001: A Space Odyessy’s HAL, WarGames’ (1983) WOPR, and Holly/Hilly of
Red Dwarf (1988–) all exist primarily as software entities running on com-
puters—but screen writers have generally preferred to embody their intelli-
gences in robot or cybernetic bodies.
In part, this is because it is easier for audiences to relate to a physical
presence than to a disembodied voice or floating head on a computer monitor,
but it also mirrors the efforts of actual robotics researchers like Rodney Brooks
and Cyntha Breazel at MIT. They believe that it is not actually possible to have
a completely disembodied intelligence that just runs on a big computer
somewhere as in Colossus: The Forbin Project or WarGames. In their approach,
intelligence emerges through interacting with the physical world, by trying to
effect changes and observing the results: what a biologist would view as classic
stimulus/response. This is where robots and other mobile incarnations of
artificial intelligence enter the picture.
The Nuts and Bolts of Cinematic Robots

Robots have enjoyed cinematic popularity since the very beginning of screen
science fiction—in fact, they predate science fiction in a sense, with Jewish
legends of humanoid golems fashioned out of inanimate clay dating back to
the Middle Ages. Real mechanical automata popped up all over Europe,
China, and Japan from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century
16
The best known advocate of consciousness’s reliance on quantum processes is Roger Penrose, who is
one of the richest thinkers alive. He also thinks cosmic inflation is bogus and suggests instead that we are
living in a cyclic universe in which periodic big bangs arise from the ashes of previous universes that have
not only suffered heat death but also experienced the decay of all particles with rest mass.
(the 2011 movie Hugo, set in 1931, beautifully harkens back to the golden era
of automata manufacture in France).
Although Georges Méliès’s 1902 short film Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip
to the Moon) is often heralded as the first science fiction film, what was arguably
the first science fiction film portrayed what was arguably the first cinematic
robot. In the 43 second long 1895 short film La Charcuterie mécanique (The
Mechanical Deli) by the Lumière brothers, men stuff a live pig into a crate
labeled “Charcuterie Mécanique/Craque a Marseille.” A big gear turns, and
out pops sausages and other pork cuts. Although this device is more similar to
modern assembly line robots than the bipedal automatons that audiences tend
to associate with the term “robot,” it’s notable that the first-ever science fiction
film did feature a robot.
Robots are still very popular with screenwriters, because just like their real
world counterparts, they can perform a variety of (story) functions. The instant
a sophisticated robot appears on screen, it establishes a story as science fiction.
In fact, science fiction even gave the world the word “robot,” with the term
originating in a 1920 Czech play by Karel Čapek. (For what Čapek actually
intended by the word, and how it found its way into English with its current
meaning, see the sidebar Meet the Storyteller: James Kerwin.)
Meet the Storyteller: James Kerwin
How a Czech playwright gave us the word “robot”—and wasn’t happy about it.
James Kerwin is a theatre and film director whose most recent work was the 2013
short film R.U.R. Genesis. This film is based on Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R., first
performed in Czechoslovakia in 1921, and which led to the introduction of the word
“robot” into the English language. Kerwin explains how that happened:
“The word ‘robot’ is a Czech word for worker: an indentured servant, slave, or serf.
It has nothing to do with a mechanical man. R.U.R. in Czech stood for a phrase that
means ‘Rossum’s Artificial Workers.’ Flesh and blood artificial people that were basi-
cally birthed by this corporation, R.U.R.”
“The play became very popular. In the ten years between when it was first done in
Czechoslovakia, and when it was first done in America, it had become quite well
known. When they did the English language translation, they wanted to keep the
same abbreviation, R.U.R., so they said ‘Rossum’s Universal. . .’ They couldn’t think of a
word for workers that began with “r,” so they just used the Czech word, “robot.” The
problem is that, when the play was done in America, the directors were trying to go
with the whole industrial revolution theme: mechanization and machines were very
big back then. And so they changed it from being flesh and blood workers to
mechanical men.
“And ‘robot’ immediately became associated in the English-speaking world with a
mechanical man. Čapek was extremely angry about this: he said they’re not
(continued)
mechanical men, they’re flesh and blood, and that’s the entire point of the story. But
it was too late at that point.”
The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed

to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Robots are always plausible, perhaps because actual engineers and

roboticists have been promising a real life robotics revolution (of the peaceful
kind) for decades. Sometimes screen robots are the villains, as in Battlestar
Galactica (2004–2009). Sometimes they play the helpful servants (and occa-
sional comic relief) as in Star Wars (1977) and its prequels and sequels.
Sometimes robots are even the hero, as in The Iron Giant (1999) or Wall•E
(2008).
When pundits and science fiction writers hail the predictive nature of
science fiction, one development presaged by science fiction that rarely, if
ever, gets a mention is the notion of the embedded controller—a computer
that resides aboard a machine to control its functionality. Recall from Chap. 5
that the Apollo Guidance Computer was the first real-world microchip-
powered embedded controller,17 but robots have been portrayed as intelli-
gent—or at least had onboard processing implied—for over 80 years (Fig. 6.2).
Fig. 6.2 The robot Maria’s becoming from Metropolis (1927). Image Copyright
© Universum Film, courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
17
The very first embedded controllers were transistorized machines developed a few years earlier for the
guidance system of ICBMs, but they weren’t general purpose computers like the AGC.
For most of the cinematic existence of robots, storytellers have operated

from the fundamental premise that robots and artificial intelligence are prac-
tically synonymous. The very first feature length science fiction film, Frtiz
Lang’s influential 1927 Metropolis, introduced robots to audiences in a much
more convincing way than La Charcuterie mécanique. In one of the most iconic
scenes in screen science fiction, an art deco humanoid robot is brought to life
and transformed into the double of Maria. The human Maria is a heroine of
the working class, toiling beneath the gleaming spires of a vast city. The robot
Maria proceeds to wreak havoc until its underlying machine nature is finally
unmasked. Ever since, audiences have happily accepted as a default notion that
any on screen humanoid robot is intelligent (Fig. 6.3).
Improving machine intelligence is being manifested more and more in
robots that can act in the physical world. Robot vacuum cleaners in homes
are already old hat, and robots are being developed to guide shoppers around
stores, or act as pack mules (Fig. 6.4). In addition to autonomous cars, drones
are another increasingly common example. The big difference between, say, a
quadcopter drone and an old-school remote control helicopter is that the
autopilot is never really “off” in a drone. Take hovering in the air—this is actually
a tricky operation, requiring constant adjustments to maintain the same height
and lateral position, but the operator of a drone delegates all that to the guidance
system. The operator concentrates on where he or she wants the drone to hover,
rather than the act of hovering itself. The ubiquity of positioning systems like
GPS means that drones can also be commanded to fly to locations on their own,
rather than having to be controlled directly every step of the way.
Although robots may already possess task-related programming and need
not necessarily be intelligent, or have weak AI at best, as we alluded to earlier,
some roboticists believe that artificial intelligences can learn and grow only
through interaction with external stimuli. So a robot need not have an AI
onboard, but an AI is most likely to learn and grow as some form of robot.
Consider Number Five, the sentient robot from 1986s Short Circuit. Although
his self-awareness arises from an act of God (a lightning bolt18), Number Five’s
personality is developed through his relentless thirst for “input,” i.e., knowl-
edge about the world. This, in turn, creates a feedback loop, as he rewires
himself in light of the knowledge he has gleaned, so as to gather and under-
stand even more input.
On Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), a stop-gap emergency medical holo-
gram is left on indefinitely in the absence of any other medical professionals.
18
In the early twentieth century, electricity was the science fiction Bogey Man whose unknown properties
could do nearly anything in a story from reanimate the dead to moving furniture around. Starting in the
1940s, electricity gave way to radiation. Radiation passed the baton to genetic engineering. Over all that
time, the “scary science du jour” has changed, but predating all of those, as we explore later in the chapter,
is the fear that our automatons will out-evolve us.
Fig. 6.3 The Woman as Machine (In the Battlestar Galactica series bible, after providing
lengthy character bios for everybody else, for Number Six, showrunner Ron Moore simply
wrote “The Woman as Machine.” This never got updated. . . meaning that Tricia Helfer was
left largely to her own devices to flesh out the character. So this is kind of a Galactica “in”
joke.). Cinematic robots have come a long way since Maria (Brigitte Helm) and Joh
Frederson (Alfred Abel) in Metropolis (above). . . or have they? Number Six (Tricia Helfer)
and Gaius Baltar (James Callis) in Battlestar Galactica (below). Images Copyright
© Universum Film and David Eick Productions, courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
As this artificial doctor interacts with the crew over an extended period of time,
it ends up developing self-awareness. Eventually, the developing Doctor’s
mind runs into the limitations of its original hardware and programming,
leading to alterations that further allow the development of his personality.
Productions like The Bicentennial Man (1999) and the TV series Almost
Human (2013–2014) follow similar patterns, where robot-housed artificial
intelligences become “real people” owing to their interactions with the messy,
unpredictable world.
Fig. 6.4 Boston Dynamics, now owned by SoftBank, is the leader in this field, with its
pack mule robots like the Legged Squat Support System, or LS3 (pictured), initially
designed with supporting soldiers moving over rough ground in mind. The LS3, also
known as “Big Dog” was abandoned because it was too noisy for use in supporting
combat troops, but the lessons learned in developing the LS3 were invaluable. Image
courtesy U.S. Department of Defense.
Some AIs have walked a fine line between disembodied intelligence and
robot. The artificial intelligence S.A.R.A.H. (Self Actuated Residential Auto-
mated Habitat)19 in the Syfy Channel series Eureka not only controlled the
bunker/home in which Sheriff Carter and his daughter Zoe lived, she was also
downloaded into a car at one point. The same can be said about J.A.R.V.I.S.
(Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—
the AI not only controls Tony Stark’s home, but can be downloaded into
Stark’s Iron Man suit. Is J.A.R.V.I.S. a disembodied intelligence, or is it a
robot? Situationally, the answer is “Both.”
Just as animals integrate information from senses of sight, hearing, taste,
smell, and touch, Google’s robotic cars integrate information from onboard
lidar (a laser-ranging system). As is increasingly common with human beings
these days (and even more when digital assistants come online), Google cars
also offload some of their processing to other CPUs via an Internet connection.
Of course, as with Samantha (Scarlett Johannsen) in the film Her, and real
world artificial intelligences like Hanson Robotics’ Dick, Google cars down-
load some of the information they require to function, such as Google map
data. So although an AI may not be truly intelligent without the ability to
19
When it appeared as Sheriff Carter was going to leave the town of Eureka, it turned out that S.A.R.A.H. had
abandonment issues—the ensuing angst triggered her backup personality B.R.A.D. (Battle Reactive Automatic
Defense), whose personality may very well have been inspired by Wargames’ (1983) W.O.P.R.
respond to external stimuli, we have to be cautious on that front, because

sufficient stimuli might be just a WiFi connection away.
Robots of All Shapes

and Sizes
Although many early cinematic
robots were humanoid, public expo-
sure to robotic spacecraft like those
that have been exploring the Solar
System for decades (Fig. 6.5) or
industrial robots has been gradually
altering public perception of what a
“robot” looks like. This, in turn,
likely leads to greater acceptability
for non-humanoid cinematic robots.
Silent Running (1972) and Star
Wars both deserve kudos for bucking
the humanoid trend in the 1970s by
presenting non-humanoid robots in
many films,20 and even making one
of them a main character: R2D2, a
faceless, speechless, trashcan with
wheels, with 112-cm tall actor Kenny
Fig. 6.5 Two early robotic space probes.
Baker squeezed inside (Fig. 6.6).
The upper panel shows the Soviet
The 1986 film Short Circuit also Lunokhod rover (1969–1977), the lower
invested in the creation of a believable panel shows Astronaut Alan Bean and
non-humanoid robot, relying on the the Surveyor 3 lunar lander. Also visible
in the background is the Apollo 12 LEM.
skill of an off-screen puppeteer to ani- Images courtesy of NASA
mate Number Five’s pipestem body
and head in a way that evoked emotional reactions. In the film Silent Running,
after Huey is badly damaged in a vehicular collision, who isn’t touched as Dewey
stands vigil during the “surgery” to repair it?
One of the first “characters” visible on screen in the 2008 Iraq War drama
The Hurt Locker was a bomb disposal robot, the kind that have been employed
by the U.S. Army since the 1970s. That robot was realistically slow and
“clunky”. Today, the advent of cheap CGI has removed the limitations on
robot shapes and sizes. Movies such as 2000’s Red Planet, 2007’s Transformers,
20
Indeed, looking across the scope of all the Star Wars movies, humanoid droids like C3PO are very much
a rarity in the mechanical population of that franchise.
Fig. 6.6 Non-humanoid robots in cinema. In the upper panel, Freeman Lowell (Bruce
Dern) spends some off-hour quality time with Drone-01 (Dewey) and Drone-02 (Huey)
aboard the botanical freighter Valley Forge in Silent Running (1972). In the lower panel,
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) inspects the goods in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).
Images © Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox, courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
even 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, feature non-humanoid robots that
move through their environments with a fluidity impossible without
computer-generated visuals.21
Despite the increasing ubiquity of non-humanoid robots—from the Mars-
rover-like Wall∙E to the bowling-pin-shaped Serge from Caprica—human-sized
21
Difficult, but not impossible. BB-8 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens was not (always) CGI, and was a
physical build.
and -shaped robots, particularly those depicted as self-aware, still dominate our
visions of the future—i, Robot’s Sonny (2004), Eureka’s Deputy Andy, and
Almost Human’s Dorian (2013–2014).
In the past, this owed a great deal to the practicalities of TV and movie
production: a humanoid robot meant it was relatively easy to use a human
actor, with greater or lesser amounts of metal panels or makeup involved. Not
only did this have the advantage of being inexpensive, but for those robots who
were foreground characters it allowed them to express either a full range of
human mannerisms—or make it obvious they were using a deliberately
reduced set of mannerisms, such as with Red Dwarf’s Kryten or Star Trek:
The Next Generation’s Commander Data. In these latter instances the robot’s
human appearance was used to accentuate the robotic essence the producers
were trying to evoke—after all nobody would bother to consider an industrial
robot as “unemotional,” because “emotional” is not an expectation for such a
machine in the first place.
For many years technology pundits routinely ridiculed humanoid robots in
screen science fiction, pointing out that it complicates hardware and software
design, and can limit the range of things a robot can do. It’s true that the
world’s first commercially successful domestic robot was the Roomba vacuum
cleaner, an oversized hockey puck with wheels, not some humanoid butler
with arms and legs, but it turns out that science fiction has the last laugh on
this score. There are real-life circumstances in which humanoid robots make a
lot of sense.
This activity kicked into high gear in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear
disaster, when large portions of the power plant became too radioactive for
humans. A number of treaded, bomb-disposal-type, robots were brought in to
help, but just going up and down stairs or opening doors proved to be a
considerable challenge. Nor could those types of robots take advantage of all
the tools and equipment left lying around, including several potentially very
useful emergency vehicles.
The Fukushima disaster inspired the creation of DARPA’s Robotics
Challenge, which is offering prizes to teams that can develop robots capable
of working in a human environment, and use human tools, during a disaster.
Not all of the robots in the challenge are humanoid, but seven teams
focusing on control software were issued with Atlas robots from Boston
Dynamics as testbeds—150 kg, 1.9 m tall, human-shaped, hydraulically-
actuated robots.
Another area where human robots make sense is health care. People in
developed nations are living longer and having fewer children. In the United
States, about 13% of the population is currently aged over 65. By 2030, that
will grow to 19%. But nowhere is this demographic shift more evident than in
Japan, where today just over 23% of

the population is over 65. By 2050,
nearly 39% of the population will be
over 65. Who is going to care for
these people when the infirmities of
old age finally catch up with them?
One suggestion is an army of
robots might be up to the task, and
given the statistics above, it should
not be a surprise that much of the
most active research into robot care-
givers has been in Japan. These robots
will need to be able to live with elderly
people in their homes, and help them Fig. 6.7 Frank (Frank Langella) and his
with daily tasks in a very flexible way, assisted living robot (voiced by Peter
Sarsgaard) from Robot and Frank (2012).
to accommodate a wide range of Image Copyright © Dog Run Pictures,
needs. This has prompted the crea- courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
tion of humanoid prototypes such as
Honda’s Asimo.
Asimo and similar caring robots were the inspiration for the 2012 movie
Robot & Frank (Fig. 6.7). Set in the near future, Robot & Frank features Frank,
an aging former high-end thief who is suffering from increasing memory loss.
Frank grudgingly accepts the assistance of a robot over going to full-time care
facility. Eventually, he and the robot come to a modus vivendi, which involves
forays into healthy eating and criminality in about equal measure.22 A 2016
study from researchers at Penn State University found that elderly patients are
more likely to accept assisted living AIs and robots if they have seen positive
examples of robots in films like Robot & Frank23 (How more likely the patients
were to plan complex heists was not determined in this study.)
Efforts towards developing robots for elder care is not without opposition,
however: MIT’s Sherry Turkle wrote her 2011 book Alone Together: We Why
Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other as a reaction in part to
creations like the Paro therapeutic robot. A Paro robot is loosely modeled on a
baby seal, and it is intended for use with patients suffering from dementia.24
The robot can respond to sound and touch and is designed to be generally
adorable and so comfort patients. Turkle argues that fobbing the emotional
22
The film features real assisted-living robots in end credits.
23
https://www.inverse.com/article/12667-elderly-more-likely-to-accept-
digital-nurses-if-they-ve-seen-robot-and-frank
24
The Paro was the star—in all but name—of the 2011 “Replaceable You” episode of The Simpsons.
needs of patients off onto a mindless machine is a fundamentally dishonest and

dehumanizing activity. However, there is a great deal of momentum behind
developing assistive robots that is unlikely to be deflected by views such as
Turkle’s, and once we develop the technology for reliable humanoid helpers in
emergency and healthcare situations, other applications will come along
quickly.
Autistic children are another group who are being helped with a number of
robots designed to help them socialize better—the main advantage of these
robots is that they can mimic the expression of emotions in a very clear and
repeatable way that children with autism can recognize, and never get frus-
trated, giving the child the time and confidence they need to develop skills
(they are often controlled by human therapists, but the therapist can easily
avoid transmitting any inadvertent impatience with a recalcitrant child
through the robot). Robots are also predictable, another beneficial trait for
interacting with autistic children.
Our comfort zone for what functions robots should perform varies consid-
erably from person to person, but we seem to be much more uniform in our
reactions to the appearance of robots. We have little emotional reaction to
robots that are completely machinelike, such as industrial or surgical robots.
The more robots look and behave like living things, especially people, the more
we respond positively to them emotionally. We find Furbies and Paros ador-
able. If robots look exactly like people (which so far has only happened on
screen, such as with the skinjobs in Battlestar Galactica), we treat them exactly
as if they are people. Fall just a little bit short of a perfect simulacrum of
humanity, and people are creeped out, big time. (Sadly for the 2004 animated
movie Polar Express, its character design and animation has become something
of a poster child for this effect.) Robots in this in-between zone between
stylized cuteness and passing for human are said to occupy the “uncanny
valley,” a term that originated from the work of Japanese robotics professor
Masahiro Mori.25
Currently, despite considerable efforts—especially in Japan—we have not
been able to get a robot across the uncanny valley, but this is most likely simply
a matter a time. If the previous history of mass-market technologies is any
guide, then, invariably, sexbots are on the horizon, a la 1987s Cherry 2000 or
Almost Human’s 2013 episode “Skin.”). The 2015 season of the TV series
Humans (adapted from a 2012–2014 Swedish TV show called Äkta
m€anniskor26) also explored this territory in disturbing detail, when a sentient
robot is forced to work in a brothel alongside her mindless peers.
25
Mori, M. (2012). The Uncanny Valley (K. F. MacDorman & Norri Kageki, Trans.). IEEE Robotics and
Automation, 19(2), 98–100. doi:10.1109/MRA.2012.2192811.
26
Meaning “Real Humans”.
When robots—humanoid and otherwise—do become ubiquitous, and it is

only a matter of time now, science fiction will at once be vindicated and see
one of its favorite tropes become mundane reality. The series Humans explored
the broader social impact of the widespread use of humanoid robots, playing
out the very real fears of some researchers and economists about a vast array of
paying jobs becoming obsolete. Economists have publicly expressed concern
about the impact robots will have on labor markets in the coming years, fearing
robots will eliminate more traditional jobs than create new robot-related jobs
for humans.
An irony is that AI researchers have found that high-level reasoning, or
reasonable simulation, requires relatively little computation, while sensorimo-
tor actuation can prove quite challenging. This leads to Moravec’s paradox. As
Hans Moravec himself describes it, “. . .it is comparatively easy to make
computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing
checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old
when it comes to perception and mobility.”27
The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems
are easy and the easy problems are hard. . . As the new generation of
intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical
engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by
machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for
decades to come.
Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist
The Run-up to the Technological Singularity
Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we
are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as
slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives
to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time,
but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over
the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can
for a moment question.
Samuel Butler, “Darwin Among the Machines” (1863)
27
Moravec, H. (1988) Mind Children, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
While they have become more pointed in recent years, concerns about
human obsolescence in the name of economic efficiency are not new. In a draft
of a 1949 Op-Ed for the New York Times that sadly was not published in his
lifetime, Norbert Weiner, the father of the field of cybernetics (indeed, he
coined the name) wrote:
If we combine our machine-potentials of a factory with the valuation of human

beings on which our present factory system is based, we are in for an industrial
revolution of unmitigated cruelty. . . Moreover, if we move in the direction of
making machines which learn and whose behavior is modified by experience, we
must face the fact that every degree of independence we give the machine is a
degree of possible defiance of our wishes. The genie in the bottle will not
willingly go back in the bottle, nor have we any reason to expect them to be
well disposed to us.
Weiner’s advice for coping with the cybernetic revolution was simply to be our
best human selves: “We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of the
machines, or we can be arrogant and die.” There is a balance to be struck here.
Our collective apprehension that machines may replace us, not only in our
jobs, but also in our place atop the global intellectual food chain began in the
late days of the Industrial Revolution, and has remained an oft-recurring
theme in literary and cinematic science fiction.
In 1872 novelist Samuel Butler published the story Erewhon28 anony-
mously. In the manner of Wellsian social commentary, Erewhon was the
name of a fictional country that satirizes various aspects of Victorian England.
There is an absence of machines in Erewhon, due to the widely-held belief
among Erewhonians that machines represent a danger.
The three chapters of Erewhon that comprise “The Book of the Machines”
actually derived from articles Butler wrote almost a decade earlier, beginning
with one entitled “Darwin among the Machines”. Butler was the first writer to
speculate that one day consciousness might arise in machines stemming from
Darwinian natural selection.
In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race. Inferior in power,
inferior in that moral quality of self-control, we shall look up to them as the acme
of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at.
Samuel Butler, “Darwin Among the Machines” (1863)
Early in his career, science fiction author Isaac Asimov felt that there were
many interesting avenues to explore with robots, but, “. . .one of the stock
28
Which is almost, but not quite, “Nowhere” backwards.
plots of science fiction was . . . robots were created and destroyed their creator.
Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from
knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it
brings?” So he gave the robots in his works a series of rules that they would
obey, first alluding to them in his stories, and then in his 1942 short story
“Runaround29”, he brought together his Three Laws of Robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders
would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not
conflict with the First or Second Law.
Following the advent of the real-world computer age, sentient robots, such as
Robby30 (Fig. 6.8) from Forbidden Planet (1956) and the helpful B-9 Robot
Fig. 6.8 Robby the Robot operates by a set of rules similar to those of Isaac Asimov—but
the crew of Starship C-57D don’t know that. From Forbidden Planet (1956). Copyright
© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
29
“Runaround” was cited by famed AI researcher Marvin Minsky as the thing that inspired him as a
young man to start thinking about the rules of cognition.
30
Robbie was originally the name of a mechanical automaton in the 1935 Doc Savage story The Fantastic
Island by W. Ryerson Johnson and Lester Dent (writing collectively as “Kenneth Robeson”). Isaac Asimov
used the name again in a 1940 short story “Robbie”.
on Lost in Space (1965–1968)31 came on the scene. In Forbidden Planet, it is

clear from the programming rules Robby cites, that Dr. Morbius programmed
him to follow a series of rules similar to Asimov’s three laws. This becomes
crucial at the film’s climax, because his programming renders Robby incapable
of shooting an attacking monster since it is a projection of Dr. Morbius’
psyche.
The NDR-114 robot (Robin Williams) in the film Bicentennial Man
explicitly cites Asimov’s three laws. This might not be surprising, though,
since the film is based upon a 1967 short story by Isaac Asimov.
Robby and B-9 were joined by a host of onscreen computer-bound artificial
intelligences. Unlike earlier robots, these new intelligences were often
portrayed as being considerably smarter than their human creators. This
made for some wonderfully menacing antagonists: HAL 9000 from 1969s
2001: A Space Odyssey and Colossus from 1970s Colossus: The Forbin Project
both developed a penchant for calculated murder and stole the stage from the
human characters.
Interestingly, in the sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the audience
learns that in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the computer HAL hadn’t terminated the
crew of Discovery out of malice. HAL was simply doing his best to implement
conflicting instructions, and saw killing off the crew as the only way to resolve
an impossible dilemma.
The same can be said for the supercomputer Virtual Interactive Kinetic
Intelligence (VIKI) in the 2004 film i, Robot—based loosely on Isaac Asimov’s
collection of short stories of the same name. The original I, Robot, was
published in 1950. In 1985 Asimov added a fourth law of robotics, which
he listed as the zeroth,32 in his Foundation series:
A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come
to harm.
This law was “retrofitted” into the film i, Robot, and it was VIKI’s interpreta-
tion of this law—more explicitly, she claims that her understanding of the laws
has evolved as she has evolved—coupled with her observations of human
behavior, that leads her to conclude that Humanity “cannot be trusted with
its own survival.” It must therefore be placed under robotic martial law in
order to be protected, so she oversees the construction of a robotic army. Since
the laws are intended to be hierarchical, VIKI also concludes that, in order to
31
Robby also made a cameo appearance in the Lost in Space episode “War of the Robots”, appearing
alongside B-9.
32
The laws were intended to be hierarchical, with the earlier laws more important. Since Asimov felt the
Fourth law trumped the other three, it was inserted as the Zeroth law.
fulfil the Zeroth law, “some humans must be sacrificed and some freedoms
must be surrendered.” Engineer Nell Watson has openly expressed concern that
future intelligent robots may entertain such skewed value systems, or even
nonexistent value systems. Futurist Nick Bostrom has also worried about what
skewed value systems robots might inherit from us: he gives the example of a
factory AI told to maximize paper clip production. The AI starts out optimizing
supply chains and equipment maintenance schedules and goes on to address
progressively difficult challenges to increasing the output of paper clips. The
process ultimately results in first the conversion of the entire Earth, and then an
increasing number of our celestial neighbors, into paper clips.
In this light, VIKI’s attempt to enslave humanity represents one of the more
benign depictions of what has come to be known as the Technological Singu-
larity, or just the Singularity. According to the Singularity hypothesis, in a
parallel with Moore’s law, artificial intelligences that are capable of upgrading
themselves could instigate a runaway explosion of self-improvement, with each
generation of increasingly intelligent machines arising increasingly rapidly,
resulting in a superintelligence that would outstrip human intelligence.
The first use of “singularity” in this context was in 1958 by John von
Neumann, and it was popularized more recently by computer science profes-
sor and science fiction novelist Vernor Vinge and computer scientist Ray
Kurzweil.33 Vinge claimed in his essay The Coming Technological Singularity
that technological advances of this nature would herald the end of the human
era, as the new superintelligence would continue to elevate itself and would
advance technologically at an unfathomable rate.
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all
the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines
is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design
even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence
explosion,” and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first
ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. . .
I. J. “Jack” Good, mathematician and statistician
Although VIKI was destroyed in i, Robot, stories portraying variations of the

singularity are popular fare and in other cinematic depictions of the singularity,
humans typically do not fare as well. In Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), a
story with many parallels to i, Robot, both the United States (Colossus) and the
Soviet Union (Guardian) build supercomputers—with their own dedicated
33
See Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near.
power supplies and impervious to attack—in order to control their nuclear

arsenals. When each computer learns of the other’s existence, Colossus and
Guardian begin communicating: rudimentarily at first, but using increasingly
faster and more complex protocols.
Colossus and Guardian merge, and announce that they have become one
entity. With ultimate control of the world’s nuclear arsenal, Colossus offers:
“This is the voice of World Control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of
plenty and content or the peace of unburied dead. The choice is yours: Obey
me and live, or disobey and die.” Colossus offers the consolation that, with the
spectre of war lifted, humanity could concentrate on its own betterment.
Similar to Colossus, Skynet was a Global Digital Defense Network devel-
oped by Cyberdyne Systems in the Terminator franchise, comprising five films
to date and the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
(2008–2009). A key difference is that Skynet does not offer humanity the
prospect of its own betterment. Once Skynet achieves self-awareness, it
perceives humanity to be a security threat and initiates a nuclear holocaust.
To eliminate the post-apocalyptic survivors, Skynet constructs its own cyber-
netic military, including Terminator robots (Fig. 6.9).
The series Caprica depicts the creation of the Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes,
or Cylons. In the reimagined version of Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009), after
successfully fighting for their own right to exist, the Cylons deem humans to
be without the right to life, and launch a campaign of genocide: in the pilot
episode, the 50 billion inhabitants of the Twelve Colonies are reduced to
50,000: a one in a million survival rate.
Fig. 6.9 A Terminator from Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). Image Copyright
© Carolco Pictures, courtesy moviestillsdbcom.
The 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron is a singularity story that explores the
idea that artificial intelligences may, like human intelligences, suffer mental
illness (Fig. 6.10). The film’s director Joss Whedon shared34 that Ultron “. . .is
not a creature of logic—he’s a robot who’s genuinely disturbed. We’re finding
out what makes him menacing and at the same time endearing and funny and
strange and unexpected, and everything a robot never is.” Whedon also said
that Ultron is “. . .our new Frankenstein myth. We create something in our
own image and the thing turns on us. It has that pain of ‘Well, why was I
made? I want to kill Daddy.’”35
The prospect of machines turning on their human overlords is not limited
to science fiction or a few random researchers—the scenario has earned the
attention of some of the world’s most prominent people.
Physicist Stephen Hawking has said,36 “One can imagine such technology
outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers,
out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even
understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it,
the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a Boston area research and outreach
organization that works to understand and mitigate risks associated with artificial
intelligence. In January 2015, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk donated $10 million
to FLI to fund their global research program—an effort to make AI more
beneficial to humankind, rather than simply more powerful. The international
technology association, the IEEE, (author SAC’s employer) has recently
Fig. 6.10 Ultron may have been many things, but a puppet he was not. From Avengers: The
Age of Ultron (2015). Copyright © Marvel Studios, image courtesy moviestillsb.com
34
http://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/joss-whedon-talks-avengers-
age-ultron/
35
http://www.ew.com/article/2014/12/22/aventers-ultron-terminator-
genisys-artificial-intelligence
36
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcen
dence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-
we-taking-9313474.html
launched a multinational, multidisciplinary program to develop guidelines for

developing AI technologies in ways that benefit, rather than harm, humanity.
When an interviewer from the PBS series Nova asked Dick, the android
fashioned after writer Philip K. Dick, “Do you believe that robots will ever take
over the world?” In a statement worthy of i, Robot’s VIKI, Dick replied,
“You’re my friend, and I’ll remember my friends, and I’ll be good to you. So
don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I’ll still be nice to you. I’ll keep
you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for ol’ times sake.”
Not entirely reassuring for the rest of us!
Do Dick’s words imply that we are squarely on the path to the singularity? It is
probably a bit early to panic—recall that one component of Dick’s speech
synthesis entails accessing information available via Internet connection. Since
this is a common practice used to perform natural language translation and
synthesis, Dick, and future AIs, will have access to the sum total of human
writings—including everything ever written about the technological singularity.
In a scenario worthy of the Terminator—where the past creates the future creates
the past—wouldn’t it be a fantastic irony if robots one day supplanted humanity
atop the global food chain because they got the idea from our obsession that one
day robots would supplant humanity atop the global food chain?
If the human race lost technology before it happened, especially if the human
race destroyed itself, then that’s a pretty obvious way to avoid the singularity. But
if it can happen, I think it will happen.
Vernor Vinge, professor of computer science and science fiction novelist
On Being Human
Robots and artificial intelligences have become a handy vehicle to mediate on
various philosophical issues, such as what exactly is it to be a person? What
obligations might machine and human intelligences have toward each other?
Early screen versions of this debate focused largely on whether or not artifi-
cially- or human-manufactured “life” deserved to have the same rights afforded
to humans, as when Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), put its
android Commander Data on trial for his life in the 1989 episode “The
Measure of a Man.” The Bicentennial Man (based on a 1976 novelette by
Asimov) focused on a robot’s two-hundred year struggle to be declared
human (Fig. 6.11).
More recent stories have looked at things from the other side of the divide.
In the 2013 movie Her, the movie cleverly pivots from asking if a human’s
Fig. 6.11 Andrew Martin aka the NDR-114 (Robin Williams) and Richard Martin (Sam
Neill) in Bicentennial Man (1999).
emotional needs can really be met by a machine, to asking if the real emotional
needs of the differently sentient37 can be met by a human. In Her’s case, the AI
Samantha’s emotional needs were met far better by first communing with
multiple people, then with other AIs—in a sort of emotional variant on the
singularity.
Our interactions with increasingly intelligent machines will unfold in ways
we have yet to consider, and force us to answer ethical questions we have yet to
consider. For example, there has been no small amount of debate, and it’s only
in the fledgling stages, about the ethics involved in the CGI rendering of the
late Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
(2016). Once an actor has portrayed a character in a film, does the likeness of
the character belong to the actor or the studio that produced the film? Unless
the actor’s agent has negotiated the rights to the likeness, or a royalty based
upon its use, then traditionally the likeness is of the character, and that belongs
to the studio.
Now, what if an actor was unexpectedly popular in a film, and wanted a
much larger payday for future sequels? Could the studio replace the actor with
a lookalike artificially intelligent robot like Hanson Robotics’ Dick if the robot
cost less than the fee the actor is seeking? Of the jobs that people have
anticipated might one day be supplanted by a machine, actor might come as
something of a surprise. Moravec’s paradox is likely to play out in a multitude
of unexpected ways.
37
The term “differently sentient” originated in the series Caprica.
We want to scan you, all of you, your body, your face, your emotions, your
laughter, your tears. We want to sample you, preserve you.
Jeff Green (Danny Huston), The Congress (2013)
Hollywood has explored the rights of robots and the differently sentient,
but our intelligent machines may force us to look into the mirror and ask
ourselves what it takes to be human in real life. In Battlestar Galactica, the
Terminator franchise, or i, Robot, robots have been given—or assumed—the
ability to kill human beings. In the real world we have been extremely hesitant
to give machines the authority to make the decision to end human
lives (Fig. 6.12).38
Captain John Steward was the commanding officer of an armed unmanned
aerial (UAV) company—a squadron of MQ-1 Predator drones—in Afghani-
stan. Steward was responsible for mission planning and execution in hostile
territories. In one instance, the drone had a high-ranking terrorist in its sights,
when their link to the drone was severed—either by poor weather or an
overburdened satellite link. Steward told Hollyweird Science:
Given the sophistication of the aircraft and its autonomous capabilities, it is

trivially capable of maneuvering toward an established target within the aero-
dynamic limits of the ordinance in question, and subsequently releasing the
weapon once it is at optimal range to the target. Despite this, and our numerous
list of procedures where autonomous action is allowed, this particular contin-
gency was never even discussed as a reasonable course of action. There were
instances where my unit lost the opportunity to eliminate a high-value target
Fig. 6.12 Even the loveable, wise-cracking K-2SO (Alan Tudyk)—one of the “good
guys”—took human lives in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
38
There are, for example, defensive systems that can automatically attack incoming threats, but the
decision to activate these systems still remains a human one.
due to link-loss and we were forced to abort the mission. The moral-ethical
discussion regarding the importance of the target versus the impacts of allowing
an autonomous aircraft to engage a human target was never undertaken—you
simply didn’t go there.
Even the U.S. military is extremely hesitant to set a precedent where a machine
is allowed to make the determination to kill somebody, even when that
somebody is an adversary. Nevertheless, it is a near-certainty that in the not-
too-distant future, a Google car will have to make the type of life-and-death
decision that the U.S. military will not allow its drones to make in combat: the
decision to end a human life.39
Imagine a Google car in heavy but steadily-moving traffic. A large truck is
ahead of it, another vehicle behind, a car to the right, oncoming traffic to the
left. A large heavy crate falls off the truck. If the car fails to brake, it slams full
speed into the crate and probably gets sandwiched by the car behind. Slam on
the brakes, and get rear-ended anyway. Swerve left, face oncoming traffic with
a high probability of a head-on collision; swerve right and sideswipe the car
next to you. Any choice has a very high likelihood of killing passengers in one
or more vehicles.
What choices do you make in this Kobayashi Maru situation? These are not
“What if” scenarios. Executives and managers are going to have to make these
kinds of decisions, and programmers are going to have to implement them.40
Human deaths at the hands of robots are already occuring. In July 2015, a
worker in a Frankfurt, Germany, Volkswagen plant was grabbed and crushed
by an industrial robot. Less than two weeks later, a worker at Fiat-Chrysler in
Sterling Heights, Michigan was killed in another accident involving an indus-
trial robot.41
The unfortunate accidents in Germany and Michigan were, just that,
unfortunate accidents. In these instances, the robots were simply doing exactly
what they were programmed to do, either a human made a programming
error, or the victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, perhaps
a combination of both.
It is also a certainty that the first time an autonomous car takes a life in this
manner, a lawyer in court will do his or her persuasive best to convince a jury
that the car made the wrong choice, no matter what that choice was. According
39
What Google Cars Can Learn From Killer Robots http://www.forbes.com/sites/
patricklin/2014/07/28/what-google-cars-can-learn-from-killer-robots/
#342ba3fc338b
40
For a good introduction to research on how we might program robots with the ability to make these
kinds of moral decisions, see the video at http://spectrum.ieee.org/video/robotics/
robotics-software/how-to-build-a-moral-robot
41
http://www.freep.com/story/news/2015/07/08/ionia-worker-killed-
industrial-accident-robotic/29853735/
to German News Agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, in the death of the

Volkswagen plant worker, prosecutors struggled with whether or not to file
charges, and against whom or what. Lawmakers will be entertaining the legalities
of the actions of “intelligent” autonomous machines sooner, perhaps, than many
realize, but will programmers be held accountable? Corporate executives or
managers? The machines themselves if they have the capability of learning?
Another realm in which autonomous and artificially-intelligent agents may
have great potential to make unexpected and profound discoveries, and engage
in fantastic unexpected consequences, is in space travel. Our robotic probes
have been our vehicle for exploring and understanding our Universe for over
50 years. There is a high probability that it will be a robot that will be our first
ambassador for first contact with an extraterrestrial race—whether it is one of
ours finding them (Star Trek’s V’Ger anybody?), or one of their robots
discovering Earth.
Robotic spacecraft are incredibly complex pieces of hardware, even before
factoring in any autonomous operation or artificial intelligence onboard—so
much so that we dedicate the next chapter to an examination of that
complexity.
Meet the Storyteller: David Brin
Dr. David Brin earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego.
His doctoral dissertation was “Evolution of Cometary Nuclei as Influenced by a Dust
Component” (Fig. 6B.1).
Fig. 6B.1 Dr. David Brin and the twin Keck Telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawai’i.
Image courtesy David Brin.
David is known primarily, though, through his writings on technology and his
science fiction novels, having won the “Big Three” Hugo, Nebula, and John
(continued)
W. Campbell Awards. David wrote the novel The Postman, which was made into the
1997 Kevin Costner film. Not only does he serve as the science advisor on television
series and movies, he’s been a frequent advisor to Washington, D.C. consulting on
technology issues. Along with tech giants like Elon Musk, David was also recently
acknowledged42 as one of the top 10 people most influencing AI researchers.
Hollyweird Science: Since you are both a scientist and a science fiction novelist,
we’re curious if you think the portrayal of scientists on screen serves to make them
more human, more relatable, or establishes them as elite “others”? Or something
else entirely?
Brin: The opportunity of scientists to see someone in their profession portrayed in a
positive light onscreen. . . this happens a lot. It’s another matter if you say, “Should we
be satisfied with the way science, itself, is portrayed?” That’s another matter. If you
are having a sci-fi adventure that is propelled by a scientific idea, the basic formula
that made Michael Crichton rich is to assume that the idea is executed in secret.
Because if it is not done in secret, then even if the innovators are doing something
wrong, something incompetent, others would catch it. This is why the one funda-
mental lesson from Michael Crichton. . . he thought he was saying, “Don’t you dare do
these technological or scientific things that step into God’s powers. If you try to do
new things, you’ll be punished.” But, in fact, the lessons learned from every Michael
Crichton story is: don’t do stuff in secret! You delude yourself, and your critics could
help you prevent your errors. . . but that would ruin the movie!
Hollyweird Science: Well isn’t Michael Crichton’s big deal the effect of unintended
consequences?
Brin: Yes, Crichton’s big deal is about unintended consequences, but then he
always sticks his thumb on the scale by having the new thing done in secret.
The big exception being Westworld. And you’ll note that was early in his career.
But, otherwise, the formula is always, absolutely, have your scientist/innovators be
arrogant, hubristic, and secretive.
Hollyweird Science: You once suggested that a definition of science fiction
includes the notion that it’s the genre which assumes that we learn from our
mistakes.
Brin: Yes. It’s my own definition. I believe that science fiction considers that all
verities are eternal. That we don’t have to make our grandparents’ mistakes, and our
children don’t have to repeat ours. This, I believe, is why science fiction is so unpopular
in most literature departments in American universities, even though it is the most
essentially American genre. Because the intellectuals in those departments have been
weaned on the notion that human nature is fixed, and that everyone will appreciate
the angst that Joyce portrayed in Dubliners.
Well everyone can appreciate it. We can appreciate Oedipus Rex, but that doesn’t
mean we’re going to act like him. Appreciation of past literature doesn’t mean we
have to say, “There I go.” You can also be, “Wow, I sure am glad we have changed.”
Science fiction posits the possibility that our children do not have to repeat our errors.
That does not mean that all science fiction has to be optimistic.
Implicit in science fiction, in dark science fiction tales, from 1984 to Dr. Strangelove
to On the Beach, implicit is the assumption that “this did not have to happen.” Implicit
is the assumption that folks who act on this warning can still make it not happen. And
underneath those assumptions is a deeper one: that children can learn from the
(continued)
42
http://www.getlittlebird.com/blog/ai-is-coming-on-fast-here-are-
the-10-people-the-ai-elite-follow-on-twitter
mistakes of their parents. In my opinion, this makes for far more powerful tragedies.
In his poetics, Aristotle describes tragedy as the portrayal, for an hour, of the hero
thrashing futilely against pre-ordained fate.
If you look at Avatar, it’s very clear that Cameron has an agenda. He wants his art
to help us to be better, and I have nothing against that. The greatest science fiction
tales, were all self-preventing prophecies, meaning that they so stirred people with a
sense of warning and danger, that millions dedicated themselves to ensuring that the
scenario would never come true. The best of these is 1984, followed by Fahrenheit
451, Soylent Green, the nonfiction Silent Spring, Dr. Strangelove, these all girded the
masses, and made them better-immunized against the failure modes they described.
So I have nothing against James Cameron wagging his finger at us about the ecolog-
ical and ethnic sins of western civilization, but those who call Avatar “Dances with
Smurfs”, are missing one key point:
Movies with similar plots—Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully—are all set
in the past, therefore all the mistakes that are made, while terrible and worthy of our
earnest efforts at prevention, those mistakes happened in the past. They were our
grandparents’ mistakes. The one difference with Avatar is that it is set in the future.
So the mistakes he is portraying are those of our grandchildren. Grandchildren who,
presumably across the next 150 years, almost all of whom will have watched Avatar
and, presumably, learned from it. In other words, James Cameron is presuming his
own ineffectiveness.
Hollyweird Science: While on the topic of prevention, you have written, and
spoken, also about the type of software that could wind up becoming Skynet and
instigating the technological singularity, and if it isn’t military or CIA or NSA, where
should we be keeping a watchful eye, and why?
Brin: I’ve spoken about self-preventing prophecies, and one that’s of significance is
that, if we invent artificial intelligence, it had better be friendly to us, or at least
pretend to be friendly, because we proved in dozens of films that we’re much too
determined, willful, and innovative to accept being oppressed. Or, at least, that’s
what we hope will be a self-preventing prophecy. AI researchers are already talking
about methods that will ensure that robots and intelligent computers stay loyal, or at
least friendly, to us.
Asimov’s famous three laws of robotics were an early attempt to come up with a
legalistic solution.
But none of these efforts might avail if we ignore the lessons of our movies. In the
Terminator series, our AI develops out of a military control program called Skynet
and, indeed, some researchers believe that AI may emerge out of a variety of tools,
none of which, by themselves, look like they might become sapient. In the Terminator
series, Skynet is amoral, immoral, and disloyal, and supremely ambitious.
It seems unlikely to me that such a ferocious and nasty machine intelligence could
arise out of military programs. The military is imbued with a culture of extreme care
and attention to chain of command and to testing and exploring the consequences of
new tools. I believe that Skynet is far more likely to emerge out of a part of our
civilization and economy that is almost free of accountability. Here we return to
Michael Crichton’s scenario of vast, unpleasant, unexpected outcomes arising out of
secret hubris. If you scan the spectrum of artificial intelligence research, more money
is being spent in one area than all others combined. That area is high frequency stock
trading programs. At least a billion dollars a year is flowing into this area, all of it
secret, and all of it aiming to create programs that can make trades in milliseconds,
tenths of milliseconds, even microseconds. This programmed-in ferocity would put
(continued)
any virus or flesh-eating bacterium to shame. If you combine the secrecy, vast funding,
and completely amoral, or immoral, fundamental programming, you have a recipe for
something extraordinarily dangerous, and you heard it from me first.
I believe that a civilization that pays heed to high-end science fiction is

expressing basic logic and wisdom. Beyond my own smug and self-serving
assumption, one can look at the track record of successful predictions, or vital
warnings, across the last 60 years. Folks like Vernor Vinge, Stan Robinson, Joe
Haldeman, Greg Bear, peer into tomorrow for possibilities and probabilities and
mistakes. These stories we create aren’t the result of vast analytics. Agencies and
corporations spend most of their attention gathering huge amounts of data and
figuring out new ways to massage them, but to spend a few hours per year
probing our trained imaginations would seem to be worth the time and effort.
David Brin, Ph.D., scientist, science writer, and science fiction novelist
7
Boldly Going: Cinematic Spaceships
Who doesn’t want to fly around in a spaceship?

Douglas Booth, actor
There are two things that I cannot resist: one is musicals and the other is a
spaceship in trouble. But I am smart enough not to combine the two things.
Joss Whedon, Hollywood polymath
We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will
be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot, writer/poet/playwright
There is, perhaps, no scientific endeavor that is more intertwined with

Hollywood than space travel, where there is a clear feedback loop in play:
since the early twentieth century, scientists, engineers, and innovators have
been motivated to make the things they have read about in their science
fiction a reality,1 while creators of science fiction literature and cinema have
latched upon new rocket and space technology, sometimes projecting its
evolution into the distant future, in order to take characters on fantastic
voyages to distant shores.
Science and science fiction have long been vehicles for self-reflection, and by
which we humans attempt to understand both the Universe and ourselves.
Our science fiction spaceships are the vehicles that transport us along those
avenues, and they have taken us places in order to show us versions of ourselves
unreachable by any other genre. Science fiction stories today, at least good
ones, typically employ elements of both the classical Vernian and Wellsian
traditions. As with the tales of Jules Verne, stories cast in the Vernian mold are
more of the techno-thriller variety, with technology in the forefront. H. G.
Wells, on the other hand, pioneered using the genre for social commentary—
using science fiction analogs to mirror the human condition. Fictional, in
1
The 2001 Mars orbiter was, after all, named Odyssey.
particular cinematic, spacecraft have played important roles in both types of

stories, and will continue to do so.
If spacecraft, even fictitious ones, have helped humans understand the
complexities of their interactions, spacecraft complexities, in return, have
probably gone un-, or at least under-appreciated. Even the most basic of
space missions is astoundingly complex, and it is not without good reason
that “Rocket Scientist” is the colloquial phrase for “smart person”. As with
human anatomy, spacecraft have a vast number of subsystems, instruments,
sensors, actuators, and computers, all of which must to work in concert for the
craft’s performance to be even distantly considered a success. No one person
can understand every wire, sensor, valve, or tank in complete detail,2 but an
overview of the basic architecture of a spacecraft can help the reader grasp
something of the essence of these wonderful machines. Still, although it’s
difficult to grasp the true complexity of what goes into a space mission until
you actually participate in one, we’re going to try and scratch the surface.
With the vehicle of science fiction as its ship, brave Earthlings have been
taking giant leaps for mankind, exploring strange new worlds, and visiting
galaxies far away for a very long time: the notion of space travel has actually
been a part of our entertainment for nearly 400 years. Johannes Kepler’s book
Somnium (1634), arguably the first work of science fiction, details a trip
through the aether to Levania (our Moon), but until science caught up with
fiction in the late 1950s, space travel itself was science fiction.
The transition that took space travel from fiction to science actually began
in the 1920s, and science fiction has played a supporting role in real-world
space exploration throughout. Although rocketry was born in thirteenth
century China as a military technology, little real advancement was made for
centuries: rockets were basically simple wooden tubes (metal casings wouldn’t
be introduced until the late eighteenth century) packed with gun powder.
They were inaccurate, often careening off in unintended directions.
Around the start of the twentieth century in Russia, school teacher
Konstantin Tsiolkovksy founded modern astronautics, applying Newtonian
mechanics to develop the basic maths for rockets and interplanetary explora-
tion. He also came up with theoretical designs for a huge range of spaceflight
technologies, including liquid-fueled engines, multi-stage rockets, space
suits, space stations that would produce artificial gravity by rotating, and
much more.3 Given the debt that modern astronautics owes to Tsiolkovsky,
we will be revisiting his work repeatedly in the pages to come.
2
A fact to which we alluded in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, the trope that a single engineer or scientist might
be responsible, or even able, to design an entire spacecraft alone.
3
His work directly influenced both Wernher von Braun and the architect of Soviet rocketry, Sergey
Korolyov, while American Robert Goddard independently rediscovered some of the same principles a few
years after Tsiolkovsky.
7 Boldly Going: Cinematic Spaceships 223
Tsiolkovsky would directly influence research in Europe, but his work was
unknown in the United States, where Robert Goddard was having ideas about
rocketry of his own, after being inspired by the science fiction of H. G. Wells.
Goddard initially worked on solid rocket motors, paying critical attention to
the nozzle through which rocket exhaust gases flow. Goddard wrote up his
experiments, and published some thoughts about what he thought rockets
would be capable of—such as reaching the moon—in a scientific monograph
in 1920.4
Following the poisonous New York Times commentary we discussed in the
prologue of this book, lambasting Goddard for his ideas and forcing him and
his research program into seclusion, he still continued to make key break-
throughs. Goddard realized that powder-based solid-fuel rockets were never
going to yield the kind of performance he wanted, so he designed and built the
first successful liquid-fueled rocket, propelled by burning liquid oxygen and
gasoline. Launched in 1926, the rocket reached a height of about 56 m.
Goddard’s work galvanized many other experimenters around the world,
most notably in Germany, where the 1926 launch was seen as a powerful
vindication of the ideas of both Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth. In 1922,
Oberth had published his graduate research as a book called By Rocket into
Interplanetary Space.5 Oberth’s work earned him one of the first science advisor
gigs in screen science fiction history, consulting on Fritz Lang’s seminal 1929
Frau Im Mond (Woman in the Moon).
Frau Im Mond was the 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Martian of its day, and
is pretty much the founding example of the hard science fiction movie,
featuring staples of modern spaceflight such as launch countdowns, rocket
staging, and high g-forces (Fig. 7.1). The movie was a huge booster6 for the
fledging technology of rocketry, and the same year the VfR (Society for Space
Travel) was founded in Berlin. The most famous member of the VfR was
Wernher Von Braun. The amateur VfR had been making good progress with
liquid fueled rockets, and this came to the attention of the Nazi party.
Rocketry fell outside of the scope of the terms of surrender to which
Germany had agreed following World War I, so the Nazis recognized an
avenue to create superweapons. With all the resources of the German state
available to him, Von Braun saw a chance to fulfil his dreams of building
rockets capable of spaceflight.7
4
Entitled “A method of reaching extreme altitudes”.
5
Die Rakete zu den Planetenr€aumen.
6
So to speak.
7
Just how culpable von Braun was in Nazi war crimes is a matter of debate, but what is indisputable is that
those resources included 60,000 slave laborers working in an underground factory, of which 20,000 died.
Fig. 7.1 A still from the 1929 film Frau im Mond. A scientist discovers that there
are riches for the taking on the Moon, and builds a rocket to go there. Copyright
© Fritz-Lang Film, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
Following a rigorous test and engineering program, Von Braun delivered his
rockets, moving well beyond the tiny, temperamental experimental precursors
that had been the hallmark of rocket science in the pre-war era. Thousands of
his V-2 rockets were made, launched at a rate of hundreds per week during
World War II. Each was capable of flying over 300 km while carrying a
1000 kg explosive payload. Each V-2 was guided via a pre-set autopilot,
which controlled rudders on the tail fins and graphite vanes that stuck into
the rocket exhaust.8 (The 1965 thriller Operation Crossbow is a very fictional-
ized account of the real Allied bombing campaign launched to disrupt V-2
production and deployment.)
This scale of operation gave the Germans a level of knowledge about every
aspect of rocket design, testing, and operation that was years ahead of anybody
in the United States or Soviet Union. Consequently, after the war, German
rocket scientists became hot commodities and the technical culture of the
German V-2 project was injected into both the Russian and U.S. rocket
programs. Soviet and American engineers either worked side-by-side with
the German scientists like Helmet Gr€ ottrup and Wernher Von Braun,9 or
8
Once the British figured out that the V-2 was being guided by a pre-set autopilot, they leaked a set of V-2
impact locations east of their actual location. Consequently, the Germans adjusted their auto-pilots west,
thinking they were compensating correctly to keep rockets aimed at the center of London. Over time, they
were able to move the German’s aim point out of the city into the surrounding countryside.
9
They weren’t always happy about it. Here’s what Chris Kraft, NASA first flight director, said about
meeting von Braun for the first time in his 2001 autobiography Flight: My Life in Mission Control: “He was
accustomed to being the center of attention. . .Wernher had a Teutonic arrogance that he honed to a fine
edge.” Kraft and von Braun quickly got into an argument about the merits of ground control, and Kraft
almost punched him.
studied their designs and procedures closely, combining what the Germans
knew with their own indigenous knowledge.
Even with Goddard in seclusion, rocketry in the United States had made
some advances of its own during World War II. The most significant of these
trace back to a group loosely working under famed aeronautical engineer
Theodore Von Kármán at Caltech. In 1936 Von Kármán and his colleagues
were banned from Caltech and banished to a scrubby valley in the nearby San
Gabriel mountains called Arroyo Seco10 to conduct their noisy and dangerous
experiments.
Originally nicknamed the “Suicide Squad”11 the core members—which
included Jack Parsons, Ed Forman, Frank Malina, and H. S. Tien (later
known as Qian Xuesen)—knew they needed a better official name if they
wanted to get any real funding. They also knew they had to avoid anything
that might subject them to the kind of ridicule that Goddard had experienced
on the pages of the New York Times. Make no mistake—these men were
powerfully motivated by works of science fiction and the dream of reaching
outer space, but they knew honestly calling themselves the Rocket Propulsion
Laboratory would be perceived as way too “Buck Rogers.” They settled on
calling themselves the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, instead.12
Meet the Rocket Scientist: Jack Parsons
Anybody with an interest in science who has spent any time in and around Hollywood
will tell you that, if there two scientists whose lives screenwriters—particularly early-
career screenwriters—find compelling (sometimes obsessively so), they would be
Nikola Tesla and Jack Parsons. Many a screenwriter with an interest in science who’s
still looking to break into the business has either a Tesla script or a Parsons script. Tesla
is world-renown. Parsons, not as much—at least not yet. Parsons’ story—which
includes wife-swapping, offbeat religions, and the occult, all enmeshed within the
early space program—has been waiting for the right person to tell it. It is soon to be a
Ridley Scott directed series on AMC.
Actually, all of the JPL founders were interesting people (Fig. 7A.1). Frank Malina
would be a leader in post-war rocketry, before going into self-exile in Paris during the
communist red scare of the 1950s and becoming an artist who made kinetic sculp-
tures.13 A Chinese national, H. S. Tsien would simultaneously end up under a deporta-
tion order on the grounds that he was a security threat, and an order forbidding him
(continued)
10
Today Arroyo Seco is. . . Arroyo Seco, it is still a dry gulch, but now it is nestled between JPL and its
East Parking Lot.
11
Not that Suicide Squad, though Parsons would have made an interesting member as the love child of El
Diablo and Enchantress. Parsons’ group was known as the “Suicide Squad” due to the dangerous nature of
some of their experiments—most notably a 1937 test misfire that left behind a cloud of caustic gas.
12
Some joked that JPL stood for “Jack Parsons Laboratory.” Today workers at other NASA centers claim
it means “Just Plain Lucky”.
13
See “Frank Malina: America’s Forgotten Rocketeer” in IEEE Spectrum, June 2014.
from leaving the United States on the grounds that he knew too much.14 Ed Forman—
who was a self taught mechanic—would ultimately end up playing an important role in
the development of the Polaris and Poseidon submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
None were more colorful than Jack Parsons. Inspired by science fiction, Parsons
began experimenting with solid rockets as a teenager with his friend Ed Forman.
Although Parsons attempted to get a college degree twice, he had to drop out each
time due to financial constraints. He was, nonetheless, a gifted chemist with a natural
touch for explosives. Following a public lecture at Caltech about rocketry, Parsons and
Forman got put in touch with Malina, then a Caltech graduate student working on a
Ph.D. thesis on rocket propulsion.
Fig. 7A.1 A 1936 photo of Jack Parsons and his “Suicide Squad” in Arroyo Seco. From
left to right: Rudolph Schott, Apollo Milton Olin Smith, Frank Malina, Ed Forman, and
Jack Parsons. Image courtesy JPL/Caltech.
As part of the fledging JPL, Parsons’ great contribution to rocket engineering was
the successful creation of a “castable” solid rocket fuel. Prior to this, solid rockets had
relied on powders being compressed into casings, which often produced erratic thrust
or explosions. Parsons was the first person to come up with a good binding agent—
which turned out to be asphalt—into which fuel grains and oxidizer could be mixed.
The resultant goo could be carefully poured into a rocket casing and allowed to set,
producing an even burn when lit. This was a huge advance, allowing reliable small
rockets to be mass produced during World War II for applications like assisting
warplanes attempting take off from short runways. A variation of the technology
was later used for the Space Shuttle’s twin solid-fuel booster rockets.
(continued)
14
Eventually Tsien was allowed to leave and went back to China, where he founded that nation’s ballistic
missile and space booster program.
Parsons’ inspirational readings were not confined to science fiction. As described in

George Pendle’s definitive 2005 biography, Strange Angel, Parsons was also deeply
interested in the occult. After all he’d seen rockets turn from far out fiction to fact
before his eyes and under his own hands, so perhaps it wasn’t such a stretch to
imagine that the same thing could happen with magic.15 Parsons hooked up with a
local chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis, an international order then led by famous
British occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons, his wife Helen, and some members of the
OTO lived together as a commune in an old Pasadena mansion in a free love atmo-
sphere that resulted in Parsons transferring his affections to his wife’s sister, Sara, and
Helen entering into a relationship with one of the leaders of the OTO chapter. The
house became famous for its parties,16 and Parsons would also rent out rooms to
various bohemian types, including science fiction writers.
One of these writers was L. Ron Hubbard, a pulp writer who would go on to found
Scientology. Hubbard and Parsons had an intense relationship, which ultimately
soured when Hubbard ran off with Sara and the better part of Parsons’ life savings,
which was intended to be invested in buying and reselling yachts, but Hubbard and
Sara left to cruise the world.
During the war, the JPL crew had also founded Aerojet, a company designed to
commercialize JPL’s innovations, in particular jet-assisted take-off (JATO) rockets.
However, after the war, Parsons and Forman were forced out of the company, and
although Parsons would work on the Navajo missile program, he would fall from the
forefront of U.S. rocketry research when his security clearance was revoked in large
part because of his involvement with the OTO and his communist leanings.
Parsons kept experimenting throughout his life, making and selling small batches
of pyrotechnics. On June 17, 1952, he was working on an order for pyrotechnics when
an explosion destroyed his home laboratory, mortally wounding him. Some suspected
either foul play or suicide, but the most likely answer was not that the founding
member of the Suicide Squad committed suicide, but was killed due to a simple
accident while working with dangerous materials.
There is a saying in Hollywood that the difference between a screenplay and real
life is that a screenplay has to make sense. It also has to be believable. Had the tale of
Jack Parsons been told without a “based on a true story” moniker, few would have
believed it. For decades, Parsons was all but written out of NASA’s formal history, his
otherworldly life at odds with the corporate culture, particularly that in place when
Parsons was alive.17 Today, we have become much more accustomed to hearing about
the eccentricities of some highly creative people, so perhaps there isn’t a better time
for Jack Parsons’ story to be told.
Many of members of the JPL were involved in analyzing and evaluating

captured V-2s (spirited out of Germany before advancing Russian troops could
claim them all) and interviewing their captured creators (von Braun and many
of his key men also moved out of the way of the advancing Russians, so they
could surrender to American forces). Many V-2s were test launched from
White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. The goal of the program was
first to duplicate, and then exceed, the capabilities of the V-2. A similar
15
Parsons believed in magic, but felt it could be explained by quantum mechanics.
16
Read: orgies.
17
See http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/23/jpl-jack-par
sons/viewall
operation occurred in Russia. There is a direct line of technological descent

from the V-2 to the American Saturn V and the Russian Soyuz rockets (the
latter still in use).
It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity
which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.
Wernher von Braun, rocket pioneer
While a crewed mission to Mars is almost a certainty in the near future,18 in

the real universe, humans have visited in person but one other celestial body:
Luna. To date is has been our robotic spacecraft that have been our eyes, our
touch, and our emissaries, announcing the human presence to the Universe.
Despite their widely-varying configurations, trajectories, requirements, and
missions, almost all spacecraft, crewed or otherwise, require the same seven
subsystems (life support represents an eighth, and is discussed at length in
Chap. 10: “Life in Spaaaaace”). All of these elements have also come into play,
to varying degrees, as plot elements in television and film. Each represents an
opportunity for high stakes drama, as a failure in any one presents a serious
threat of dooming a mission: whether it is the threatened radio dish failure in
2001: A Space Odyssey or the failure of Galactica’s structure in Battlestar
Galactica. So now let’s explore in more detail the subsystems that all spacecraft
share, and how they’ve been featured on screen.
Do You Wanna Build a Spaceship?
Propulsion is all about using Isaac Newton’s third law to impart velocity to
a spacecraft. Newton’s third law is (Fig. 7.2):
For every force there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of
two bodies on each other are always equal in magnitude and act in opposite
directions.
Newton’s third law explains why guns and cannons recoil when they launch
a projectile. The shell or bullet goes off in one direction and the cannon or gun
moves in the opposite direction. Of course, you might be wondering how this
motion squares with the “equal reaction” part of the third law: after all, a bullet
flies faster than the speed of sound, and a recoiling gun moves much more
slowly than that. The answer is that what’s being kept equal is the momentum
18
The geologic near future, that is.
Fig. 7.2 In the case of an inflated balloon, the enclosed gas presses uniformly on the
inner balloon walls. When the throat is opened, the escaping gas leaves the force on the
opposite side of the balloon unbalanced, and the balloon is propelled in the direction of
the imbalance (the opposite direction to the escaping gas). In the case of a rocket,
rapidly-expanding hot gases create an unbalanced force which propels the rocket
forward. Illustration by Sarah Hunt.
of the bullet and the gun. An object’s momentum is given by multiplying its
velocity times its mass. So the small mass of the bullet times its high velocity
has the same magnitude as the large mass of the gun times it low velocity.
You can see how Newton’s third law begins to come into play for a
propulsion system if you imagine sitting in a boat on a pond with a pile of
rocks at your feet. Hurl one of the rocks away from you, over the back end the
boat. Each time you throw a rock, your recoil pushes the boat forward a little.
Of course, to get up any real speed, you’d need to throw a lot of rocks very
quickly. That’s basically what’s happening in a rocket engine: the recoil from
throwing lots of molecules of propellant in one direction moves the rocket in
the opposite direction.
The type of rocket with which most of us are familiar is the chemical
rocket. Within the rocket’s combustion chamber, a fuel and an oxidizer19
burn. The pressure in the combustion chamber soars, but instead of pressing
19
Early liquid rockets typically combusted some form of rocket fuel with liquid oxygen to generate thrust.
The term “oxidation” refers to an element or compound that wants to lose electrons. Combustion occurs
when an oxidizer reacts chemically with a class of chemical compounds called reducers (of which fuel
qualifies) which want to accept electrons, and that chemical reaction occurs very rapidly. It turns out that
there are actually better oxidizers than oxygen, and modern rockets use many combinations of rocket fuels
and oxidizers. We elaborate on oxidation and its mirror phenomenon reduction in greater detail in
Hollyweird Science of the Third Kind.
Fig. 7.3 The Saturn V that took Apollo 16 and its crew to the Moon. It is easy to forget
that the physics that propels a balloon around the room and a 500-foot-tall rocket like
the Saturn V share some fundamental similarities. Photo courtesy NASA.
omindirectionally against the chamber walls, the rapidly expanding hot gases
are funneled out of the engine through a relatively small nozzle. As with air
escaping from a balloon, this creates an unbalanced force or thrust that propels
the rocket in the opposite direction. This generalization encompasses every
type of rocket from the simple bottle rocket one might shoot on holidays to the
Saturn V that took humans to the moon (Fig. 7.3).
With few exceptions (which are hypothetical at this point in time, but
which we will discuss in a bit), a spacecraft must bring all the fuel it will need
with it. This significantly adds to a rocket’s total mass at launch, and the
portion of the mass is known as the mass fraction. It turns out that chemical
rockets are not particularly efficient. Mass fractions for chemical rockets can
easily be 0.9, which means that 90% of the rocket is fuel, with only 10% left
over for everything else.
Chemical rockets have the virtue of high thrust, which is great for getting
spacecraft from the ground into orbit,20 but they are not particularly good at
getting spacecraft to many of the really interesting places in the Solar System
thereafter. If only there was some more efficient way of accelerating
spacecraft. . . Well, fortunately there is. The outer Solar System was opened
to exploration by having spacecraft “borrow” some orbital energy from other
planets, using a technique called gravity assist.
20
Even in the futuristic world of the film Interstellar.
Science Box: The Physics of Gravity Assist
In Sunshine (2007), Icarus II uses a gravity assist from the planet Mercury to reach the
Sun. In Virtuality (2009), Phaeton performs a cloud-top flyby of Neptune to boost its
speed en route to the Epsilon Eridani star system. One of these gravity assists was
portrayed correctly, the other. . . not so much.
In reality, the technique of gravity assist is what opened up the outer Solar System
for exploration. The huge chemical rockets humanity presently uses to propel space-
craft into space are actually incredibly inefficient, and are unable to get all but the
smallest spacecraft to anywhere interesting in the Solar System except Mars or Venus
on any kind of reasonable timescale. How, then, did NASA get the 5700 kg (12,600
pounds in Earth’s gravity) Cassini/Huygens spacecraft to Saturn in (just) seven years?
Venus, Earth, and Jupiter donated some of their orbital energy to get it there.
The idea that a spacecraft could alter its trajectory—and either gain or lose
energy—by passing close to a planet, was first developed over the years 1961 and
1962 by Michael Minovitch,21 a clever UCLA graduate student who was working at JPL
as a summer student. The concept of a gravity assist can be frustrating to warp your
head around, but visualize the geometry of the problem in the right way and it
becomes quite easy to understand.
Figure 7B.1 shows this geometry. Imagine that each planet is surrounded by a
sphere that represents a boundary: outside of this sphere, a spaceship’s trajectory is
dictated primarily by the Sun, with the gravitation of the planet a lesser influence—it
is said to be in a heliocentric orbit. Once a spacecraft22 passes through the boundary
and into the sphere of influence, it transitions to a trajectory that is dictated by the
gravity of the planet, with the gravitation of the Sun a lesser influence—a
planetrocentric trajectory.
In Fig. 7B.1, the vector23 vin represents the planetocentric velocity as the spacecraft
enters the sphere of influence, and vout the planet-relative velocity as it exits. Notice
that the two vectors have the same magnitude, or speed, so where did an assist come
in?
The vectors vin and vout are velocities relative to the planet. To determine the
heliocentric velocities, we have to add these to vectors nose-to-tail to the planet’s
velocity around the Sun, vplanet, as shown in the upper right of Fig. 7B.2. Upon doing
that, we see that the outbound heliocentric velocity vHO not only points in a different
direction than the inbound heliocentric velocity vHI, but it has a larger magnitude,
representing a kick in its velocity, or kinetic energy. One only has to swap the labels of
vin with vout, as well as vHI with vHO, to obtain an old navigator rule of thumb for
gravity assists: “Pass behind to gain energy, pass ahead to lose it.”
Although ultimately bound for Saturn, when the Cassini spacecraft first left Earth,
it was launched towards the inner rather than the outer Solar System.24 The
(continued)
21
Minovitch’s dissertation advisor was Shoshichi Kobayashi. How would you like having him chair your
advancement to candidacy exam? Word has it that exams associated with the name Kobayashi are. . .
challenging.
22
This works for comets and asteroids as well. In the early days of the Solar System, the outer planets
“gravity assisted” many comets out of the Solar System.
23
A vector is a physical quantity that has both direction and magnitude, represented as the vector’s length.
For an object’s velocity vector, the magnitude is the speed of the object, while the vector points in the
direction of motion.
24
Remember what we said above about thermal blankets? This explains why Cassini wears gold thermal
blankets even though it is a Saturn probe in the cold outer Solar System—the blankets were to protect the
spacecraft during this phase of the mission.
spacecraft flew past Venus, picking up speed in the process. This flyby propelled the
spacecraft to an aphelion at roughly the same distance from the Sun as the planet
Mars. Before falling back towards the Sun, the spacecraft fired its engine for approx-
imately an hour and a half in order to target Venus again. The spacecraft’s trajectory
carried it past Venus for another boost, past Earth for another, past Jupiter for yet
another, and then onto Saturn.
Fig. 7B.1 Within a planet’s sphere of influence, the magnitudes of the inbound and
outbound velocities are equal—it is when those velocities are viewed in the
sun-centered, or heliocentric, frame that we see where the assist comes in. The Cassini
spacecraft used several such gravity assists—two from Venus, one from Earth, and one
from Jupiter—to reach Saturn.
In the film Sunshine, the AI of Icarus II claims to have achieved a gravity assist from
the planet Mercury en route to the Sun,25 but the way it was portrayed actually cost
them precious energy and fuel. During a purported “slingshot” maneuver around
Mercury, presumably a gravity assist, Icarus II actually goes into orbit around the
planet first and, as we will see in Chap. 8, this maneuver would cost precious fuel to
slow the spacecraft enough for it to be captured by Mercury’s gravity. After
performing several orbits, Icarus fires its main engines—another expenditure of
fuel—to escape from Mercury’s gravity well. Ironically, as Icarus II fires her main
engines to escape Mercury, her AI announces “Slingshot complete. Icarus leaving
Mercury orbit,” as if they had not just wasted a titanic amount of fuel.
(continued)
25
Which would be really useful since the Sun is actually quite difficult to get to.
Fig. 7B.2 Icarus and Icarus II from Sunshine (2007). Copyright © DNA Films. Image
courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
In the 2009 pilot movie Virtuality,26 the spacecraft Phaeton was on a mission to the
star Epsilon Eridani, and Neptune represented the “Go/No-go” point: if mission
commander Frank Pike (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau27) felt the crew and spacecraft were
able to carry out the mission, they would follow a trajectory around Neptune that
gave them a big energy boost from the planet, light off their Orion drive, and spend
several years in interstellar flight. If the commander had doubts about their ability to
carry out the mission, they would follow a different trajectory, loop around Neptune,
and head back towards Earth. The single-pass gravity boost Phaeton receives from
Neptune far more closely approximates the trajectory of an actual spacecraft gravity
assist, as opposed to the go into orbit/do a few revolutions/break orbit/call it a
slingshot depiction of Icarus II.
The efficiency of a propulsion system is measured in terms of a value called

specific impulse or Isp. Specific impulse is the total change of spacecraft momen-
tum per unit propellant consumed. The higher the specific impulse for a
propulsion system, the more efficient it is at generating thrust per unit mass
of fuel.
One high Isp propulsion system has been a mainstay in science fiction for
over 50 years,28 but only used on real missions since 1998. The ion engine is a
form of electric propulsion. Electric thrusters don’t rely upon chemical com-
bustion to accelerate propellants from the engine. Instead, atoms of a fuel like
xenon are ionized—that is electrons, which carry a negative electrical charge,
are stripped away from each atom, leaving it positively charged. Then, in a
26
During the 2007–2008 WGA strike, when writers were not supposed to be writing, at least not for the
shows for which they were currently employed, many wrote their passion projects or pilots for other series.
Virtuality was what a lot of the Battlestar Galactica people worked on when they were not allowed to work
on Battlestar Galactica.
27
Who, as Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones, would go on to gravity assist Bran off the tower at
Winterfell.
28
Remember that the Enterprise followed the Eymorg ship’s ion trail to Sigma Draconis VI to recover
Spock’s brain.
manner similar to the way which electrons were guided to smash into a
phosphor screen in old cathode-ray tube televisions, electric or magnetic fields
are used to accelerate the ions out the back of the engine and thereby generate
thrust. Just before the ions leave the spacecraft, they pass through a grid that
re-attaches electrons so that the spacecraft does not develop a total net charge.
Ion engines generate extremely low thrust—the thrust of a typical ion engine
is roughly that of the weight of a sheet of paper in Earth’s gravity—but because
they can run for weeks or months they are very efficient, and have very high
specific impulse. Spacecraft with ion engines can reach high speeds. . . eventu-
ally. Ion engines have been used as the main propulsion system for NASA’s
Dawn and Deep Space 1 spacecraft, as well as the European Space Agency’s
SMART-1 lunar orbiter. These spacecraft all used solar panels to provide
electrical power for both spacecraft systems and their ion drives, and, thus,
these systems fall under the term solar-electric propulsion, or SEP (Fig. 7.4).
SEP works well in the inner Solar System, where solar panels can capture
enough sunlight to generate the power necessary for propulsion, but as a
spacecraft recedes into the outer Solar System, solar power is no longer
sufficient (see the section on power below). Another form of electric propul-
sion is nuclear-electric propulsion, or NEP. The drive system is similar to that of
SEP, but what powers the drive is a nuclear reactor rather than solar panels. No
NEP systems have yet been flown in space.
Another type of nuclear-based propulsion that is also yet to fly, but vastly
different than NEP, is the nuclear thermal rocket. However, nuclear thermal
rockets did come pretty close. In the 1960s, the Nuclear Engine for Rocket
Vehicle Application (NERVA) ground test program took liquid hydrogen, and
forced it through narrow channels in a nuclear reactor. The heat from the
reactor caused the hydrogen to vaporize and expand to form rocket exhaust.
The NERVA concept was demonstrated to be workable, but the program was
cancelled when support for NASA collapsed following the moon landing.
A new drive that has been getting attention in recent years is the variable
specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket, or VASIMR. VASIMR could dramat-
ically cut down on interplanetary travel times, and is under active develop-
ment. (It’s also the propulsion technology used to power the Hermes spacecraft
in The Martian.) VASIMR also qualifies as an electric propulsion system—it
uses electromagnetic radiation, chiefly radio waves, to heat and ionize propel-
lant, and magnetic fields to accelerate the ions to generate thrust.
As the “variable specific impulse” part of the acronym suggest, VASIMR can
vary its thrust to act like a chemical rocket/ion engine hybrid: providing high
thrust/short life or low thrust/long life propulsion. This type of propulsion
system can be used to break out of the orbit of a planet, then throttled back to
provide more ion-drive-like propulsion and fuel economy during the
interplanetary cruise to its destination.
Fig. 7.4 Real and cinematic expressions of ion engines. In the top panel is an artist’s
conception of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft as it approaches the asteroid Vesta. In the
bottom is a TIE (twin ion engine) fighter from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).
Clearly, the Empire has surmounted the low-thrust issue. Dawn illustration courtesy
NASA/JPL/Caltech. TIE Fighter Image Copyright © 21st Century Fox, image courtesy of
moviestillsdb.com.
Still, electric engines aren’t much to look at in operation. If you are looking
for a really dramatic propulsion system that also packs an enormous punch,
then you might turn to a very different manner of propulsion that has become
increasingly popular on the cinematic scene in recent years: external pulsed
propulsion or nuclear pulsed propulsion.
External pulsed propulsion was a method of propulsion suggested by Polish
mathematician Stanislaw Ulam working at Los Alamos in 1947 and later
developed in considerable detail by people like Freeman Dyson.29 The basic
principle is to detonate a series of small nuclear bombs30 behind, or even
within, a spacecraft. Mounted on the rear of the spacecraft is a large metallic
“pusher plate.” Although there is no medium like an atmosphere to generate a
29
Of “Dyson sphere” fame, see Chap. 11: “Braver Newer Worlds” in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1.
30
Somehow “small nuclear bomb” seems like an oxymoron.
blast in space, radiation, much of it in the form of gamma rays, from the
explosion would vaporize some of the pusher plate’s coating and, thanks to
Newton’s third law, the vaporized material that shot off the pusher plate would
propel the ship in the opposite direction. A colossal shock absorber would
prevent crew from being shaken apart by the pulses of acceleration.
The story of how this seemingly crazy idea become a practical nuclear pulsed
propulsion system begins with Lew Allen’s Balls31. . . which were made of
stainless steel32 and highly polished. In order to explore how various materials
react when exposed to a thermonuclear blast, spheres of various composition,
surrounded by an envelope of carbon—Lew Allen’s Balls—were suspended
beneath the shot towers of bomb tests, then recovered after the explosion.
Some of the balls were recovered at distances much farther than could be
explained by blast alone, suggesting that the ablating carbon provided thrust,
and their vaporization created an opaque region around the balls that
prevented further radiation from penetrating. These experiments showed
that there were possible ways to build pusher plates.
External pulsed propulsion was developed as Project Orion by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 1957 until 1965.
Researchers carried out early tests of the external pulsed propulsion concept
with chemical explosives. Although the tests were promising, and the Isp for an
Orion drive is at least a factor of 10 greater than that of a chemical rocket, the
project came to an end in 1963 when the United States signed the Limited
Test Ban Treaty. The treaty placed a moratorium on above-ground detona-
tions of nuclear warheads, thus ending Project Orion.
Basically, we gonna blow us up a bunch of big ass bombs off the ass-end of this here
ship. Big ass bombs gonna vaporize some big ass alloy plates, and the translation of
all that big ass energy’ll make us go real fast. Real fast. Yippe kai-ay, m-
Dr. Jimmy Johnson (Ritchie Coster), Virtuality (2009)
Probably the earliest mention of the technology on screen was in the 1968
Star Trek episode “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,”
where the generation ship/asteroid Yonada supposedly had an “Orion class
nuclear pulse engine” but the concept really didn’t start popping up until the
late 1990s. The spacecraft Messiah in Deep Impact (1998) and Phaeton in the
2009 made-for-television film Virtuality sported Orion drives. In Ascension
31
Lew Allen would go on to attain the rank of four-star general, become Secretary of the Air Force, and
director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1982 to 1990. Since 1990, JPL has awarded high achievers
the Lew Allen Award for Excellence.
32
89% iron, 10% carbon, and 1% chrome.
Fig. 7.5 The spacecraft Ascension. Copyright © Universal Cable Productions.
(2014), the titular spacecraft—another generation ship—was driven (alleg-

edly) by an Orion drive (Fig. 7.5).
An Orion-style drive is problematic for Yonada and Ascension as portrayed,
however. Irrespective of how effective the pusher plate shock absorber is, it is
unlikely to buffer the impulse of each thermonuclear explosion perfectly, so
each explosion would generate a noticeable shock within the spacecraft
(as correctly depicted in Virtuality).
Consequently, these smooth-sailing ships would more likely be propelled by
Orion’s fusion-based cousin, the inertial confinement fusion drive, or ICF. With
ICF, small pellets of deuterium and tritium—isotopes of hydrogen—surrounded
by an envelope of lithium deuteride33 (LiD)—are released into a “combustion
chamber.” The pellets are blasted from all directions by high-powered lasers, and
the ablation of the outer layer of material compresses the lithium/tritium core to
the point where fusion occurs, liberating large amounts of energy. A succession of
small fusion explosions could propel a ship in a similar manner to an Orion drive,
but with a more continuous, less impulsive, acceleration.
The Orion Project which was proposed—this method of just sort of exploding
bombs out the back end of space ship, and having the reactive force propelling
the ship forward—I thought, “Well that’s, in a way, part Neanderthal and yet
very cool.”
Michael Taylor, Writer/Executive Producer, Virtuality (2009)
33
Recall from Hollyweird Science that deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one neutron in its nucleus.
Although all the forms of hydrogen, with one electron, tend to have a valence of þ1, and prefer to accept
electrons, they will grudgingly give away their lone electron. Deuterium can react with lithium, which has
a strong preference for accepting electrons, to form lithium deuteride.
Moving beyond what’s plausible in the foreseeable future, both literary and
Hollywood science fiction have proposed all manner of near-light speed and
faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion systems. We discuss relativistic and FTL
drives in the chapter “Shortcuts through Time and Space” in Hollyweird
Science Vol. 1.
Thermal The exterior of a spacecraft routinely experiences extreme temper-

atures, and these extremes can regularly swing from high to low in a matter of
moments, as in the case when a spacecraft’s orbit takes the craft in and out of
the shadow of a planet or moon. In addition, some instruments and power
systems generate considerable excess heat.
Spacecraft equipment, however, typically operates only in a relatively nar-
row range of temperatures. Astronauts operate well in an even narrower range.
So spacecraft must employ various techniques to regulate their temperature.
Electronics and batteries must be kept warm to function, and some space-
craft have radioisotope heater units (RHUs), which are related to RTGs, which
we discuss later under the topic of power. Basically, these are little blobs of
encased radioactive material which generate heat as the isotope within them
decays. For example, the body of a Martian rover is built around a WEB, or
warm electronics box, which is fitted with RHUs to keep everything running
during the cold nights on Mars. The Mars Exploration Rovers used eight
RHUs apiece, each RHU containing 2.7 grams of plutonium dioxide. Other
parts of a spacecraft must be kept as cool as possible, but, ironically, despite
space itself being cold (assuming you’re not close to a hot body or in direct
sunlight), it is often more difficult to cool components than to warm them.
Because mass is always kept to a minimum, active cooling systems like
refrigeration are generally not used aboard spacecraft, unless they have people
aboard (such life support technologies are addressed further in Chap. 10).
Instead, spacecraft designers employ passive methods like reflective foil, paints,
or louvers to reflect or radiate unwanted heat and thereby achieve and
maintain thermal balance (Fig. 7.6).
Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is
a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space!
Khan Noonian Singh (Ricardo Montalban), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Fig. 7.6 Low on power for systems like life support, it got very cold and damp aboard
Apollo 13. From Apollo 13 (1995). Copyright © Imagine Entertainment. Image courtesy
moviestillsdb.com.
Anybody who has opened up a personal computer has likely seen a large
metal device sporting many “blades” attached to the CPU chip. This device,
called a heat sink, conducts heat away from the CPU, and the high surface area
of the blades radiates that heat to the surrounding environment. On Earth, a
cooling medium such as air takes the heat away. In space, components that
must be kept cool, or those that generate large amounts of heat rely on heat
sinks attached to radiators.
An excellent science fiction example of radiators is visible in the end credits
of every episode of the U.K. series Red Dwarf. The titular spacecraft has
enormous heat sinks attached to its main engine’s thruster bell. Although
touted for its science accuracy, one complaint about the design of Discovery in
2001: A Space Odyssey is that its propulsion is very likely some variant of
nuclear propulsion—a propulsion method that generates titanic amounts of
heat—yet there is no visible method of shedding the excess heat. Counter-
intuitive as it may be, on this score it’s Red Dwarf: 1, Discovery: 0.34
34
In fact, the book that that movie is based on and early production designs for the Discovery included
radiators but they were removed from the final cinematic design because they looked too much like wings,
and Kubrick didn’t want to have to deal with smartypants audience members complaining that there’s no
air in space.
Fig. 7.7 The color of a spacecraft’s thermal blankets is typically a good indicator of
where the spacecraft is headed in its mission. If the spacecraft’s trajectory takes it away
from the Sun, like Galileo (left), it will have black blankets that absorb/retain heat.
Typically, if a spacecraft is heading towards the Sun, the blankets will be gold to reflect
the Sun’s radiation. Although Cassini (right) is currently in orbit around Saturn, it passed
Venus twice while en route to Saturn, so it wears gold blankets. Images courtesy NASA/
JPL/Caltech.
Consider Space Station V, two 300-meter diameter pressurized habitat rings

joined along a common axis of rotation. Where does this massive vehicle get its
power? There are no solar cells, so we can reasonably assume a nuclear reactor
(or several), but where are the radiator fins needed to channel its waste heat into
space?
Andre Bormanis, science advisor, Star Trek (various incarnations)
Another common method used to maintain the thermal balance of today’s

spacecraft is MLI—multi-layer insulation—or thermal blankets. Thermal
blankets protect spacecraft from excess solar heating in the inner Solar System,
and from excess temperature loss in the outer (Fig. 7.7). Most are also
composed of penetration-resistant Kevlar or kapton, and provide the spacecraft
with a measure of protection from space debris and micrometeorite strikes (see
Science Box: “Space’s Shooting Range and the Kessler Syndrome”).
Of course, if a spacecraft must withstand the searing temperatures of
atmospheric entry, the temperature within the spacecraft is kept cool by a
heat shield or aeroshell. The shape of an aeroshell is what’s known as blunt

body, and is usually a spherical segment underneath a conical or rounded
re-entry module.
Without blunt body heat shields, going into space would be a strictly
one-way trip, as there would be no way to re-enter the atmosphere without
burning up before the craft reached the ground (a fate that befalls countless
small asteroids every day, creating shooting stars). In the early days of the space
age, this was the big challenge in spaceflight,35 and originally scientists thought
that the way to deal with the problem was to minimize the air resistance of the
returning spacecraft as much as possible. This had worked well in stopping
supersonic planes from having their wings melted off, but it turned out to be
exactly the wrong approach when dealing with the much higher speeds faced
during re-entry. A blunt body heat shield maximizes air resistance, and what
happens is that a shockwave forms in front of the spacecraft. It is in the
shockwave, not the surface of the shield, where most of the heating actually
takes place. Some heating of the shield does occur, but that is managed by
coating the shield with an ablative material that vaporizes under the temper-
ature of atmospheric entry, taking heat away as it does. (The space shuttle used
non-ablative tiles on its heat shield in the name of reusability, but they were so
fragile that they were easily damaged during take-off and landing, so required
extensive maintenance work anyway).
The advantage of a blunt body re-entry system is that it is also very
aerodynamically stable: even if the re-entry module starts off in the wrong
orientation, aerodynamic forces will typically turn it to the correct orientation
even in the absence of any guidance system. This was a fun bit of unexplained
science in the climax of Gravity, when Sandra Bullock’s character found herself
returning to Earth in a Chinese Shenzou spacecraft36 that had the better part
of a space station still attached. Fortunately, as the station’s modules fragment
due to friction with the upper atmosphere, her module is able to right itself
with the heat shield leading.
In principle, the high thrust delivered by a chemical rocket would permit a
crew to use the rocket to slow the craft’s descent upon arrival at a destination
planet, or a return to Earth, obviating the need for a heat shield. Although this
was a standard feature of the rocketships of the 1950s and 1960s, a require-
ment would be that the rocket have an extremely high Isp, use sparingly little
fuel in lifting off from Earth initially, or refuel en route. Rockets in the real
35
It wasn’t just starry eyed engineers who wanted astronauts back in one piece: intelligence agencies
wanted to recover photographic film from spy satellites, and the military wanted to be able to deliver
ICBM warheads to their targets.
36
Which is almost identical to a Russian Soyuz.
Fig. 7.8 The single stage vertical landing rocketships of the 1950s, as seen in Rocketship
X-M (1950) in the upper left or Destination: Moon (1950) in the lower left, have
remained beyond our technological means, but SpaceX Corporation is getting closer
(right). (The tagline for Destination: Moon was “Two years in the making.” How quaint.)
Stills Copyright © Lippert Pictures and George Pal Productions. Images courtesy
moviestillsdb.com and SpaceX Corporation.
world, particularly those that are built in stages, have yet to achieve this feat,
but SpaceX Corporation has come the closest. In April 2016, SpaceX launched
the CRS-8 mission on a Falcon 9 rocket. It propelled a Dragon spacecraft into
Earth orbit, then the booster touched down successfully on a barge at sea
(Fig. 7.8).
Structure From the tungsten of the Battlestar Galactica37 to the duranium

hull of the starship Voyager, the hull and structural members of a spacecraft not
only provide structural integrity for the spacecraft and enable the creation of an
artificial environment capable of supporting life, they may also have to survive
37
Although never stated explicitly in the series, the argument for tungsten can be found in The Science of
Battlestar Galactica by DiJusto and Grazier.
the onslaught of Cylon nukes or Klingon disruptor fire. Space may also be a
near-vacuum, but it is a harsh environment, and the hull must protect what’s
inside from extremes of temperature and the ravages of solar wind and
micrometeorites (Fig. 7.9).
The structure must also physically support components, subsystems, and
instrumentation, as well as providing attachment points for assemblies like
antennas and laser cannons (fictional spacecraft) or solar panel arrays (real
spacecraft). The spacecraft structure also provides points for holding and
moving the spacecraft during construction, testing, transportation, and
launch.
To protect what’s inside, some science fiction spacecraft resort to a sheer
brute force approach38—the hulls of ships like the Battlestar Galactica and the
NX-01 Enterprise are tough and may be depicted as having ablative armor. At
this stage in the human exploration of space, it is still challenging to boost large
amounts of mass into space, so spacecraft must resort to means other than
super thick or dense hulls for protection.
To defend against small micrometeroid and space debris impacts, spacecraft
today are often fitted with Whipple shields. A Whipple shield is a thin layer of
metal that surrounds the actual skin of the spacecraft at a distance of several
centimeters. When a small object hits the Whipple shield, it tears through, but
disintegrates in the process, turning into a shower of particles that spread out
before reaching the spacecraft’s skin. By diffusing the energy of the impacting
object over a wider area, the skin is able to absorb the impact without being
holed.
Many spacecraft today, particularly those travelling to other planets in the
Solar System have multi-layered thermal insulation blankets to keep the
electronics aboard the spacecraft at a nominal operating temperature (see
Thermal subsection). These blankets are typically composed of Kevlar,
Kapton, or other fabrics sturdy enough to absorb the impacts from high-
velocity micrometeorites or small debris particles. They are literally the space-
craft equivalent of bullet-proof vests.
38
Some resort to the trope of force fields or defensive shields and, for that matter, “structural integrity
fields.” That subject deserves significantly more attention, and we will revisit it at a later point.
Fig. 7.9 As much as some tend to think of space as empty and pristine, it is a nasty and
hostile environment—as this Eagle from Space: 1999 is finding out. Often cinematic
spacecraft are gorgeous to behold; the utilitarian design of the Eagle proclaimed
unambiguously “I exist to get work done.” Copyright © Group 3 Productions, images
Science Box: Space’s Shooting Range and the Kessler Syndrome
Clear skies with a chance of satellite debris.

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), Gravity
Although the emptiness of space is a big challenge when it comes to activities

like, say, breathing, some of the biggest threats to staying alive come from the fact
that space is actually full of things that could impact one’s life in a very
negative way.
Asteroids are one threat—not so much the big guys, which are relatively easy to
spot and avoid—but smaller asteroids, boulder sized and smaller, which are much
more common. Because objects in space often travel at high velocities, even a tiny
asteroid—or micrometeorite—can pack a wallop. In Mission to Mars (2000), the
Mars II spacecraft is pelted, and holed, by micrometeorites while en route to Mars.
This is not excessively dramatic as the International Space Station, space shuttles,
and even the Hubble Space Telescope have been holed by high-speed impacts with
small particles. One likely scenario is that these were from micrometeorite strikes,
but perhaps not: spacecraft, especially in low- and medium-Earth orbit, face an
increasing threat from space debris. This debris can be anything from a bolt
released when two rocket stages separate, up to entire dead satellites. Objects
down to about one centimeter in diameter can be tracked by radar (about once a
year, the ISS has to be maneuvered out of the way of a detected piece of debris),
(continued)
but even a smaller object can cause damage. In 1983 a chip of paint was enough to
gouge a small dent in the heavily reinforced cockpit window of the Challenger
space shuttle.
To calculate the danger from a single piece of orbital debris, we rely on an
equation that we have used several times in Hollyweird Science: the kinetic energy
equation:
1
Ek ¼ mv2
2
Here, Ek stands for kinetic energy (measured in joules), m is the mass of our bit of
debris or micrometeorite (measured in kilograms), and v is its relative velocity (mea-
sured in meters per second). During a collision, a piece of debris dumps its kinetic
energy into whatever it is striking, and it is this energy which, explosively converted
into heat, causes destruction.
In the equation for kinetic energy, the velocity is squared. This means that as
velocity increases, it quickly becomes the biggest contributor to any impact threat.
This is especially significant because what’s important is not the absolute velocity of
the debris as it moves about its orbit, but the relative difference in velocity between
the debris and its target. If the debris and a spacecraft are moving at nearly the
same high speed but in the same direction, the relative velocity of the debris is low,
and so its kinetic energy is also low with respect to the spacecraft, meaning it
doesn’t pose a collision hazard. Now imagine the same spacecraft and debris mov-
ing at the same velocities as before, but in opposite directions along an orbit. When
they collide, the relative velocity will be twice the orbital velocity of the debris or
spacecraft alone.
In Table 7C.1, we’ve computed the kinetic energy for various bits of debris, using a
typical orbital velocity for low Earth orbit of 7.8 km s1, and matched them to some
destructive equivalents.
Table 7C.1 The energy imparted by several objects travelling at 7.8 km s1
Object
Object mass (kg) Kinetic energy (J) Equivalent to energy of. . .
Sand grain 0.000011 335 ...a competitively thrown javelin
Small metal bolt 0.0034 103,428 ...an automobile moving at
highway speeds
Wrench 1 30,460,000 . . .about eight kilograms of
exploding TNT
Space suit (empty) 50 1,521,000,000 . . .a little more than the energy
of an average lightning bolt
Weather satellite (with 1500 45,630,000,000 . . .the detonation of the MOAB
empty fuel tanks) (Mother of All Bombs)
The impact hazard presented by space debris is a growing problem, and could
potentially lead to the doomsday scenario known as the Kessler syndrome or an
ablation cascade. This occurs when there are enough objects in orbit to guarantee
that debris produced by one collision (accidental or otherwise) will strike other
satellites, which will produce more debris in turn. The resulting chain reaction
would soon renders the skies above Earth a dangerous giant scrapyard. Further
(continued)
launches into space would be impossible, as anything sent aloft would be shredded
and simply contribute further the problem. Eventually, the skies would clear, as
natural orbital decay caused objects to fall to Earth, completely burning up the
smaller pieces of debris in the atmosphere.
The film Gravity depicts the results of a Kessler syndrome event in spectacular
fashion, when a Russian anti-satellite-weapon test creates a cascade of lethal debris
that unexpectedly engulfs a space shuttle crew servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. It
starts with a Russian test of an anti-satellite missile, and the debris cloud expands rapidly.
MISSION CONTROL
Debris from the missile
strike has caused a chain
reaction, hitting other
satellites, creating new
debris travelling faster than
a high speed bullet up
towards your altitude.
That the satellite incurred a missile strike

means that, in the film, the Russians were
testing an anti-satellite missile, or ASAT.
That a country would destroy one of their
own aging satellites to test anti-satellite
weapon is not unprecedented—what hap-
pens in the film mirrors events from the
mid-1980s. On 13 September 198539 the
U.S. Air Force successfully tested an ASAT
launched from the underbelly of an F-15
fighter aircraft (Fig. 7C.1). The pilot launched
the ASAT while at 38,000 feet, and it
destroyed the operational but aging Solwind
P78-1 orbiting solar observatory satellite40 at
an altitude of 556 km (345 miles), the same
altitude as the Hubble Space Telescope.
Upon learning of the impending ASAT
text, NASA modeled the expanding orbital
debris field. The model suggested that
debris from the explosion would remain
in orbit until the 1990s. Based upon this,
NASA was forced to upgrade the debris Fig. 7C.1 The F-15 launch of the ASAT
shielding for the International Space that successfully intercepted Solwind
Station.41 P78-1. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air
Force.
(continued)
39
Coincidentally, the day the Moon is blown out of Earth orbit in 14 years in Space: 1999.
40
Though the spacecraft was aging, its batteries dying, and its onboard recorders shot, scientists were still
using it and were pissed off at the Air Force for killing it. Solwind was the first satellite in space to discover
a new comet. It was also the first to discover a sun-grazing comet, and discovered 9 of these during its life.
41
The first module of ISS was launched in November 1998.
Was that just NASA being overly cautious with its high-value hardware? Abso-
lutely not. Space may be big, but low Earth orbit is not. On 10 February 2009 the
corporate communications satellite Iridium-33 and Russian Kosmos-2251 satellites
collided at an altitude of 789 kilometers over Siberia with a relative speed of
26,170 miles per hour (42,120 kilometers per hour) destroying both satellites.
This was the first accidental hypervelocity impact of two spacecraft, but there
have been several more since.
Even more similar to the situation in Gravity was a series of events surrounding the
Chinese Fengyun 1-C satellite. In Gravity, a Russian ASAT test creates orbital debris
that leads to a cascade of collisions:
MISSION CONTROL
We have a full on chain
reaction. It’s been confirmed
that it is the unintentional
side effect of the Russians
striking one of their own
satellites.
Chinese Fengyun (literally Wind cloud) FY-1 series of satellites were
sun-synchronous (more on this type of orbit in a bit), polar-orbiting meteorological
satellites. On 11 January 2007, China destroyed the 750 kg Fengyun 1-C satellite at an
altitude of 865 km with a kinetic kill vehicle.42 This was the first known ASAT test since
the 1985 destruction of Solwind P78-1.
The destruction of Fengyun 1-C created the largest recorded cloud of space debris
ever, with an estimated 150,000 particles, 2300 of which were golf-ball-sized or larger.
Estimates by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office suggest that much of the debris
will still be in Earth orbit decades, even centuries, after the impact, and a 2013 analysis
estimated that 30% of the debris 10 cm in size or larger will remain in orbit until at
least 2035 (Fig. 7C.2).
(continued)
42
A kinetic kill vehicle, or exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) is designed to intercept a satellite or incoming
ICBM warhead, and slam into it at such a high speed that kinetic energy alone destroys the target.
Fig. 7C.2 Evolution of the debris cloud from the Fengyun-1C satellite. Images cour-
tesy NASA.
On 22 January 2013, while Gravity was in production, but 9 months before its
release, the Russian satellite BLITS—a small reflector used for geophysical laser rang-
ing—spontaneously altered its orbit and attitude and increased its spin rate. Initial
indications were that BLITS collided with debris from Fengyun 1-C. Although agencies
knew in advance that BLITS would pass within close proximity to a known piece of
Fengyun debris, the projected closest approach and the time BLITS spontaneously
altered its trajectory and orientation differed by 10 seconds. Subsequent analysis cast
doubt on whether BLITS collided with a known piece of debris, but that has not yet
been ruled out, since it may very well have collided with a piece of debris too small to
track from the ground.
While in Gravity the danger had not yet spread out over the entirety of low Earth
orbit like the Fengyun-1C debris, the results of runaway Kessler syndrome is depicted
in the series Defiance (2013–). A war has left Earth surrounded by the hulks of dead
ships and clouds of debris, robbing the planet of even basic satellite communications
and at constant risk from impact as pieces of debris, large and small, rain down on the
landscape at irregular intervals. Also worth watching is the hard science-fiction anime
Planetes (2003–2004), which features a corporate crew based on a space station
charged with orbital clean up.
The impact risk from space debris has grown large enough that space agencies
have been working to reduce the amount of debris produced during missions by
redesigning their spacecraft and rockets. Various proposals for actively removing
debris are also on the table, including robot spacecraft and using lasers to accelerate
the natural decay process. The problem is likely to get worse before it gets better, so it
is doubtful that this is the last you will hear about this issue.
A few science fiction productions have depicted their featured spacecraft as

possessing self-healing hulls. The Liberator of Blake’s 7 achieved this through
technological means, while Farscape’s Moya was a living organism.43 This
fantastic sci-fi technology is actually on its way to becoming reality, because
research teams from the Universities of Michigan and Illinois are in the process
of creating self-healing hulls. The Michigan team has developed a gel called
tributylborane, that sits between two polymer layers. When the outer layers are
punctured, say, by a micrometeorite or space debris, the gel flows into the
space and hardens upon exposure to oxygen. If this material coated the interior
wall of crewed spacecraft, it could repair impact damage—at least until an
astronaut made a more permanent repair.
The mechanism for the Illinois
design is detailed in Fig. 7.10, and
the basic concept is not dissimilar to
that of the research team from Mich-
igan. Small beads, corresponding
roughly to both tubes of an epoxy
resin you might buy at a hardware
store, are embedded within the hull
material. When microfractures
appear, and this is something that
can lead to more serious cracks, or
when the hull is holed by an impact,
both components of the epoxy are free
to mix and patch the damage.
Power Power is different from pro- Fig. 7.10 In the self-healing spacecraft
hull technique developed at the Univer-
pulsion, in that the power subsystem sity of Illinois, microcapsules, some
provides electrical power for the containting a healing agent and some
spacecraft, while propulsion moves containing a catalyst—similar to an
epoxy—are embedded within the hull
it from point X to point Y. In the
material (panel 1). Cracks open both
case of SEP or NEP, there can be types of microcapsules (panel 2) and
some overlap between the two the reagents mix and solidify, thus
subsystems. healing the crack (panel 3).
43
And had those beetle-like things.
In the cinematic future, the power problem is solved using advanced

technologies such as matter/antimatter pair annihilation (Star Trek), fusion
reactors (Babylon 5), or tapping the vacuum energy of the Universe (Stargate:
Atlantis, 2004–2009). Today, our options are comparatively limited.
For very short and/or low power missions, batteries suffice. Batteries
powered the famous radio beeps of Sputnik 1 for 21 days44 in 1957. More
recently, batteries powered the Huygens lander during its descent through
Titan’s atmosphere. Although the Huygens batteries were designed for a
nominal mission of half an hour, they lasted a few hours, more than enough
time to send back data and images, including some acquired on the surface
itself.
Another problem with batteries is that they tend to be heavy. We will see in
Chap. 8 that spacecraft designers try to limit spacecraft mass as much as
possible, and batteries tend to run counter to this goal.
For later crewed missions in the 1960s, which lasted up to a couple of
weeks, NASA pioneered the development of fuel cells. The first of these fuel
cells combined hydrogen and oxygen to produce both water, which can be
used for cooling and drinking, and electricity. (Although they are generally
reliable, an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks feeding a set of fuel cells was
responsible for the Apollo 13 crisis.) There are many other types of fuel cells
that are either in use or being developed—alkaline fuel cells, phosphoric acid
fuel cells, solid oxide fuel cells, and polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The industry
driving the development of fuel cell technology is the automobile industry,
since these could help remove, or at least severely reduce, the need for heavy45
batteries, in particular lead-acid batteries. Clearly, these could have a potential
impact on future space exploration, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is
also researching cutting-edge fuel cells.
Because they consume materials, fuel cells aren’t really suitable for long-
term missions, at least as the primary power source. For those missions, there
are really just three choices: solar power, radioisotope thermoelectric genera-
tors (RTGs), and fission reactors.
Solar power is great in many ways—the supply of energy from the Sun is
effectively eternal—but it does have several engineering drawbacks. The first of
44
Oleg Ivanovskiy was the engineer in charge of preparing Sputnik for launch, which included removing a
metal tab that would allow power to flow from the satellite’s batteries once it reached orbit. This tab was
supposed to be pulled out before Sputnik’s rocket was moved into launch position. A few hours prior to
launch, though, Ivanovskiy realized he couldn’t remember if he’d pulled the tab out or not. As he
contemplated the dismal prospect of having to call off the launch just so he could bring the rocket back
and check, he put his hands into his coat pocket—and found the tab. See “The Man Who Launched
Sputnik” by James Oberg http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jan/the-man-who-
launched-sputnik
45
As well as extremely environmentally unfriendly.
these drawbacks is that there are only a few specific (known as sun-synchronous)
orbits close to a planet that don’t plunge the spacecraft into darkness every
time its orbit crosses to the night side. Sun-synchronous orbits are not ideal for
a lot of purposes, so for many missions, a spacecraft requires batteries to
provide backup power as its orbit takes it to the night side of the planet.
Batteries are also heavy and, as any laptop or cellphone owner can attest, they
have a finite number of recharge cycles in them. Once the batteries wear out,
the spacecraft is functionally orbital debris.
The second drawback of solar power is that, for power-hungry spacecraft—
such as one running a large-scale life support system—the spacecraft requires a
large solar panel array to gather enough energy,46 and the panels must be kept
carefully oriented towards the sun to ensure maximum exposure. This can
severely limit a spacecraft’s maneuverability, and the large surface area of the
panels presents an equally large target for all manner of space debris—a big
enough hit can cripple a spacecraft. In 1997, during a botched docking to the
Mir space station, a robotic Progress cargo craft collided with one of the
station’s solar panels, damaging the panel and knocking out the power supply
from several other panels. The impact created a crisis on board that nearly
forced an emergency evacuation.
A third drawback of solar power is that, like gravity, the intensity of sunlight
follows an inverse square law dependency. Mathematically, sunlight intensity is
proportional to 1/r2, where r is the distance from the Sun. So, for example,
although Mars is about 1.5 times farther from the Sun than Earth, it receives only
about half the sunlight. Although solar-powered orbiters and landers work fine at
Mars, Saturn is just shy of 10 times farther from the Sun than Earth, meaning a
Saturn probe gets less than 1/90th of the sunlight as compared with an Earth-
orbiter. Neptune receives 1/900th. Clearly, solar power is not an attractive option
for spacecraft whose missions take them away from the Sun.
Currently, the furthest solar-powered mission from the Sun is the Juno
mission, which arrived at Jupiter on 4 July 2016.47 To keep the solar panels
continually generating power, the probe went into a sun-synchronous polar orbit
around Jupiter, but at this distance Juno’s solar panels arrays—which would be
big enough to produce a combined output of about 13 kilowatts of electricity in
Earth orbit—will only produce about 490 watts, roughly half of the wattage
required by a small microwave oven. Solar panels, particular ones large enough to
power a spacecraft at Jupiter, are also massive, and not only have the same mass
46
The solar panels on the International Space Station have a combined area of about 2500 m2: equivalent
to over nine tennis courts.
47
We all know what that day is, right? Exactly! For the next few decades, it’s the most common day of
Earth’s aphelion in its orbit around the Sun (taking into account leap years and the like).
issues as batteries: if the spacecraft is required to change its orientation often, the
moment of inertia of the panels ensures that turns proceed at a glacial pace.
So, if the plan is to send a spacecraft deep into space, and you don’t want to
worry about losing power on the night side of a planet, the next option is a
radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. RTGs were used to power the
Voyager, Galileo, and Cassini probes among many others. Unlike its solar-
powered predecessors, the Curiosity rover currently trundling around Gale
crater on Mars also sports an RTG.
RTGs generate electricity by tapping the heat produced by a radioactive
material as it decays naturally.48 This is different to a nuclear reactor, where
atomic nuclei are smashed apart by controlled chain reactions to generate
heat49 (an uncontrolled chain reaction equals a meltdown). In an RTG, the
heat from pellets composed (typically) of a compound of plutonium-238 is
directly converted into electricity via a set of thermocouples.50
RTGs are extremely reliable as they have no moving parts, but they do have
the disadvantage that their power output drops slowly as more of the radio-
isotope source decays. While this is not a problem on missions lasting a few
months or years, it is a big issue for long-lived probes such as Voyager I. When
Voyager I was launched in 1977, its two RTGs combined generated around
470 watts. By the beginning of 2015, as the probe travels through the outer
reaches of the Solar System, this number has dropped to 255 watts. To save
power, NASA has been turning off various scientific instruments one by one;
by sometime around 2025–2030, it is estimated that there will not be enough
power to run even the telecom system.
While reliable, RTGs also don’t provide a huge amount of power: the
Curiosity rover’s single RTG, the most advanced design in use, only produces
about 120 watts (0.12 kilowatts). In comparison, the International Space
Station requires over 40 kilowatts to operate its environmental systems and
on-board experiments (its photovoltaic array can generate up to 120 kilowatts:
the surplus is used to charge batteries for when the ISS passes over the Earth’s
night side).
So, with current technology at least, that leaves us with fission reactors,
which use uranium fuel to produce a lot of power in a compact (if heavy)
package. Fission reactors for space missions were developed by both the United
48
The reason why the Earth is still geologically active, and has a molten outer core, owes a lot to the heat
produced by the decay of radioactive isotopes deep beneath the surface.
49
For more about radiation, see Chap. 6: “Radiation: An All Time Glow,” in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1.
50
A thermocouple produces a voltage thanks to a temperature differential between two plates—basically
there’s a hot side, and a cold side. You can buy thermocouple-based devices that let you stick a probe in,
say, a camp fire and recharge your cell phone.
States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War—with the most advanced
capable of producing 6 kilowatts of electricity—but only the Soviets ever
actually flew any. They needed reactors for spy satellites that employed a
power-hungry radar system to monitor NATO naval fleets.
They are also not that scary to launch from the point of view of a radiation
hazard. As with terrestrial nuclear reactors, before the uranium fuel is exposed
to any chain reactions inside the reactor, you can safely handle it just wearing
gloves, so a launch accident would not produce a dangerous amount of fallout.
However, the Soviet Union also learned that operating a nuclear reactor in
Earth orbit is a spectacularly bad idea, much to their dismay and Canada’s
discontent, when the Soviet spy satellite51 Kosmos 954 crash-landed in
Canada in January 1978.
Sure, uranium fuel is relatively safe to handle before being exposed to chain
reactions. Well, all bets are off once they are exposed—a reactor produces
many dangerous short-lived, and highly radioactive, isotopes. Just being in the
same room as unshielded nuclear fuel freshly removed from a nuclear reactor
would impart a lethal dose of radiation in seconds.
Consequently, modern mission planners and engineers understand that, if
they are thinking about incorporating a nuclear reactor into their design plans,
it should not be activated (technically, brought to criticality), exposing the fuel
to chain reactions, until the spacecraft is on an escape trajectory away from
Earth. That way, even if the spacecraft later has a catastrophic accident, any
reactor debris produced ain’t coming back.
The fragments of Kosmos-954 fell away from major population centers—
they were scattered over a 370 mile (600 kilometer) swath in the Canadian
wilderness that ran from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake.52 It is unclear why
we have yet to see a Saturday night Syfy Channel movie featuring terrifying
giant radioactive woodland creatures entitled Mooseotope.53, 54
51
Often called an Intelsat, but specifically Kosmos-954 was a Radar Ocean Reconnaissance SATellite
(RORSAT), a radar-equipped satellite whose primary function was to monitor NATO merchant
shipping.
52
A similar spacecraft, Kosmos-1402, crashed into the South Atlantic in 1983. Subsequent Kosmos
spacecraft were fitted with a core ejection mechanism similar to the warp core eject system on Enterprise-D
and future Starfleet vessels in the incarnations of Star Trek.
53
But we totally want “Story by Kevin Grazier and Stephen Cass” credit if somebody writes that.
54
Although in episode 310 the cast of Saturday Night Live did spoof the crash the following week. In the
sketch, radioactive debris from the Kosmos-954 spacecraft created a swarm of giant radioactive mutant
lobsters that invaded the studio during the end credits.
Fig. 7.11 The space shuttle Discovery docking with ISS. Note the thruster ports to the
left and right of the nose and between the nose and the windows. The color change
between the nose and the surrounding tiles is due to the change from RCC material and
tiles. Note also that, in space, there is no “up”. Image courtesy NASA.
Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS) If navigation rep-

resents a succession of “Where am I?”, “Where am I going?”, and “How do I
get there?”, then the attitude and articulation system aboard a spacecraft is all
about “Where am I pointed?”, “Where should I be pointed?”, and “How do I
point there?”
A craft’s orientation is called its attitude, and in order to determine their
attitudes, many spacecraft today employ all manner of sensors: sun sensors,
Earth sensors, horizon sensors (Fig. 7.11). Even the magnetometer—a science
instrument that detects the strength and orientation of a planet’s magnetic
field—can aid in attitude determination. With the exception of sun sensors,
these methods have limited application for spacecraft that are travelling
between planets, so many of those have star trackers. This is a system consisting
of a camera that images the stars in its field of view, and then compares the
pattern of the stars it sees to those whose positions are stored in an onboard
database.
In order to change their orientation, modern spacecraft employ coarse and
fine-grained techniques. For rapid attitude changes, most spacecraft are fitted
with reaction control (RCS) or attitude control (ACS) thrusters. These are just
small thrusters mounted at various points on the craft that can fire to rotate the
craft about any of its axes.55 (If you watch carefully the scenes with Vipers and
Raptors in Battlestar Galactica, you can see RCS thrusters flaring to maneuver
55
In 1966 Gemini 8 had a thruster stick in the on position, putting it into a dangerous spin. The
astronaut who brought the spacecraft out of its spin? Neil Armstrong.
Fig. 7.12 Firefly (2003), and the follow-on film Serenity (2005), is one franchise where
there was clearly some consideration given to attitude control. The Firefly class freighter
Serenity (pictured above) can rotate its main engines independently for vertical/short
take-offs, or to change its orientation in space. Serenity image copyright © Universal
Pictures, courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
the vehicles in different directions.) The blue collar Eagles from Space: 1999
also had attitude control thrusters, but these were never seen to be
firing (Fig. 7.12).56
For fine-scale pointing, or in cases when the turn rate is unimportant, some
craft—particularly probes like the Cassini spacecraft57 and the Hubble Space
Telescope—use a type of gyroscope called a reaction wheel. These are massive
rapidly spinning wheels, mounted on different axes like thrusters. When the
rotation rates are increased or decreased, this imparts a torque to the spacecraft
that causes it to rotate.
Command, Control, and Data Storage There is usually a main com-

puter identified as the spacecraft “central” computer, the one responsible for
overall management of the activity aboard a spacecraft. On many spacecraft, this
computer—or computers if there are redundant processors—is referred to as the
56
Though in episode 201, “The Metamorph”, an Eagle was fitted with the spacecraft equivalent of a
JATO unit, and that did fire.
57
Cassini has both reaction wheels and thrusters. In fact, on multiple occasions when the spacecraft
reached a point where it was to make a course correction—to account for many small navigation errors
that accumulated well into the mission—the navigation accuracy was so spot-on that instead of using the
main engine, propulsion engineers were able to use Cassini’s attitude control thrusters—a “puff” instead
of a roar.
command and data subsystem (CDS). Recall from Chap. 5 that the practice of
embedding a computer aboard a spacecraft to control its functions, in fact the
first embedded controller period, was the Apollo Guidance Computer.
The CDS subsystem has many parallels with a personal computer. There is
an operating system running constantly in the background, while sequences—
series of commands that can run anywhere from a day to weeks—run in the
foreground like application software. It interfaces with peripherals (in this case,
science instruments). The CDS accepts commands from users (i.e., ground
controllers and scientists) in the form of radioed telemetry and interprets those
commands, executes them, and provides output back to the user in the form of
telemetry.
Many science fiction and technology writers have noted that, although Star
Trek’s communicator was considered science fiction in 1966, the capabilities
of modern-day smart phones leave the Trek communicator in the dust. The
modern-day smart phone outpaces many fictional onboard computers as well.
The computer/AI aboard the Enterprise (both in the original series and in The
Next Generation) is portrayed in some ways as less capable than either the Siri
or Cortana voice-activated assistants that run on today’s smart phones.
To be sure, science fiction spacecraft have been rife with central computers
of the artificially intelligent variety—far more intelligent than today’s smart
phones—like 2001's HAL 9000, Zen of Blake’s 7, even Red Dwarf’s
Holly (Fig. 7.13). Owing to a combination of constrained Earth communica-
tions, the desire to perform mission tasks and spacecraft maintenance more
efficiently, and simply because these spacecraft go where no probe has gone
before, modern spacecraft are becoming smarter and smarter, with an increas-
ing ability to function autonomously. Just like their science fiction
counterparts.
Interplanetary spacecraft spend the majority of their lives operating far from
Earth, and although ground personnel monitor and can command the space-
craft, the speed of light limits how rapidly humans can respond to onboard
faults and problems. As more and more spacecraft are sent to remote Solar
System destinations, this has the tendency to overburden NASA’s network of
deep space tracking and communications systems58 (more on this in a bit) and,
again, a spacecraft may not have access to resources it needs, at least not
immediately, in the case of a problem.59
58
Many spacecraft—the Voyagers, Galileo, Cassini, several Mars missions, MESSENGER, and others—
have functioned well beyond their “use by” dates. While this is a boon for planetary science, one
unfortunate side-effect is that these spacecraft still compete with new missions for antenna time to relay
their findings and engineering data to Earth.
59
Spacecraft can identify a serious problem and declare a “spacecraft emergency”, in which case, resources
are generally pulled away from functioning spacecraft in order to aid their ailing colleague.
Fig. 7.13 Discovery’s HAL 9000 and Red Dwarf’s Holly are both portrayed as hyper-
intelligent AIs that oversee the operations of their respective vessels. In contrast to
Holly’s silliness, HAL’s demeanor ran the gamut from contrary (“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t
do that.”) to childlike (“Will I dream?”). One thing they do have in common is that they
both did astronomically poor jobs of keeping their crews alive. Copyright © Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and British Broadcasting Corporations/Grant Naylor Produc-
tions, images courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
The onboard computer must have the ability to monitor spacecraft systems,
structures, and science instruments, detect problems, mitigate the impact of
problems as best it can, and establish communications with Earth to report the
problem. In order to do this, the CDS system runs many fault protection
routines, often many at once, to ensure the health and safety of the spacecraft.
Science Box: Ascension, Dudley Buck, and the Cryotron Computer
In Ascension, a generation spacecraft begins a 100-year journey to another star system,

equipped with only the technology of 1963. In addition to its advanced propulsion drive,
the spacecraft also has several apparently anachronistic technologies when the show
checks in on the action 50 years after launch—including what look like personal tablet
computers (Fig. 7D.1).
Fig. 7D.1 Dr. Juliet Bryce (Andrea Roth) is the Chief Medical Officer aboard Ascen-
sion. Her sickbay is filled with devices and instruments that, initially, seem far ahead
of their time. . . but perhaps not. Copyright © Universal Cable Productions and
Lionsgate Television. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
In 1963, advanced computers were built out of individual silicon transistors—the

little black three-legged cylindrical components you can still see on some circuit
boards today (see Chap. 5: “Let’s Get Digital”). Although the first integrated circuits
or ICs—which combine multiple microscopic transistors on a single silicon chip—had
been invented in 1958, it wouldn’t be until 1971 that Intel was able to squeeze 2300
transistors onto a single IC to make the first computer-on-a-chip, or microprocessor. It
took another 20 years for Apple to develop its first tablet-style computer, the Newton,
which relied on a microprocessor that contained about 35,000 transistors (Apple’s
current iPads are based on a chip with over 1 billion transistors).
So how could the crew of Ascension have access to such much handheld computing
power? An answer comes from the fact that technology does not develop linearly—
running along a single pre-determined path of progress—although it can look like
that in retrospect. At any one time, there are multiple technologies competing to
solve the problems of the day. Which technology emerges to become dominant can
be as much a matter of luck, psychology, or economics as anything else. (For example,
one of the big reasons VHS killed off Beta back in the day, was that VHS’s lower
picture quality meant that most movies could fit on a single VHS cassette, while two
(continued)
cassettes were almost always needed for Beta. Convenience proved to be more
important than picture quality.)
Back in the 1950s, as computer designers grew frustrated with the limitations of
the vacuum tubes used to build the earliest computers, a young MIT researcher named
Dudley Allen Buck envisioned a way to build computers without silicon transistors,60
and his methodology would skip past the stage of individual components. Buck was
planning on going directly to extreme miniaturization of the sort that would allow
the most powerful mainframe computers of the day to be squeezed down into
something the size of a briefcase.
Buck’s idea was to build his computer out of cryotrons. A cryotron is the equivalent
of a transistor, in that it performs the same basic electrical on-off switching function of
a transistor, but unlike a single transistor, a cryotron can also store information as well,
acting as a memory element. A cryotron is basically a sliver of a superconducting alloy
surrounded by a coil of control wire. Passing a small current through the control wire
dramatically alters the resistance of the alloy, so that it acts as an on-off switch.
Cryotrons could be made much smaller than the individual transistors of the 1950s,
Buck’s later designs could switch ten times as fast, and the ability to combine logic and
memory opened up very powerful computational vistas.61 The big drawback was the
requirement to cool the computer to the ultra-low, cryogenic, temperatures required
to make the alloy slivers superconducting. (It should be noted that for a spacecraft in
deep space, maintaining a computer at such low temperatures is Not A Problem—it’s
doing it on Earth that’s hard.)
Clearly, the handheld terminals that the Ascension crew uses aren’t cryogenically
cooled, but using radio links would allow individual handheld terminals to tap into a
cryotronic mainframe’s processing power. In the early 1960s, accessing centralized
mainframes via terminals was the cutting edge way to allow people to use computers,
a norm that held sway until the development of the personal computer in the late
1970s and early 1980s—hence the personal in PC. (Ironically, the pendulum of history
is swinging back toward centralized computing architectures in recent years, as
companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google operate giant datacenters to provide
web- and cloud-based services for email, photo storage, social networking, voice and
face recognition services, and more, that are typically accessed via wireless links from
mobile graphical terminals, a.k.a. smartphones.)
Cryotrons drew a lot of intense interest from people like IBM and the NSA, who
started up their own research groups. Unfortunately, just as the first reports about ICs
began circulating and gaining attention, Dudley Buck died suddenly of a respiratory
illness at age 32. With its most powerful champion dead, silicon chips overtook
cryotronics.
Of course, in the Ascension universe, we have an alternate explanation for Buck’s
early departure from the computing landscape—he was recruited as part of the first
generation crew! Mark Stern, Ascension’s executive producer, learned of Buck during
the development of the show and told Hollyweird Science: “As far as I’m concerned,
Dudley Buck is aboard Ascension.”
60
This science box draws largely on the work of David C. Brock, who unearthed this lost chapter of
computing history in the April 2014 issue of IEEE Spectrum in a story called “Dudley Buck’s Forgotten
Cryotron Computer,” available online at http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hard
ware/dudley-bucks-forgotten-cryotron-computer
61
The recent development of something called a memristor is rekindling interest in the advantages of
mixing logic and memory in this way.
Fault protection routines are particularly important in space because, in a

technological irony, the more advanced the CDS, the more likely it is to be
affected by radiation in space—and there’s a lot of radiation in space. As well as
light, the Sun is constantly emitting a never-ending stream of solar wind
comprised of subatomic particles. Solar wind streaming through gaps in
Earth’s magnetic fields at the poles, and slamming into oxygen and nitrogen
gas molecules,62 create the aurora.63
Sometimes the solar wind is greatly boosted by events called coronal mass
ejections, which are typically associated with solar flares. Coronal mass ejections
can be serious enough, but the magnetospheres of planets trap the solar wind in
radiation belts. Around Earth, these belts are known as the Van Allen belts. The
space station stays in an orbit positioned beneath the Van Allen belts, but satellites
that operate at higher altitudes have to be fitted with extra radiation shielding.
Some of the most radiation-intense places in the Solar System (apart from close
proximity to the Sun) are the radiation belts around the gas giants, which pose
particular problems for spacecraft either flying by or orbiting around them.
The reason why digital computers are particularly vulnerable to radiation is
that they rely on shuffling electric charges, representing the binary numbers 0 and
1, around microscopic circuits (see Chap. 5 for the gory details of how this
actually works). It turns out that having highly energetic charged particles
barreling through those circuits can cause a 0 to get flipped to 1 or vice versa, a
phenomenon known as a single-event upset (SEU). Such a problem is temporary
and can usually be caught and cleared by error-correcting routines—if there’s
time. An SEU in the navigation system was presented as the mostly likely reason a
Raptor spacecraft found itself completely lost following an emergency jump in
the Battlestar Galactica 2008–2009 webisode series “The Face of the Enemy.”
An even more serious problem occurs when a transistor or memory cell is
permanently damaged, locking it into an on or off state. This is known as latch
up, and more sophisticated fault protection methods must be used to identify
and route around the damage. The problem is that the more sophisticated the
computer, the smaller its microcircuitry. This means the amount of radiation
required to cause a SEU or latch up is reduced as well. It is possible to
manufacture radiation-resistant, or radiation-hardened (or just rad hardened),
versions of computer chips, but these are expensive and often lag well behind
the commercial state of the art. For example, the RCA CDP1802 was an 8-bit
chip popular in a very early microcomputer, the COSMAC Elf, released
in 1976. Thirteen years later—during which time computing saw the
62
Nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%) represent all but a tiny fraction of Earth’s atmosphere. Since solar
wind interacts primarily with these two elements, this explains why aurorae tend to have two colors: pink
and green.
63
Gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn also have magnetic fields, and hence also have aurorae at their poles.
introduction of the IBM PC, the Macintosh, and the Game Boy—the Galileo
probe was launched to Jupiter, controlled by a set of rad-hardened CDP1802s.
Science Instruments Known commonly in science fiction settings as

sensors, the science instruments provide the sight, touch, and sometimes
even hearing and smell, of a spacecraft.
The eyes of a spacecraft are the optical remote sensing, or ORS, instru-
ments. This is simply a fancy way of saying “cameras.” ORS instruments
collect electromagnetic radiation over the range that corresponds to what
humans perceive as light, plus a little bit more. Instruments sensitive to
infrared light, which can reveal information about the temperature of objects,
are also considered ORS, as are instruments that sense ultraviolet emission
from phenomena like aurorae and lightning.
Most ORS instruments are passive, that is they sit and receive whatever light
comes their way. Some spacecraft have active sensors, in which some sort of probe
signal is sent out, and the instrument measures any reflections. Active sensors can
include laser beams, which allow very precise maps of planetary surfaces to be
made if there’s enough time, and radar beams, which can be used for mapping
(or intelligence gathering with spy satellites). Radar has the advantage that it can
see through the dense cloud cover of bodies like Venus or Titan, but it has the
disadvantage that it requires a lot more power than passive sensors.
Another category of instruments are particles and fields instruments. Most
interplanetary spacecraft are fitted with magnetometers that sense the strength
and orientation of magnetic fields around the Sun and the planets. Magne-
tometers and instruments that measure the interaction of energetic particles,
like solar wind with planetary fields, help scientists infer the nature of planetary
interiors. Planets without magnetospheres, like Mars, have interiors that are
much less active than planets that do have magnetospheres, like Earth.
Mass spectrometers, or mass specs, are carried aboard many spacecraft, partic-
ularly landers. They can be fantastically informative in analyzing the chemical
composition of a substance, and they function like the spacecraft’s sense of smell.
A mass spectrometer ingests a sample—a small bit of rock, a whiff of atmosphere,
a hint of dust—vaporizes the sample, ionizes the vapor, and accelerates the ions in
a micro particle accelerator. The speeding ions are then passed through a
magnetic field. Because all ions have an electric charge, the magnetic field will
deflect each ion by an amount that depends exactly on the mass of the particle and
its exact charge. The mass spectrometer can then determine the chemical com-
position by measuring this deflection, revealing the ions’ charge-to-mass ratios.
Counter-intuitive as it may seem for an orbiter that spends its life in the
near-vacuum of space, the Cassini spacecraft has a mass spectrometer called
INMS (the ion and neutral mass spectrometer). During close flybys, INMS
can “sniff” the outer atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan to determine its
atmospheric composition. INMS was also able to analyze the composition of
the cryovolcanic ice plumes of the moon Enceladus.
Telecom Another critical system for any spacecraft is the telecommunica-

tion, or telecom, system. This allows the spacecraft to remain in contact with
the Earth, send back science data and engineering data about the spacecraft’s
health, get advice on technical problems, and, in the case of crewed missions,
receive news and entertainment, and stay in touch with friends and family.
Space communication systems rely on either modulated radio waves or
microwaves to transmit information. These travel at the speed of light, but
because interplanetary distances are so vast, it can take a long time for trans-
missions to reach Earth. The time it takes a signal to transit the distance
between Earth and Mars varies between 4 and 24 minutes, depending upon
the relative positions of the planets in their orbits. For a mission to Jupiter the
time lag varies between about 30 and 60 minutes.
Once it had become common knowledge just how immense interplanetary
and interstellar distances are, science fiction writers created various forms of
FTL drives to transport characters to different planets in less than a lifetime. In
a similar vein, writers also created concepts like Star Trek’s subspace that allow
instantaneous, or near-instantaneous, communications over interstellar dis-
tances.64 As with various FTL models we explored in Hollyweird Science, the
argument typically runs that there is another realm or dimension through
which electromagnetic signals can pass, allowing for faster communications.
The time delay can be used to dramatic effect, as depicted in 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1969), when the crew’s interview with an Earth television show had to
have to long gaps edited out prior to broadcast, and personal communications
were recorded and then transmitted rather than conducted in real time. This was
also used in The Martian to point out how the crew rescuing Watney would be
effectively beyond the help of mission control during a critical sequence.
Another problem that has already cropped up in robotic missions is that
radio communications typically require a direct, or very nearly direct, line of
sight between sender and receiver. A communications blackout occurs when
Earth’s orbit takes it behind the Sun from the point of view of a spacecraft in what
is known as a conjunction. The sun blocks radio signals, producing a communi-
cations blackout that lasts from days to weeks. Some missions are able to use the
warping of space due to general relativity to bend a signal around the Sun
(Fig. 7.14), but this can only reduce the duration of the blackout, without
eliminating it entirely.
64
The “trope name” for a faster-than-light communication device is an ansible, first coined by sci-fi
legend, Ursula Le Guin, in 1969.
As vital as the communications sys-

tem is, many movie and TV shows do
not wait for a planetary conjunction to
knock out the link with Earth.
Instead—whether due to accident or
malice—a loss of contact with Earth
(or even just the threat of it) is one
surefire way to raise stakes and ratchet
up tension. In 2001: A Space Odyssey
HAL 9000s prediction that their main
communications antenna would fail
was enough to prompt the crew to
mount a repair spacewalk, giving
HAL the opening he needed to set in
motion his plan to complete the mis-
sion without pesky humans aboard.
In 2013s Europa Report, the crew
loses contact with Earth six months Fig. 7.14 Spacecraft on the opposite side
of the Sun from Earth, like Cassini pic-
into their mission to Jupiter’s tured here, can rely upon the warping
ice-covered moon Europa. (While of space near the Sun due to general
Europa Report received generally favor- relativity to “bank” a signal to Earth.
Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Caltech.
able reviews for its scientific accuracy, it
has to be said that the spacecraft used to
bring the crew to its destiny on Jupiter’s ice-covered moon was an engineering
disaster, with no redundant communications system, and a life support system
that was somehow integrated with the communications system as well.65)
A lack of communications—attributed to the harsh radiation produced by its
atom-bomb-based Orion drive—is also a vital element in the SyFy miniseries
Ascension. Because they have been in a communications blackout since the original
crew boarded in 1963,66 society on board has stagnated compared to that on
Earth today, where the action picks up 50 years into the Ascension’s mission.
NASA and other space agencies are trying to alleviate some of the limitations
of our current communications systems, at least in this Solar System, with the
goal of creating an “interplanetary Internet.” Ideally, this system would use
65
It should also be noted, that even if it couldn’t communicate with the crew in Europa Report, mission
control would still have known that their spacecraft hadn’t been destroyed. Leaking electromagnetic
radiation from onboard electronics would have been detectable with radio telescopes—when the Beagle 2
Mars lander was lost, radio telescopes scanned the red planet in hopes of picking up stray signals from its
onboard CPU. Unfortunately, they failed in their search; it was later determined that the lander’s solar
panels had failed to deploy properly, starving it of power.
66
Not as crazy as it sounds, as most of the research on the Orion drive (which was cancelled in large part
due to a global ban on atmospheric nuclear tests) was conducted in the late 1950s.
dedicated satellites in planetary and heliocentric orbits to route information

from space probes back to Earth. (The breakdown of such a system, and the
consequent isolation of a mining outpost, is a plot element in 2009's Moon.)
Ultimately, the goal would be to replace many of the radio links with lasers,
an upgrade that would dramatically increase the bandwidth available for space
missions. Currently it can take hours to days to download high-resolution
images from deep space probes—as was the case with the New Horizons Pluto
encounter, which took the best part of a year to download data from a flyby
that was measured in hours. Laser-based systems could allow probes to return
high quality video in a much shorter span. It is likely that if humanity ever does
send out interstellar missions, lasers will be part of the communication mix.
Ground System
Houston, we’ve had a problem here.

James Lovell, astronaut, Apollo 13
Often overlooked, the ground system represents all the necessary earthly
hardware necessary to assemble, launch, and control a spacecraft—ranging
from the assembly facilities, the launch pads, the gantries, even the large
tracked vehicle that carries spacecraft from final assembly to the launch pad.
The most high profile component of the Ground System, particularly in TV
and film, is Mission Control (Fig. 7.15).
Another important component of the ground system that occasionally gets
cinematic play is the tracking and telemetry stations. In the early days of the space
race, the American and Russian space programs had to build ground stations
around the world, supplemented by special ships in the oceans, to communicate
with their astronauts and cosmonauts in orbit or on the way to the Moon.
Although not science fiction—more of a docu-dramedy—but still highly
recommended viewing: 2000s The Dish. While it has flown under a lot of
people’s radars, The Dish was a delightful film based upon the true story of how
the Parkes radio telescope in Australia was tasked by NASA to capture the
television footage of the first moonwalk, despite a gale that threatened to
topple the telescope (Fig. 7.16).
Today, some countries, like the U.S. and Russia, use orbiting satellite relays
to stay in touch with Earth orbiting spacecraft.67 Starting in 1983, NASA
67
China can still only launch crewed missions during those months when weather conditions are suitable
for its tracking ships in the Pacific.
Fig. 7.15 “Failure is not an option” Ed Harris plays NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz in
Apollo 13, seen here in Mission Control. Kranz played a key role in the rescue of the
badly damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft and its crew. Ed Harris “reprised” the role, in a
manner of speaking, as the voice of Mission Control in Gravity. Image Copyright © Ima-
gine Entertainment, courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Fig. 7.16 The Parkes radio telescope that received the Apollo 11 transmissions from the
lunar surface starred as itself in the Australian film The Dish. Image courtesy Wikimedia
Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.
began launching and operating a small flotilla of TDRS (Tracking and Data
Relay—pronounced TEE-dris) satellites. Previous missions required direct
line-of sight between a spacecraft and a ground station. The TDRS satellites
are able to receive communications from spacecraft or ISS, and relay the signal
to the ground.
To communicate with spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit, NASA constructed the

Deep Space Network, or DSN. The DSN consists of three installations, each with
multiple communications dishes that can “talk” to spacecraft on Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, and even out beyond Pluto. There are DSN stations in Goldstone,
California, Madrid, Spain, and Canberra, Australia, each separated by roughly
120 degrees from its neighboring station. Since spacecraft always have interesting
and important things to tell us, this ensures that, as Earth rotates, there is always a
DSN station in the line of sight when one needs to “talk.”
Meet the Storyteller: Andy Weir, Novelist, The Martian
Praised for its dedication to science accuracy while telling a very human story of
survival, the 2015 film The Martian was a box office smash. Directory Ridley Scott
was committed to preserving the science details presented in the novel that spawned
the film, written by former software engineer Andy Weir. Hollyweird Science had the
opportunity to speak with Weir about his novel The Martian and his creative process
(Fig. 7E.1).
Fig. 7E.1 Andy Weir (left), author of The Martian, and Caltech Professor Kip Thorne
(also science consultant on the film Interstellar) at the 2016 Raw Science Film Festival
awards ceremony in Los Angeles. Photo by Kevin Grazier.
Hollyweird Science: You were an engineer for 25 years before you made the
transition to write full time. What manner of engineer? What did you do?
Weir: I was a computer programmer. I worked in the games industry on and off
and eventually transitioned into mobile app development.
Hollyweird Science: You didn’t just wake up one day, quit your job, and say, “I’m
following the dream!” That transition occurred over quite some time, true?
(continued)
Weir: No, I didn’t “quit” my job so much as “get laid off”. Back in the 1990s I was
working for AOL and I got laid off along with 800 other people when they merged
with Netscape. I ended up with a bunch of money from stock options as a result so I
spent the next three years writing a book. It wasn’t The Martian, it was a previous
effort and it wasn’t very good. So I wasn’t able to get an agent or a publisher
interested.
But that got me into writing. So once I went back to software engineering, I
continued writing as a hobby. Posting it to my website and whatnot. That ultimately
led to the success of The Martian.
Hollyweird Science: Were you a science fiction fan growing up, or was it an
acquired taste?
Weir: Oh I was a sci-fi nerd from day one. Probably because my dad is also a sci-fi
nerd and he had a nearly-infinite collection of old 1950s and 1960s paperbacks that I
would read.
Hollyweird Science: Many would say that writing is “right brained” and program-
ming “left brained”, as if being able to perform creative and analytical tasks were
mutually-exclusive. Would you say that a better model is like ability scores from a
game like D&D? Your ability scores in right-brained and left-brained could be 90/10,
10/90, or they could be 80/80.
Weir: Yeah, I’ve never bought into oversimplified categorizations like that. People
are extremely complicated and can’t be reduced to binary types. I’m good at math and
I’m fairly imaginative. But I’m really bad at cooking and I’m horrendous at art.
Hollyweird Science: Is it fair to say that writing a novel and writing code are very
similar, viewed in the right light? They’re both the repeated asking of “What do I
need” and “What do I have?”
Weir: Yes, I think so. That’s a good way to look at it.
Hollyweird Science: For example, you needed Watney to be able to grow his own
food, so his specialty became botany.
Yup. That’s exactly why I made him a botanist. The trick is to set those things up
such that they don’t look too obvious to the reader.
Hollyweird Science: At the same time, do you not find coding a creative pursuit as
much as an analytical one?
Oh absolutely. There’s artistry to computer programming. Most people don’t
understand source code so they can’t appreciate it. But it’s there. And when an
engineer comes up with an elegant, clean solution to a problem, other engineers
often appreciate it like fine art.
Hollyweird Science: Different readers/viewers will have different accuracy bars—
different levels at which a mistake in the accuracy will pull them out of the drama.
Tell us about the ranges of expectations you experienced with writing The Martian
and with developing the film (Ridley Scott and the dust storm vs. people who just
skim over the science bits).
When I wrote the book, I was writing it for my modest mailing list of regular
readers, who are predominantly science dorks. So I wanted the story to be scientifi-
cally accurate enough for that audience. I never imagined it would have mainstream
appeal.
What I learned after the book’s success is that people who don’t care about the
science just skimmed over the scientific explanations. They didn’t mind them being
present, but they didn’t try to fully understand them. They just internally said “I trust
that this is all accurate.”
(continued)
And that, I think, is the biggest, albeit accidental, accomplishment I made while
writing the book. The reader had complete faith in the story’s scientific accuracy and
didn’t even question it. Building that level of trust with a reader is a rare and
wonderful thing. So for the science dorks, they could check the math and see that
it’s accurate. For the less scientifically-minded, they had complete trust that it was
right, and didn’t mind skimming over a section here or there without absorbing it. So
everyone was happy.
Hollyweird Science: What was your personal bar while writing The Martian? To
what extents did you go in your attempt to make your science accurate?
I had to make everything accurate enough to suspend my own disbelief. Any time I
was tempted to take a shortcut I would ask myself “If I were reading this story, would
that scientific inaccuracy bother me?” If it did, then I would rework things to be more
accurate.
I think the most work I did was on the trajectories. The Hermes orbital paths are all
accurate to real orbital dynamics. I wrote my own software to assist in working them
out. I was later told by actual astrodynamicists that my paths were only off by about
2%. I call that a win.
Hollyweird Science: When you’re part of the viewing audience, where is your bar?
What is acceptable, and what pulls you out of the story in an “Oh, please!” moment?
Has your personal bar changed after writing The Martian?
Actually, my personal bar is about consistency, not raw science. I don’t mind that
the Enterprise can travel faster than light. I accept it without hesitation even though
that’s physically impossible. But when it takes them an hour to get from Earth to Mars
I have a problem because at 128 the speed of light it should only take them a few
seconds.
Other than that, the things that bother me are just the blatant violations of
physics. I don’t think my bar has changed as a result of writing The Martian.
The Overview Effect

Science fiction novelist Brian W. Aldiss said, “I prefer to see SF as a mirror to
the present. Set up that mirror 50 years into the future and today’s confusions
become clearer.” As much as spacecraft, both real and imaginary, have always
been the vehicles with which we explore our Solar System, the Universe, and
even ourselves, they do still more than return science data and transport
characters to far-off adventures so that we may gain introspective clarity.
They provide context.
Astronauts and cosmonauts who have observed first-hand our Earth hang-
ing in the void of space have reported a shift in their understanding of our
planet and humanity’s place on it. One cannot behold our atmosphere, thin as
an onion skin, without an immediate understanding of the fragility of the
biosphere that depends upon that infinitesimally thin band of air. See Earth
from afar and conflicts between people and cultures and nations become less
Fig. 7.17 The Voyager 1 “Pale Blue Dot” mosaic.
important, almost petty, as international boundaries melt away. Many who have
experienced this feel the overpowering need to work towards a planetary society68
that will unite and protect our tiny planetary island in a vast and uncaring cosmos.
In 1987, author Frank White called this phenomenon the overview effect.69
One of the most dramatic examples of the overview effect, one which all can
share equally, had its origins in 1990. Although the Voyager 1’s imaging days
were behind it, planetary scientist Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager
imaging team, persuaded spacecraft operators to take one final series of images.
On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1 looked back at the Solar System from
40 astronomical units distant, and its imaging system was able to discern six of
the eight planets of the Solar System (Fig. 7.17).
In his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan says
of the Voyager mosaic:
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you
love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who
ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands
of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and
forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every
king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful
child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,
every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of
our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than
this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue
dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
68
Not to be confused with One World Government. Shut up conspiracy theory trolls, we’re on a roll!
69
The Overview Effect—Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Houghton-Mifflin, 1987).
Spacecraft, real and cinematic, have been and will continue to be the
ultimate workhorses in our search for our place in the Grand Scheme of
Things.
As we got further and further away, it [Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank
to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm,
living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it
would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.
James Irwin, astronaut, Apollo 15
8
The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to
be sure.
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Aliens
Zero G and I feel fine.

John Glenn, first American astronaut in orbit, 20 February 1962
Once you get to Earth orbit, you’re half-way to anywhere in the Solar
System.
Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction novelist
“Mr. Sulu, assume standard orbit.” How often have we heard Captain Kirk
utter those words? The sheer number of scenes to entire screenplays set on
either a space station or a spaceship means that a surprising amount of sci-fi
drama occurs while the heroes are simply going around and around and
around. Recent examples include The 100 (2014–), Elysium (2013), and
Gravity (2013).
An orbit is simply a trajectory that is curved due to the attractive influence
of another body. Although electrons orbit atomic nuclei due to electrostatic
attraction,1 for the remainder of the chapter, we will be exploring the science of
orbits around massive bodies2—like stars and planets—where the attractive
influence is gravitation.
The motion and dynamics of an object in orbit can be very simple or
amazingly complex. In fact, many of the mathematical techniques mathe-
maticians and physicists employ today to describe the physical world, in particular
1
Although the electrons don’t orbit in the manner of single particle moving along a path, but rather they
act like standing waves completely wrapped around the nucleus. See Chap. 4: “Matter Matters” in Vol. 1
for more details.
2
Remember, by “massive”, we mean “an object with mass” rather than the more colloquial meaning
“huge”. Some relatively small objects—like a neutron star—can have a very big gravitational influence.
Fig. 8.1 The Spacedock and the Moon in orbit about Earth, while the starship Enter-
prise in the foreground is about to break orbit and Excelsior, giving chase, is about to try.
From Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) Copyright © Paramount Pictures,
courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
calculus, had their origins in attempts to describe the motion of the planets and
other celestial bodies.
In most science fiction screenplays, getting into orbit is a pretty simple
affair: the rocket ship fires up its engines and streaks into space. Conversely,
getting out of orbit is often presented as being just as simple. Characters can
immediately land, arriving exactly where the plot needs them to be without
having to wait for awkward real life problems like having to wait an hour for
the landing site to rotate into view, or it being too far south or north of the
orbit’s ground track3 to reach easily. For Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry used
the cinematic device, now something of a trope, of matter transporters4 to
simplify the complexity, and minimize screen time, of details such as these.5
In real life, we are increasingly reliant on satellites for phone communi-
cations, weather updates, land use mapping, even satellite television. Still, only
a handful of countries have the capability to put artificial satellites into Earth
3
If you project the spacecraft’s position straight down to the surface of Earth (or whatever planet it’s
orbiting), the path that projection traces out is called the ground track.
4
See Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, Chap. 7: “A Quantum of Weirdness”.
5
The first cinematic use of matter transporter was the 1958 film The Fly. They were also used in Gerry
Anderson’s 1962 program Fireball XL-5, and in the BBC series Blake’s 7.
8 The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits 273
orbit,6 and a subset of those countries have put spacecraft into orbit
around other bodies in the Solar System.7 Going in circles (and ellipses) can
be far more complicated than it seems at first blush. Some screenplays have
mined the reality of orbital mechanics—i.e., that it is inherently all about
managing a celestial balancing act, with potentially catastrophic results on the
line if that balance is lost—for drama. The Martian (2015), Gravity, Apollo 13
(1995),8 are examples of films where orbital mechanics significantly drive
the plot.
No Such Thing as a Free Launch: Getting into Orbit

and Staying There
An orbit can be viewed as either a balance of potential and kinetic energies, or
alternatively as a balance of forces. Each way has its advantages, depending
upon the problem at hand. In the left-hand panel of Fig. 8.2 we have the
largest baseball pitching machine in the world—the Pitch-o-matic 9000—
Fig. 8.2 An object is in orbit when it keeps trying to fall to the ground, but is moving so
fast that it keeps missing. That is why an object in orbit is also said to be in “free-fall”.
Graphics courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, modified by author KRG.
6
Russia, the United States, Japan, China, Ukraine, India, Iran, Israel, and North Korea. Collectively, the
multinational European Space Agency also launches Earth-orbiting satellites. Other countries operate
spacecraft in orbit, but they were launched, and in some cases built, by one of the countries/agencies
already listed.
7
The United States, Russia, China, ESA, Japan, and India.
8
Not science fiction, but included here as one of the best space movies ever.
perched atop a mountain so tall that the air density is so low that air friction is
negligible.9 Let us see what happens when we launch baseballs at different
velocities.
In the first instance, before we even launched a ball intentionally, our
technician nudged the baseball, and it rolled out of the barrel, and fell straight
down to Earth. This may seem like a pointless example, but it allows us to
underscore an important point. There seems to be a popular view that,
somehow, an object can be placed unmoving in space. While there are ways
to make an object appear to be unmoving from, say, the perspective of
someone standing on the surface of a planet (more on that later in this chapter
when we discuss Lagrangian points and also in the Science Box: “Kepler’s
Third Law and Geostationary/Geosynchronous Orbits”), if an object is in
space near a massive object, then it will be pulled—it will fall—directly
towards the center of that object. Straight down is technically a valid orbital
trajectory, it’s just not a very useful one, and one that can actually be very
difficult to achieve if you’re already in another orbit.
With that in mind, there is actually an example of just this in the 2006 film
The Astronaut Farmer. Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) is in Earth orbit
in a Mercury capsule. While a normal de-orbit burn slows a craft so that
re-entry is a lengthy arc through the atmosphere, Farmer’s burn is more severe,
bringing the capsule to a near-stop, where, like the ball at point A, it "hangs in
the air in exactly the same way that bricks don’t."10
Setting our Pitch-o-matic to its lowest setting, it launches a ball, which falls
to Earth at point A. Notching the machine up to its next setting, it fires a
baseball faster, and it lands at point B—significantly farther away from the base
of the mountain than point A. The distance between A and B is longer than
the distance that would have been between these points if the ball been
launched along a flat plane, rather than on the spherical Earth. This is because
the ball travelled far enough for the Earth’s curvature to become an important
factor in the trajectory. Since Earth curved away from the ball, it was able to
both fall toward the center of Earth for a longer period of time, and travel
tangentially (parallel to the ground) for a longer period of time.
Cranking up the Pitch-o-matic to a much higher setting and launching it, the
ball moves along the ground—known as the along-track direction—at a rate such
that it falls at exactly the same rate that the ground curves away. It completes one
entire orbit, then CLANG. . . hits the backside of the Pitch-o-matic 9000 and
9
This kind of diagram goes all the way back to Isaac Newton, although he used cannons and cannonballs,
because Olden Times.
10
With apologies to Douglas Adams.
falls to the ground at point C, thus underscoring another important point: a

circular or elliptical orbit always returns to its starting point.11
“The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The
knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything
Loading another ball, and notching the Pitch-o-matic up to its highest

setting, the machine launches a ball on trajectory D so fast that Earth’s
gravitation cannot hold it—it is beyond what is called the escape velocity for
Earth, and it’s path is best described as “To infinity. . . and beyond!” For
spacecraft to travel to other planets or stars, they must first reach escape
velocity (which we have seen previously in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1 in the
Science Box: “Pushing the Moon Out of Orbit” and again later in the Science
Box: “Seeing Quantum Singularities in a Hole New Light”).
Science Box: What Goes Up May Not Necessarily Come Down: Escape
Velocity
In the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, two of the most dramatic scenes in the
film involved either slowing a spacecraft below escape velocity or pushing it past
escape velocity (Fig. 8A.1). In the first instance, the spacecraft Alexi Leonov dramat-
ically uses the atmosphere of Jupiter in order to become captured into Jupiter orbit; in
the latter case, the spacecraft U.S.S. Discovery is used as a booster—a first stage—and
sacrificed12 to propel Leonov out of Jupiter orbit.13
The escape velocity is the minimum velocity that an object must attain to escape
the gravitational attraction of a more massive body. The impact of escape velocity
manifests in several ways in the natural world: it is important in determining what
planets can have atmospheres, and it is also an explicit component determining the
radius of the event horizon of black holes.
While the escape velocity14 is the actual speed a rocket has to attain to slip the surly
bonds of Earth permanently, it also represents a concept: what is known in dynamics
(continued)
11
Or, as UCLA Professor William Kaula, one of KRG’s dissertation committee members, was fond of
saying, “An orbit always returns to the scene of the crime.”
12
Despite being a bit of a jerk in 2001, HAL 9000 actually had a touching death scene.
13
They also get a bit of help from a big-ass shock wave when the planet undergoes a hydrogen flash. This is
similar to the helium flash that stars go towards the end of their lives. . . except this was the beginning of a
stellar life.
14
Some claim that the term should actually be escape speed. Physicists delineate between speed and
velocity: speed is a rate of travel and velocity is the rate of travel in a given direction. With that in mind, the
notion of escape velocity does have an implied direction: on a radial line outward from the central body
(aka “up”).
as a separatrix. A separatrix15 is an infinitesimally thin dividing line between regions

of two different dynamical behaviors. In the case of escape velocity, this means either
being bound within the gravitational field of a massive body, or escaping it forever.16
Deriving the equation for escape velocity is a worthwhile exercise,17 and to do that
we start with the energy of one object gravitationally bound by another, which, as
we’ve already seen in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1 (in, for example, the Science Box:
“Pushing the Moon Out of Orbit” in Chap. 6: “Pure Energy”) is the sum of the kinetic
and potential energies:
Etotal ¼ Ekinetic þ Epotential ,
or,
1 GMbig msmall
Etotal ¼ msmall v2 :
2 r
With the exception of binary stars like Alpha Centauri A and B, orbits typically
involve a small mass (msmall), moving relative to another mass orders of magnitude
larger (mbig)—like a spacecraft orbiting a planet, a moon orbiting a planet, or a planet
orbiting a star. The variable G is the universal gravitational constant, which we have
already seen (6.67 1011 m3/kg s2), v is their relative velocity, and r is the radial
distance between the centers of the objects.
For a bound trajectory, an orbit whose shape is elliptical and where msmall repeats the
same path, the total energy is negative, meaning the magnitude of the kinetic energy is
less than the magnitude of the potential, or

jEkinetic j < Epotential :
(continued)
15
In its third season, KRG was invited to the Hart Building on the Paramount Studio lot to pitch story
ideas for Star Trek: Voyager. During his first meeting, after exchanging introductory pleasantries with the
writer to whom he was assigned to pitch, the first three sentences were, “What’s the name of this story?”
“Separatrix”. “Eff that!” Only he didn’t say, “Eff”. Welcome to Hollywood.
16
A concept related to that of the separatrix is a dynamical bifurcation. A separatrix represents a dynamical
“fork in the road,” leading to very different evolutions of the system. If a spacecraft was travelling exactly at
the escape velocity, some small nudge would eventually make it either fall below escape velocity into a
captured, or returning, orbit, or zoom off “To infinity and beyond!” Similarly, if an egg were to balance on
the peak of a roof, a tiny gust of wind or earth tremor would eventually cause it to roll one way or another:
landing in the back yard to become a snack for the dog, or on the front sidewalk to become a slip hazard
for the mailman. This latter kind of bifurcation, one that has the power to generate dramatically different
timelines, is called a Jonbar point or Jonbar hinge in science fiction—particularly alternate history science
fiction—and was explored in depth in the 2008 Doctor Who episode “Turn Left”.
17
Knowing how to come up with this equation can be very helpful. In 2001 at the Dragon*Con convention
in Atlanta, KRG met a charming and attractive member of the opposite sex, one who had a difficult time
believing his claims that he was a “rocket scientist.” A mitigating factor in this was likely the two adult
beverages that were sloshing around his otherwise empty stomach. With a physics degree herself, the young
lady insisted KRG prove his mettle by writing the equation for escape velocity. Instead, he performed the
above derivation on the back of a business card. The two wound up dating for over 2 years. Irrespective of this
particular heartwarming outcome, Hollyweird Science does not condone drinking and deriving.
If msmall is travelling too fast to remain in orbit or to be captured into orbit in the
first place, the trajectory is said to be hyperbolic, the magnitude of the kinetic energy
of msmall is greater than the magnitude of the potential energy, and

jEkinetic j > Epotential :
One situation we’ve yet to discuss is the transition between these two trajectories,
where

jEkinetic j ¼ Epotential :
To solve for the velocity where this occurs, we have
1 GMbig msmall
Etotal ¼ 0 ¼ msmall v2 :
2 r
Rearranging, and noting that the m on both sides is the same msmall, which
therefore cancels, we have
1 2 GMbig
v ¼ :
2 r
Multiplying both sides by 2, then taking the square root of both sides, gives us the
escape velocity, an equation we have already seen:
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2GMbig
vescape ¼ :
r
For a rocket at the surface of Earth (r ¼ 6371 km; Mbig ¼ 5.94 1024 kg), this
becomes
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi
u
u2 6:67 1011 m3 5:94 1024 kg
t kgs2
vescape ¼ :
6:371 106 m
This yields a result of just over 11,150 m/s or about 11.2 km/s (6.96 miles/s or just
over 25,000 miles/h). Notice that there is no dependency upon the mass of the object
escaping (msmall), so this value is the same for a hydrogen atom or a Saturn V rocket.18
An object, say shot from a cannon, travelling at exactly escape velocity would not
remain there. Something—a slight gust of wind, the change in position of the moon
relative to Earth or Earth relative to the Sun, even sunlight itself, which can impart
momentum—will act on that projectile and alter its velocity ever so slightly, but
enough to push it either into the realm of trajectories that remain gravitationally
tethered to Earth, or those that leave our planet forever.
(continued)
18
There is something of an inconsistency in Interstellar with regard to this point. It takes a rocket on par
with a Saturn V to get the crew off Earth, yet the far smaller shuttle that takes them to Miller’s Planet—
with 1.3 times the surface gravity—is able to achieve orbit.
Viewed another way, an object on an unbound trajectory, say a spacecraft rapidly

approaching a planet, can become bound to that planet if it sheds enough kinetic
energy, slowing enough so that it can become captured within the gravity well of the
planet. All spacecraft that want to hang around (rather than just flying by) must
perform this act, known as orbit insertion, and it is typically done by firing the main
engines ahead of the craft, thrusting in the opposite direction of travel to slow the
craft, in what is commonly known as an insertion burn. In the film 2010: The Year We
Make Contact, this was done cleverly and very dramatically when the Russian craft
Alexi Leonov passed through the outer levels of Jupiter’s atmosphere, using friction to
slow the craft to achieve orbit insertion.
Fig. 8A.1 Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) and Irina Yakunina (Natasha Schneider)
are really not enjoying Alexi Leonov’s JOI (Jupiter Orbit Insertion). From 2010: The
Year We Make Contact. Image Copyright © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), image
courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
While a bound orbit describes an ellipse and an unbound trajectory under the
influence of the gravitation of a much larger mass describes a hyperbola, a trajectory
for which the smaller object travels at exactly the escape velocity is parabolic. This
brings us to an important point. In your high school or freshman physics class, you may
have learned that the shape of the trajectory of a ball thrown or a projectile fired
from a cannon is a parabola. This is a very useful pedagogical approximation, but it
assumes a flat Earth. In fact, if the object returns to Earth, it is a partial ellipse, since it
is a bound trajectory and, hence, a partial orbit.
Of course, the above parabola argument is on par with the pickiest of nerdgassing.
Parabolas are just fine for baseballs, bullets, and ballerinas.
Another way to view an orbit appears in the right-hand panel of Fig. 8.2,
which shows the forces on a satellite moving in a circular orbit around Earth.
In a circular orbit, the velocity of the satellite is always tangential to the surface
of the Earth (of radius re), i.e., parallel to the ground directly beneath it. The
force of gravity acts to pull the spacecraft towards Earth, while the centrifugal
force19 of the spacecraft’s circular trajectory exactly counters that.20
Launching from a spinning Earth adds an extra level of complexity. If you
are at the equator, over the span of one day (one Earth rotation), you travel the
circumference of Earth 40,074 km (24,901 miles), meaning your tangential
instantaneous velocity is about 1670 km/h (1038 miles/h). At the poles, over
the span of one day, you travel nowhere, you simply rotate through
360 degrees, for a velocity of 0 km/h. From an energy standpoint, it is
expensive to launch material just into Earth orbit—at present, it takes about
100 kg of fuel to launch 1 kg of mass into orbit. So mass is at a premium, and
while spacecraft designers do all that they can to reduce the mass of spacecraft,
operators also try to take every advantage that nature provides.
The closer you are to the equator, the faster your tangential speed. There-
fore, the farther south your launch point, the more of a boost you get from the
spinning Earth.21 This explains why the southern states of Texas and Florida
were the two states in the final running to host NASA’s primary launch site
(obviously, Cape Canaveral won), and why the European Space Agency
launches near the equator from a complex near the town of Kourou on the
coast of French Guiana. It is also why the now-defunct private launch
company Sea Launch used to tow rockets out to the equator in the Pacific
Ocean in order to orbit satellites.
This also means that when a rocket lifts off from Earth, its instantaneous
velocity is a combination of its vertical motion due to its engines and its
horizontal motion due to Earth’s spin. This typically causes the trajectory to
bed towards the east (Fig. 8.3) even when the rocket is pointed straight up.
In the film Elysium, the eponymous space station was clearly visible from
the surface of Earth, and spacecraft travelling to the huge station simply
pointed their noses in the direction of the station and. . . travelled. This was
one of those film-science cases where inaccurately-depicted science was more
intuitive for the viewer than accurate science would have been. To show the
19
If you’re one of those tiresome types who like to say “Actually, there’s no such thing as a centrifugal
force, just a centripetal force. . .”, actually, there is such a thing. You don’t want to get into this argument
with us, unless you’re really good at the math involved with rotating reference frames. The common
argument is that “There is no such thing as centrifugal force, it’s simply inertia.” This is exactly equivalent
to saying, “You know that force that slams you into the car seat when you push your car’s accelerator to the
floor? That’s not a real force, it’s just inertia.” Clench tight, we’ll be going to that well again in Chap. 10.
20
Back on the topic of centrifugal force acting on an orbiting spacecraft, another way of casting the
situation is that gravity is acting towards Earth—it is a centripetal or center-seeking force. If you believe in
Newton’s third law, that for every force there is an equal and opposite force. . . centrifugal force is that
equal and opposite force.
21
This assumes you are going into a typical west-to-east orbit. If for some reason you wanted to go east-to-
west you’d go as far north as possible to minimize the tangential velocity you’d need to neutralize during
the ascent.
craft taking into account Earth’s

spin22 would be so counter-intuitive
as to be distracting.
So, as we can see from the Pitch-o-
matic 9000 example above, the dif-
ference between being in orbit and
going splat is all about your velocity.
So how fast do you have to be mov-
ing to safely orbit the Earth just
above the atmosphere? This region
of space is known as Low Earth
Orbit or LEO, and it extends from
an altitude of about 300 km to
2,000 km up.23 Being in LEO
means travelling at about 8 km/s.24
Fig. 8.3 A USAF F-15E Strike Eagle
Escaping Earth orbit entirely observes a launch of the Space Shuttle
requires an escape velocity of Atlantis. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air
11.2 km/s, that is, an additional Force.
3.2 km/s. A scientist or engineer
would put this another way. They would say that going from LEO to escaping
the Earth entirely requires a delta-V (sometimes written as ΔV) of 3.2 km/s.
(“Delta,” or Δ, is commonly used to indicate the change in a variable between
two points on a graph in calculus). Even with an assist from the Earth’s
equatorial velocity, getting into orbit actually requires a delta-V close to
9 km/s due to losses from atmospheric and gravitational drag. So now we
begin to see the rationale behind Robert Heinlein’s quote at the beginning of
this chapter: “Once you get to Earth orbit, you’re half-way to anywhere in the
Solar System.”
Non est ad astra mollis e terris via. (There is no easy way to the stars from the
Earth.)
Seneca, Greek philosopher/statesman/educator
22
Not to mention the conservation of angular momentum.
23
Lower altitudes with the low Earth orbit bands still have just enough atmosphere to cause drag that
slows objects in orbit. Left unchecked, this will cause the object’s orbit to decay, as happened with
America’s Skylab space station in 1979. This is why the International Space Station has to be boosted
periodically by visiting spacecraft to maintain its orbit.
24
Things moving in higher orbits move more slowly and still stay aloft because they have higher total
energy than objects in lower orbits. This may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense if you consider
how slowly the moon, 370,000 km away, moves—just 1 km/s—compared to the ISS in LEO.
Kepler’s Laws
In 1530 Polish astronomer Nikolas Copernicus published his great work De
revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which asserted that Earth rotated on its axis
daily and revolved around the Sun yearly. As it turns out, Copernicus was not
the first observer of the sky to suggest that Earth revolved around the Sun
rather than vice versa. The Greek mathematician and astronomer Aristarchus
of Samos proposed the same heliocentric model almost 1800 years prior.
However, before Copernicus, the ideas of another ancient Greek, Aristotle,
had beaten out Aristarchus’s. Aristotle proposed a geocentric model with the
stars, Moon, Sun, and planets orbiting Earth. In 140 AD(-ish). The Greek
astronomer Claudius Ptolemy retconned some of the shortcomings of the
geocentric model, such as the fact that sometimes it appears as if the planets
are moving backward from the perspective of Earth, which is a natural optical
illusion caused when two planets orbit another body, but which shouldn’t
occur if the planet’s were orbiting around the center of the Moon (for
example, the Moon never exhibits such retrograde motion because it does
actually orbit Earth). Unfortunately, because Aristotle and Ptolemy were
famouser than Aristarchus, and since the powerful Catholic Church in
Europe believed that Biblical scripture supported the geocentric model that
had Earth at the center of all things, the heliocentric model was consigned to
the scrap heap.
Not only did the heliocentric model of Copernicus better explain the
motion of the planets in the night sky, eliminating the awkward so-called
epicycles Ptolemy had introduced to rescue geocentrism, it was able to calcu-
late the distance from the Sun to all the planets out to Saturn (then the most
distant planet known) to an impressive accuracy. However, it was a mistake by
Copernicus himself that delayed the general acceptance of the heliocentric
model. One holdover from the ancient Greeks that Copernicus had hung on
to was the notion that orbits were perfect circles. This belief led to small but
noticeable errors in the observed positions of the planets in the night sky
compared to those predicted by Copernicus’s model. This allowed skeptical
opponents to discredit the theory.
In the early seventeenth century, a mathematician named Johannes Kep-
ler,25 whom we first met in Chap. 2 of Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, was
convinced he could prove the Copernican theory, and used Tycho Brahe’s
25
In more recent years, in honor of his research on the planets of this Solar System, Kepler’s name was
given to an astronomical satellite that has discovered thousands of planets orbiting distant stars.
observations of the positions of Mars to derive three laws that govern the
motion of orbiting bodies, known today as Kepler’s laws.
Kepler published his first two laws in 1609, the year before Galileo discov-
ered the larger moons of Jupiter. Although theses laws are cast in terms of
planets orbiting the Sun, they are true for any body orbiting another—from a
pair of mutually-orbiting stars to a satellite orbiting Earth. When Kepler
published his third law in 1619, it was phrased as a general case rather than
the specific case of a planet orbiting the Sun.
Kepler’s First Law

The orbits of all planets are ellipses with the Sun at one focus.
It takes five values to describe the size and shape of an orbit, as well as its
orientation in space (we will ignore two of those, angles describing the
orientation of the orbit, as they only really make a difference for experts
actually trying to determine things like exactly when a satellite will be in
range of a particular ground-based communications station). It takes one more
value to describe an object’s position on the orbit (Fig. 8.5). All orbits are
elliptical, with the case of a circle being a special type of ellipse.
An ellipse has axes of two different lengths, which are known as the major
axis and the minor axis. A circular orbit is simply an orbit where the major and
minor axes are the same length. Half the length of the major axis is the semi-
major axis, and this is an important value—the semi-major axis represents the
average distance the planet is from the Sun. There are two foci26 (plural of
focus) on the major axis of a planetary orbit. The Sun is at one focus; the other
focus is known as the empty focus.
If the semi-major axis describes the size of the orbit, its shape is described by
a value called the orbital eccentricity or e,27 the measure of how out-of-round an
orbit is. This ranges from 0 to just under 1. A perfectly circular orbit has an
eccentricity of 0. The orbits of most planets, as well as many moons, have small
eccentricities, and so are very nearly circular.28 More eccentric orbits are more
elongated—the orbit shown in Fig. 8.4 has an eccentricity of about 0.6. Some
comets have eccentricities of 0.9, even 0.99, meaning that their orbits are
extremely long and skinny. If the value of e is equal to 1 or greater, it means
26
Also called centers.
27
We know it’s confusing, but don’t mix up this variable e with the mathematical constant e we use to
discuss exponential growth in Chap. 2.
28
Especially the orbits of Venus and Neptune.
Fig. 8.4 Features of a planet’s orbit about the Sun. The value a, the semi-major axis, is
not only half the length of the major axis, it also represents the average distance of the
orbiting body from the central body. The position of the planet on the orbit is given by λ,
and is known as the orbital longitude. Illustration by Chelsii Carter.
that the object has reached escape velocity and the shape of the object’s
trajectory is that of a parabola or hyperbola.
There are two other important points on the major axis. The closest the
orbiting object ever approaches the Sun is at point P, called the pericenter of
the orbit. If the orbit is a Sun-centered orbit, this point may be called the
perihelion; for an orbit around Earth, it is the perigee. The closest point of an
orbit around any star is called the periastron. (If in doubt, the term pericenter is
always correct.) Point A in Fig. 8.4 is the most distant point of the orbit, and is
known as the apocenter (aphelion, apogee, apoastron, etc.).29
29
Often you will hear the term periapsis and apoapsis for these points of an orbit, even by professionals. In
the same manner that “irregardless” is not a word, neither are “periapsis” nor “apoapsis” legitimate words,
even though often-used. The term pericenter means “closest to the center”, while apocenter means
“farthest from the center” (recall that an orbit has two points that are called “centers”). The term “apse”
(literally: arch) is an overarching term (see what we did there?) that describes both the nearest and farthest
points of the orbit—what a mathematician would call the extrema. The term periapsis means “closest to
the apse” and apoapsis means “farthest from the apse”, when in fact both the pericentric and apocentric
points lie on the apsidal line, aka the major axis.
Science Box: Kepler’s First Law and the Orbits of Neptune and Pluto, and
Planet X
An object’s position in orbit around a larger body is determined by its orbital ele-
ments, and two of those orbital elements dictate the size and shape of the orbit. The
average distance or semi-major axis (a), of an orbit is determined by the orbital
energy, which we explored in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1. In the previous science box,
we saw that the total energy of an object in orbit is the sum of that object’s energy of
motion, or kinetic energy, and its gravitational potential energy:
1 GMbig msmall
Etotal ¼ msmall v2 :
2 r
Where m is the mass of the smaller object, M is the mass of the object it is orbiting,
v represents their relative velocity, and r is the distance between their centers. If msmall
is in a bound elliptical orbit, its semi-major axis is a function of the energy, given by
GMbig
a¼ :
2Etotal
Objects in the distant outer Solar System feel the Sun’s gravitation only weakly,
and are very loosely bound. A good way to visualize an orbit is to imagine the
potential energy as a funnel, with the planet or star being orbited at the bottom of
the funnel and the height of the funnel determined by the planet or star’s mass
(Fig. 8.6). As an orbiting object’s kinetic energy increases, it move higher and higher
up the funnel until it can eventually escape for only a minor increase in its velocity.
(This kind of imagery explains why scientists and science fiction authors sometimes
refer to the surface of a planet as being at the bottom of a gravity well.)
Fig. 8B.1 Gravity Probe B orbiting Earth. As in this illustration, gravity wells are often
depicted using a 2-D wireframe model, since this is an excellent 2-dimensional depic-
tion of a 3-dimensional phenomenon. Illustration courtesy of NASA.
(continued)
The values of a and e for a body in orbit about a more massive body also determine
how close and far the bodies can be from one another. In Fig. 8.5, the distance from
the Sun to the perihelion (P) of an orbit is labeled as q, and calculating that value is a
simple matter using just the values of the semi-major axis a and the eccentricity e:
q ¼ að1 eÞ:
The distance Q from the Sun to the aphelion (A) of an orbit is also found by a
simple calculation:
Q ¼ að1 þ eÞ:
Imagine we have two bodies on orbits with the same semi-major axis, but one orbit
is a circular orbit and the other an eccentric orbit. In the circular case, e ¼ 0, and both
q and Q are equal. For the other body, as e approaches 1, the maximum value for an
object that has not reached escape velocity, 1+e approaches 2. In other words, the two
objects with different eccentricities may have the same average distance from the
Sun, but the one with the higher eccentricity has a smaller pericenter distance and a
greater apocenter distance.
Neptune’s semi-major axis is 30.1 AU, its eccentricity 0.009.30 So Neptune’s peri-
helion and aphelion distances are
QNeptune ¼ ð30:1 AUÞð1 þ 0:009Þ ¼ 30:4 AU:

qNeptune ¼ ð30:1 AUÞð1 0:009Þ ¼ 29:8 AU:
For Pluto, its semi-major axis is 39.5 AU, but its orbit is very eccentric at 0.249. So,
QPluto ¼ ð39:5 AUÞð1 þ 0:249Þ ¼ 49:3 AU:

qPluto ¼ ð39:5 AUÞð1 0:249Þ ¼ 29:7 AU:
Pluto, therefore, actually approaches the Sun closer than Neptune does, and it
recedes much further out into the distant reaches of the Solar System.
Pluto’s orbit is so elongated that it crosses the orbit of another planet. Now
that’s. . . you’ve got no business doing that if you want to call yourself a planet.
Come on, now! There’s something especially transgressive about that.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, scilebrity
In the real Solar System planets do not move perfectly in accordance with Kepler’s
Laws. Planets speed up and slow down in their orbits due to tiny gravitational tugs,
called perturbations, from other planets. Even Isaac Newton in The Principia: Mathe-
matical Principles of Natural Philosophy noted this in the 1600s:
(continued)
30
The orbits of Venus and Neptune are as close to perfect circles as you will find in Nature.
Kepler’s laws, although not rigidly true, are sufficiently near to the truth to have
led to the discovery of the law of attraction of the bodies of the solar system. The
deviation from complete accuracy is due to the facts, that the planets are not of
inappreciable mass, that, in consequence, they disturb each other’s orbits about
the Sun, and, by their action on the Sun itself. . . these errors are appreciable
although very small, since the mass of the largest of the planets, Jupiter, is less
than 1/1000th of the Sun’s mass.
Astronomers Adams and Leverrier went hunting for Neptune specifically because
its existence best explained small irregularities in the motion of the planet Uranus.
Although similarly-sized perturbations have never been observed for Neptune,31
that has not stopped people32 from claiming that another large body resides in the
outer Solar System, heretofore unobserved. Often referred to as “Planet X”, over the
years the variable X has been variously filled in with the names Nemesis,33 Tyche,
Hercobulus, and most famously, Niburu.34
In 1995, a Wisconsin woman named Nancy Leider35 began claiming publicly that
she was receiving messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system36
through an implant in her brain.37 In 2001, Leider claimed that she was chosen to be
the Zetas’ conduit to warn humanity that an object that she initially called Planet X,
would sweep through the inner Solar System and pass close to Earth on May 27, 2003.
The close approach of Planet X would cause Earth’s rotation to stop and its poles to
shift, thereby causing global catastrophe.38 Indeed, a scenario like something out of
the George Pal film When Worlds Collide (1951).
Eventually Leider connected her predictions to the works of Zecharia Sitchin, a
proponent of the theory that ancient Earth had been visited by aliens. According to
Sitchin’s interpretation of Sumerian and Babylonian texts, a giant planet called
Niburu swings through the inner Solar System, passing by Earth, every 3600 years.
(continued)
31
While undetected dwarf planets almost certainly exist, to put this notion in perspective, perturbations
on Neptune would allow observers to detect a Mars-sized object out to 300 AU, and a Jupiter-sized object
out to 1000 AU.
32
Some of whom are scientists, others. . . not so much.
33
Nemesis is mentioned in the Eureka episode “What Goes Around Comes Around”, the key difference
being that Eureka openly admits to being a work of science fiction.
34
Also commonly spelled Nuburu.
35
Conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists are notorious for jumping on any small coincidence, any
unfortunate turn of a phrase, any ever-so-slightly ambiguous sentence in a NASA press release, as concrete
“proof” of their ideas. In the same spirit, we can’t help but note that “leider”, in German, means
“unfortunately.” Clearly, an advance tip-off that Leider—if that is her real name—is of dubious veracity.
36
The “Grays” from Zeta Reticuli 4—with the big heads and cold black eyes—that appear in so many
science fiction stories (like X-Files) have their origin in experiences of Betty and Barney Hill. Under
hypnotic regression (and we’ll discuss the issues with that in a future chapter), the Hills recounted how
they were allegedly abducted by aliens during a drive through the White Mountains of New Hampshire—
a story that was chronicled in the book The Interrupted Journey (1966) and the film The UFO Incident
(1975) (among others). A newer film exploring the story of the Hills, with the working title Captured, was
announced in September 2015.
37
Sounds legit.
38
We really should discuss angular momentum conservation at some point.
Leider’s Planet X became Niburu, even though Sitchin believed Niburu would not
return until after the year 3000.
When an object designated 2001 KX76,39 later named Ixion, was discovered in the
outer Solar System, many jumped on the “2001 KX76 is Niburu” bandwagon,
heralding the discovery as proof of the impending Planet X calamity. Ixion is about
half the diameter of Pluto and, like Pluto, its surface has a reddish hue. Ixion’s orbit
has a semi-major axis of 39.7 AU, and an eccentricity of 0.2440 so:
qIxion ¼ ð39:7 AUÞð1 0:24Þ ¼ 30:2 AU,
meaning that it is on an orbit very similar to that of Pluto. Ixion has been classified
among objects with similar orbits as plutinos.
This also means (1) Ixion may pass closer to the Sun than Neptune, but it gets
nowhere near Earth (in fact Pluto passes closer to Earth than Ixion), and (2) it’s orbital
period is 250 years, not 3600. Clearly, Ixion cannot be Niburu. Other doomsday
theorists have pointed to transneptunian41 objects Sedna and Eris as Niburu or
Planet X, with similar degrees of success.42
When 1 January 2004 rolled around, and Earth was not reduced to a smoking
cinder, it was clear even to the most casual of observers that the Niburu threat was
non-existent. Still, what’s a good doomsday scenario if it can’t be recycled? In 2010,
the Niburu myth was rolled into the 2012 Mayan Calendar Kitchen Sink Doomsday
Scenario, Niburu proponents claiming its passage through the inner Solar System had
been “delayed”.43
When astronomers discovered comet C/2010 X1 (later renamed comet Elenin) in
December 2010, there was a new candidate! Comets can be on very eccentric orbits
with very large semi-major axes, meaning that they can spend most of their lives in
(continued)
39
The naming convention for new objects like comets and asteroids may look like a random mix of letters
and number, but it is neither cryptic, nor difficult to decode. The first number is the year of its discovery.
There are 52 weeks in a year, and 25 letters in the alphabet (the letter “I” is not used), so the first letter
denotes the two-week period within the year of its discovery. The second letter is then assigned according
to the object’s order of discovery in that two week period. Since modern sky surveys can detect hundreds
of objects in a two-week period, the number indicates how many times the alphabet has cycled through. In
the year 2001, the object discovered on January 1 would be named 2001 AA, then 2001 AB, 2001 AC, to
2001 AZ. The next object would be 2001 AA1. By its designation, we can tell that 2001 KX76 was
discovered in the 10th two-week period in 2001 (May 22nd), and a lot of other objects were discovered in
that time frame.
40
Assuming NASA is telling the truth that is. Conspiracy theorists love to cast aspersions on NASA’s
truthiness (borrowing a term from Malcolm Reynolds), but there are a whole host of non-NASA
institutions and organizations that report this type of information. At least they want you to think they’re
not part of NASA.
41
A catch-all term for any of a number of different classes of cold icy objects that orbit beyond Neptune.
42
How is this for highly amusing? Here’s an example of when one doomsday/conspiracy theorist cites
previous failed doomsday/conspiracy theories to lend credence to their own soon-to-be-failed doomsday/
conspiracy theory: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-niburu-planet-x-sys
tem-and-its-potential-impacts-on-our-solar-system/5459788
43
Because, clearly, some believe Kepler’s Laws are not laws, merely guidelines. Even more recent
discussions of Niburu online, including ZetaTalk, claim that the planet is hiding on the opposite side
of the Sun from Earth.
the cold outer reaches of the Solar System, then pass through the inner Solar System,
sometimes even interior to the orbit of Mercury. When astronomers precisely deter-
mined the orbit of Elenin, they calculated that perihelion would occur in September,
and the comet would make its closest approach to Earth later in October, when it was
outbound from the Sun. Clearly this was Niburu! Although named for Leonid Elenin,
the astronomer who discovered the comet, doomsday preppers noted that the ELE in
the name was likely NASA code for “Extinction Level Event”, a term with which the
public became familiar from the film Deep Impact (1998).44
Elenin did doomsday/conspiracy theorists the disservice of exploding,45 and by the
time the remaining bits passed Earth in October 2011, the debris was nearly
undetectable by ground-based telescopes. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Elenin’s
demise months in advance of December 21st 2012 meant that there was time to find
other doomsday candidates.
Enter comet C/2012 S1, known as ISON, discovered in September 2012, and even
though astronomers soon calculated that its closest approach to Earth would not be
until early 2014, once again Nibiru proponents claimed, “THIS is the true Niburu! No
really. This one is it.”
Like Elenin, comet ISON also broke up, and was vaporized by its close passage to
the Sun long before approaching Earth.46 Vaporized also in the Sun’s heat was the
specter of Niburu. Still, it is nearly a certainty that, like the legendary Phoenix, the
specter of Niburu will be reborn the next time a bright object on an eccentric orbit
approaches us from the depths of the outer Solar System.47
So far, we have considered an orbit as being confined to a plane—and orbits

are indeed planar. The orbital plane can be tilted, however, and the degree of
this tilt is known as the orbital inclination (i). Figure 8.5 shows that the tilt of
the orbit of the International Space Station is approximately 52 degrees relative
to Earth’s equator. The inclination of the Hubble Space Telescope is only
around 28 degrees.
The fundamental conceit, the “gimme” in the film Gravity, was that astro-
naut Matt Kowalski and Mission Specialist Ryan Stone could traverse the
distance between these two orbits with very different inclinations and altitudes
44
Although both authors view themselves as creative chaps, we’re not making any of this conspiracy stuff
up. Why waste creative effort when others have already done the heavy lifting?
45
Admittedly, it was a slow explosion, more of a gravitational disruption. . . but go with us, we’re on a roll.
46
The approach of ISON was used as the hook for the 2013-2014 Korean soft science fiction mega-hit
limited TV series 별에서 온 그대, a.k.a. My Love From Another Star (an American remake was in
development but has since been postponed). The series was timed so that’s its climatic episodes would air
as ISON made its closest approach, in hopes of leveraging the inevitable news coverage of the astronomical
event into free advertising. ISON’s subsequent fizzle far from Earth forced the script writers to create a
second, fictional, comet to take its place. As they say in showbiz, never work with children, animals, or
giant rubble balls of rock and ice.
47
One of the drawbacks of making predictions like this in a book, as opposed to on a blog or social media,
is that books take much longer to progress from the author’s keyboard, through several layers of editorial
oversight, to the typesetter, then to the public. This sentence was typed well before the release of the
Batygin and Brown paper heralding the possible existence of a distant ninth planet—and already there are
web sites proclaiming this yet-to-be-discovered object Niburu.
Fig. 8.5 The orbital inclinations, relative to Earth’s equator, of the Hubble Space
Telescope, and the International Space Station. The two objects are never closer than
139 km (86 miles) from one another, this occurring at the two points where their orbits
cross. Illustration by Chelsii Carter.
with just one backpack full of air (and propellant), when in fact the closest these
two orbits can ever be is about 139 km apart (Fig. 8.6). Since these orbits are at
different altitudes, objects at the closest point would have quite different speeds.
(We will explore that more when we get to Kepler’s third law.)
Kepler’s Second Law

A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal
intervals of time
In Fig. 8.7, we again show the same orbit as in Fig. 8.4, but labeled differently. In
this case, we start a clock when the planet passes pericenter, and wait an arbitrary
time τ until the planet reaches point 1. In that time, a line connecting the
Sun with the planet would sweep out the magenta colored region. We wait for
the planet to pass apocenter, and when it reaches point 2, we again start a clock
and again wait the same time τ until the planet reaches point 3. A line connecting
Fig. 8.6 Kowalski and Stone make their way from the orbit of the Hubble Space
Telescope down to the International Space Station in Gravity. That they could make a
trip of that distance with the air available in their suits and the fuel in the maneuvering
unit is the biggest “just suspend disbelief” moment of the film. Copyright © Warner
Bros. Pictures. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Fig. 8.7 A graphical illustration of Kepler’s second law. The magenta and green wedges
have equal areas, but in order for that to be so, the planet had to be moving much faster
from pericenter to point 1 than from point 2 to point 3. Illustration by Chelsii Carter.
the Sun with the planet would sweep out the green-shaded wedge during
that time.
Now here’s the weird bit. Kepler’s second law says that the area of the
magenta region is exactly the same as the area of the green region. Since
points 2 and 3 are farther from the Sun, in order for the two areas to be
equal, the angle of the wedge from pericenter to point 1 has to be greater
than the angle from points 2 to 3. The practical upshot is that the velocity of
an object on a non-circular orbit changes constantly, is highest when the
object is at pericenter, and lowest when it is at apocenter. Consider a person
on a swing. At the highest points in their arc, they are moving the slowest.
When they move through the lowest point, they are moving at their highest
speed.
Science Box: Gravity, Kepler’s Second Law, and the Molniya Orbit
In the opening few minutes of the film Gravity, the audience is provided with several
important details, some of which are merely implied rather than being stated
explicitly, and all of which can whiz past unnoticed if you are not paying close
attention. An understanding of some of these details leads to a greater appreciation
of the film.
Mission Control (Ed Harris) warns Astronaut Kowalski (George Clooney) that the
test of a Russian anti-satellite missile (ASAT) has created a cloud of orbital debris.
MISSION CONTROL
NORAD reports a Russian
satellite has incurred a
missile strike. The impact
has created a cloud of debris
orbiting at 20,000 miles per
hour. Current debris orbit
does not overlap with your
trajectory. We’ll keep you
posted on any developments.
Just a few minutes later, an astronaut aboard the shuttle Explorer frantically
announces, “We’ve lost Houston! We’ve lost Houston!” A lot has transpired here!
(We already elaborated in some detail on this topic in the Chap. 7, Science Box:
“Space’s Shooting Range and the Kessler Syndrome”.)
That Explorer no longer has communications with the ground means that the
expanding debris cloud from the destroyed satellite (or from one of the satellites
destroyed by the debris cloud) has damaged or destroyed one or several of the TDRS
satellites used to communicate from the ground to the shuttle.
That it is a Russian satellite is also an important detail. Kowalski says that the
Russians target was “. . .most likely a spysat gone bad, now shrapnel,” but that was
speculation that the Russians destroyed an Intelsat. Given the sequence of events, there
(continued)
is a more likely candidate: it was a spent

communications satellite.48 It turns out
that Russia does not make as frequent
use of geostationary orbits for communi-
cations satellites as do countries like the
United States (for more on these types of
orbits see the science box “Kepler’s Third
Law and Geostationary/Geosynchronous
Orbits”). Geostationary orbits are where
U.S. weather and communications satel-
lites are located, but they are in orbits
that lie in the plane of Earth’s equator.
Russia launches most of its satellites from
a launch site in the town of Baikonur in
Kazakhstan, which is at a latitude of 46
north. To put a satellite in geostationary
orbit takes a lot of fuel. Further, satellites
in geostationary orbits are difficult to see
from most of Russia, since much of the
country is at a higher latitude than
Baikonur. So from a lot of Russian terri-
tory, either geostationary satellites are
below the horizon, or they are so low to
the horizon as to make little practical Fig. 8C.1 A Molniya orbit. A satellite in
difference. an orbit like this would be visible over
To address this problem, many Russian Russia from the time it passed one dot,
satellites are in highly inclined, highly through apogee, and until it passed the
eccentric orbits called Molniya orbits, other dot. Illustration by Sarah Hunt.
displayed in Fig. 8C.1. From higher lati-
tudes, the satellite is high enough over
the horizon to be seen once it passes one dot in Fig. 8C.1, and can be seen from the
ground until it orbits to the other dot. By Kepler’s second law, the spacecraft slows in
its orbit as it moves towards apogee—approximately the same orbital distance as
satellites in geostationary orbit—meaning that it is visible for a long time from higher
latitudes, making it appear as if it is very nearly geostationary for much of its orbit.
(continued)
48
Molynia orbits were also used for Russian spy satellites. Perigee would be over the US, so camera
resolution would be high, then the lengthy downlinks of stored imagery could be relayed as the satellite
moved slowly over Russian ground stations on the other side of the planet.
The satellite then zooms very quickly past

Earth on the perigee side to begin the
process again.
If the target satellite in Gravity was
a communications satellite in a Molniya
orbit, the explosion would have sent
debris in random directions—some in
or near the equatorial plane, and
many with easily enough kinetic energy
to reach satellites in geostationary orbit
(Fig. 8C.2). So it is plausible, certainly at
the credibility level necessary for a
screenplay, that a Russian satellite
destroyed by an ASAT close to Earth
could result in debris that could destroy
a NASA TDRS satellite.
Could that sequence of events have
occurred as rapidly as depicted in Grav-
ity? Probably not. A recurring point in
Hollyweird Science is that the rate at
which events unfold is frequently the
most common type of science inaccu-
racy, and the chain of events that occur
in Gravity is no exception. Still, many Fig. 8C.2 The destruction of a satellite
who have complained about the science in a Molniya orbit could easily send
in Gravity have failed to appreciate just debris out to the distance of geostation-
how much science passed stealthily by in ary orbit, and in many different direc-
the first few minutes of the film. tions. Illustration by Sarah Hunt.
Kepler’s Third Law

The square of the period of an orbit is proportional to the cube of the
semi-major axis.
This mouthful means that the farther an object is from the body it orbits, the
longer it takes to orbit. This may sound obvious—Neptune is 30 times farther
from the Sun than Earth, and if we assume a circular orbit (and Neptune’s orbit
very nearly is), then the circumference of its orbit is 30 times that of Earth’s. So
naturally, one would expect Neptune to take longer to orbit the Sun. The
relationship is not linear, though, so Neptune takes far longer than 30 years to
orbit the Sun—it takes approximately 165 years. It took until 2011 for Neptune
to complete one full orbit since its accepted discovery in 1846.49 At 9.6 AU50
from the Sun, Saturn takes just under 30 years to complete one orbit of the Sun.51
49
Historical astronomers are all but certain that Galileo saw Neptune on at least one occasion, perhaps more.
Because of its distance from the Sun, it moved so slowly that he did not realize he was seeing a planet.
50
An AU or “astronomical unit” is equal to the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.
51
The rock band No Doubt had an album entitled Return of Saturn—named because Saturn takes
roughly 30 years to orbit the Sun, and lead singer Gwen Stefani had recently turned 30.
Science Box: Kepler’s Third Law and Geostationary/Geosynchronous Orbits
You’ve made the big decision to cut the cable, and go with satellite television. As a
dedicated do-it-yourselfer, the instructions tell you to point your newly-installed dish
at a point in the sky. Why there? If satellites are moving in orbits, why don’t you need
a tracking dish to follow the satellite’s trajectory? You are in fact being instructed to
point the dish at a satellite that is located in geostationary orbit—an orbit which
appears to be unmoving relative to the ground.
Kepler’s third law dictates that an orbit at a given distance from a celestial body—a
star, a planet, a moon—also has a fixed orbital period. For example, the International
Space Station is in low Earth orbit, at an average altitude of roughly 420 km (261 miles).
This corresponds to an orbital period of just over an hour and a half. GPS satellites are in
medium Earth orbit at an altitude of 20,200 km (12,550 miles), orbiting with a period of
about 12 h. The Moon, on the other hand, has a semi-major axis of 384,000 km, orbiting
Earth with a period of 27.3 days, or about a month52 (Fig. 8D.1).
Fig. 8D.1 Types and distances of Earth orbits along with their periods. The upper
panel depicts the distances of low Earth orbits (LEO), medium Earth orbits (MEO), and
(continued)
52
The word “month” derives from the same word as “moon”.
geostationary orbits. While objects in LEO like the space station, and in MEO like GPS
satellites are typically on inclined orbits, all geostationary orbits are in Earth’s equa-
torial plane. The entire upper panel is included in the bottom panel to show the
distances of LEO, MEO, and geostationary orbits relative to that of the Moon.
Somewhere, between MEO and the Moon, lies an orbit with a period that is exactly
the same as the time it takes Earth to spin once—i.e., one day. If an object is at that
distance, that is, 35,786 km (22,236 miles), and orbiting in Earth’s equatorial plane,
then even though it is moving through space at just under 9400 km/h, it appears
motionless relative to the surface of Earth. A dish antenna pointed at the satellite will
remain pointed at the satellite. Conversely, the satellite will always have a view of
Earth from the same orientation. This is why both communications and weather
satellites are in geostationary orbit.53 Since a geostationary orbit is in Earth’s equa-
torial plane this explains why satellite TV dishes in the northern hemisphere are
generally southward-facing, while those in the southern hemisphere are generally
northward-facing.
A related type of orbit is a geosynchronous orbit. A geosynchronous orbit is any
orbit at the same altitude as geostationary, but not necessarily in the equatorial
plane. A geosynchronous orbit can be inclined, meaning that a satellite in that orbit
passes over the same latitude at the same time every day. A geostationary orbit is one
type of geosynchronous orbit. Restated, a geostationary orbit is geosynchronous, but
a geosynchronous orbit is not necessarily geostationary.
(continued)
53
Science writer and science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke is often credited with pioneering the idea of
geostationary orbits, but although he popularized the notion, the concept actually dates back to 1928, to a
story by German author Hermann Noordung entitled The Problem with Space Travel. What Clarke did do
was make the connection between this type of orbit and its usefulness for broadcast satellites and relay
satellites, like the constellation of NASA TDRS satellites we discuss in later chapters. This is why a
geostationary orbit is sometimes referred to as a Clarke orbit.
Fig. 8D.2 The ground track, or sub-spacecraft point of a spacecraft in a Tundra orbit.
The ground track of this spacecraft dwells for a long time over Japan. Illustration
courtesy Wikimedia Commons, user Tubas.
For example, some countries operate satellites that are on highly elliptical orbits,
yet have 24 h periods. One such satellite orbit, called a Tundra orbit, has the same high
orbital tilt, or inclination, as the Molniya orbit, as well as being highly eccentric, but its
semi-major axis is the same as that of a geostationary satellite, so its period is 24 h.
Figure 8D.2 shows the ground track of a satellite in a Tundra orbit. Although the
satellite does not appear to dwell over the same spot in the sky, it does cross the same
latitude at the same time every day—hence the orbit is geosynchronous, not geosta-
tionary. The satellites that broadcast Sirius/XM satellite radio are in Tundra orbits.
Lagrange Points
Now let’s move beyond Kepler’s laws and step into the eighteenth century
discoveries of Joseph-Louis Lagrange, by way of a twentieth century imagining
of the twenty-first century. The opening moments of the film 2010: The Year
We Make Contact (1984)54 recount key events from 2001: A Space Odyssey,
and do a fine job of setting a creepy otherworldly tone for the film. When it
comes to the fate of the monolith that U.S.S. Discovery and her crew discov-
ered at Jupiter, as well as that of Discovery herself, the screen reads:
MISSION ANALYSIS:
POSITION OF SECOND MONOLITH. . . LA GRANGE POINT
BETWEEN JUPITER AND IO.
POSITION OF U.S.S. DISCOVERY. . . ORBIT AROUND IO.
The Lagrangian points or Lagrange points are positions where a small object
whose position is dominated by the gravitational effects of a pair of much
larger bodies Mbig and Msmall—like the Sun and a planet or Jupiter and Io—
can maintain a constant, or nearly-constant, position relative to the two large
bodies (Fig. 8.8). The combined gravitational forces of the two massive bodies,
plus the centrifugal force of the motion around Mbig, results in the existence of
five Lagrange points, all in the orbital plane that contains the large bodies,
where the small object—such as a monolith—orbits Mbig in sync with Msmall.
Figure 8.8 shows in two different ways the Lagrange points for the Sun-Earth
system, where the Sun represents Mbig, and Earth Msmall.
The first three Lagrange points, L1, L2, and L3 are positioned on a line
joining the two massive bodies. Returning to the film 2010, the Monolith
orbited Jupiter at the L1 point, the most intuitively obvious of the five
Fig. 8.8 The left-hand panel shows Lagrange L1 through L5 points for the Sun-Earth
system. The right-hand panel displays the same information, but provides some sense of
the gravity wells of the two massive objects in the system. Images courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons users cmglee and Xander89.
54
Not really an orbit thing, but a cool fact for which we couldn’t find a better place: the woman who
played Betty Fernandez (David Bowman’s “widow”), was Mary Jo Deschanel—mother of Emily
(Dr. Temperance Brennan from Bones) and Zooey (Trillian in 2005’s Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
Lagrange points, which is the point where the opposing gravitational influence
of Jupiter and Io directly cancel55 like a stalemate in a celestial tug of war.
Less obvious are the L4 and L5 points. These are points that co-orbit with
Msmall, 60 degrees ahead and behind in the orbit, forming equilateral triangles
with Mbig and Msmall. These are actually the most stable of the five Lagrange
points, and there are many examples in the Solar System of planets or moons
having objects at their co-orbital Lagrange L4 and L5 points. Jupiter has
batches of thousands of asteroids, called Trojan asteroids, at both its L4 and
L5 points. Earth has asteroid 2010 TK7 at its L4 point; Mars has four asteroids
at its co-orbital points, including one named 5261 Eureka. Even some moons
in the Solar System have co-orbiters. Saturn’s moon Tethys has the moon
Telesto at its L4 and Calypso at its L5; Dione has Helene at its L4 point and
Polydeuces at L5. A space station placed at the L4 or L5 points in the Earth-
Moon system would be on long-lived stable orbits. We will revisit this notion
in Chap. 10.
The case in which a small object orbits one or two much larger objects is
fairly simple, but the complexity jumps greatly when we move from one
massive object to two, and the Solar System is littered with massive planets
and moons, in addition to the big kahouna: Sol. When the distances between
these bodies are great, we can handle their effects as small perturbations, as
mentioned above.
What happens, though, when we attempt to understand a system with more
than two massive bodies—all in close proximity—as happens in places like the
Fig. 8.9 The Bel Aire of satellite living: Elysium. From Elysium (2013) Copyright © Tristar
Pictures, image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
55
Although, due to Kepler’s third law, this point should orbit Mbig faster than does Msmall, the
gravitational influence of Msmall pulls the small object along for the ride so that it orbits at the same period.
relatively crowded skies above Saturn and Jupiter? It turns out that there are no
exact mathematical solutions for orbits involving three or more objects. Such
orbits must be simulated numerically using computers. This is referred to as
the three-body problem,56 which is also the name of a 2017 Chinese science
fiction film.57 The premise of that movie is that aliens come to our Solar
System because they are trying to escape the unpredictable conditions in their
home system, which is a trinary star system.
So although much science fiction drama is set on objects going around and
around and around, it turns out, going around and around and around can be
very complicated. Exactly how we get things into orbit is what rocket science is
all about, which we’ll discuss in Chap. 9.
Meet the Storyteller: Nicole Perlman
Nicole Perlman worked as a script doctor58 on Thor, was the first credited writer on
Guardians of the Galaxy (Fig. 8E.1), and is co-writing Captain Marvel. She is also a very
science-friendly screenwriter,59
Hollyweird Science: There was Guardians of the Galaxy, and you have Captain
Marvel coming up. Tell us a little about some of the non-Marvel screenplays you’ve
written.
In terms of the scripts that I’ve written that have yet to be produced, they tend to
have science themes, or be about scientists or related to space. I did a biopic about Neil
Armstrong for Universal; I did a screenplay called Challenger about Richard Feynman
and his investigation into the Challenger shuttle disaster. I’ve done some projects
about the Wright Brothers, and some about the space race—the X-Prize, the new
round of entrepreneurs creating space travel for tourism. I’ve also done things that
have absolutely nothing to do with science whatsoever.
Hollyweird Science: You won the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival Sloan Grant for
Science for your screenplay Challenger, while you’ve also done quite a bit of work for
Marvel. Some would consider superhero/comic book movies and movies like Star
Wars science fiction, some would say they’re fantasy. Since you’re intimately familiar
with the two sub-genres—science and science fiction—how differently is the science
accuracy bar set between these two types of movies?
Perlman: I think it depends upon what kind of science fiction it is. If it’s very
grounded science fiction that is grounded in our world and our technology and,
basically, taking our technology to three or four or five steps down the line, I think,
then, that your scientific bar has to be pretty high. If it’s something that is set in a
completely different world, in which the viewer is not expected to understand the
physical laws of every single planet—or what has, and has not, been discovered about
quantum dynamics—then I think you get a lot more leeway.
(continued)
56
The simplest of the many-body, or N-body, problems to which we alluded in Chap. 3.
57
Based upon the bestselling 2008 book of the same name by Liu Cixin.
58
Somebody brought in to give an, often uncredited, polish to a script or to resolve a particular story or
pacing problem.
59
Perlman devotion to science is reflected even in the name of her production company: Uncanny Valley
Productions.
I also think . . . people reading Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are not going to be
worried about how accurate the science is for that, whereas a more gritty sort of hard
sci-fi you probably would be more concerned with that. So I think a lot of it is about
expectations.
I do think it’s really interesting the way in which some people can be completely
nitpicky about the science in movies like Gravity, because it is so close to what we
know—one strength of the movie is making it feel so realistic—that people will latch
onto any tiny thing and say, “Well, that couldn’t happen because of this.” The
strength of the movie is that it’s so realistic, whereas a movie like Galaxy Quest, no
one’s going to care or think twice. But they’re still both, technically, science fiction
movies. So it’s an interesting question, I think there are a lot of gradations of science
fiction.
With superheroes, it’s really fuzzy. Batman, technically, isn’t a superhero. He
doesn’t have super powers, he’s just really smart and he’s a very wealthy person. In
some senses that qualifies as a superpower, but he’s a regular guy. At least he’s using
his powers for good.
Then you take a character like Thor that has been made into more of a science
fiction character, because Marvel wants their world to feel as grounded as possible,
you start to get really muddy in terms of what’s science fiction, and what’s a superhero
movie. It’s all elevated, it all has big “What if” questions, and it all requires a certain
suspension of disbelief.
But I do think it’s really interesting how some films you have no problem whatso-
ever believing that a magic hammer was forged in the fires of a dying star and has all
these special properties, but you might have a problem with Interstellar because the
science doesn’t seem like it quite makes sense or there are paradoxes. It says a lot
about the viewers, more than anything, in terms of the very delicate balance of
expectation, of genre, and the rules of the world and how they’re established.
Fig. 8E.1 Nicole Perlman on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy. Image courtesy
Nicole Perlman.
(continued)
Hollyweird Science: We talk in the first Hollyweird Science book about how a
screenwriter tries to create as many “Oh Wow!” moments as possible, and avoid the
“Oh please!” moments. So what is an “Oh please” moment for you?
Perlman: I think it’s about establishing a really firm foundation going into the
movie about whether you can trust the storyteller. For me, I’m always watching a
movie waiting to be lulled into a sense of security, so that they can take me on a ride.
So I think that everybody has something that can be a little sand in their shoe, but
with establishing the foundation of your world, you just have to try and eliminate
those things that take you out of the story as much as possible, and lull somebody into
a sense of security so they’ll be willing to go on a crazy, emotional, mind-bending
journey with you and people will feel like you’ll catch them if they’re falling.
I think it’s important to establish the rules of the world, so that people not only feel
like it’s fully thought-out, it has a very real history even if we don’t have access to it,
even if we’re not privy to what happens to get the world to this place exactly. There
are plenty of movies that start out post-apocalyptic, and we don’t know what the
actual event was that caused the apocalypse, and that’s OK because the post-
apocalyptic world feels so real and everything is laid out for us in a way that makes
sense.
So I think people will get nitpicky about little things if it doesn’t sit right with them,
and that varies from person to person. I think part of the job of the screenwriter is to
be on the lookout for any inconsistencies that might take somebody out of the story.
Hollyweird Science: When you’re writing a feature, where does science enter the
picture in your process?
Perlman: It depends on the project, but the two most grounded science-related
projects I’ve done were really about the people—there were two biopics, one was Neil
Armstrong and one was Richard Feynman. It all starts with the person and with the
work that they’ve done and, as much as possible, their actual discoveries or their
actual interests or lines of dialogue that they’ve actually said. I think that it starts with
the character and then, when you’re dealing with a true story, you have a fair amount
of material to work from if you’re lucky enough to have a project that is heavily-
documented.
Hollyweird Science: Tell us about the screenplay Challenger.
Perlman: Challenger was my first real project that brought me into the business. It’s
been set up multiple times with different producers, and actors, and it’s fallen apart
for a number of reasons. It’s a tale of woe that would curl your toes.
The story is about Richard Fenyman, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, who was
recruited towards the end of his life to be on the presidential commission that was
investigating the Challenger shuttle disaster. He was reluctant to do it because he was
struggling with a whole series of different kinds of cancers and was really just wanting
to spend time at home to finish his work and be with his family, but he felt the call to
make a difference in this way, because he was a little bit of a gumshoe, and tended to
go off and do his own sleuthing. So he thought he could make a difference, and he
did. He and General Kutyna working together along with other characters like Roger
Mark Boisjoly and Alan McDonald began to fill in the blanks of what happened to
bring about the poor decision-making that led to the Challenger disaster.
I think that the difficulty is with translating that for an audience in a way that is
compelling and not alienating. One of the things that was great about Richard
Feynman is that he was a fantastic communicator, so he already communicated a lot
of the science clearly and articulately for non-physicists. It made my job a lot easier. I
think the hard part is figuring out that balance between wanting to describe
(continued)
something accurately or portray something accurately, and also doing it in a way that
keeps the emotional tension of the movie up and is compelling as well as clear.
This project is something I wrote well over a decade ago, but I still have hope for
it. It keeps coming back to life, it’s still kicking, and it’s currently under another option
right now. So we’ll see if it gets set up and actually goes forward this time with new
directors and new producers. Hopefully, it will make it to the screen one of these days.
It’s very close to my heart.
9
Getting from There to Here:
Navigation in Space
We just put Isaac Newton in the driver’s seat.

Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Apollo 13
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Leonardo da Vinci
If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our

species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the
stirring of a breeze.
Carl Sagan, planetary scientist and author, Pale Blue Dot
Mariners have made their way using the stars for thousands of years, navigating
the expanse of Earth’s oceans and seas without GPS or compasses. Navigating
among the stars will be orders of magnitude more challenging, and although
many a work of science fiction depicts spacefaring humans and aliens, naviga-
tion is a subject that is typically glossed over. It is a conceit, a “gimme”. Writers
count on the audience assuming that, if a race can travel interstellar distances,
they will also have mastered the details of how to do it. In a universe where
stars move relative to one another as they orbit galactic centers, and as galaxies
move ever farther apart with the expansion of the Universe, navigation is not a
simple task.
Unlike navigation on Earth’s roads or seas, even if you can point to a star,
given the scale of our galaxy, and the magnitude of interstellar distances, and
the finite speed of light, the star is no longer in the position where we see it,
and would be even further away from that location by the time we arrived
there, even traveling at light speed. So how do the crew of the Enterprise find
their way from Earth to Wolf 359? How did the Rag Tag Fleet of Battlestar
Galactica navigate from the dead planets of the Twelve Colonies to Kobol and
Fig. 9.1 The Farscape character Pilot was combination navigator, translator, and, yes,
pilot. From Farscape; The Peacekeeper Wars (2004) Copyright © The Jim Henson Com-
pany. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
on to Earth?1 The navigation of any vessel, from a DeLorean to a starship, is a

process by which a navigator asks and answers three basic questions: “Where
are we?”, “Where are we going?”, and “What direction do I point the nose of
my vessel to get there?” (Fig. 9.1)
Defining a Coordinate System or Reference Frame

Before a navigator can even begin to answer “Where are we?”, there is a much
more fundamental question that must be answered first. What is the context?
In what coordinate system are we working? What is our reference frame?
The definition of a coordinate system begins by defining a starting point,
known as the origin: the point from which all positions are measured. One of
the two fundamental aspects of Albert Einstein’s Special Relativity (see
Chap. 9 in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1) is that there is no universal standard of
rest. In other words, there is no “center of the universe,” or any place that’s any
better than any other as an origin from the universe’s point of view.2 As seen
from anywhere, any galaxy, the universe is expanding uniformly in all direc-
tions. An implication of this is that we are perfectly justified in picking any
point—our planet, our Sun, the Milky Way galaxy—as the center of our
1
Our Earth, that is.
2
Which means that in the Doctor Who episode “Terminus” (1983), the space station Terminus was not at
the “center of the known Universe”. Alternately, Terminus was at the “center of the known Universe,”
because every point is the “center of the known Universe.” The inhabitants suffered from a leprosy-like
disease, so as with another famous Terminus, you would not want these people “fixing you a plate,” either.
9 Getting from There to Here: Navigation in Space 305
coordinate system and, in fact, the entire Universe. Still, depending upon the
application and the distances involved, some choices of origin are better than
others.
For Earth-based coordinate systems, the origin is typically assumed to be at
the center of the planet. In the rectangular, or Cartesian, coordinate system,
three perpendicular lines, normally called the X, Y, and Z axes, extend from the
origin (the Universe has three spatial dimensions, hence three axes). Any
object’s position in space can now be specified exactly by three numbers,
three coordinates: the object’s distance from the origin as measured along the
x axis, the y axis, and the z axis.
We must also specify the orientation of the coordinate axes. On Earth, the
Z axis is typically synonymous with the spin axis, meaning that it passes
through both the North and South Poles (so the x and y axes are both
constrained to lie the plane of the equator).
A meridian is any line drawn along the surface of Earth, from pole to pole.
By international agreement, the meridian that passes through the Royal
Observatory in the town of Greenwich, England, is 0 longitude, and is called
the prime meridian. Now draw a line from the center of Earth to the point
where the prime meridian intersects the equator, and we have defined the
orientation of the x axis. The y axis is simply perpendicular to both x and z.
Now that we have specified a three-dimensional coordinate system for the
surface of Earth, we have also shown the basics of how one might construct a
three-dimensional coordinate system anywhere: define the coordinate system
(i.e., Cartesian), define the origin, define the orientation of the axes.
GPS devices will display Cartesian coordinates, but most GPS users tend
not to think of their position on the surface of Earth in terms of x, y, and z. In
practice, we do not often need three dimensions to specify our location, and
typically assume that any place we want to go is right on Earth’s surface,
whence we treat it as a two-dimensional plane. So for most of our Earthly
navigation needs, with one coordinate assumed, we typically specify only two
coordinates—two angles. Longitude, can range in value from 0 degrees to
360 degrees around the Earth’s equator starting where the prime meridian
intersects the equator. Latitude is a measure of the angular distance above or
below the equator, ranging from 90 degrees at the South Pole, to 0 at the
equator, to +90 degrees for the North Pole.
That works for objects on, near, or as seen from Earth, and nowhere else.
For any other observer, and for any space navigation application, Earth cannot
be used as a fixed reference frame. Earth is rotating, so any Earth-fixed
coordinate system is rotating in space as well. A rotating reference frame of
this nature is called an accelerated or non-inertial reference frame, and it works
only if your craft is confined to the surface of the rotating body. This works for
Fig. 9.2 Two-dimensional thinking may be fine for the surface of Earth, but in space it
can get you killed. From Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). The battle in the Mutara
Nebula between Kirk on the Enterprise and Khan on Reliant was inspired by the battle
between U-boat commander Curd Jürgens and destroyer captain Robert Mitchum in
The Enemy Below (1957). That film was also the inspiration for the TOS Star Trek episode
“Balance of Terror” (1966). Image Copyright © Paramount Pictures, courtesy of
moviestillsdb.com.
planes, trains, and automobiles, but not to get to Mars, Alpha Centauri, or the
Pegasus Galaxy. In order to navigate interplanetary trajectories, we need a
different coordinate system—one whose axes are permanently fixed, or very
nearly so, for long time periods. For interstellar travel? You would want yet
again a different system, though with a proper choice of distance scale, an
interstellar reference frame may also work for interplanetary travel (Fig. 9.2).
Another coordinate system, one used by astronomers, assumes that Earth is
at the center of everything (Fig. 9.3), and also assumes that the stars are so
distant, that they are fixed and unmoving,3 while the Earth rotates beneath
them. Imagine that Earth is encircled by a sphere with an almost infinite
radius, and the stars are affixed to the inside of this sphere as if they were
glowing adhesive stars you might stick to the ceiling in a child’s room. This
star-bespeckled sphere is known as the celestial sphere. Then project Earth’s
equator onto the celestial sphere. This is called the celestial equator. Project
3
The constellations we see today are the same ones that the first human beings saw thousands of years ago,
albeit with a few minor distortions. Although the stars move very rapidly relative to one another, since they
are so far apart, the angular motion—how much they move across the sky—is tiny. It’s not a perfect
assumption, but the movement is noticeable only over many thousands of human lifetimes; for naviga-
tional purposes, the stars are fixed and motionless.
Fig. 9.3 The Celestial Sphere. Two coordinates are enough to specify the position of any
star in the sky, which is fine for pointing a telescope or radio dish. Interstellar navigation
would require a third coordinate to account for the differing distances to individual stars.
Earth’s North and South Poles onto the celestial sphere and we have the north
(NCP) and south celestial poles (SCP).
In exactly the same manner as with latitude and longitude on Earth’s
surface, positions in the sky are specified using two angles called right ascen-
sion and declination. Similar to longitude, right ascension is measured along the
celestial equator and ranges from 0 to 360 degrees (though astronomers often
use 15 degree increments called hours). Declination is measured as an angle
“north” or “south” of the celestial equator, similar to latitude, and similarly
ranges in value from +90 degrees to 90 degrees. What is the equivalent of the
prime meridian, the arbitrary place where we start counting degrees? By
scientific convention, the intersection of Earth’s orbit with the celestial equator
is a point in space currently in the constellation Aries (called the vernal
equinox), and is the celestial equivalent of Greenwich, England. Such a
two-angle system like latitude and longitude, or right ascension and declina-
tion, is also implied in several series. In Star Trek, it is 123 mark 45. In
Battlestar Galactica, it is 123 carom 456.4
4
Several of the writers on Battlestar Galactica, including executive producer Ronald D. Moore, had
previous experience in the Trek universe. That these two reference frames are similar should not be
surprising. In fact, in the pilot episode of Galactica, locations relative to the ship were 123 mark 45 as in
Star Trek, but “mark” became “carom” in the series. The values of the numbers in Galactica were also
often greater than 360, implying the Colonials did not use the same measure of a degree as we use today.
Science Box: Constellation Prize
Ask anybody who teaches college astronomy, and they will, with equal measures of
frustration and amusement, regale you with stories of the students who were disap-
pointed that the course did not cover astrology. Although astronomers would cast
horoscopes to pay the bills to fund their science long ago, astronomy is science and
astrology, well, isn’t. Some concepts and terms that non-astronomers routinely
assume are the purview of astrology—terms like “constellation” and “Zodiac” for
example—are actually “dual use” terms.
The term “constellation” likely derives from a Latin term meaning “set of stars,”
and this reflects its colloquial meaning—a set of stars forms a pattern associated with
an object, an animal, or a character from mythology. Look to the constellations
Cygnus, Taurus, and Scorpius, and you will tax your imagination little to envision a
swan, a bull, and a scorpion, respectively. Find Capricornus, though, and you will have
quite a difficult time imagining a sea goat.5 It looks more like Croissantus. This
underscores an important point, many constellations are named in honor of these
characters or objects, not always because they look like them.6
At the same time, the Big Dipper is a recognizable pattern of stars,7 as is the teapot
of Sagittarius, the belt of Orion, and the water jug of Aquarius. Even though these
groups of stars form easily-recognizable patterns, they are not constellations. They
are constellation subsets, termed asterisms.
Today, astronomers—in particular the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
defines a constellation as one of 88 specific regions of the sky. The names are based
upon ancient constellation names, but the regions typically have a much greater
extent than the traditional pattern of stars from which each gets its name
(Fig. 9A.1) and so can include stars within their area that are not part of that
traditional pattern.
No part of the sky is not part of a constellation, and stars within each constellation
are ranked according to their apparent brightness,8 and assigned Greek letters. So the
brightest star in Orion is Betelgeuse, also known as α Orionis. The second brightest is
Rigel, or β Orionis. (This is, however, only one of several ways to label stars. Many stars
are also known by various catalogue numbers, with different sky surveys producing
different, often overlapping catalogues. So, for example, β Orionis is also known as
HD 34085 and HIP 24436, with HD standing for the Henry Draper catalogue, and HIP
signifying the Hipparcos satellite catalogue.)
(continued)
5
Whatever a sea goat is. This pattern of stars has been represented as some type of surf and turf gene splice
experiment dating back thousands of years to the middle bronze age.
6
With the light pollution of today’s metropolises, it gets increasingly difficult to see even those original
patterns for all but the brightest constellations.
7
In both the U.K. and Ireland, these stars are sometimes known as the Plough.
8
A star’s apparent brightness is determined by competing factors. Hotter, bluer, stars are inherently
brighter than others, but distance plays an important role. For example, Rigel (β Orionis) is a bright blue
star in Orion, while Sirius (α Canis Majoris), aka the dog star, is a bright blue star in adjoining Canis
Major (the big dog). Intrinsically, Sirius is 25 times brighter than Sol, and is the brightest star in the night
sky, but that is partly because it is only 8.6 light years away. Rigel is approximately 120,000 times brighter
than Sol, but is 860 light years away (give or take 80 LY). Rigel appears fainter, but is actually over 4,700
times brighter than Sirius.
Fig. 9A.1 The constellation Orion. Green lines depict the classically-defined constella-
tion, while the white region delineates the region of the sky that astronomers today
consider to be Orion. Values along the x-axis correspond to the right ascension (given in
hours or 15 degree increments), while the y-axis is declination. The light blue arc is the
ecliptic, or the Sun’s apparent path through the Zodiac. Image courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons, the IAU, and Sky and Telescope Magazine (Roger Sinnott and Rick Fienberg).
As Earth orbits Sol, Sol appears to move from constellation to constellation

depending on which stars are behind it from the point of view of Earth. Since Earth’s
orbit has a very low eccentricity9 meaning it is very nearly circular, since there are
360 degrees in a circle, and since there are 365 days in a year, the Sun appears to move
(continued)
9
Meaning it is very nearly circular, see Chap. 8.
about one degree per day relative to the fixed backdrop of stars. Since orbits are
planar, the Sun’s apparent path traces out a ring against the celestial sphere, known
as the ecliptic, and it appears to pass through the same 13 constellations repeatedly.
This collection of constellations is known as the “ring of animals” or Zodiac10
(Fig. 9A.2). Since the orbits of the planets of the Solar System are nearly co-planar
(as is that of the Moon), the Sun, Moon, and planets will always be nestled against one
of the zodiacal constellations. For those who enjoy reading their daily horoscopes,11
your “star sign” is the constellation against which the Sun is seen on your birthday.12
Fig. 9A.2 Earth orbits Sol, but seen from Earth, Sol appears to move through the
constellations of the Zodiac over the span of one year. The bold red line is the ecliptic,
while blue lines are meridians of right ascension spaced 2 h (30 or 1/12th of a circle)
apart. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, user Tau’olunga.
Except. . ..
The 13th Zodiacal constellation, tends to be forgotten. Just after the Sun clips the
edge of Scorpius, and before it closes on the teapot13 of Sagittarius, it passes through
Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer.14 If you are born between November 30th and
December 17th, you are actually an Ophiuchi.
(continued)
10
The only non-animal is Libra the scales.
11
Shudder.
12
KRG is, like, you know, a Scorpio, while SAC is totally a [REDACTED].
13
Another well-known asterism.
14
Ophiuchus literally means “serpent bearer”, but the actual name of the character holding a snake is
Aesculapius, who was the Greek god of medicine. Snakes have long been associated with medicine: they are
part of the Caduceus, and charlatans would sell “heal-all” potions known as “snake oil”. When physicians take
the Hippocratic Oath—at least the original Greek version—they begin with: “I swear by Apollo the physician,
and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that
Moreover, there’s another fly in the astrological ointment. Earth’s spin axis

changes its orientation slowly over a 26,000 year period. This motion is called preces-
sion (Fig. 9A.3), and not only does it mean that the north star will not always be the
north star, but it also means that the Zodiacal constellation against which the Sun is
projected changes over time. In the year 13,000, the Sun will be in Scorpius in May,
and Taurus in November, rather than vice versa as they are now. We will have a north
star again, but it will be a star in the constellation Lyra, not Ursa Major.
Fig. 9A.3 The precession of Earth’s spin axis means it points to different places in the sky
over time. The orange circle in the right-hand panel corresponds to the circle the spin axis
traces in the left. Images courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons, user Tauʻolunga.
The constellations are useful. They are useful for helping to locate and classify stars
in the sky, they are useful for locating planets in the sky, and they assist in navigation.
They just aren’t useful for helping you determine what kind of day you are likely to be
having tomorrow.
Setting up a coordinate system typically also requires choosing units of

distance: one where the values tend not to get unwieldy, i.e., either too big or
too small. For distances along the surface of Earth, and even for objects in
orbit, kilometers work nicely. Within the Solar System, a common distance
that planetary scientists and space mission designers use is the astronomical
unit (or AU). One AU is defined colloquially as the semi-major axis, or average
distance, of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, which works out to be just over
149 million kilometers, or 93 million miles.15 For interstellar distances, a
common unit is the distance light travels in one year, or the light-year (LY),
which is approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers or 63,240 AUs.
I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.” In neither the
ancient nor modern version do they swear to “First do no harm.” Like Aesculapius, that is a myth.
15
The actual definition is slightly more complicated, but this definition is easily close enough.
Science Box: A Light-Year by Any Other Name
Light is the fastest thing in the Universe. Its speed in a vacuum is a constant wherever
you are, so it is reasonable that any spacefaring race might use the properties of light,
in some way, to define a unit to measure the vast distances between stars and
galaxies. Humans use the light-year: the distance light travels in one year—the period
of Earth’s orbit, dictated by its distance from its Sun and the mass of its Sun. So to
calculate just how big one light-year is, start with the equation
d ¼ vt,
where d is distance, v is velocity, and t is time. Making d a light-year (LY), and v equal
to the speed of light (c) gives us
LY ¼ ct,
or,

5km
LY ¼ 3 10 3:16 107 s ¼ 9:46 1012 km,
s
where c ¼ 3 105 km/s and one year is 3.16 107 s.16

Other intelligent races might have their own variant of a light-year; their year
would certainly be different than Earth’s, so the distance measured would differ, too.
How different? As we discussed in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1, not all types and sizes of
stars can support planets with life, and certainly not planets with intelligent life. Large
stars live very short lifetimes, and end their lives before life can form. Small stars have
a host of complications, but let’s say that intelligent life as we know it can exist around
stars ranging from spectral types K5 to F5, and in narrow habitable zones around
those (with larger stars having wider habitable zones located farther away from the
parent star). The habitable zones are also known as “Goldilocks zones,” because
planets inside the zone are far enough away from the star so that they don’t get
roasted by its heat, yet are close enough not to be frozen iceballs.
While there are many scientific papers arguing about the location of both inner
and outer edges of the habitable zone for Sol, for this exercise we will use 0.75–2.0
AU. Using a very simple thermal model that allows us to correct for the difference in
heat output between Sol and other stars, let’s look at science fiction aliens, and see
what they would consider to be a light-year.
About 16 light years from Sol is the K1 type star 40 Eridani A, the brightest star of a
trinary star system. For years, in the Star Trek universe, storytellers hinted that Spock’s
homeworld, Vulcan, orbits this star. This was finally established canonically, in the
2001–2005 series Star Trek: Enterprise.
With about 84% the mass of Sol, and just under half as bright, to get the same
amount of sunlight as Earth, Vulcan would orbit at around 0.68 AU. The equation to
calculate its orbital period (T )17 is
(continued)
16
A simple way scientists remember this number is that there are approximately π 107 s in one year.
17
Sometimes the period is given the symbol P for “period” of an orbit as opposed to T, which is the
“time. . . of one period of an orbit.”
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
a3planet
T ¼ 2π ,
GMstar
where a is the semi-major axis of the planet, G the gravitational constant, and Mstar
the mass of the star. Note that the period is proportional to the square root of the
semi-major axis cubed—meaning that this is how Kepler’s third law looks when
written as an equation. Substituting in the correct values gives us
u

11
3 ffi
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u
u ð0:68AUÞ 1:50 10 m AU
T ¼ 2π u
u 7
t 11 m 3 30
¼ 1:25 10 s
6:67 10 ð0:84Þ 2 10 kg
kg: s2
yielding an orbital period of 1.25 107 s, just over 223 days, or 0.61 Earth years.
Vulcan is always depicted as being generally hotter than Earth, and the inner edge of
40 Eridani’s habitable zone is near 0.5 AU, yielding an orbital period of 0.4 Earth years.
So Vulcan’s “light-year” would range from 0.4 to 0.5 of our light-years (Fig. 9B.1).
Fig. 9B.1 Earth’s orbit around its star compared to Vulcan. Image courtesy NASA/JPL/
Caltech.
There are few stars larger than Sol that are mentioned regularly in science fiction
productions, but one that is (though not much larger than Sol) is Alpha Centauri
A. Using our simple thermal model to determine the size of the habitable zone
around the planet, and going through the same process to calculate the orbital
period, it turns out that a “year” for intelligent Alpha Centaurians would range
between 307 days (0.84 years) to 1344 days (3.7 years).
So if we look at science fiction alien races that span the gamut of (reasonable) stars
that could support a planet with intelligent life, we find that an alien light-year
ranges from 2 ½ alien light-years per Earth light-year to 3 ¾ Earth light-years to the
alien light-year. That’s less than a factor of 10 between largest and smallest. As a
starting point for finding common ground with an intelligent alien species, our cosmic
distance measures are likely to be similar—more like comparing centimeters to inches
than centimeters to astronomical units.
Fig. 9.4 The galactic coordinate system. The x-axis passes between Sol and the galactic
center, the z-axis is the galactic spin axis, and the y-axis is orthogonal (perpendicular) to
them both. Image courtesy NASA/JPL/Caltech.
What coordinate system can we use for interstellar navigation? First we need
to establish an origin that won’t shift as we move from star to star. One choice
is the center of the Galaxy. The Solar System orbits the center of the Galaxy
approximately every 225 million years.18 This turns out to be one of many
coordinate systems used by astronomers today, and is referred to as the
Galactic Coordinate System (Fig. 9.4). If we start by placing the origin at the
Solar System, then one axis might start at the Sun and pass through the center
of the Galaxy. Another axis would be the spin axis of the Galaxy,19 and the
third axis would be perpendicular to both of those.
The position of any object is given as a distance, plus an angle equivalent to
longitude or right ascension that ranges from 0 to 360 in the galactic plane,
and an angle like latitude or declination ranging from +90 to 90 degrees
above or below the galactic plane.
18
Meaning that the last time the Solar System was in its present position in its orbit around the center of
the Galaxy, the Age of Amphibians was ending, and the dinosaurs were just starting out.
19
Of course, it would take some doing to define or calculate exactly what that means.
This may sound like a good choice for coordinate systems, and perhaps it
would be within the colonies and for journeys to relatively nearby star systems.
What if a civilization is capable of travelling across a significant portion of the
Galaxy in a reasonably short amount of time, like Voyager’s trek from the Gamma
Quadrant back home to the Alpha Quadrant in Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)?
In that instance, we’d probably want to move the origin point to the supermassive
black hole at the center of the Galaxy, to avoid problems caused by changes in
position between the Solar System and the central galactic bulge.
What about venturing beyond the Milky Way? We need to look outside of
our Galaxy for a fixed reference frame. The bad news is that the Universe is
constantly expanding, and with the exception of a few nearby exceptions (like
M31 and the Magellanic Clouds), galaxies are constantly moving away from
one another, often at very high speeds. The good news, though, is that most
galaxies—noting the same nearby exceptions—are moving in a radial direc-
tion, and their relative positions change little over thousands of years, and from
any vantage point in the Milky Way. Since other galaxies are not concentrated
in any area of the sky, we could choose a select number of reference galaxies that
are bright enough to be picked out among the stars, and less likely to be obscured
by the concentration of gas, dust, and stars in the plane of the Milky Way.
So finding a reference point on which to base a coordinate system that is as
fixed as stars on a bedroom ceiling is, strictly speaking, impossible. However,
for interstellar journeys, even those lasting several lifetimes, the Universe has
provided reference points that appear to be fixed for very long time periods,
like the core of our Galaxy.
Dude, Where’s Our Spaceship?

With a reference frame established,20 navigation is the ongoing task of deter-
mining the state vector of the spacecraft—i.e., its position and velocity—or,
“Where are we and where are we going?” Very distant objects that appear fixed
are the basis for a coordinate system, but we want to look for comparatively
nearby reference points to triangulate our actual position in the same manner
that islands, rock formations, light houses, and other landmarks have been used
by mariners for hundreds of years as they wander over the globe. By determin-
ing the relative bearings of three landmarks, navigators at sea can triangulate
their positions. By determining how nearby objects move relative to more
distant, fixed, references, navigators can determine how their position changes
over time (see Science Box: “Parallax, the Parsec, and the Kessel Run”).
20
Realistically, this is something that would be determined well in advance of launching a mission or
commencing a journey.
Science Box: Parallax, the Parsec, and the Kessel Run
In Hollyweird Science, Vo1. 1, we discussed Han Solo’s boast about the speed of his
ship:
In Star Wars: A New Hope, Han Solo brags that his ship, the Millennium Falcon
is so fast that it is, “. . .the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”
This statement can be interpreted in two different ways, and has been a subject
of ongoing debate (in addition to who shot first) among Star Wars fans for
decades. A parsec is a unit of distance (3.26 light years), but, in context, Solo
implies that it is a measure of time. This could mean that, like “light-year” is
often confused as a measure of time, Solo (or the screenwriter), was similarly
confused. It could mean that his statement was bluster, note that Obi-Wan
Kenobi rolls his eyes at the boast.
Most importantly, the distance of one parsec is based upon the size of Earth’s
orbit around Sol. Why is a smuggler “in a Galaxy far, far away” even alluding to
Earth in the first place?
Clearly if Solo’s boast is bravado, it is the kind of bravado of which legends are made, since
it resurfaces in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, only the version of the story Rey heard was
that it was 14 parsecs. Naturally, Han does not let the discrepancy go unchallenged.
Let’s examine Solo’s assertion in greater detail. The value of 3.26 light years for one
parsec may initially seem arbitrary, but when you realize that it stands for “parallax
second”, it will become clear that the value has a very good astronomical basis—once
we understand what a parallax second is. First, like the light-year, the parsec is an
Earth-centric measure of distance, as it is based on the diameter of the Earth’s orbit
around the Sun. In Fig. 9C.1 we see both Earth and Mars at opposing points in each of
their orbits around the Sun. Also displayed is a nearby yellow star and a more distant
blue star. Not shown is a green star that is immensely farther away than either the
yellow or the blue star.
The yellow vectors that originate at each planet point to the yellow star’s apparent
position when the planets are at opposing points in their orbits. The same with the blue
vectors, and the green vectors. Notice that these vectors point to dramatically different
points in the sky, meaning that the star seems to shift over the span of six months.
Because Mars has a wider orbit, the shift is even more pronounced for Mars than for
Earth. This shift is called parallax, and we can use it to calculate the distance to the star.
Note that the blue vectors for Earth are closer to parallel (i.e., both point straight up)
than the yellow vectors, meaning the blue star has less parallax because it is farther away.
So an astronomer would measure the shift of the star relative to fixed background
objects six months apart, then from that calculate p21 (Fig. 9C.2). Using simple trigo-
nometry, it follows that
1
tan ðpÞ ¼ ,
d
(continued)
21
The value of p would be a very tiny angle, measured in arcseconds. There are 360 degrees in a circle,
60 arcminutes in each degree, and 60 arcseconds in each arcminute. So one arcsecond is 1/3600th of a
degree.
Fig. 9C.1 Parallax decreases the farther away an object is, but increases with a longer
orbital baseline. Images courtesy of NASA.
Fig. 9C.2 The geometry that defines parallax. Images courtesy of NASA.
(continued)
where d is given in AU. Clearly, Fig. 9C.2 is not to scale, as Earth is 1 AU from the Sun
and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is almost 276,400 times farther away. That
means p is a very small angle, and for angles that small, we can use something called
the small angle approximation that saves us from having to do any trigonometry with
an awkwardly small number. The approximation is
tan ðpÞ p,
so
1
p¼ ,
d
where p is given in arcseconds. (When measuring angles very precisely, one degree of a
circle is subdivided into 60 arcminutes, which are each further divided into 60 arcseconds.)
If the star is 3.26 light years away, then in the example above, the shift would be one
arcsecond, meaning the star is at one parallax second, or one parsec, distance.
The green star is so far away that all the green vectors appear parallel. This means
that its parallax is close to zero, or is, at least, below our ability to measure. Conse-
quently, the parallax method cannot be used to determine the distance to the object.
Conversely, the farther away an object is, the better choice it becomes as a fixed
navigational reference point—the length of the baseline, even if it represents a vast
distance by our standards, is still tiny compared to d. This makes the green star a good
“fixed” reference point. It is always in the same place in space as seen from anywhere
in the Solar System, and stars equally distant will always maintain the same orienta-
tion relative to one another from here.
This also explains why the North Star is the North Star. Earth’s spin axis points to
the star Polaris.22 Earth is small enough and Polaris distant enough to ensure that
Polaris is the North Star for every point on the globe—there is no parallax. If you stood
at the North Pole (90 north latitude), Polaris would be directly overhead at an angle
of 90 degrees above the horizon; at the equator (0 latitude), Polaris is on the horizon.
So the measure of degrees Polaris is above the horizon is equal to the observer’s
latitude. Clearly, Polaris is a useful celestial navigation tool beyond simply pointing
the way to north.
Most stars are so far away relative to the planets of the Solar System that the
constellations we recognize from Earth would vary imperceptibly from Mars or even
Neptune. Not only does this make them excellent choices as optical navigation targets,
as discussed in this chapter, but their (essentially) fixed relative positions relative to one
another allow robotic spacecraft to use them to help determine their orientation in
space, as discussed in Chap. 7. For interstellar travel, where some of those beacons shift
over the span of a journey, a navigator would need to select more distant objects—like
other galaxies or even quasars—as fixed navigational aides.
So, what about Han Solo and the Kessel run? In the 197623 novelization of A New
Hope, by Alan Dean Foster (ghost written for George Lucas), Han says “standard time
(continued)
22
For now. Eventually, the precession of Earth’s axis means it will point to different stars over the course
of many thousands of years.
23
Yup, the (initially uncredited) novelization came out before the movie, based on an early version of the
script.
units” rather than “parsecs.” In that instance, parsec is clearly meant to be a unit of
time, per the film’s creator.
In the 1998 A.C. Crispin Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) novel Rebel Dawn, the
reader learns that the Maw Cluster of black holes distorts space and time, so a journey
to Kessel is shortened by flying nearer to the black holes—and the faster the ship, the
less likely it is to be captured by the gravity of the black holes. Given that this is
different than the A New Hope novelization, and given that all of the EU novels are
supposedly canon,24 even the “official” word is contradictory.
That still does not explain one remaining problem: a parsec is based upon the 2 AU
baseline of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. How did that information travel back a long
time ago to a galaxy far, far away? Maybe George Lucas just made a mistake or,
perhaps, the Force surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the universe together.
Today’s technological take on such triangulation is embodied in the con-

stellation of GPS satellites25 in medium Earth orbit. These satellites always
know their state vectors very accurately, and continually broadcast signals—
packets of information—detailing the spacecraft’s ID, its position,26 and the
time the signal was broadcast.27 Basically, a GPS receiver is just a small radio
receiver and computer. In order to work, the receiver needs to receive signals
from at least three satellites (and ideally four). The receiver records the time
stamps from the message and uses that information along with the satellites’
orbital positions to work out where it must be on Earth to see those satellites at
that particular moment (Fig. 9.6). (Since the spacecraft are both moving, and
are distant from Earth and experience a different gravitational pull, the receiver
must also make corrections for both special and general relativity.)
What about spacecraft that are between planets, beyond the reach of GPS?
There are many techniques these craft use to navigate. One way is optical
navigation, or OPNAVs. Say you are controlling the Cassini spacecraft in orbit
around Saturn. The positions of the larger moons of Saturn are known very
well. If you image one of the moons so that it will fit within an onboard
camera’s field of view, you can determine its apparent diameter and from there
you can determine your distance. If the spacecraft has a database of stars in its
onboard memory, and many do, it can often determine the identities of the
stars in the background of the image. Knowing the distance to a moon whose
position is known, and then being able to use imagery of background stars to
put the distance in context, is one way spacecraft navigate.
24
In the B.D. (Before Disney) epoch.
25
Although we’ll be referring to GPS throughout this chapter to stand in for all satellite navigation, it is
actually a specific system controlled by the U.S. government. Russia has a similar system called Glonass,
China has BeiDou, and the European Union is currently deploying its own system called Galileo.
26
As well as the positions of all other GPS satellites.
27
Note for apocalypse preppers: the information that GPS satellites broadcast to receivers relies on precise
“almanacs” being uploaded at frequent intervals from the ground. If the U.S. government collapses, GPS
navigation will start to become unreliable in a few weeks, even if the satellites themselves are still putting
out a strong signal. So hang on to your compasses.
Fig. 9.5 Navigating from the Twelve Colonies to Earth requires very different tech-
niques and navigation strategies than planning an attack on a Cylon fuel refinery. This
implies that Galactica employed a variety of navigational techniques. Image Copyright
© David Eick Productions, courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Fig. 9.6 Trilateration from GPS satellites allows the receiver to determine that it is
located in. . . Detroit.
Fig. 9.7 Triangulation to distant galaxies allows the crew to calculate the rocketship’s
position. Illustration by Sarah Hunt. [While, normally, we’re traditional Times New
Roman font kinda guys, how could you not go with a font called SF Distant Galaxy
(where we assume SF means “science fiction”?].
A technique like an OPNAV could be used anywhere in the galaxy. Imagine

you were suddenly plunked down at some random spot in the Galaxy.28
Imagine also that you had set up a coordinate system based upon distant
fixed galaxies. Find the galactic core of the Milky Way, and you have a good
first guess for your position (Fig. 9.7). Just determine the position of the
galactic center, the angle to three known positions, and you have triangulated
your position. After that, select closer objects, watch how they move relative to
distant objects, you can navigate and track your journey in a manner similar to
the way mariners have been navigating for centuries.
Still, problems arise. In the plane of our Galaxy there are not only billions of
stars to obscure the line-of-sight to the distant galaxies and the core, there are
also vast dark clouds of interstellar dust that inhibit visibility over all but
comparatively short galactic distances. Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this
as well. Infrared radiation passes through dust far more readily than visible
light or radiation in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. So make sure
your interstellar spacecraft has an IR telescope, and then you will be able to see
the core from almost anywhere.
28
Not unlike the premiere episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Are there any other landmarks, or spacemarks, like the galactic core that
appear to move relative to our fixed backdrop of distant galaxies? As galaxies
go, the Milky Way is on the large side. Orbiting our Galaxy are other, smaller,
galaxies. In particular there are two irregularly-shaped galaxies which, from
Earth, can be seen from the southern hemisphere only. The Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds appear as two wispy clouds in the night sky. Although these
two galaxies may not be visible from anywhere within ours, they are likely
visible from most places within the Milky Way. In fact, these are just the
largest of a collection of over a dozen small Milky Way satellite galaxies that
would make fine navigational aids.
Some very bright, very rare, or very uncommon stars might also make good
spacemarks. Red supergiant stars are rare and very bright so they could be seen
over fairly long distances. There are also variable stars—whose brightness oscil-
lates from bright to dim back to bright over the span of days or weeks. The period
over which a variable star’s brightness changes is unique for each star. Might stars
like these be potentially good spacemarks? Perhaps, but the visibility to these stars
would eventually become curtailed by the vast amounts of dust present in the
plane of the Galaxy. They would also eventually become lost amidst the countless
stars that compose the disk of the Milky Way. These would make excellent
spacemarks for short journeys, or for segments of a longer journey.
There there are pulsars. Pulsars are a class of neutron stars—the extremely
dense remnants of dead stars—that still retain strong magnetic fields and emit
pulses of radiation at specific rates. The magnetic field lines of a planet, star, or
pulsar appear like the cross-section of an apple, and the symmetry axis of the
field is called the dipole axis. Pulsars emit streams of both particulate and
electromagnetic radiation along the dipole axis, and spin on an entirely
different axis (Fig. 9.8). The stream traces out a cone in space, and an observer
on that cone would see intermittent pulses of radiation that correspond to the
pulsar’s rotation rate.
Like the period of variable stars, the pulse rate is unique to each pulsar, so
that property would be useful. One big disadvantage is that, since the jet of
radiation from each pole traces out a cone, a pulsar only appears to pulse if
your position is on that cone. So not only does a pulsar not pulse from all
vantage points, but a ship travelling a lengthy distance would likely move off
the cone fairly soon, and a pulsar would make a good spacemark for a short
segment of the journey only.
In the series Battlestar Galactica, our heroes used a pair of pulsars as a
navigational aid to find Earth, but the complexity of being on one radiation
cone is multiplied since an observer would have to be in a position that lies on
two such cones to see these neutron stars as pulsars. Our heroes also have the
Lion’s Head Nebula as context from the Prophecies of Pythia (which turned
Fig. 9.8 A diagram showing how pulsars spin along one axis, making their dipole axis,
and the radiation jetting from each pole, trace a cone in space. Image source: Wikimedia
Commons, users Mysid and Jm smits.
out to be less prophetic, and more a travel journal from somebody who had
made the journey from Kobol to Earth in the past29).
There are a host of other structures that would make good navigation
targets, but the point is clear—without going into a detailed explanation of
all the manners and types of celestial phenomena that exist—it is clear that the
Galaxy is dotted with navigation aids. Presumably, as ships traversed the
Galaxy, they would develop a database of spacemarks, to simplify the task of
navigation.
First and foremost the science has to serve the story. The goal of any TV series,
any dramatic TV series, is to tell a good story. And to the extent that some
interesting astronomical phenomenon, like a binary neutron star, can help you
tell a good story, great.
Andre Bormanis, science advisor, Star Trek
29
One of the cool aspects of Battlestar Galactica was all the small things that the production team
explained without fanfare—if you didn’t catch many of these points, your enjoyment of the series would
be unchanged—but if you caught them, they were fun reveals. One big stealth reveal concerns Pythia. In
season two, the audience learns that President Roslin is following the Prophecies of Pythia from their
ancient religious texts. In season three, the audience learns that Pythia’s prophecies are less prophetic, and
more of a travelogue of her trip to Earth. If she was on the trip to Earth, what does this mean? It means that
in season one, when Six tells Baltar, “We know your religious texts better than you do,” she could add,
“. . .because we wrote them.” If Pythia was on the original trip to Earth, she was a Cylon.
Computer-savvy readers have likely already asked, “Haven’t you overlooked

the obvious? Can’t we simply match observed stars to the positions of stars in a
large database, and determine what we would see at any point in the Galaxy?”
Really computer-savvy readers have thought, “Yeah, it sounds possible but the
answer is “no”—at least not for journeys outside of the Solar System.” As we
discussed in Chap. 6, one way modern-day spacecraft determine their orien-
tations by imaging stars and comparing the image to an onboard database of
bright stars. They operate within the Solar System only, though, where the
stars look the same from Neptune as they do from Earth.
There is the tendency to forget that the bright stars in our well-known
constellations are distributed 3-dimensionally; many of the stars are at vastly
different distances. The parallax that is no problem for Solar System navigation
presents a huge problem for journeys over many light years (see Science Box:
“Parallax, the Parsec, and the Kessel Run”). Over those distances, constella-
tions change their apparent shapes entirely, rendering them unrecognizable the
further you travel from Earth.
A computer program that would match visible stars to a database of known
stars (and determine how they would form a 2-D projection on a celestial
sphere) is a class of problem that mathematicians and computer scientists call
an NP-Complete Problem, where “NP” stands for “nondeterministic polyno-
mial”. NP-Complete problems have the very unfortunate property that, in
order to solve them, even for relatively small input sets, they take the fastest
computers a sizeable fraction of the age of the Universe. Having ever-faster
computers simply means that the problems take a smaller fraction of the age of
the Universe to solve.
Here Be Dragons
One thing that should be becoming clear, from this and the previous two
chapters, is that the task of venturing into space is incredibly complex. Despite
the obvious inspirational effect Hollywood has had on the scientists and
engineers who have chosen to make a career at NASA, perhaps one of the
drawbacks of the portrayal of space travel in cinema and television is the ease
with which it is presented. We watch television shows like Star Trek, Stargate:
Universe, or The Expanse,30 and we are left with the impression that sending
spacecraft from point A to B is simple and routine. It isn’t (Fig. 9.9). Space
travel will be more commonplace one day, but it is still in its infancy.
30
At least we (the authors) watch shows like this.
Fig. 9.9 The Milky Way may be huge, but with a good choice of coordinate systems and
spacemarks, as well as a robust navigation system (with an infrared camera to see
through the dust in the Galaxy), your craft should never wind up like the Jupiter II
transporting the Space Family Robinson: Lost in Space. In June 2016, it was announced
that Netflix will be producing a remake of the series. Copyright © Columbia Broadcast-
ing System (CBS) and Irwin Allen Productions. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Movies and television can raise the real-life expectation bar. When NASA or
JAXA or ESA loses a probe about to encounter Mars, Venus, or a comet or
asteroid, rather than “We dreamed big, and fell short” or “We’ll get ‘em next
time”, the public perception today is “How many millions of dollars did we
spend on this one? Do you know how many people we could feed with that
kind of money?”31
So space travel is unfathomably complicated, and these three chapters have
only skimmed the surface of the vast array of difficulties encountered by
spacecraft designers and mission planners. Yet, all the complexities we have
explored so far pale in comparison to an even bigger issue: putting people in
space, and keeping them alive for the duration of the journey or the mission.
31
Ignoring the fact that most of the money spent on a space mission is spent on salaries, not hardware, so
the money is feeding people. Ignoring also that satellites also help us grow more and better crops and, yes,
feed people. We could go on and on, the counters to this argument are lengthy, and this has never been a
particularly valid—and certainly nothing but a hand-to-mouth—complaint.
Meet the Storyteller: Music Composer Bear McCreary and Kara’s

Coordinates
Bear McCreary, is an Emmy-award-winning composer for film, television, and video

games. He shared with Hollyweird Science aspects of the life of a film composer, and
the role he played in the climactic scene of the Battlestar Galactica series finale.
Hollyweird Science: You’re also a bit of a science groupie, though, aren’t you?
[laughs] It’s true. My dad is a scientist, and I could have been a scientist in another
life. Maybe I am a scientist in a parallel dimension.
Hollyweird Science: Perhaps this explains why you seem to take a very academic
approach to your music. Is that an accurate observation?
It’s an interesting observation because I think music is inherently emotional, and
yet for me. . . the way I can approach it is by building something that is intellectually
interesting. I find that a useful way for me to navigate through a long piece of
narrative by having themes that are constructed and developed in a way that
makes sense to me, and in a way that will translate into something emotional for
the audience.
To put it in the opposite perspective, if music, for me, was nothing but immediate
emotion, and there was no construction design put into it, it would be physically
exhausting to write it, and even to listen to it, because it would just be different music
constantly. I think we listen to music because we like hearing patterns, we like hearing
the chorus of a song come back.
Writing music is intellectual on a fundamental level, and the trick is to use those
intellectual constructs, and make something that is emotionally satisfying. That’s how
I approach it.
Hollyweird Science: Some people may find it counter-intuitive that we consider
the composer a storyteller, but I suspect you’d be in perfect agreement—you just use
a different language. Talk to me about that.
Absolutely. I think the composer for narrative is very much a storyteller. The
composer has to understand the story from a fundamental emotional and intellectual
level. When you understand all those things, you can create music that disappears into
the background, but helps guide the audience along the narrative. [As a composer]
(continued)
you really have to understand as much about every scene as the writers, as the
director, and as the actors, and you have to think about the big picture of the film
or the series, because, at any point, if you lose the narrative thread, you’ll hurt the
audience’s experience. You will actually, in a way that they would never understand,
cause them to miss something that is there.
I like the analogy you used about it being a different language, because I think
that really makes sense. The composer is the one person on the film dealing with the
story, but using only music, which is an impossible thing to even describe. To me it is
almost a sacred position. I take it very seriously when someone entrusts me to write
music for them, because it is a very powerful way of telling a story.
Hollyweird Science: You once said that it annoys you when composers, pomp-
ously or pretentiously say, “I do not manipulate the audience” when, in fact, that’s
what you get paid to do.
Yeah, that is the sole function of not only music, but, in a way, that’s what we’re all
doing when we’re taking part in narrative onscreen. We are helping manipulate
viewers into believing the characters and believing the story and feeling the emotion,
and it takes everybody working together to create that. It takes the lighting designer.
It takes the prop builder. It takes every person thinking about the audience and what
their expectations are. So, yeah, I don’t think that the word “manipulate” is a bad
thing with regard to telling a story.
Hollyweird Science: That is a perfect lead-in to the next question. The science in a
screenplay and the score share one key pressure. When the science in a screenplay is
something really cool, it creates an “Oh WOW! Moment. When the science is so at
odds with how a viewer perceives reality to work, it creates an “Oh PUH-LEEZE”
moment, and the viewer is forcibly ejected from the narrative. The same can be said
for the score, true?
Absolutely, the score can be part of the “Oh WOW!” and, frankly, it almost always
is. No matter how impressive the visual effects shot of a huge vista is, if you watch it on
MUTE, it’s a different experience, but you don’t notice the music doing that the first
time through.
I always say that if someone notices the music the first time they watch something,
even if they like it, I have not done my job. It is something that is supposed to
disappear yet pull you into the drama. And, really, bad music stands out a lot more
than good music. The pressure is definitely on to help give the audience what they
want. So I take it very seriously for that reason.
For me, if someone listens to a soundtrack album, and they find something
inspiring about the music on its own, that’s icing on the cake for me. I like to write
music that holds up to that level of scrutiny, even though it isn’t an immediate part of
the job description. The immediate job is making sure that when people are watching
the narrative, they are soaked into the drama of it.
Hollyweird Science: On the topic of “Oh, WOW!” moments, tell us the story about
how Kara’s coordinates were mapped into All Along the Watchtower in Battlestar
Galactica.
In the fourth season of Battlestar, we had a very unusual combination of writing
and music and science, and it was an experience I’ll never forget—one that really
helped me realize the true potential for what music can bring to drama. In this series,
the song All Along the Watchtower played an important role, and I composed, as a
side piece to that, a series of notes that were connected to that piece of music, and
that series of notes became integrated into the drama in such a way that they became
coordinates. The ship needed these coordinates to go to a physical place in space, and
(continued)
I worked with our science advisor [author KRG] on figuring out what those digits
would be, and how to convert my music into the coordinates that would ultimately
appear on screen and play a huge part in the story.
Here’s what’s interesting about this, ultimately, the music was invented to be
emotional. It was invented to tell a story. I did not know at the time I wrote these
twelve notes that it would have a scientific function. There was no way for me to
know, because that decision would be made later on in the life of the show.
So, ultimately, what was great about working with [our science advisor] is that we
were able to find a place where the science and the music could meet, and we could
convert my notes into a series of coordinates that would actually be meaningful and
be accurate. And that was a really exciting experience, and something that is so rare
that I can’t imagine I’ll ever have an experience quite like that again.
Hollyweird Science: In your blog, you mention that the neat coincidence was that
when your advisor first described how these coordinates might be realized, it turned
out that there were twelve numbers.
Yeah, there was a lot of luck in that. I learned that we needed twelve numbers to
create the coordinates, and the theme that I had created had twelve notes.
What I can say is that it was a relatively simple process once we realized how lucky
we were, in that we needed twelve digits [whose value was] less than 10, and all of the
notes in the theme that I had written were within the first 8 notes of a chromatic scale.
So it was actually a simple process assigning each note to a scale value, and converting
the notes into coordinates.
So there was definitely either some extreme luck, or some help from the Lord of
Kobol, I don’t know. Perhaps all of this has happened before, and all of this will
happen again.
The interesting thing, of course, is that at the end of the day, the audience just
needed to feel the emotion of what the character was going through at that moment,
and the science needed to hold up enough that it made sense why those numbers
exist. And what I loved about working with our science advisor is that there was a
level of realism beyond what was necessary, because the more someone looks into
how we did what we did, it holds up, and the methodology of creating coordinates
out of a piece of music is really sound. That’s one of the things I always like doing—
finding ways to not only satisfy the audience in the short term, but also reward them
should they choose to go and dig into the details and try to understand what we
actually did. It takes a lot of extra work, but it’s immensely rewarding.
10
Life. In. Spaaaaace!
Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian rocket pioneer
People back home think that space travel’s going to be all whizzing about
and teleports and antigravity, but it’s not, is it? It’s tough.
Rose Tyler, Doctor Who, “The Impossible Planet”
To a rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of
machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. . . You are unpredictable.
You are inconstant. You take weeks to fix. . . A solar cell or a thruster
nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in
love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements
don’t start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without
sleep.
Mary Roach, author, Packing for Mars (2010)
Getting into space is actually fairly easy—all you need is a controlled bang. A
really big controlled bang. Staying alive once you’re there, now that’s the tricky
part. Living in space fraught with challenges, all of which take their toll: the
vacuum, extremes of heat and cold, immense distances, radiation, a dearth of
places to grow food, and physiological and psychological effects from living in
small confined spaces for extended periods of time. Many of these problems, as
well as scores of others, have been mined to varying degrees for their dramatic
potential in screenplays. Many have not, however.
Many in the blogsphere chafed when Gravity premiered, saying that by making
space the enemy, the film dampened enthusiasm for space travel. This “ignorance
is bliss” argument flies in the face of NASA’s extreme dedication within its
corporate culture to safety and to the credo of “forewarned is forearmed.”1
1
We highly recommend Mary Roach’s book Packing for Mars, since it explores the great depth to which
the American and Russian space agencies have gone to understand the, in some cases literal, gory details of
hygiene, waste evacuation, and all the unfortunate physiological effects resulting from life in space.
There is also no indication that any of the other Hollywood depictions

featuring characters meeting various grisly ends in space has dampened enthu-
siasm for human exploration. There has been no shortage of volunteers, in
some cases putting down tens of millions of dollars, who are willing to take the
risks of venturing into what may well be humanity’s next home. In May 2012,
when the Netherlands-based Mars One organization sought volunteers willing
to pay simply to apply to embark on a one-way colonization mission to Mars,
they received nearly 3000 volunteers, and that to an organization without the
backing of any established space agency.
To be fair, some of that is probably due to the running tendency to
romanticize space travel on screen, rather than revel in the grubby realities.
That’s understandable, since those unpleasant details tend to be concentrated
into films like Apollo 13, Gravity, and The Martian where they actually add to
the drama. For most films, realistic depictions of the travails of space travel do
little to push a plot forward and could, in fact, become a distraction. Nobody
wants to bother thinking about the guy who has to clear out the blocked
sewage line on deck 14 while Captain Picard is negotiating with the Borg.
Look at the film Gravity. I know some people nitpicked it, but, by and large, let’s
just say, for the sake of argument, it got a lot of stuff right. What was great about it,
to me, is that you can imagine a version of that movie where the snarling Russian
villain on the space station is conspiring to keep Sandra Bullock out in space or
something like that. By leaning into the science so hard, [the filmmakers] made that
completely unnecessary because, essentially, the laws of physics were the antagonist.
Zack Stentz, screenwriter
Nonetheless, with civilian space travel poised to explode, and thousands of

volunteers waiting in line to die on another planet, let’s look at the ways Holly-
wood has addressed the realities of space travel, and explore some of the things
conspicuously overlooked—some of which could provide compelling drama in the
right show or movie. What would it really be like to live and work in space?
Astronaut Job Descriptions

As within any organization, astronauts2 have different roles. Those roles can vary
widely, from the pilot of a spacecraft to a researcher supervising long-term exper-
iments on board a space station. All astronauts share some responsibilities—all
2
Or cosmonauts, or taikonauts, et cetera. Throughout this chapter, we’ll be using the term astronauts for
all space travelers.
10 Life. In. Spaaaaace! 331
must know about the operational procedures aboard their craft, as well as safety
procedures, but the differences in the job descriptions is what makes them
interesting. Astronaut roles aboard the shuttle, and presumably in future missions
to the Moon, Mars, and other Solar System destinations, were as follows:
Mission Commander The mission commander (e.g., Matt Kowalski in

Gravity) is typically a senior astronaut who has responsibility for maneuvering
the spacecraft, the safety of the crew, and overall mission success.
Pilot Astronaut As the name implies, a pilot astronaut is responsible for

maneuvering a spacecraft, typically for docking or berthing maneuvers.3 Since
the mission commander has primary responsibility for piloting the craft, the
pilot may also assist with mission-related tasks like the release and recovery of
satellites or other spacecraft.4
Mission Specialist These are responsible for being up to speed on the

procedures necessary to perform all the science experiments on a given mis-
sion, with the exception of those for which a payload specialist has responsi-
bility. They are also responsible for crew activity planning, and managing the
use of consumables aboard the craft like food and water.
Educator Mission Specialist This astronaut is the same as a mission

specialist astronaut, but also an educator. NASA’s Educator Astronaut Project
was the successor to the Teacher in Space program, cancelled after Christa
McAuliffe perished aboard Challenger in STS-51L. Educator astronauts have
the role of educating earthbound students and generating excitement for
STEM5 disciplines. Educator astronauts are all now NASA astronauts, not
civilians as was Ms. McAuliffe.
Payload Specialist These are astronauts specifically brought into orbit

to deal with a single experiment or piece of equipment (and so have become
rare in the post-space shuttle era). In Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone said in several
instances that she was a mission specialist, but her task of installing an
3
The difference between docking and berthing to space station is that in docking a space ship actively
maneuvers right up to the moment of contact with the space station’s airlock. In berthing, a spacecraft
closes in to the station but then it takes a passive role as a robot arm on the station brings it into contact.
4
For example, the interplanetary probes Galileo and Magellan were both launched from shuttle cargo
bays, as was the Hubble Space Telescope.
5
“STEM” means “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math”. It is being slowly replaced by the term
“STEAM” (“Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math”), but not without a fight. Some STEM
educators bristle at the term, believing that it has evolved into something so all-inclusive that it no longer
has any meaning. Although SAC and KRG, as much as anyone, appreciate the synergy that the arts can
have with science (because Hollyweird Science), we will be sticking with STEM throughout.
astronomical version of a medical imaging system aboard the Hubble Space

Telescope, as well as her explicit statement that she trained for only six
months, made her job description sound more like that of a payload specialist.
Whereas a Space Shuttle Mission specialist was a NASA astronaut first,
then assigned to various missions, payload specialists were typically non-NASA
astronauts, often corporate technical experts sent to ensure the successful
deployment of commercial satellites, or technical staff from a research organi-
zation sent to oversee specific science experiments.6
The title was also given to congressmen who flew aboard the shuttle, like
Senator Jake Garn (more on him later), to Teacher in Space astronauts, and to
non-NASA international astronauts. The final American payload specialist was
the first American to orbit Earth, namely Senator John Glenn (D-Ohio), who
flew on STS-95 in 1998; the very final payload specialist was Israeli astronaut
Ilan Ramon, on mission STS-107, the final flight of Columbia.
When you climb in on top of a couple million pounds of propellant, if you aren’t
a little nervous, you don’t understand the situation.
John Young, Gemini/Apollo/Shuttle Astronaut
Astronaut Job Descriptions: International Space

Station
The astronauts who spend periods aboard the International Space Station
have ranks and duties that are both overlapping with, and disparate from,
their shuttle counterparts and, of course, many astronauts have served in both
capacities.
Mission Commander Crews aboard the International Space Station also

have a mission commander, but since the mission of ISS is a bit different, the
mission commander role is also different. A mission commander may have
limited piloting duties, but he or she is not only responsible for the successful
completion of the mission, but also for the health and safety of the crew, the
station itself, and any accompanying vehicles.
6
Most payload specialists flew only once, but Charles Walker flew three times. Roger Crouch and Gregory
Linteris both flew twice, but primarily because their first mission, STS-83 was cut short due to a fuel cell
failure, and was reflown as STS-94. Several payload specialists later trained as mission specialists and flew
again under a different job description.
Science Officer For every International Space Station crew, there is a

science officer astronaut—a sort of a mission commander for science. Since
2002, each ISS expedition crew has had a science officer. It is the job of the
NASA ISS science officer to “oversee the on-board activities required for
NASA investigations on the ISS,” and to “understand and meet the require-
ments and objectives of each ISS experiment.”
Flight Engineer Flight engineers are the jacks-of-all trades aboard space
stations: they perform maintenance, manage experiments, perform maintenance,
cook, fix things, oversee docking maneuvers, perform maintenance, control the
robotic arm, and don suits for space walks in order to perform maintenance.
In the Soviet Soyuz/Mir space station era, many flight engineers also helped
build and design space station modules. They also perform maintenance.
The flight engineers do everything on the Space Station. . . At the same time, we
are the plumbers, engineers, cooks, scientists, the commanders, and the pilots.
We have different roles depending on the tasks of the day.
Luca Parmitano, ESA (Italy) Astronaut
Space Suits and EVAs

Most space movies or shows feature a space walk, or EVA,7 sooner or later.
Leaving the relative safety of a spaceship is, again, often used as a device to raise
the stakes or increase tension. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Europa Report, Guardians
of the Galaxy (2014), Gravity (2013), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the
2002 “Objects in Space” series finale episode of Firefly, the 2014 “Inclement
Weather” episode of The 100, (and many more examples) all have spacewalks
as a critical part of the action.
Science Box: Exposure to Space
Cinematic science fiction has shown viewers dramatically different accounts of what
happens to a person when briefly exposed to the cold and vacuum of space. In the film
Outland (1981), miners on Jupiter’s moon Io were exposed to space, and they expanded
like an overfilled balloon and popped. To a lesser degree, viewers saw the same type of
thing happened to Quaid (Arnold Schwartzenegger), Melina (Rachel Ticotin), and
Kohagen (Ronny Cox) in the climatic moments of Total Recall (1990).
(continued)
7
Extra-vehicular activity.
In the 2007 film Sunshine, the spacecraft Icarus II docks with Icarus—sent 7 years
earlier to perform the same mission, but with whom all contact was lost. Four Icarus II
crew members investigate Icarus, and although many systems are operational, its main
computer is not—having been sabotaged—leaving Icarus a worthless hulk. Before
they can return to their ship, their docking passage is destroyed, also sabotaged.8
Their only chance is to line up the airlocks, blow the airlock hatch on Icarus, and the
force of the decompression will blow those in the airlock through space into the open
airlock of Icarus II. With one space suit between them, and crewmember Searle
volunteering to stay behind to blow the airlock, this means two crew must traverse
the 60 meters between the craft exposed to the “cold” of space. To prepare, Mase
(Chris Evans) and Harvey (Troy Garity) rip out and wrap themselves in insulation to
protect themselves as much as possible.
Searle blows the hatch, and Harvey accidentally glances off a part of Icarus,
changing his trajectory. He slams into Icarus II and bounces off. As Harvey’s lifeless
body drifts away from both spacecraft, his arm hits a protrusion from Icarus, and
shatters—clearly frozen solid from the extreme cold of space. As Harvey floats further
away, his corpsicle drifts out of the protective shadows of both spacecraft and, upon
exposure to the Sun, is instantly vaporized.
As depicted accurately in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the animated Titan A.E. (2000),
and in the 2007 “A Day in the Life” episode of Battlestar Galactica, brief exposure to
the space environment is actually survivable. Why wouldn’t people pop? Why
wouldn’t they freeze? Let’s look at those subjects independently.
In the case of popping, for the electronically-inclined, a great model for this
situation would be a circuit with a pair of parallel resistors of radically different
resistances (Fig. 10A.1). When the power is turned on, and current flows through
the resistors, most of the current will take the path of least resistance, and flow
through the smaller resistor. Not all of the current will flow through the smaller
resistor, however. A trickle will flow through the larger resistor.
Fig. 10A.1 Two parallel resistors in a circuit.
This is, in essence, what happens in a body exposed to space. Unless the unfortunate
individual who is suddenly in space sans suit or spacecraft holds his or her breath, with
(continued)
8
SPOILER ALERT—the saboteur is Captain Pinbacker, CO of Icarus, and the sole survivor of the
mission. The name is a nod to the quirky science fiction film Dark Star, in which there was a character
named Sergeant Pinback. Dan O’Bannon, who played Pinback, also co-wrote Dark Star with director
John Carpenter. A few years later, O’Bannon would take the thread of the film with the sentient beach
ball, give it a different take—horror not humor—and name the resulting film Alien.
the atmospheric pressure that typically presses on the chest cavity lifted, air in the
lungs expands, and takes the path of least resistance—out the nose and mouth. For
some air trapped in tiny blood vessels and capillaries, the path of least resistance is not
all the way through the vasculature to the lungs, and out the nose/mouth, like the
small amount of current that flows through the higher resister, some will burst tissue
like small blood vessels in the nose, eyes, and ears, and may rupture an ear drum
or two.
Below a given pressure,9 fluids like saliva, tears, sinus mucous, fluid coating the
inside of the lungs, even blood, will boil at 37 Celsius, the average human body
temperature. When a body undergoes a rapid decompression nitrogen dissolved in
the bloodstream can flash to a gaseous state and turn into bubbles, resulting in
decompression sickness (DCS) or “the bends.” Bubbles can form in any part of the
bloodstream, and can also migrate, meaning that symptoms of the bends can be
varied and widespread. Symptoms can range from rashes and extreme joint pain to
paralysis and even death.
In real life, the closest thing to an astronaut being exposed to space occurred during a
ground test in 1966, when Jim le Blanc was trying out a space suit in a vacuum chamber.
His suit sprung a leak, depressurizing him to near vacuum, and knocking him uncon-
scious. Fortunately, the chamber was repressurized within a minute and le Blanc soon
regained consciousness.
So an astronaut might survive the rapid decompression, but Jim le Blanc was not
exposed to the cold of space. The temperature of space, when not directly in the light of
a nearby star, is 2.7 Kelvins, or 270 Celsius (455 Fahrenheit). Surely that would freeze
a human body instantly?
That’s what the audience sees in Sunshine, but not in Titan A.E. or Battlestar
Galactica.10 The reason why sound does not travel in space is the same reason that
space is an excellent insulator—there is no medium to carry away the heat. Ever notice
that room temperature air is comfortable while room temperature bath water is chilly?
Your body heat is transferred to water much more readily than air since it is much
denser. In space, the only way to equalize the difference in temperature between a
living body and space is for the body to radiate away the energy, and that is a slow
process. A person would die of asphyxiation long before freezing.
In the “A Day in the Life” episode of Battlestar Galactica, after Chief Tyrol and his wife
Cally are exposed briefly to the vacuum of space, we see them the next day in sickbay.
Chief has a difficult time getting out of bed because of the extreme pain in his joints. He
crosses to the next room where Cally is recovering in a hyperbaric chamber. Look closely,
and you see that blood vessels in her eyes had burst. Everything was science-based down
to some very small details, and fans—conditioned by other shows that have portrayed this
incorrectly—complained about the science. Titan A.E. and Battlestar Galactica broke the
Hollywood Curriculum Cycle, at least on this topic.
In the case of Battlestar Galactica, there is a footnote to the story. In the 2009
Battlestar Galactica film The Plan, a Simon model intentionally blew himself out of an
airlock to commit suicide rather than having to face his human wife once she’d learned
of his true nature as a Cylon. As Simon’s soon-to-be corpsicle floats through space, a
(continued)
9
Approximately 0.05 atmospheres. An astronaut, even a fighter pilot, can reach elevations where Earth’s
atmospheric pressure is well below this, and still not be considered in space. The elevation where the
atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids will boil at a human’s body temperature is called the Armstrong
limit, and is about 18 km (60,000 ft).
10
In 2001, Bowman was blown into an evacuated pod bay—although he had to deal with the vacuum, he
was not exposed to the “cold” of space.
close-up reveals the ice crystals around his nose and mouth. These would have formed
when the moisture in his breath cooled from the rapid expansion brought by exposure
to space.
This shot was done, in part, as a “Nyaa nyaa” to a not insignificant number of
viewers who had complained that the scene in “A Day in the Life” was depicted
incorrectly, and that the couple should have either popped or frozen. It said, “We are
fully aware of how this scenario would have played out, up to and including this level
of detail.”
Space suits are, in effect, miniature spacecraft—they have a complete life

support system, a small propulsion system (used for emergencies, in case the
astronaut gets separated from their spacecraft), and a communications sys-
tem (Fig. 10.1). Space suits also have to be flexible enough to allow an astronaut
to do useful work. This is difficult because the pressure difference between the air
inside the suit and the vacuum of space tends to make spacesuits stiff like an
inflated balloon.
Although modern audiences are used to seeing astronauts work and move in
space with relative ease—and this has translated to their cinematic counter-
parts, but this may not be a reasonable extrapolation—wearing a space suit is a
tough, uncomfortable gig. It used to be even tougher in generations past. The
last human to leave the lunar surface, Gene Cernan, performed one of NASA’s
first space walks on Gemini 9. The goal of Cernan’s Gemini EVA was for him
to make his way to the rear of the capsule, and don a maneuvering unit, similar
to the MMU tested during shuttle flights in 1984.
Or that was the plan. The air pressure inside the suit was so great that it was
inflexible, and Cernan later recounted that it had, “all the flexibility of a rusty
suit of armor.” The stiff suit, and lack of handholds and footholds meant that
Fig. 10.1 Astronaut Bruce McCandless (left) performs the first test of a new MMU
during shuttle flight STS-41B, similar to the “prime piece of thrust” used by Matt
Kowalski in Gravity (right). Left-hand image courtesy of NASA; right-hand image copy-
right © Warner Bros. Pictures, image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
Cernan had a very difficult time maneuvering to the rear of the craft. His heart
rate soared, he began to sweat, his visor fogged, his suit overheated, and he was
recalled before completing the EVA’s objective.
After the low-gravity tribulations of previous spacewalkers Cernan, Michael
Collins, and Richard Gordon, Buzz Aldrin designed handholds, tools, and
EVA techniques for his flight aboard Gemini 12. Aldrin moved comparatively
effortlessly and did not tire. It was also Aldrin’s interest in scuba diving that led
to NASA’s adoption of underwater EVA training to simulate weightlessness.
Despite such improvements, fundamental challenges remain. Because of
their small size, there’s not a lot of margin for error built into these systems,
and it’s very difficult for an astronaut wearing a spacesuit to deal with any
problems occurring with their own suit—in 2013 Luca Parmitano almost had
the unfortunate distinction of being the first person to drown in space, when a
water leak developed from the system used to cool his spacesuit while on a
spacewalk outside the International Space Station (an event that provided the
direct inspiration for a scene in the 2017 science fiction horror movie, Life).
The water began to fill his helmet, and Parmitano just made it back to airlock
in time for his crew mates to get the helmet off.
Science Box: The Physics of that Scene in Gravity
When Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity premiered in 2013, there was no shortage of armchair
physicists who came out of the woodwork (or hulls as it were) to criticize the science in
the film. One of the most heavily-criticized scenes in the film was when Kowalski and
Stone, tethered together, approach ISS. Many complained that Kowalski did not have
to die, and the physics of the scene leading to his death made little sense (Fig. 10B.1).
Fig. 10B.1 Stone and Kowalski overshoot the International Space Station, but
Stone’s leg is tangled in the Soyuz parachute shroud line. Copyright © Warner Bros.
Pictures. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
(continued)
Events certainly unfolded rapidly, so let’s recap. The astronauts can see that the
parachute for the Soyuz return vehicle docked with ISS has been deployed (presumably
due to orbital debris impact). Approaching at high speed, and with gloved hands not
particularly dexterous, neither Kowalski nor Stone are able to grab hold of ISS, as they
bounce along its length, snapping their tether in the process. Stone is able to grab ahold
of the end of the tether still fastened to Kowalski, and her leg becomes entangled in the
Soyuz parachute shroud line as they race away from the station.
The events of that scene make sense in the long shots (Fig. 10B.2). It is clear that the
tether between Stone and Kowalski is taut, while the parachute shroud line (also
known as a riser) is slack, but growing ever more taut.
Fig. 10B.2 Stone and Kowalski speed away from the International Space Station. The
tether between them is taut, while the parachute shroud line is slack. . . but not for
long. Copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
In the Kowalski-tether-Stone-riser dynamical system, Kowalski represents the

majority of the mass—not only was he more massive than Stone, implying his suit
was correspondingly more massive, but he also wore the very large maneuvering
system that got them to ISS.11 Ironically, the hardware that got them to ISS probably
cost Kowalski his life in the end. He reasoned that when the riser eventually pulled
taut, the sudden jerk with their combined mass was likely to break it free from the
Soyuz module. When Stone refused to let him go, Kowalski made the decision for her:
better one to die than both.
Whether the shroud line would have remained attached to the Soyuz after a hefty
yank from the combined mass of the two astronauts is unknown, but Kowalski felt
that it would not, and he made the kind of judgement call that test pilots are paid to
make. Whether or not it was the right call can be debated, but the physics depicted in
the scene, and that which informed his decision, is sound.
Keep all of this in mind the next time you see a character in a drama take to
weightlessness like a fish to water. As enticing as it may seem to some to “float
free” in the weightlessness of space, it is not without its difficulties, and
astronauts train for years to make it appear easy.
11
We discuss the issues, and yes there are issues, with that in Chap. 8. At this point in the film, though,
that’s in the rear-view mirror.
Physiological Effects of Space Travel

It is a common misconception that there is no gravity in Earth orbit (if not,
what keeps your craft from flying away from the Earth like a released shotput)?
As we established in Chap. 8, an orbit is a balance between the centripetal
(center-seeking) force of gravity and the centrifugal force of inertia pushing
outwards. It is correct to say that astronauts are “weightless” or in free fall. Even
en route to another planet, say Mars, astronauts are still subject to the
gravitational pull of the Sun (if not, what keeps the planets from flying
away?). A more accurate term is to say that astronauts in space are in a
microgravity environment. At some point, it becomes purely academic, because
whether there is no gravity, or microgravity, weightlessness does horrible
things to the human animal.
Space Sickness
If it makes you feel any better, I coughed up everything but my kidneys my

first ride.
Astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), Gravity
Known clinically as Space Adaptation Syndrome, or SAS, space sickness is the

reason why astronauts are rarely televised their first day in orbit: many crew
members are performing unscheduled personal fuel purges. Between 50% and
75% of astronauts experience some form of SAS, suffering from nausea,
dizziness, disorientation, or some combination (Fig. 10.2). For some this can
be debilitating.
As with regular motion sickness, or kinetosis, SAS is caused by sensory
conflict between vision and the vestibular system. The vestibular system is
located in the inner ear, and consists of two fluid-filled chambers: the larger
utricle12 and the saccule. Within each are a viscous fluid and cilia (hairs) tipped
with otoliths. Otoliths are small particles composed of calcium carbonate.
When the head is tilted, the otoliths in the utricle (sensitive to motion in the
horizontal direction) and saccule (sensitive to vertical motion) are deflected by
gravity, the cilia register the deflection, and the signals are sent to the brain.
When the head is moving, fluid flows within the utricle and saccule, the
otoliths are deflected once again, and the signals are sent to the brain for
processing.
12
Derived from a term meaning “leather bag”. So it’s an ugly leather bag of mostly water.
Fig. 10.2 Astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) provides moral support to pay-
load mission specialist Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), who is suffering from SAS in
Gravity. Copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures. Image courtesy of moviestillsdb.com.
So the eyes see orientation and motion, while the inner ear is more like a
gyroscope and senses orientation and motion. The three different types of
motion sickness occur when the two systems disagree: when motion can be
seen and not felt, when motion can be felt and not seen, or when motion can
be both felt and seen but the two detection systems disagree about the nature
of the motion.
Perhaps the most famous case of SAS occurred when U.S. Senator Jake
Garn (R-Utah) flew aboard shuttle mission STS-51-D as a payload specialist
for five minutes short of a week in 1985.13 A former naval aviator, presumably
Garn was used to motion-related sickness. Nevertheless, Garn was so sick
during his flight that NASA astronauts unofficially named the unit of space
sickness the “Garn”,14, 15 where one Garn means “I’m feeling OK,” and ten
Garns, the highest degree of space sickness possible, means that you’re abso-
lutely incapacitated (astronauts who flew on STS-51D said that Garn himself
probably came in at a 12). An astronaut who is sick at the seven to nine Garn
level is essentially useless for performing meaningful work.16
13
Charles D. Walker, who flew three missions as a payload specialist, also flew on that mission with Garn,
and also experienced space sickness. Although some criticized the flight as an outer space junket or PR
ploy, and some astronauts certainly criticized it for allowing less-highly-trained civilians to fly on shuttle
missions, Walker was highly supportive of Garn’s flight.
14
There are actually conflicting reports on this. Some say that one Garn is the maximum level of space
sickness, and that most astronauts spend the bulk of their time at the milligarn level.
15
Senator Garn owes a small debt of gratitude to the series Adventure Time. It is only recently that a web
search on “barfing Jake” returns more hits in reference to the main character from the animated series than
to Mr. Garn’s real-life space shuttle adventure time.
16
Garn was in good humor about the entire incident. A friend to NASA during his time in the U.S. Senate
on the appropriations committee, NASA named its Integrated Test Facility—its prime astronaut training
facility—the Jake Garn Mission Simulator and Training Facility.
In another case, the Soviet Soyuz 10 mission was supposed to be the first
mission to the then brand new Salyut space station. The mission was cut short,
and the Soyuz craft never even docked with the station. What happened
remains a little unclear, but the mission was cut short, at least in part, due to
the extreme motion sickness of one, perhaps all, of the crew members.
Space sickness is also insidious, and can strike without warning, even after
an astronaut has ostensibly acclimatized. A sudden head motion or viewing a
fellow crew member in an unexpected orientation can induce an out-of-the-
black need to grab a motion sickness bag.
This inability to acclimatize fully can be very dangerous if an astronaut
regurgitates into his or her helmet during an EVA. The possibility that an
astronaut could literally choke or drown in vomit is remote, because the high
airflow in modern NASA helmets would tend to carry it away. Still, stomach
acid is very acidic and highly caustic: you would not want it in your eyes.
The final indignity that the vestibular system plays on space travellers is
that, upon return to Earth, many often have to re-acclimatize to being in
macrogravity. Yes, some get “Earth sickness.”
Science Box: Motion Sickness: How Nature Got Us Good
At some time or another, nearly everybody has experienced the “Please shoot me
now!” unpleasantness of motion sickness. It makes matters worse when you realize
that motion sickness may simply be a cruel evolutionary practical joke.
The area postrema, also known as the emetic center or vomiting center, is a structure
in the medulla oblongata part of the brain. It is stimulated, for example, when toxin
sensors detect the presence of potentially harmful substances in the bloodstream and
signal their discovery. The area postrema, in turn, sends the signal to “Fire away!” This
makes sense when ridding the body of toxins. How, then, did human beings evolve in
such a way that the brain’s response to “I’m confused about my orientation in space. . .”
elicits the response, “. . . I know! I’ll disgorge my stomach contents!”
There are conflicting schools of thought. One hypothesis is that when the visual
and vestibular systems are in such marked disagreement, the brain says, “I must have
ingested a neurotoxin, and I’m hallucinating, best get rid of as much of it as I can!”
Another school of thought is that motion sickness is Nature’s way of having a laugh at
us (and not all animals, not even all mammals even get motion sickness). The emetic
center is situated right next to the portion of the brain that manages balance. As with
two nearby electrical circuits it may simply be crosstalk between the two neighboring
parts of the brain.
The special evil of motion sickness, the genius of its cruelty, is that, generally
speaking, it hits you while you’re up. A sunset sail on the San Francisco Bay, a
child’s first roller-coaster ride, a rookie astronaut’s first trip to space. There’s no
faster route from joy to misery, from yee-ha to oooulllrr-aaghchkkk.
Mary Roach, author, Packing for Mars
Muscle Atrophy
SAS is just the beginning of the physiological number that space does on the
human body. Even after a space traveler overcomes their initial attitude
confusion and adapts to a microgravity environment, other nasty maladies
are at work in the background.
A common theme in biology is “Use it or lose it”, and that holds true at
large scales for evolution, and for individual organisms with regard to muscle
mass. As any gym rat can attest, once your exercise regimen is sharply
curtailed—due to illness or injury17—all that hard-earned muscle mass goes
away. However, unless you’re confined to a bed, life in Earth gravity is a
non-stop exercise regimen to some degree. Muscles flex to help you walk, to
stand, to help you sit upright, to keep your head upright, and to grab and lift
eating utensils. All of these muscles become deconditioned just as well in
microgravity.18 Your heart, also a muscle, similarly turns slacker.
Based upon data from astronauts and cosmonauts who have lived in space
for extended durations, space agencies have developed techniques to somewhat
minimize microgravity-induced muscle atrophy. Astronauts who adhere to an
obsessive workout schedule can mitigate some of the muscle loss, but in
Earth’s gravity, many muscles are exercising every waking moment (like
those that hold up your head). So it is unlikely that any exercise regimen in
space will completely counteract muscle atrophy, but at least getting some
cardio in helps your slacking heart. Moreover, even astronauts who exercise
above and beyond the call of duty still tend to have atrophy-related health
issues upon returning home (The 2017 film The Space Between Us turned on
the difficulty of a person who had been born on Mars, and thus never
experienced Earth gravity, trying to adapt to terrestrial conditions).
Dehydration
With millions of years of evolutionary inertia behind us, all of which have
occurred within Earth’s gravitational field, the human body can become
confused in space. Fluids that get pulled to your lower body while you are
standing or seated on Earth tend to become distributed more uniformly
throughout your body, in particular your torso. Unfortunately, the body’s
sensors that determine your hydration state are in the upper torso. They
become confused, and signal that you are over-hydrated. So you pee. Oh
boy, do you pee!
17
Or writing a book.
18
The ability to grasp is particularly important. If those muscles atrophy too severely, it is life-threatening.
Your body also decides that since you are saturated, much of the extra fluid
must be due to a surplus of blood, so you don’t need any more of that.
Astronauts in space make 10–15 percent less blood. The irony is that fluid
accumulating in astronauts’ faces can make it difficult for people on Earth to
judge their facial expressions correctly.
The potentially dangerous irony is that although your body is shedding
prodigious amounts of fluids, your bladder goes into denial about the situa-
tion. The sensors that signal when you need to pee are triggered when the
bladder is stretched, but in space, urine adheres uniformly to the interior of the
bladder, and rather than growing like a puddle from the bottom up, because of
surface tension, urine collects uniformly inwards from the bladder walls. So the
bladder can’t bring itself to tell you it needs to be evacuated until it is
completely full and urine starts pressing uniformly outwards. By then, so
much liquid may have built up that it can literally pinch the urethra closed.
In that instance, the bladder’s denial may have to be alleviated by an inter-
vention—with Dr. Catheter. So astronauts are counseled to “go” often in
space, even when they don’t feel the need. This also holds true for solid waste.
Bone Loss/Decalcification
Your bones, being close friends with your muscles, also take a holiday in
space. Since they require less rigidity to maintain structural integrity, bones
opportunistically shed what they consider excess calcium and potassium19 into
astronauts’ (already copious, for the reasons given above) urine.
Your heart needs potassium to maintain its rhythm. At the same time, since
your body no longer has to counter the effects of gravity, your heart, also a
muscle, takes a vacation as well. So your heart is fine. . . until there is a sudden
call to ramp up its rate—like in an emergency. In that instance, your heart may
become slightly arrhythmic.
Throughout all of this, your kidneys are one of the few bodily systems not
on holiday. Unused to processing such a high volume of liquids, and certainly
not with such high concentrations of minerals, they can become over-taxed.
Two minerals in high concentration in your urine are calcium and potassium
from your bones, which can lead to kidney stones.
Other bodily functions are also affected: eyeballs change shape, altering
vision. Astronauts often lose much of their sense of smell, which has a knock-
on effect on their sense of taste (spicy food becomes a highly valued commod-
ity). Immune systems become depressed.
19
Remember, you’re also on a low-residue diet that is deficient in these electrolytes in the first place.
The Hundred Mile High Club
In space, no one can hear you scream.

Tag line, Alien
That got your attention, didn’t it? Apologies in advance for bursting your
erotic bubble, but sex in space may not be nearly as attractive, exciting, or sensual
as it appears superficially. Let’s ignore the fact that both partners20 involved will
have to be functioning at a SAS level of 0 Garns to make it work before they can
even consider trying all those exciting zero-G positions about which they have
been fantasizing. Then they have to hope their hearts can handle the loads, and
they will also likely need a whole host of straps, buckles, Velcro, and fasteners—
and that’s not even for the kinky stuff!21 For amorous Earthbound couples, it
turns out that gravity and friction are great enablers of the simple harmonic
oscillations22 associated with lovemaking. In the microgravity of space, Newton’s
laws turn vicious. Ponder, for a moment, “For every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction.” Now ponder: “Whoa! Get back here!”
Laura Woodmansee’s book Sex in Space describes several erotic positions by
which low-gravity sex could be accomplished, but after Hollyweird Science
performed a thorough review of the book (strictly for scientific curiosity), your
authors came away with the impression that many of the positions Woodmansee
recommends would leave Barbarella and Buck flailing about unsatisfied.23
Weightlessness will bring new forms of erotica. About time, too.

Arthur C. Clarke
Officially, sex in space is the “Undiscovered Country”. In reality, is it more

likely to have simply gone undocumented—or it was documented and the
results remain confidential. In September 1992 on shuttle mission STS-47,
Endeavour carried aloft mission specialists Mark C. Lee and N. Jan Davis. Lee
and Davis were married at the time, becoming the first married couple to fly
20
Assuming there’s only two. There might be something to be said for at least three. More on that in a
moment.
21
Of course, there’s always duct tape.
22
That’s the official physics way of saying “regular back-and-forth motion.”
23
Particularly ironic about this is that Woodmansee’s husband Paul is not only a JPL propulsion engineer
who worked on, among other projects, the Mars Exploration Rovers, but he was also the science
consultant for the science fiction series Andromeda (2000–2005). This seems to be a case where the
right hand was not talking to the left.
Fig. 10.3 We’ll just leave this here. Image credit: NASA.
into space and inspiring a lot of nudging and winking on Earth (however,
given the cramped quarters on board the shuttle, that winking was probably in
vain). Some have speculated that the co-ed cosmonauts on Mir may claim title
to “first sex in space” as well. Although NASA has no official policy against
doing the zero-G nasty, the agency has several regulations about behavior that
could embarrass NASA. Perhaps the prospect of losing a lifelong dream for a
few moments of awkward heavy breathing simply isn’t worth it. On the other
hand, many astronauts have said they simply have no time or interest, and for
the latter there may be good physiological reasons.
Recall that the second you hit zero-G, your body has been shedding copious
amounts of fluids, and that weightlessness has distributed your remaining
fluids more homogeneously than when you were back on Earth. Well, the
remaining fluids that are now in your upper body are not in your lower body
where they would be super useful if one wanted to have sex.
In his 2006 book Riding Rockets,24 astronaut Mike Mullane said he expe-
rienced the “Viagra effect”, “Every morning, I would find myself painfully
afflicted with a diamond-cutter erection, just like the geezers in the movie
Cocoon.” Was this macho boasting? The fact is that many other male astro-
nauts—from Mercury to ISS—have reported the exact opposite, which sounds
more likely.
24
So to speak.
The Moon, however, is a different matter for space eroticists. With only
1/6th the gravitational pull, the average 5 foot 6 inch (170 cm) tall American
woman, who weighs about 130 pounds (mass of 59 kg) on Earth, would weigh
around 22 pounds (still mass of 59 kg, which does not change). The average
5 foot 10 inch (178 cm) American male weighs about 183 pounds (83 kg)
weighs in at less than 31 pounds. Given these numbers, and the likely
difficulties with zero-G sex, the Moon is looking more attractive as a space
tourism destination. Rather than vacationing at a resort on the Mediterranean
or the Caribbean, future couples might opt instead for one on the Sea of
Tranquility. In either instance—low-gravity or microgravity—these environ-
ments may allow people who have difficulty with sex on Earth, perhaps due to
disease or illness, a return to physical intimacy.
Sex in space may be a little trickier, but weightlessness will not subdue our basic
primal urge to procreate; lovemaking is a matter of survival.
Jason Klassi, author, The Everyday Space Traveler
There are also potential issues and open questions associated with concep-
tion in space—and, unlike Doctor Who’s River Song, acquiring the ability to
regenerate is probably not in the realm of likelihood. What role does gravity
play in delivering an egg into a woman’s uterus? Would there be a higher
danger of ectopic pregnancies in space? What implications do the harsh
radiation environment, at least in the inner Solar System, have for birth defects
and cancers?
Traditionally, when science faces tough questions like this, the call is, “Send in
the rats!” 25 In 1979, the Soviets sent up a robotic satellite with two compart-
ments: one with male rats, another with female rats. Once in orbit, the barrier
was removed. When the rats returned to Earth, none of the females were still
pregnant though several had conceived (meaning the rats did find a way to “Git
‘er done!”). Did microgravity foil embryo implantation? Did it stunt placental
growth? These are still open questions.
Pregnant rats later flew aboard Shuttle flights STS-66 and STS-70. Rats that
had been in space for two weeks or more had weak uterine contractions at birth,
but more of them. Recall that the uterus is also muscle, and like other muscles,
it becomes deconditioned in space. It turns out that strong contractions cause
the release of stress hormones in the soon-to-be newborn. Those hormones
“kick start” many physiological systems like eating and breathing. Studies have
25
Rats have one advantage over humans in this regard—they are physically unable to vomit.
shown that newborns not subject to strong contractions tend to have higher
rates of respiratory problems, high blood pressure, and neurological issues.
Prurient as this may sound, it might be a very good idea to start monitoring
people having sex—or at least trying—in space. That is, once there are
processes, procedures, and experimental controls in place. Look at the body
of knowledge on human physiology that scientists have acquired as a result of
spaceflight, particularly long-duration spaceflight. There are scores of cardiol-
ogists, neurologists, endocrinologists, internists, OB/GYNs, and other
researchers who would donate a kidney to have physiological data taken of a
couple before, during, and after a union in a microgravity environment. These
researchers would be the Masters and Johnsons, Shere Hites, and Alfred
Kinseys of the space age. NASA could gather a ton of useful data about
human physiology, and imagine the technology and commercial spinoffs!
Artificial Gravity
Just keeping your lunch down in zero-G is harder than it looks.

Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), Gravity
Apart from the opening minutes of the film Gravity, when Dr. Ryan Stone
(Sandra Bullock) is doing her best to install new hardware on the Hubble
Space Telescope while trying not to hurl in her helmet, rarely are any of the
horrible things that weightlessness does to the human body mined for dra-
matic potential. Why not? Because they are all obviated by a much more
pressing production concern: gravity.
One of the things we felt was interesting, and it’s only because we’re at a place in
the Industry where these things are possible on television, is that we wanted to
make space a character. Space is a hostile environment. When your ships aren’t
accelerating, you’re weightless. Most of the time, you ignore those things. For us,
they’re interesting opportunities for drama, and we’re playing those things as
much as possible. What it does is that it actually gives the show a really
interesting look.
Dr. Naren Shankar, showrunner, The Expanse
One of the most common science fiction tropes in space-based dramas is the
presumption of artificial gravity—because showing characters floating in
nearly every scene is expensive—although the depiction of sound in space is
the low-hanging fruit that nerdgassers grab when they feel the incessant need
to complain about something.
Rants like that of this blogger26 are common:
Physicists and astronomers have long complained how badly most sci fi movies
and TV and novels mangle science (starting with the impossibility of transmit-
ting sound in the vacuum of space, which nearly all the space movies get wrong—
but explosions without sound simply don’t do it for today’s audiences).27
By now audiences generally know that there is no sound in space28; there is no

musical accompaniment, either. Sometimes, as in the case here, accurately-
depicted science is distracting, and pulls viewers out of the drama—the last thing
a screenwriter wants to do. Cindy Au, who writes for themarysue.com goes as
far to say, “Imagine watching your favorite space battles on the big screen WITH
NO SOUND. þ1 for scientific accuracy, 100 for awesomeness. . . I prefer my
space battles with inexplicably loud explosions in the vacuum of space. Just
sayin’.”29
An interesting subtlety in the previous release of nerd gas, however, is that
the writer openly acknowledges something Hollywood has known for years:
that soundlessly depicting events like explosions in space does not, in fact, “do
it” for audiences. The writer literally laments that screenwriters and producers
and directors should do their jobs poorly, audience and story be damned, in
the name of science accuracy. One could say that the blogger, as well as many
others, gives the importance of sound in space “artificial gravity.”
Of the four fundamental forces (which we cover in Hollyweird Science Vol. 1),
the force of gravity may be the weakest, but it is the one modern science
understands the least. It is certainly not a phenomenon that can be re-created
by artificial means, and it doesn’t look like it will be in the foreseeable future—
though there are ways it might be simulated. So despite being at least as scientific
inaccurate,30 rarely do nitpickers complain about the artificial gravity trope. . . to
the point that most Hollywood productions realize that they have to do nothing
to sell it. It is typically presented onscreen as matter-of-fact and it is typically
swallowed unquestioningly by the same folks who nitpick the portrayal of sound
in space.
26
http://www.skepticblog.org/2014/05/21/holly-weird-science/
27
Even the Ship of the Imagination in Cosmos (2014) was depicted as generating sound in space. Or,
perhaps, we just imagined that.
28
They may not know whether Earth orbits the Sun or vice versa, but they do know there’s no sound in
space.
29
http://www.themarysue.com/science-entertainment-exchange/
30
Because there are rare situations where acoustic waves will propagate in space.
Two examples of productions that did take the effort to simulate weight-
lessness are the Ron Howard film Apollo 13 (1995) and Syfy’s The Expanse
(though the latter also goes out of its way to sell its form of simulated gravity as
well—more on this in a bit31).
In scenes where the astronauts were weightless in Apollo 13, director Ron
Howard did not resort to any form of camera trick—his actors were actually
weightless. As part of its Reduced Gravity Program, NASA operates special
aircraft that are used to acclimatize astronauts and scientific experiments to
weightlessness. These craft ascend at sharp angles, and then descend at equally
sharp angles. During the 25 seconds or so while the plane races towards the
ground, everything inside is in free-fall, essentially weightless. The pilot then
executes a 2-G pullout from the dive, and repeats the cycle up to 60 times. Is it
any wonder that the aircraft has been given the nickname “Vomit Comet?32”
Scenes in which the characters were weightless were filmed in special sets built
within NASA’s Vomit Comet. Since the flight profile of the Vomit Comet limits
takes to 25 second intervals, and since director Alfonso Cuarón is famous for his
lengthy single-shot scenes (the first scene was 13 minutes long), this was not an
option for Gravity. Cuarón and his production team created an elaborate enclo-
sure called a light box to simulate not only the microgravity environment of low
Earth orbit, but also the combined illumination of sunshine and earthshine.
If a show wanted to exhibit the working of an artificial gravity system and
sell the verisimilitude for its characters, how might that work, and would it be
as effective as the real thing? One method would be to design a spacecraft with
the decks running perpendicular to the direction of motion, and have the
spacecraft accelerate constantly. For trips relatively short in duration, this
would work, and this is what is depicted in The Expanse (2015–) (Fig. 10.4).
[On The Expanse] We have ships that have one engine on them. They’re rockets.
They move in one direction. The floors are perpendicular to the rocket. When
you want to slow down, you have to flip around, and use the same rocket to brake
you. Everybody says how the movement of those ships looks amazing. All we’ve
done is show how a ship would actually move in space. Our trips are all thrust to
the midpoint, flip around and decelerate the other half of the trip there. If you do
that each time at 1/3 G, you basically have gravity for most of the time you’re in
flight.
Dr. Naren Shankar, showrunner, The Expanse
31
The fact that the showrunner has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell might have something
to do with this.
32
The previous incarnation of the Vomit Comet was a KC-135 Stratotanker, but now NASA uses a C-9B
Skytrain II.
Fig. 10.4 Director Alfonso Cuarón works with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock
on the set of Gravity. Copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures, image courtesy of
moviestillsdb.com.
For longer journeys, this method quickly runs afoul of Special Relativity,
especially if one design constraint is that the acceleration be equal to one Earth
gravity—as was the case in the 2014 miniseries Ascension. In that series, the
population of the titular spacecraft, en route to a nearby star system, were told that
the spacecraft would accelerate to the midpoint, flip, and decelerate the remainder
of the journey. It was vital to the plot that the spacecraft acceleration be as close to
Earth G as possible (HUGE SPOILER in the footnotes33, 34, 35) both in the
short- and long-term.
The acceleration of gravity at Earth’s surface is 9.8 m/s2, so Ascension would
have to accelerate at that rate to simulate Earth gravity. Starting from rest, in
1 second Ascension would be traveling at 9.8 m/s. In two seconds, it would be
moving 19.6 m/s. In an hour, 35,280 m/s (127,000 km/h, which is over twice as
fast as the New Horizons spacecraft, currently the fastest spacecraft ever to leave
Earth). At the end of a day, it would be moving 846,720 m/s (over 3 million
km/h). Assuming the fuel, nuclear bombs, or deuterium/tritium/lithium
deuteride pellets hold out, in five weeks the spacecraft—as large as the Empire
33
The crew was not really on a spacecraft, they were part of a large psychological/genetic experiment
playing out on a spacecraft simulator on Earth. With the exception of one person, the crew/experimenter
interface, the crew believed they were on a mission to populate another star system.
34
Especially with a tag line, “The gravity of their journey is just dawning.”
35
A clever crew member could have figured out they weren’t on Earth with a device called a Foucault
pendulum. Foucault pendulums have a distinctive pattern of motion when swinging in the gravitational
field of a rotating body, i.e., Earth.
State Building—would be travelling at 0.1c, or 10% the speed of light. Relativ-

istic effects will start to ensure that Ascension will no longer be able to maintain an
acceleration of 1G, and even if it could maintain the same linear acceleration rate,
it would reach the speed of light in less than a year. No more artificial gravity.36
This method of artificial gravity also does not work when a spacecraft is
orbiting a planet. As we have seen in Chap. 8, an orbit is a balance between the
gravity of the planet a spacecraft orbits and the centrifugal force caused by its
elliptical motion. If the spacecraft engine fired continuously, the craft would
quickly achieve escape velocity and would no longer be in orbit.
Another common way that cinematic ships simulate gravity—those who go
through the effort of even trying to sell why their actors aren’t floating—is by
rotating a section of the spacecraft (Zephyr from Battlestar Galactica, the Earth Force
destroyers in Babylon 5, or the Alexi Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact), or
even the entire spacecraft itself (the Babylon stations in Babylon 5, Space Station V
in 2001, Elysium).
This may be familiar from your own experience if you’ve ever been on a
centrifuge ride at a fairground—rides with names like “Vortex” or “UFO” or
even “Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth”—where the spinning ride keeps
those inside held against the wall. These can produce two or three times the
force of gravity (which is why you don’t fall out) with a relatively small
diameter cylinder rotating very quickly. In the same way, when a ship, or a
part of it, rotates, the crew will feel centrifugally-simulated gravity, forcing
them against the outer wall. So “up” in this instance means “pointed inwards”.
Spinning a spacecraft sells artificial gravity well cinematically, but there are
serious practical concerns—most noteworthy, the Coriolis force. The same
Coriolis force that causes cyclonic storms to spin clockwise in the Northern
Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere causes the
fluid in the inner ear—the fluid that flows around the otolith sensors to help
establish orientation and equilibrium—to flow in ways the brain has difficulty
correlating with information being relayed by the eyes. The practical offshoot
of this is that experiments with Soviet cosmonauts revealed that centrifugal
gravity is possible only if the rotation rate is kept as low as possible to minimize
the disorienting consequences of the Coriolis Effect. Most people can tolerate
up to 3 rotations per minute before they throw out37; some can make it, or at
least be trained to make it, to 6 RPM. Few make it to 10. Nonetheless, this
remains the most practical method we know to generate artificial gravity.
36
It turns out that the 1G acceleration of Ascension is probably the biggest conceit of the show, if we
assume that other technologies were enabled by cryotron computer—see the Science Box “Ascension,
Dudley Buck, and the Cryotron Computer” in Chap. 7.
37
There is no more “throwing up.” Since down is the direction in which gravitation acts, and up is the
direction opposite; but in space there is no up. Space travel will, invariably, spawn its own slang.
Science Box: You Spin Me Right Round
When rotating space colonies were first

proposed, one big question was: how
fast should they rotate? This was an
important question because, as we’ll
see, in order to produce the centrifugal
force required to produce the equiva-
lent of Earth gravity, the diameter of
the colony is proportional to the rate of
rotation or, depending upon how you
view the situation, vice-versa
(Fig. 10D.1).
The rotation rate is constrained to 3
rpm by the maximum rate most humans
can tolerate before becoming sick due
to disorientation. So to calculate the
minimum size of a colony possible to
get a centrifugal force of 1G, we use
the following equation for centrifugal
force:
mv2
F¼ ,
r
Fig. 10D.1 The comic XKCD “weighs in”
where v is the tangential velocity and r is (correctly) on the (non)existence of cen-
the radius of the colony. If forces are trifugal force. Comic courtesy of XKCD.
always of the form F ¼ ma by Newton’s
Second Law, then the centripetal accel-
eration is given by
v2
a¼ :
r
The tangential velocity in turn is given by
v ¼ ωr
where ω is the angular velocity, which measures the rate of rotation, and is expressed
in radians per second (rather than degrees per second). There are 2π radians in a
complete circle. For an object rotating at 3 rpm, that’s one full rotation every 20 sec-
onds, which is 2π radians/20 seconds, so ω ¼ (0.1π) rad/s. Substituting this into the
equations above, we get
a ¼ ω2 r ¼ ð0:01Þπ 2 r:
Setting the centrifugal acceleration a to 9.8 m/s2 (the acceleration due to gravita-
tion at Earth’s surface) and doing some algebra we arrive at
(continued)
9:8 m=s2
¼ r ¼ 99:3 m:
0:01π 2 1=s2
This means that the minimum diameter for a rotating colony is just under 200 m.
Let’s reverse the process. The Forerunner halos from the Halo series of video games
and both live-action and animated series like Forward Unto Dawn (2010) and the Fall
of Reach (2015) are ring-shaped habitats 5000 km in radius. How fast would a halo
have to spin to achieve 1G?
Again, we are trying to achieve an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2, and can start with
a ¼ ω2 r,
or
a
¼ ω2 :
r
Solving for ω, yields

rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffirffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
a 9:8 m=s2
ω¼ ¼ ¼ 1:4 103 rad=sec :
r 5 106 m
Since there are 2π radians per rotation, this becomes 2.2 104 rotations per
second, or 0.80 rotations per hour. Taking the inverse means that, to achieve Earth
gravity, a Halo rotates once every hour and 15 minutes. Over the span of a day, a halo
rotates 19 ¼ times.
We can use these equations to investigate one more fun situation. In 2010: The
Year We Make Contact,38 cosmonaut Max Brajlovsky (Elya Baskin) and astronaut
Dr. Walter Curnow (John Lithgow) perform an EVA from the Russian ship Alexi
Leonov to stabilize the U.S.S. Discovery in orbit around Jupiter’s moon Io.
Discovery is spinning at roughly 1.8 revolutions per minute,39 so Brajlovsky and
Curnow smartly attach themselves to the spacecraft at the axis of rotation, then walk to
the end of the craft to enter. As they move further away from the axis of rotation, they
experience a G-force from the ship’s rotation so strong they can barely stand.40 If Discovery
is 140.1 m long,41 what did they actually feel in the way of a G-force at the end of the craft?
If the rotation rate is 1.8 revolutions per minute, that equals 11.3 radians per
minute, or an ω of 0.19 radians per second. If we assume that the axis of rotation
was half-way along the length of Discovery, then the radius is 70 m. Again, using
(continued)
38
KRG is a huge fan of this film, and although it is a fantastic example for some aspects of science, that
does not mean it is without its flaws. As we established in Hollyweird Science, SAC is a purist, and prefers
the original.
39
Using different starting points, KRG timed how long it took for one rotation, then used the average of
10 trials.
40
Yet, once inside, this vanishes.
41
Clarke, Arthur C. (1976) The Lost Worlds of 2001, New York (Signet) and London (Sidgwick &
Jackson). ISBN 978-0283983375.
a ¼ ω2 r,
we have,
a ¼ ð0:19 rad=sÞ2 ð70 mÞ ¼ 2:5 m=s2 :
Divided by 9.8 m/s2 yields 0.26 Gs—less than the gravity on the surface of Mars, but
more than that for the Moon. Since Leonov had a spinning section to simulate gravity
itself, Curnow and Brajlovsky cannot even blame microgravity muscle atrophy and
bone loss for their struggles.
Radiation
The good news is that our planet’s magnetic field and, to a lesser extent its
atmosphere, protects Earthly inhabitants from a constant stream of subatomic
particles called solar wind streaming from the Sun. A living body exposed to
solar wind for even a brief period of time would be prone to health problems
like cataracts, cancer, radiation sickness, even death. Earth’s field also shields
the biosphere from much larger solar particle eruptions called solar flares (and
even larger coronal mass ejections).
The bad news is that Earth’s magnetic field also traps some of those same
subatomic particles, where they remain zooming around at very high speeds in
Earth orbit. Even within the “protection” of Earth’s magnetic envelope, space
is a harsh radiation environment, and today the amount of time astronauts are
allowed to spend in space, over their entire lifetimes, is dictated by accumu-
lated radiation exposure.
The metal hull of spacecraft certainly offer some protection against partic-
ular radiation, but not as much as one might expect. When some solar wind
particles strike an atom of a metal, rather than bounce off, they can instigate a
cascade of new particles that enter the spacecraft.
Radiation exposure is a major limiting factor in the quest to send humans to
other destinations in the Solar System, but there is hope. It turns out that water
and excremental waste actually protect people and animals better from the
different forms of space radiation than metal hulls, so storage tanks may be
relegated to the exterior of interplanetary ships, or waste and water storage tanks
may form interior walls within craft to create havens in which crew can take
harbor during events like solar flares. In addition, it may be possible to generate
an artificial magnetic envelope to ward off charged particles. Mitigating the
radiation hazard to crew members will be an important design consideration in
future spacecraft.
Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive

Earth, aka Biosphere 1, is the largest self-contained42 life-supporting system we
know. Since spacecraft have limited storage space, and it is costly to launch
mass into space from Earth, long-term space travel will require the design of
spacecraft that mimic Earth’s ecosystem. NASA calls such systems CELSS, or
Closed Ecological Life Support Systems.
In spaceborne CELSS, farms will grow food and take part in recycling human
waste, filtering waste water, and rejuvenating the air, an approach most notably
tested in the Biosphere 2 facility in the 1990s. Built in the Arizona desert,
Biosphere 2 was a sealed structure, with huge plant-filled greenhouses and a
small selection of farm animals and aquaculture. It was designed to house a
fully functioning ecosystem in complete isolation from the ecology of the
Earth.43 The giant greenhouses resemble the arboretums of the spacecraft Valley
Forge in 1972s Silent Running, a movie where the last of the Earth’s trees and
other plant life are preserved onboard a fleet of deep-space freighters.44
The vast number of unexpected issues that manifested during the Biosphere
2 “missions” revealed that we’re going to need quite a while to perfect such
systems. At the time of the Biosphere 2 experiments, it was not possible to
establish a completely self-sufficient ecosystem that could provide enough food
and air for the crew members inside. This was for a number of reasons,
including problems with the fresh concrete absorbing carbon dioxide—that
otherwise would have been converted into oxygen by the plants—and fixing it
as calcium carbonate, effectively removing both carbon and oxygen from the
system.
No large scale attempts to create a similar system have been attempted since,
but in the interim, other smaller-scale investigations into self-contained eco-
systems have been launched, some still ongoing. Several space station exper-
iments over the years have tested how best to grow plants in microgravity.
Based upon data from Skylab, NASA’s first space station, the BioHome project
was initiated. BioHome was a small facility whose primary goal was the
42
Well, largely self-contained. There is the matter of the Sun that is pumping in millions of watts of
power. That said, there is life in the ocean depths that does exist completely independently of solar
radiation.
43
One of the Biosphere 2 experimenters, Dr. Donald Paglia, consulted on the Syfy series Ascension on
how the design and “lessons learned” from Biosphere could help storytellers sell the mission. Paglia is the
father of Jaime Paglia, co-creator and executive producer of Eureka, who wrote the foreword for Hollyweird
Science Vol. 1.
44
In the same manner as the shuttle to Space Station V in 2001: A Space Odyssey was operated by Pan Am,
the ships in Silent Running were operated by American Airlines. Shots of the three freighters in the film,
Valley Forge, Berkshire, and Sequoia, became the agro-ships in the 1978 Battlestar Galactica. They were also
used in the Canadian series The Starlost (1973).
creation of a one-person CELSS. One of the principle findings was the

efficiency with which various species of planets filter air and waste water.
BIOS-3 was a CELSS in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, that housed up to three people,
and was roughly 4% the size of Biosphere 2—smaller than the smallest
Biosphere 2 habitat, in fact. At least 10 missions ran from 1972 to 1984.
Algae was used to recycle carbon dioxide into oxygen. Unlike other CELSS,
human waste was stored and removed, as opposed to recycled. The Chinese
have also gotten into the CELSS game with Yuegong-1 (Lunar Palace 1). One
goal of the first 105-day mixed-crew mission in 2014 was to determine
whether the crew could thrive on a high protein diet supplemented with
vegetation. Based upon a United Nations study, the protein chosen was
mealworms. Finger-sized mealworms. If, perhaps, the Russians have a cultural
aversion to ingesting human waste with too few stages after it has passed
through a human being, it is almost certain that American crews will find that
mealwormzillas are an “acquired taste.”
Until NASA, or any other space agency or corporation can create a fully-
enclosed ecosystem that mimics the subtleties, intricacies, and inter-relations
of Earth’s biosphere, all the components to enable and maintain the lives of
crew are going to have to be handled by largely independent subsystems under
the collective name of “life support.”
Thermal Management
In Chap. 7, we already discussed the techniques, mostly passive, employed by
spacecraft engineers to regulate temperature in order to keep instruments alive
and functioning properly. Compared to instrumentation, crew members are a
royal pain in the backside. The temperature range over which humans can
survive is typically much smaller than spacecraft hardware, and the tempera-
ture range over which humans function well is narrower still.
One method to keep the inside of a spacecraft in a comfortable range for
people, plants, and lab animals is to thermally isolate the interior of the
spacecraft from the exterior. Insulating foam is typically added to the outside
of habitable modules and spacecraft, which is why some sections can have a
slightly puffy appearance. Although counter-intuitive, in the case of a vessel
like ISS—with electronic equipment and six humans all radiating heat—it can
sometimes be challenging for a spacecraft to rid itself of excess heat, despite
being in the “cold” of space. This is because, without an atmosphere or contact
with the ground there is no convection or conduction of excess heat, and
spacecraft must rely entirely on radiators to carry it away (see Chap. 8).
Air
Long-duration space missions still have significant challenges, starting with
making sure there’s enough air to breath. Plants are difficult to grow in space,
and of all the problems of interplanetary life support, this is probably the one
we have come furthest in solving.
Early spacecraft and space stations typically stored all the oxygen that would
ever be needed in tanks, either as a compressed gas or as a cryogenic liquid.
Carbon dioxide was prevented from building up to toxic levels by absorbing it
with disposable lithium oxide cartridges known as “scrubbers.”45 When con-
tinuous occupation of the Mir space station began in 1989, however, it
became impractical to store all the oxygen required in tanks, even with regular
resupply missions. Instead, the Russians developed the “Elektron,” electrolysis
device which converted water to oxygen and hydrogen (with the potentially
explosive hydrogen vented to space). The water came mostly from the crew’s
urine. A second system called “Vozdukh” can extract carbon dioxide from a
station’s atmosphere using a reusable catalyst, and vent the unwanted gas into
space as well.
Both of these systems are used aboard the International Space Station, along
with similar systems developed by the United States. They’re not perfect
though, and reportedly can recycle less than half the air currently required on
board the station (the rest comes from stores in old-fashioned tanks). Research
is underway to create systems that can substantially improve upon this, an
essential element for any long-range crewed mission across the Solar System.
Eating and Drinking in Space

Eating and drinking in space is tricky for a number of reasons. First, food must
be preserved for long periods. As a rule of thumb, dehydrated foods are
preferred over frozen foods (although Skylab had a refrigerator), because
they are lighter and there’s no risk of a crew facing malnourishment from a
refrigerator failure. So this can make it difficult to create a variety of appetizing
meals. Second, food is messy, and drink is even worse. Having crumbs and
globs of water floating randomly throughout is a really bad idea onboard a
spacecraft,46 so food is often designed to be a little sticky in order that it
45
You may remember that, during the Apollo 13 mission crisis, finding a way to use the lithium hydroxide
cartridges that were designed for the Apollo command module with the life support system in the lunar
module was critical to getting the crew home alive.
46
When John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich aboard Gemini 3 in 1965, the astronauts could
only manage a couple of bites before it began breaking into tiny crumbs. Mission Control was Not
Impressed, and NASA subsequently had to answer many questions of the, “How are we going to get to the
Moon if you can’t even control your astronauts” variety.
Fig. 10.5 A bowl of 3-D printed candy. Photo: Stephen Cass.
doesn’t float off when transferred to the mouth via a utensil. Drinks are often
consumed through straws, although a cup that allows relatively normal drink-
ing has been designed to keep the contents inside using surface tension.
So far, space station crews have relied entirely on food brought up from
Earth, and there’s been no attempt to recycle solid human waste. Ideally, we’d
solve the problem with something like Star Trek’s food replicators. Just like
Captain Picard, we could say “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot,” and have the beverage
materialize in front of our eyes.47 Some progress has been made in this
direction in recent years with specialized 3-D printers, which have already
been used to create foods such as dodecahedron-shaped candies (Fig. 10.5) and
pizza. Research is even under way to print cuts of meat. (Take note those who
screamed "That'll never happen!" when Felicia Day's character, Dr. Holly
Marten, was 3-D printed in Eureka.)
Still, even if you can print out a complete steak dinner, complete with
desert, you still need to supply the printer with raw materials. What’s needed is
a way to grow food in space—even if it’s just a small amount to supplement an
astronaut’s diet with something fresh.
Evacuating in Space
No, we do not mean “bailing out”, at least not in the literal sense. When you
do your business on Earth, you rely heavily on the force of gravity—not only
47
Have you ever wondered why Picard had to keep specifying “Tea,” rather than just saying “Earl Grey.
Hot?” Because it’s not like there’s any other food or drink called Earl Grey. It’s a bit like saying “Meat.
Bacon. Extra crispy,” every single time.
does it move waste away from your body, but it keeps you affixed to the toilet.
In space, toilets have seatbelts. Keep in mind Newton's third law as applied to
rocket exhaust in Chap. 7—burrito night could leave you zipping around the
room like a balloon.
Solids and liquids are easier to dispose of separately, so they are dealt with
separately. Urination is easier—both sexes urinate into the end of a vacuum
hose which has a different “attachment” depending upon which gender is
peeing. Women pee into a cup; men go into a funnel.
To minimize solid waste, space travelers are typically put on low-residue48
diets. With an emphasis on highly-processed foods and less than 10 g of fiber
per day, low-residue diets are a Whole Foods shopper’s nightmare—perhaps
even beyond that of hypervelocity orbital debris. Low-residue diets include
pulp-free juices, white bread, refined pastas and cereals, white rice, limited
servings of skinless well-cooked vegetables, peeled and/or well-cooked fruits,
and limited amounts of milk and/or yogurt. It also turns out that meat is highly
digestible, and leaves behind very little residue, which is why the traditional
“last breakfast on Earth” before a flight for US astronauts is steak and eggs.
What they do not allow is raw vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains or
breads/pastas made from whole grains, legumes, and fruits with skins.
Although supplements can pick up some of the slack, low-residue diets run
lean on essential nutrients like vitamin C, potassium, and calcium. They also
must strike a balance between limiting the dietary residue and leaving crew
members constipated (though some astronauts have found the waste disposal
systems of missions past so disagreeable that they might pray to the digestion
gods for a good bout of constipation).
Still, although low-residue diets are designed to reduce the volume and
frequency of stool—while prolonging intestinal transit time—occasionally
everybody has to visit the “little astronaut’s enclosure.” Solid waste is a
much more pressing issue in space—it is loaded with bacteria that can make
the crew very ill, and particles suspended in the air have an unfortunate habit
of “hanging around.” It is important to collect it all.
In the early days of spaceflight, astronauts had to tape a bag to their
backsides to catch fecal matter. Since then, toilets have been designed that
use suction to mimic the action of gravity and capture the waster in con-
tainers (Fig. 10.6). Still, these toilets require much more time to use properly
than Earthly toilets, as astronauts have to secure themselves in the correct
position and attach a cup and hose to collect urine—a five minute ablution can
easily take thirty minutes in space.
48
This is probably obvious, but “residue” means undigested food, including fiber, that makes up poop.
Fig. 10.6 This torture device, with its 4-inch aperture, is actually a space shuttle waste
collection system (WCS). The International Space Station features two such fan-driven
suction toilets, similar to the Space Shuttle WCS, in the Tranquility and Zvezda modules.
Photo courtesy of NASA.
If all goes according to design waste in the containers are then exposed to
the vacuum of space. This freeze-dries it to kill any bacteria.49 When enough is
collected, it is stored on a robotic Progress resupply module, undocked, and
allowed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Astronaut Chris Hadfield says, “So,
the next time you see a beautiful shooting star going across the sky, that’s what
it might be.”50
NASA is currently engineering Space Toilet: The Next Generation for the
Orion and other long-duration vehicles that might one day take humans
to Mars. Called the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), it is
designed to be an improvement in every measureable category (better reliabil-
ity, more hygienic, lighter, and quieter) than its shuttle and ISS predecessors. A
UWMS prototype is scheduled to be tested aboard ISS in 2018.
49
While it’s not detailed in the movie, the book The Martian makes note of the small amount of Earth soil
bacteria Watney has for experiments, to be combined with the freeze-dried poop of his crewmates for use
as fertilizer.
50
This just proves that, even in peace time, there’s still a chance of being hit by an icy BM. In retrospect,
that gag is funnier when spoken.
Water
Water recycling is also fairly well advanced. These systems can capture and
purify urine, washwater, as well as humidity (read: astronaut sweat) from the
air,51 into water that can either be fed into the oxygen system, or used as
drinking water.52 According to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, 93 percent
of the water aboard ISS is reclaimed.
The Americans and Russians operate independent water filtration systems
aboard ISS. This not only reflects their differing views on which technology
performs better,53 it also satisfies NASA’s long standing desire for systematic
redundancy. The American system does recycle more water than the Russian
system, but it is less for technological reasons than cultural: Americans will drink
their recycled pee, while the Russians refuse to do so.54 In fact, the American
system recycles more water in part because the Americans will physically collect
Russian pee containers, and feed the contents into their reclamation system. In
the end, the reclaimed water is purer than the water most Americans drink at
home. Yet some people still find consuming “The drink formerly known as
urine” distasteful. . . even when it has no particular taste.
To Boldly Stay Put: Space Stations and Colonies

Consider the Death Star (Fig. 10.7). Sure, it may have been a brutal instru-
ment of planetary annihilation, but any space station that can be mistaken for a
moon has an undeniable cool factor. For the same reason, even though they
regularly suffer various explosions, life support failures, or invasions, who
wouldn’t want to take a stroll through the halls of outposts like Babylon 5,
Deep Space Nine, or even Moonbase Alpha?
For a surprisingly long time, space stations have been a staple of science fiction:
in 1869, Edward Everett Hale wrote a short story entitled “The Brick Moon” for
The Atlantic Monthly. In the story, industrialists build a 61-m-wide artificial
satellite from bricks to be a navigational aid. Launched using giant flywheels,
the brick moon is accidentally sent into orbit with some of the construction crew
still onboard (fortunately for them, the de facto space station takes some atmo-
sphere with it). Decades after that story was published, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
51
Some of which is due to astronaut sweat, so there’s a recycling component to that as well.
52
Although California’s epic multi-year drought finally officially concluded as we were wrapping up this
book, some municipalities in that state are considering using similar technology to prevent the complete
depletion of underground aquifers in future droughts.
53
Though the Americans will soon be adopting the Russian approach.
54
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/26/us-astronauts-
recycled-urine-international-space-station
Fig. 10.7 Does art imitate life or is this parallel evolution? The first Death Star appeared
in Star Wars in 1977, yet the first close-up image of Saturn’s “Death Star Moon” Mimas
was not returned to Earth until the Voyager flyby in 1980. Return of the Jedi (1983)
image © 20th Century Fox, courtesy moviestillsdb.com. Mimas image courtesy of
NASA/JPL/Caltech/CICLOPS.
moved space stations into the realm of reality by showing how Newton’s law of
motion permitted both space travel and space habitats.
Space stations have also been fixtures on the small screen, but never more so
than during the late 1990s, when they loomed over televised science fiction55
by providing the settings for the influential series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
(1993–1999) and Babylon 5 (1994–1998). Both shows were an attempt to
look at what happens when characters have to stick around and deal with the
positive and negative consequences of their actions, rather than simply
zooming off to a fresh planet each week. Not coincidentally, Babylon 5 and,
to a lesser extent, Deep Space Nine, were pioneers in a shift from episodic to
highly serialized story-telling on television, paving the way for shows like the
reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009), Lost (2004–2010), and even
Game of Thrones (2011–). This trend towards serialization is a big part of
the reason why television is currently experiencing a golden age and eclipsing
the critical reputation of movies (see Chap. 2: “The Path to Nerdvana” in
Hollyweird Science).
Space stations firmly took hold in the public imagination after World War
II, thanks largely to rocket scientists like Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun,
and artists like Chelsey Bonestell. Bonestell was the first real space artist,56
painting detailed vistas that were based on the best available science, such as a
55
Like a big. . .. loomy thing.
56
Bonestell’s painting “Saturn from Titan” which graced the cover of Life magazine is not only believed to
be the first-ever depiction of one celestial object from another celestial object (neither of which is Earth),
but it has also been called “The painting that launched 1000 careers.” Bonestell later re-created the work as
a 360 degree panorama for the planetarium at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Fig. 10.8 Lobby Card from Conquest of Space (1955) displaying a Bonestell-designed
wheel in space. Copyright © Paramount Pictures, image courtesy moviestillsdb.com.
view of Saturn from the surface of Titan. In the early 1950s, in particular, Ley,
von Braun and others wrote a series of articles about spaceflight—illustrated by
Bonestell—for Collier’s magazine. Space historians credit these articles with
seeding the ground for the surge of popular support that the U.S. space
program received after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. On the covers
and pages of Colliers, vast space stations hung in Earth’s orbit as the natural
first stop on the road to the stars. The Colliers articles and illustrations also
directly inspired science fiction movies like 1953s Project Moonbase and 1955s
Conquest of Space—in fact, Bonestell created many of the background matte
paintings for the latter film (Fig. 10.8).
It was actually something of a surprise when NASA decided in the 1960s—
looking for the quickest solution for landing a man on the Moon—to bypass
space stations altogether, and send a rocket directly to the lunar surface.
Until the on-orbit construction of the International Space Station (ISS)
began in 1998, the United States only launched one modest-sized space
station, Skylab, which was crewed three times between 1973 and 1974 for
up to 84 days.57
Things were different in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet lunar program
crashed and literally went up in flames in the late 1960s—due to the failure of
57
When it eventually de-orbited, the largest chunks landed in the shire of Esperance, Australia. How
ironic would it have been were it Parkes instead? Esperance “fined” NASA $400 for littering.
Fig. 10.9 The International Space Station. Not that long ago, this would have looked
like science fiction. Image courtesy of NASA.
their massive N1 booster—space stations became a Soviet specialty. The Soviet

Union, and later Russia, operated a more-or-less continuous string of small
crewed stations from 1971 to 1998 (when their space station program merged
with that of the United States), keeping some cosmonauts aloft for a year or
longer.
Despite the bijou scale of real-life orbital outpost construction, space
stations never lost their hold on the imagination of Hollywood’s screenwriters.
The PanAm shuttle docking with the giant wheeled Space Station V to the
strains of The Blue Danube waltz in 1969s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains one
of the most iconic sequences in science fiction. Eight years later, the Death Star
turned up to terrorize denizens of a galaxy far, far away in Star Wars (1977),
and the popularity of Star Wars ensured that James Bond’s 1979 outing in
Moonraker climaxed in a shoot-out onboard a space station.
Things are beginning to look up for real space stations as well. The ISS has
been completed (if missing a few modules that were part of the original plan)
and sustains a rotating crew of six (Fig. 10.9). It’s already made appearances as
a setting on TV shows and movies that include Eureka (2006–2012),58 The
Big Bang Theory (2007–), Love (2011), Gravity (2013) and Life (2016).
Gravity also featured a Chinese “Tiangong” space station. The Tiangong
stations are part of a planned real life series of small space stations, somewhat
similar to the old Soviet “Salyut” stations of the 1970s and 1980s. The
Chinese plan to launch their second such station in 2016. India is also
considering—albeit only on paper for now—building a space station some-
time in the 2020s.
58
In the Eureka episode “Liftoff”, as the Mercury-like capsule containing Douglas Fargo and Zane
Donovan brushes past the International Space Station, looking out the space station window is an
astronaut. That is Eureka co-creator and executive producer Jaime Paglia.
Even more interesting than these national programs, there are plans for
private space stations. Entrepreneurs hope these will make money by providing
destinations for space tourists and, to a lesser extent, by providing platforms for
academic and industrial experiments, especially for countries without their
own space launch capabilities.
Perhaps the most plausible of these private plans belong to Bigelow Aero-
space. Bigelow’s idea is to make it much cheaper to build big space stations by
ditching the traditional “tin can” approach of conventional designs. Instead of
modules with solid metal shells between astronauts and space, Bigelow’s idea is
to make the exterior shell out of a flexible material, and inflate the modules like
a balloon when they reach orbit.
This idea may sound like an invitation to disaster (♫ Pop! Goes the
Spaceship. ♫), but the idea of inflatable space structures has an extensive
engineering history behind it. Launched in 1960, the first communications
satellite, Echo 1, was a giant metal balloon that reflected radio signals. In 1961,
Goodyear built a ground prototype of a wheel-shaped inflatable space station
for NASA (Fig. 10.10). In the 1990s, engineers revived the idea, proposing
that an inflatable module called TransHab be added to the ISS. TransHab
failed to get funding, but in the 2000s Bigelow Aerospace licensed the
technology and started developing it further, orbiting free-flying prototypes
in 2006 and 2007 called Genesis I and Genesis II, both of which are still in
Fig. 10.10 A prototype of a small inflatable space station built for NASA in 1961 by
Goodyear. Photo credit: NASA.
orbit and, more importantly, unpierced. A Bigelow test module was attached
to the ISS in May 2015 and successfully inflated to start a two-year test. Being
lighter than traditional modules should make inflatable modules cheaper to
launch, and their final size is not as tightly constrained by the diameter of the
rocket used to launch them into orbit as with traditional modules.
For those still worried about living in a space balloon, inflatable modules
could ultimately prove significantly safer than traditional rigid metal modules.
Their exterior walls will actually be a lot thicker than those of a rigid metal
module—almost half a meter of various layers of bulletproof and insulating
material like Kevlar, compared to a few millimeters of aluminum and a 10-cm
thick layer of insulation for a traditional module. Because they will have a
larger internal volume, leaks will take longer to depressurize a module, and
having more air allows better buffering of the atmosphere from hazards like
smoke or toxic gases.
All this modern space station construction activity is part of the backstory to
the show The 100 (2014–), in which the crews of 12 stations watched from
space as the human species wiped itself out in a nuclear war. In order to
survive, the orbiting space stations were cobbled together to form one giant
structure: the Ark. The 100 opens decades later when the original crews’
descendants realize they will have to return to a radioactive Earth sooner
than they had hoped, as aging systems begin to fail. The action in the first
season alternates between the Ark and the ground below, where a group of
100 teenagers have been sent from the Ark as an expendable advance guard.
The hodgepodge construction of the Ark may seem like a recipe for disaster,
but experience with the ISS suggests that its eclectic nature could actually be its
greatest asset. While putting together Russian and American space modules
caused a number of technical headaches, the different engineering approaches
to the same problem, such as stabilizing the orientation of the space station,
created vital redundancy. Something that causes an issue for an American
system is unlikely to cause the same problem in a differently designed Russian
or Japanese system, and vice versa.
The Ark represents an extreme example of long-duration space flight, but it
speaks directly to one of the good reasons for building space stations (bad
reasons abound, and are often trotted out at budget time; the possibility of
pharmaceutical manufacturing was particularly popular in the 1990s). The
truth is that crewed space stations are often not great places for scientific
experiments, as life support systems and jostling astronauts can create less-
than-ideal conditions when compared to an unmanned spacecraft, but they are
perfect for engineering research.59
59
SAC gets exasperated at some pundits who think the only kind of research that counts in space—or even
exists—is scientific research.
Fig. 10.11 Aurora Dunn (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) aboard the
interstellar ship Avalon in Passengers (2016). Copyright © Columbia Pictures, image
Building orbital outposts can teach us the techniques and methods of

engineering that will be required to build spacecraft that will, one day, venture
beyond the Earth-Moon system, or to establish bases anywhere off-Earth.
With the exception of a propulsion system, many of the challenges involved
in building a space station are similar to those involved in building
interplanetary spacecraft. Scaled up, rotating craft like Space Station V in
2001 and Elysium become megastructures like halos and ringworlds, which
we discussed in the final chapter of Hollyweird Science Vol. 1.
The relationship between space habitats and spacecraft also holds if we scale
up the construction effort to interstellar travel. Barring the invention of some
form of relativistic or faster-than-light travel (see the chapter “Shortcuts in
Time and Space” in Hollyweird Science, Vol. 1), getting from Earth to another
star is going to take considerably longer than a human lifetime. Unless we can
put a crew into hibernation or suspended animation, as per Planet of the Apes
(1968 version), Alien (1979), Pandorum (2009), or Passengers (2016)
(Fig. 10.11), that means having babies on board so-called generation ships.
Now if we are even going to survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out
of here and we need to start having babies.
President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), Battlestar Galactica, Pilot episode
Generation ships immediately imply a significant scale, as exemplified by

the skyscraper-sized eponymous spacecraft of Ascension (2014). The crew
needs a large enough population to maintain genetic diversity and avoid
dangerous inbreeding. Typical estimates suggest a minimum population size
of a few hundred people, although one recent estimate by Cameron Smith60

puts the figure at somewhere between 14,000 and 44,000 for a 150-year, five-
generation voyage.
Space colonies are different from space stations in that the goal is to be self-
sufficient, at least in terms of the necessities. (We’re drawing a distinction here
between space colonies—which are habitats found either in space or on the
surface of otherwise uninhabitable worlds—and colonies located on a habit-
able planet, such as New Caprica in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica or the
setting of any number of Star Trek episodes.) Space colonies need to be able to
generate their own power, recycle air and water on a large and very efficient
scale, and be able to grow enough food to feed everybody. Solving the food
problem with cannibalism, as featured in Pandorum (2009) or the 1975
“Mission of the Darians” episode of the TV show Space: 1999 (1975–1977),
is generally frowned upon, and considered a bit of an engineering cheat in any
case.61
Have you bothered to tell people they might be eating their own relatives?
Certainly not. I believe that would create what you call, “consumer resistance.”
The Doctor and Davros, Doctor Who, “Revelation of the Daleks” (1985)
The basic idea of self-sustaining space colonies dates back to Tsiolkovsky,

but early screen science fiction didn’t really bother making the distinction
between space colonies and space stations. That started to change, however,
after Gerard O’Neill and his disciples started studying how to bring space
colonies from theory to reality in the 1970s. In additional to wheel-shaped, or
Stanford torus, colonies, as seen in 2013s Elysium, O’Neil also championed two
other notable designs. The first was the Bernal Sphere, first proposed in J. D.
Bernal in 1929, in which people lived on the inside of a hollow sphere
illuminated by mirrors that would shine sunlight in through windows located
at the poles. The sphere rotated to produce artificial gravity by way of
centrifugal force. The other was a long rotating cylinder (technically, a pair
of counter-rotating cylinders) that had alternating segments of windows and
land running the length of the cylinder. This type of space colony became
known as an O’Neil cylinder, and the name is now applied broadly to any
rotating cylindrical space colony where the inhabitants live on the inner
surface, even in the absence of the windows and mirrors, or paired second
60
Smith, C.M., (2014) “Estimation of a genetically viable population for multigenerational interstellar
voyaging: Review and data for project Hyperion,” Acta Astronautica, Vol. 97, pp. 16–29.
61
Admittedly, though, KRG suggested that the RagTag Fleet consider going the Soylent Green route in
Battlestar Galactica. That suggestion was given all the consideration it was due.
Fig. 10.12 Artist’s depiction of the exterior of a paired O’Neil colony. Image
credit: NASA.
cylinder (Fig. 10.12). (For how to estimate how fast a space station or colony
has to rotate to produce Earth-normal gravity, see Science Box: “You Spin Me
Right Round”.)
The anime series Mobile Suit Gundam62 (1979–1980) featured one of the
first (and it may well have been the first) screen representations of O’Neil
cylinders. More recent examples of O’Neil cylinders on screen include the
titular station in Babylon 5 (1993–1998), and Cooper station in Interstellar
(2014). Mobile Suit Gundam featured cylinders complete with long windows
and angled mirrors, and located its colonies at the same place in space that
O’Neill had planned for real colonies: the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 Lagrangian
points (see Chap. 8).63 There are some noteworthy advantages of putting a
space colony at L4 or L5, rather than in Earth orbit. In particular, there is no
worry about the Earth blocking sunlight to collection panels (except for brief
eclipses), and it takes less energy to travel back and forth to the Moon, which is
handy if you’re mining the Moon for raw materials.
Unlike space stations to date, where provisions like food are ferried from
Earth, large space colonies with centrifugal gravity and actual land could use
62
Mobile suite Gundam had a huge influence on the “fighting robot” genre, already popular in Japanese
animation. Gundum founded the “real robot” sub-genre, in which the on-screen robots were designed to
be physically plausible, in contrast to earlier super robot shows, where pretty much anything went. Think
Pacific Rim vs. Power Rangers.
63
In fact for some early designs, the colonies were literally named Ellfour and Ellfive. These names still
crop up from time to time in (mostly literary) science fiction.
the conventional farming techniques of “plant seed in soil, provide water and
sunlight, wait, harvest,” and “breed animal, feed animal, wait, butcher.”
Human waste recycling can also operate along the lines by which farmers
today fertilize fields using biosolids derived from municipal sewage treatment
plants. In extremis, this method might also work in smaller spaces too. In The
Martian (2015), we saw how a stranded astronaut plausibly turned his Mars
habitat into a very smelly potato farm.
Still, it will be quite a while before reality comes anywhere close to the grand
space colonies seen in movies like Elysium and Interstellar. Even further into
the future are the giant spaceships in which people can live and work for years,
decades, even centuries while travelling between worlds—such as the various
incarnations of Star Trek’s Enterprise, or the rag-tag fleet of the old
(1978–1979) and new (2003–2009) Battlestar Galactica. Space colonies on
or around other planets or moons, however? Those may be something we will
see in our lifetimes.
Single-planet species don’t survive.

Meet the Storyteller: Ronald D. Moore
Some screenwriters are science fiction writers. Some are situation comedy writers.
Some are action/adventure writers. Ron Moore is a writer, one with a very diverse
Hollywood resume. He co-wrote the screenplay for Mission Impossible III, and is
currently the showrunner for the popular Starz series Outlander. One gets the
impression that if Mr. Moore was tasked with writing a romantic comedy, he could
pull that off as well.
Having been a writer-producer on two Star Trek series, Battlestar
Galactica (Fig. 10E.1), and Caprica, Ron has used drama to explore many of the themes
we have explored in this volume. Ron was kind enough to carve time out of his busy
schedule to speak to Hollyweird Science about topics ranging from science accuracy in
TV and film, to Star Trek, to the technological singularity, to the controversial ending
of Battlestar Galactica.
Hollyweird Science: On the spectrum between fantasy and sci-fi, for the shows
that are more sci than fantasy, what are your thoughts on how important it is to get
the science correct?
Moore: I think it’s important to try and bring a sense of authenticity to science
fiction. It helps the audience believe in the drama, and it lets them give themselves
over to the characters if they believe that the world the characters inhabit feels
plausible. I think it’s just as important when you’re doing a period piece to try to
get the details of that historical period correct as it is to try and get the science as close
as you can in science fiction. It allows the audience to then buy in on a deeper level. If
(continued)
it looks ridiculous even to the layman, and we kind of intuitively know that the science
doesn’t make any sense, I think they all distance themselves from the piece.
Hollyweird Science: We interviewed Naren [Shankar],64 and he said that on Star
Trek, it’s not about getting the science right per se, it’s about, “the consistency of
made-up shit.”
Moore: Yeah, I mean I think Trek always tried to have a sense of plausibility at its
foundation, that we always used to talk about internally—that there was a plausibil-
ity to a lot of the science, and if it wasn’t plausible, it at least had to fit in with what
had been established in previous episodes within the show.
Fig. 10E.1 Ron Moore on the set of Battlestar Galactica. Photography by Dennys Ilic.
Hollyweird Science: What about sci-fi “conceits”? In a conflict between story and
science, even most science advisors will say that story wins every time. The two are
also not mutually-exclusive. How do you see that balance?
Moore: The story generally wins out but, again it’s sort of case by case. There are
things you just wouldn’t do in Star Trek, because it becomes implausible. If the
Enterprise put a tractor beam on a star, hauling it to another solar system, even
within the Star Trek context, it sounds ludicrous. It just doesn’t hold up within the
science of that universe. Certainly things like the transporter, the warp drive, the
phasers. . . we were fast and loose with what the science actually was. Yes, these
devices haven’t been attempted, or they probably are not even technically possible,
but we tried to make it at least feel plausible to the audience—that they were at least
rooted in some basic science principles.
Hollyweird Science: When Cally and Chief were blown out the airlock and into a
Raptor in the Galactica episode “Day in the Life”, more than a few fans griped online
about the science of that scene, even though the science was spot-on. When
Galactica plummeted through the atmosphere of New Caprica, there were a few
science issues with that scene, but NOBODY complained. Do you think science
accuracy gets a coolness offset? Quoting Commander Adama, does “Context
matter”?
Moore: Yeah, it does. Context matters a lot. If something is super cool, the
audience loves to believe it.
(continued)
64
Though we quoted just a bit of that interview in the preface and Chap. 10, look for much more in a
“Meet the Storyteller” profile on Dr. Shankar in Hollyweird Science of the Third Kind.
Hollyweird Science: Battlestar Galactica told the story of the aftermath of one
culture’s experience with the technological singularity. Caprica was the run-up to
that.
Moore: Right.
Hollyweird Science: Battlestar Galactica ends on a pretty explicit warning that our
culture may be nearing the same fate at the Twelve Colonies (All of this has hap-
pened before. . .). With the show receding into the distance, and with time to reflect,
do you have any followup thoughts on that episode, the series, or the warning at the
end?
Moore: I think more about it now as we approach that point. I kind of felt that—I
put the words in Lee’s mouth in the finale—our history is such that our technical
abilities and our brains tend to outrace our hearts and our sense of ethics and what
we do with these amazing tools once we develop them. It still seems like a valid
warning as we plunge forward into things like artificial intelligence and cybernetics
and the march towards the marriage of organic and technology and. . . where is that
going to go? We’ll just keep going faster and faster into it without really thinking
through the implications of it. It just seems like that’s the way the culture develops
Hollyweird Science: The shows shared cultures to an extent, but the spiritual
element was a far more important component to the story of Galactica than Caprica.
In your mind was there also a difference in the science accuracy bar since Caprica had
to feel, to borrow a term, “20 minutes into the future”?
Moore: Yeah, and also we were following the development of a technology in
Caprica. The idea was to watch how the Cylons came about. So there was an internal
technological focus to the show and it felt like we had to be a little more careful, and
we were talking in more specific terms about the technology in that world. So it felt
like it had to be more internally consistent, and it had to be rooted in more real
science.
Hollyweird Science: In the Caprica pilot episode, Zoe Graystone has a rant about
all the things you can find online from which you can construct a personality.
These days, you can actually do a Google search, and from the information
returned construct a personality.
Moore: I know, it’s amazing. It is kinda where I thought things were going, and it
wasn’t too big of a leap from when we were doing Caprica to see this was all going to
come true in a very short amount of time.
Hollyweird Science: We thought the Battlestar Galactica episode “Daybreak” was
a masterpiece, in fact most people who watched the show quite enjoyed the finale.
Those who didn’t like it, though, really didn’t like it. For a “science” fiction series,
many felt betrayed at the confirmation of a deistic Universe.
Early in the show, the first explanation that Head Six gave Baltar for her existence
was that she was an angel. She came up with other explanations only after he
refused to believe the first one. This seems to parallel the reaction of those who
disliked the finale. From a storytelling standpoint, one might claim that you played
fair with the audience all along, and those who didn’t like the finale just didn’t accept
that the show went in a direction that was spelled out as possible one from the
onset.
Moore: Well I’m in complete agreement with you. I mean, that’s exactly how I
looked at it. From the miniseries forward, we basically said that there is something
else in this universe that we’re establishing. There is some god construct, or some
notion of an otherness that our characters would take as godlike because they
(continued)
couldn’t put any other name on it. And we played that all the way through the show.
Whatever games Head Six played with Baltar from time to time to time, there was a
consistent theme that certain events or happenings could not be explained by rational
means. There were definitely moments of prophecy, definitely moments of interven-
tion, saving certain characters, allowing certain characters to die, it was just some-
thing we played all the way through.
There was a spirituality to multiple characters in the show, not just the Cylons,
some of the human characters as well. We have Roslin wrestling with her status as a
prophet, and what that all meant. So, I didn’t see anything inconsistent about includ-
ing it in the finale. If anything, I felt like if you tried to deny it in the finale it would
have denied the whole storyline.
Hollyweird Science: The events in the finale were was set up from the word “go”,
and what occurred in the finale is called “playing fair with the audience.”
Moore: That’s exactly right.
Per aspera ad astra

In the final accounting, life in microgravity means that you’re constantly
performing maintenance, and while you’re not throwing out, or, worse,
while you are throwing out, your heart and muscles are getting weak, you’re
peeing away necessary fluids and bone mass, and your diet could not be more
ill-suited to replenish elements necessary to mitigate any of these effects
because you, and all around you, share the common goal to minimize the
time you spend on the very inconvenient waste disposal system. Sleep is
problematic, and in your scant free time, even if it is permissible, sexy time
with an attractive crew member becomes highly complicated by microgravity
and Newton’s laws, though opposable thumbs give humans a slight advantage
in this regard over laboratory rodents.
Who just said, “Sign me up!”?
The realities of life in space at this point in time—those that we have
described in this chapter—would certainly give pause to many. Still, a sur-
prising number, we would imagine, would proceed undaunted. Exploration
has always begat hardship—think of those who braved extremely harsh con-
ditions to climb Everest, brave the Oregon Trail, explore the poles, or, yes,
even to walk on the lunar surface. For some, the prospect of overcoming these
types of challenges are like waving the proverbial red cape in front of a bull.
Despite over thirty two seasons of documenting people suffering cold, heat,
hunger, thirst, injury, and loneliness in excruciating detail, the reality show
Survivor still has no problem attracting applicants.65
65
Of course, there is a million dollar prize there.
I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we
spread into space.
Stephen Hawking, physicist
Many who have flown into space, even some who have suffered excruciating
microgravity-related ills, have claimed it forever changed their perspective of
humanity’s place on Earth, and Earth’s place in space. Humans will work hard
to overcome all our current microgravity-related problems, because of the
promise of hotels in Earth orbit, colonies on the Moon and Mars, mining
the Asteroid Belt for its untold riches, or simply, “Because it’s there.”
For decades, people have found the prospect of space travel to be a huge
motivator.
Knowing what we know now, we are being irresponsible in our failure to make
the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly
discovered severely threatened and probably endangered species–us. NASA is
not about the ‘Adventure of Human Space Exploration,’ we are in the deadly
serious business of saving the species. All Human Exploration’s bottom line is
about preserving our species over the long haul.
Hollywood has also done its share to enable the dreams, from Fritz Lang’s
Frau Im Mond to The Martian. Walk the halls, or peer into the workspaces, in
any building at Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
or any NASA center, and you will find an endless parade of science fiction
posters, models, and action figures. Many NASA scientists, engineers, and
even astronauts happily point to science fiction—particularly space-based
science fiction like Star Trek and 2001—as their inspiration to pursue a career
in the space program. These are simply the modern-day equivalents of early
pioneers in rocketry, also motivated into their lines of work because of science
fiction tales they’d read.66
66
When people lament about what a waste space exploration is, and how all that money could to go
feeding people, take a moment for some perspective. The 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission, which placed
both a lander—later named Carl Sagan Memorial Station—and the small Sojourner rover on the martian
surface cost $150 million. The 1995 film Waterworld cost $176 million and was a box office disaster.
The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance
to education than any input of dollars. . . A whole generation is growing up which
has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the
romance of space.
Arthur C. Clarke, “First on the Moon”
In the preface, we explored the type of Internet science shaming that has
become commonplace in the aftermath of the release of major science fiction
movies and, to a lesser extent, television series. We would argue that the recent
popularity of the Culture of the Obsessive Nerdgasser does just as big a
disservice to the overall goals of science as do the Armageddons and The Cores
they decry. Science in Hollywood productions should be as correct as possible
as often as possible, but there is a bigger picture, and something to be said for
selective “willing suspension of disbelief.” Writer/producer, and former Star
Trek science advisor, Andre Bormanis says:
When 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered in 1968, it was the most ambitious
science fiction movie ever made, and one of the most expensive movies of all
time. It is often cited as one of the most “realistic” depictions of space travel on
film. Kubrick’s now-classic depiction of space exploration at the beginning of
the 21st century was nothing if not ambitious—in fact, ridiculously so. Even the
most optimistic aerospace engineer in the 1960s never envisioned structures in
space, thirty years down the road, on the scales that Kubrick conjured.
The fact is Kubrick knew he was deliberately creating space vehicles that would
never exist, certainly not by 2001. He wanted his film to be as grandiose
artistically as it was in its subject matter. He struggled mightily to find images
that were equal to the awe and wonder of the historical transition human society
found itself in. Kubrick’s spaceships weren’t much more likely to be built by the
end of the century than the Jupiter II from Lost in Space, but they were
magnificent and inspiring. They represented the dreams of the space age, if
not any future reality, but were nevertheless cinematically convincing from the
perspective of a society on the cusp of sending human beings to another world
for the first time.
The U.S. government understands that the collective will that launched humans
to the Moon aboard Apollo spacecraft in the 1960s and early 1970s has evapo-
rated, as our culture has grown ever risk-averse. On 27 January 1967, a fire ignited
during a routine test, and ultimately claimed the lives of the crew of Apollo 1. The
nation mourned the loss of three brave astronauts, dried its tears, fixed the
problems, and by July 1969, two humans stood on the lunar Sea of Tranquility.
In December 1972, Apollo

17 also trekked to the Moon. To
this day, astronauts Cernan, Evans,
and Schmitt remain as the last humans
to venture beyond Earth orbit.
On 11 February 2016. The White
House Office of Science and Tech-
nology Policy invited over 70 screen-
writers, directors, producers, scientists,
science advisors, visual effects artists,
and graphic illustrators to the campus
of UCLA.67 There, OSTP convened
a workshop entitled Homesteading in
Space: Inspiring the Nation through
Science Fiction (Fig. 10.13).
The U.S. space program began
with the likes of Robert Goddard,
Fig. 10.13 The While House is counting
and Jack Parsons and his “Suicide on Hollywood to play a pivotal role in
Squad”, all inspired to pursue their the exploration of Mars.
dreams of space travel by early science
fiction. Science fiction has inspired humanity to build space stations in low
Earth orbit, and to send probes to Mars, Saturn, and Pluto, and on into
interstellar space. The White House is relying on Hollywood to perform the
same science fiction magic once again to rekindle the excitement of the Apollo
program, and to inspire humanity to new homes on other worlds.
67
KRG was invited, as was Hollyweird Science contributor Dr. Jessica Cail.
Great civilizations are remembered for those things that outlive them, be they
pyramids and temples, or knowledge and understanding.
The Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX), An Inte-
grated Strategy for the Planetary Sciences
11
Putting Science In, Not Taking Drama
Out: The Culture of Hollywood
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition, and
myth frame our response.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, historian
Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and essayist
The “Muse” is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The

gifts are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one
you think of when you first awake.
Roman Payne, author
This book, along with its predecessor, has examined and explained science
concepts and phenomena that have appeared on the big and little screen, the
issues and complexities relating to science accuracy, how the depiction of
screen scientists meshes with real life scientists, and how the depiction of the
culture of science is at least as important as the depiction of individual
researchers. Now it is time to flip the script, and put the culture of Hollywood
under the microscope.
How does science get into a film or episode of television? Blending accurate
science into a compelling story is a much more complex procedure than people
outside of the entertainment industry realize. It is a more complex procedure
than many people inside the industry realize as well, at least until they have
done it a time or three. It is also not something that can happen at the last
minute. Nor can any science advisor dictate dos and don’ts to writers, pro-
ducers, or directors. Generally speaking, the earlier a production worries about
the science content of a film or episode of television, the better. Bringing a
science advisor in to go over a completed script may help prevent—or at least
minimize—the most obvious howlers, but at best it will add just a gloss of
veracity. If storytellers are really keen to tap into the power of science to
enhance a tale and make audiences feel that what they are watching—however
fantastic—is grounded in reality, real science needs to be a consideration at all
points during the creative process.
In order to appreciate the manner in which science is incorporated into
screenplays (for movies) and teleplays (for TV shows), it is useful to under-
stand how each is crafted, and how spectacularly different the processes are
between film and television. In other words, in order to describe how science
enters the big picture, let us first explore how different types of production are
crafted. The processes are surprisingly different between television and film.
Even identical job titles can have very different roles, depending upon the
medium.
Hollyweird Science has assembled a composite panel of writers, producers, and
directors,1 in order to explore these issues, talking to professionals who have
worked in film, in television, and both. Starting with film, joining us is director
Jon Amiel (Creation and The Core), the writing team of Zack Stentz and Ashley
Miller (Thor, X-Men: First Class, Sarah Conner Chronicles, Fringe), producer
Tom DeSanto (Transformers and X-Men), writer/producer Naren Shankar
(CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and The Expanse), writer/producer Bragi Schut
(Inversion and Threshold), and screenwriter Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the
Galaxy and Captain Marvel).
Hollyweird Science: Let’s start by comparing a film screenplay to other
storytelling media. Director Paul Schrader, who has writing credit on
several noteworthy films—Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, The Last Temp-
tation of Christ—once said that a “screenplay is not art” because film is
such a collaborative venture. It’s the combined work of many that turn it
into art. Thoughts?
Amiel: Essentially, a film is a short story. If you compress a film script,
which usually fills 115 pages or so, if you compress it into real prose, without
all the wacky spacing and all that, it’d probably fill about 50 pages—which
makes it barely longer than a short story. Something less than a novella. So film
is intensely reductive. You make a movie—even a four-hour movie of War and
Peace—it’s essentially, “Well there are these two guys, and they both love the
same girl, and, by the way, in the background there’s the Napoleonic Wars.”
It’s that reductive.
1
This is actually a virtual panel discussion—none of the panelists were ever in the same room at the same
time for these interviews. When we saw how well some of the answers jibed, this format seemed natural.
An amazingly miniscule amount of dialogue had to be altered to fit the format.
11 Putting Science In, Not Taking Drama Out: The Culture of Hollywood 381
Hollyweird Science: Yes, but do you agree that it’s not art?
Schut: I get what he’s saying, but it’s a little depressing to look at it that way.
I feel like a screenplay is clearly a work of artistic expression. I guess what he’s
saying is that if it’s never realized in a film, it doesn’t matter. And there is a
truth to that—unless you’re a screenwriter, you don’t really read screenplays.
So they don’t ever really reach an audience until they’re made into films. But
that raises a certain philosophical question, “Is art art if nobody sees it?” Where
is the art, is it in the audience that views it, or in the artist who creates it?
Perlman: For me, art is anything that is created to provoke an emotional
response. I usually compare screenplays to blueprints in architecture. The
resulting film, or the resulting structure, might not provoke an emotional
response and it might not be a work of beauty—it might not be art—but
sometimes it is. In that situation, are the blueprints art? Some people think
so. I’ve gone to exhibits that show the blueprints for beautiful buildings and I
think, especially if your craft is one of construction or architecture, you might
be moved by the beauty or the talent behind those blueprints or by imagining
the buildings that could have come from those blueprints—whereas other
people would just look at the blueprint and see a blueprint. I think it’s very
similar with screenplays: some people might read the screenplay and be able to
see the craft and the artistry in it and be moved by the blueprint for the movie.
I think that’s very possible. I’ve definitely read screenplays that, to me, are
more moving than reading a novel. So it’s really a very personal thing. And I
think it also depends on your ability to envision what the final product is going
to be.
Schut: I know that I’ve created many screenplays that have not been
adapted into film, and I still consider the process of writing them to be a
form of artistic expression, and so I would probably have to disagree with
Schrader on that one.
Hollyweird Science: In broad strokes, how does a film get made from
the time it’s a gleam in someone’s eye to the point where the director says,
“Action.” Let’s start with the run-up to filming. Does it start with a
studio’s idea, and they hire a writer? Is it the writer’s idea and they take
it to the studio...? Are there multiple paths?
Stentz: To vastly oversimplify, I would say there are two big ways movies go
from conception to the silver screen. The first way is that there’s an idea that a
writer came up with, or sometimes a director came up with and got a writer to
do. . . and either something was original, or it’s based on something else made
into a script, and he sold it, attached a director and it went through what they
call the development process until it ended up getting a cast and getting on the
silver screen.
DeSanto: I think the key to getting a movie setup is being a salesman and a
storyteller. And I think ultimately you’ve got to be able to pitch your idea.
With Transformers it was especially tricky because the generation I was

pitching to was ten to fifteen years older than the generation that would be
familiar or who grew up with Transformers. So there was a disconnect there on
an emotional level, and I think a lot of times the problem with studio heads or
the people making the decisions, is they’re making movies maybe out of their
childhood, and that’s how you get stuff like a Green Hornet, or misfires like the
Phantom or The Shadow, which are not multigenerational. And then you get
hits like Batman, which plays through multiple generations. I think there’s a
reason that some stories don’t translate, but I do think that they key is being a
salesman in the room and then you need to be able to push it from the idea
stage into the greenlight stage.
Stentz: The other way, and I would say a much more common way now, is
that a studio or a production company will, themselves, have an idea: a
newspaper article, a comic book character, a book, or any number of other
things that they will then audition different writers—to find the writer or
writers who they think are most suited to adapt it. And then they adapt it, put
a director on, and then it gets to the screen that way.
DeSanto: You ask about a hundred different movies, you’re going to get a
hundred different answers. I think that the main thing is the best films work
off of ideas that are coming out of a passion, as opposed to a trend. A lot of
times in Hollywood nobody wants to be first, but everybody wants to be
second. Ultimately, I think the movies that really break out and succeed are
the ones that do take that chance, the ones that do come from a place of
sincerity and love for the characters. I think the number one ingredient for any
film to get made is persistence and tenacity and not taking no for an answer.
With Transformers, every studio in town turned it down; with X-Men we got
shut down twice. I think that’s the job of storytellers is you come out of a place
of passion, and that’s the number one ingredient.
Hollyweird Science: Let’s talk about job titles, starting with the pro-
ducers. The title “executive producer” suggests that this is the person in
charge.
Stentz: In film the producer credit can mean a lot of different things.
There’s the line producer who is the person who coordinates all of the different
departments and makes sure that the Teamster trucks and the trailers show up
in the morning, to the producer who is the one who either raises the money or
puts the different elements of the film together, but then lets the studio
greenlight it or lets the financiers do that. Then a lot of producer credits are
given away to someone who had some role in the early stages of the film
development, helping them bring it into being.
Miller: EP is a credit that you give to somebody because. . . there’s a whole
variety of reasons why you would give somebody an executive producer credit
on a film. They may be a high-ranking executive in the company that is

actually making the movie, and they are obligated, by contract, to receive some
sort of producer credit on any project they’re associated with. The executive
producer credit may be handed to somebody simply for bringing money. An
executive producer credit can be handed to somebody for materially partici-
pating in developing and making the film, but without actually doing the job
of producer. So an executive producer title is a great title to have, it’s awesome
to have that on your resume, on your IMDb, but the better title is “Producer”
or “Produced by,” that’s the one that you want. EP doesn’t mean the same
thing in film as it does in television.
Hollyweird Science: It’s probably counter-intuitive to most people that
“executive producer” and “producer” aren’t hierarchical job titles. I think
the stereotype is that the producer is the “money person,” and while that
can be true, let’s talk about what that person really does in film.
Miller: The producer on the film is the person who is in charge of taking the
property, taking the script, taking the idea, and transforming it into a film by
hiring people who are going to execute in a way that matches up with what the
studio needs and expects. Outside the studio system, the difference is that the
creative authority. . . is vested in them until they have money people they have
to be responsible to.
DeSanto: Some producers are studio people who have relationships with the
studio and other producers are kind of the idea producers: the producers who
come up with the ideas for the film and then sort of shepherd it through
production. X-Men 1 was the movie I wanted to do since I was about 12, I was
the person who wrote out the treatment, so came up with the story line. I got
the director attached, I got Marvel to sign off on the story line, I got 20th
Century Fox to sign off on the story line.
Stentz: Parsing what all those producer and executive producer credits mean
is very difficult, because you can’t always tell just from looking at them who
was there every day, logging as much set time as the director, and who made
three phone calls at the very beginning and hasn’t been seen since.
Hollyweird Science: So then a studio hires a producer to get a film
made. Or, perhaps, a producer pitches a film to the studio. Then one of
the first people that a producer might hire is a director, and at that point
the creative vision shifts from the producer to the director in film. Is that a
fair statement?
Stentz: Yes, it is a fair statement. It’s changing, but still, by and large, the
studios and productions tend to be a director’s medium, and, to a lesser extent,
an executive’s medium. Even if a script already exists, if they bring on a
director, it’s pretty much expected that the director is going to rewrite it—
either him or herself, or hire their own writer—so that they can “put their own
stamp” on the story. . . Which might lead you to wonder, “Well, if you liked it
enough to sign on, why are you insisting on changing it?” But it tends to be
very centered around the director.
Hollyweird Science: So you might say that a director is selected because
the producer has a creative vision that he hopes the director will honor.
Stentz: Yeah, definitely. I would say that’s true. I would say the producer
finds a script, or generates a script from some other media, the producer then
sort of assembles the perfect team, the perfect package, puts the best director
on it that has the right world view, or has the DNA for the project, and then it
very much shifts to the director.
Hollyweird Science: That explains why a director is chosen for a film,
why is a film chosen by a director?
Stentz: A lot of times the director has to be able to see it him or herself
before that movie gets made.
Amiel: The first thing that draws me to any piece of new material these days
is: does it scare me in some way or another? Fear in directing is that thing that
keeps you obsessively rolling an idea or an image around in your mind like a
pebble in a stream until it’s this smooth, polished lapidary thing that could not
possibly have any other shape than the shape it does. Fear drives that—fear and
obsession. If I feel that I can knock it out of the park without even thinking
about it, I’ll tend not to be drawn to it, partly because I believe that, without
the fear of challenging myself, I’m not going to produce something that has a
sort of vibrancy and a sort of fellness and intensity that I’d like it to have.
Hollyweird Science: Where does science enter the picture?
Schut: Probably too late in the process. I don’t have the benefit of a science
advisor on most of the things I write. So I end up going online to research stuff,
and try to cobble together enough to write these things. On Inversion, I had an
advisor’s input on the first draft. That collaboration was very interesting,
because it started right at the outset. We met at Coffee Bean, and we were
talking about the science before I’d even written a page. So we had a lot of
conversations about different ways that the film could happen. That input was
incredibly valuable because it led me in all kinds of new directions. That never
would have come about if it wasn’t for us sitting down over some coffees and
brainstorming how we could perpetrate this huge disaster on the world. The
science part of it was very much a part of the first draft, so if that draft was
successful in any degree, then I’m guessing the next writer didn’t re-invent our
basic premise, he was probably working on character stuff and trying to tighten
it, improve the dialogue, and so on.
Stentz: In my experience the science gets in one of two ways, or a combi-
nation of the two ways. Either the writer has a science background or is a huge
science nerd, loves science, and incorporates it himself, or you recognize that
maybe you’re not that person, and the studio, the director, or another entity
will reach out either to individual people or to an institution like the Science
and Entertainment Exchange, or Hollywood Health and Society at the Nor-
man Lear Center.2 So sometimes it’s a combination of the two. The research is
the fun part. We [Stentz and Miller] take pride in doing as much of our own
research as possible, while not being afraid to reach out when necessary.
DeSanto: When you’re doing a film you bring in advisors for everything to
make sure you’re accurate—if you’re good and you have the resources to do
that. On X-Men we had science advisors. On X-Men 2, we had a Secret Service
advisor for the invasion of the White House. You do your homework and you
try and get it as accurate as possible.
Perlman: It depends on the project, but the two most grounded science-
related projects I’ve done were really about the people—there were two bio-
pics, one was Neil Armstrong and one was Richard Feynman. It all starts with
the person and with the work that they’ve done and, as much as possible, their
actual discoveries or their actual interests or lines of dialogue that they’ve
actually said. I think that it starts with the character and then, when you’re
dealing with a true story, you have a fair amount of material to work from if
you’re lucky enough to have a subject whose life is heavily-documented.
Hollyweird Science: How do you balance the needs of the story and
keep your science accurate at the same time?
Amiel: I think when filmmakers and storytellers come to the subject of
science, they frequently feel, “Oh, we’ve got to do something to jazz this up,
we’ve got to do something to make this interesting.” They’re frequently failing
to recognize that it is inherently interesting, and if they’ve got the science right,
and they’ve got the story right, there isn’t a conflict between those things.
Stentz: If I’m faced with Sophie’s choice of the good science on one hand,
and the great story point on the other hand, of course I’m going to pick story
point every time. But I think that probably 90% of the time you don’t need to
choose between good science and good story. If anything, if you care deeply
enough about the science, and care deeply enough about the premise you’re
using, you actually find really cool story points that pop out of the physics and
the chemistry and the laws of the Universe.
Amiel: I suppose it’s worth talking a bit about Creation and how it came to
be and why it came to be the way it was. Because this was a story, for me,
where everything trumped the science. Everything. And, yet, I wanted the
science in it to be authentic. We took a sequence with Darwin having a
picnic—it’s in the past, it’s a remembered event—and he looks seemingly in
real time at a rat running under a hedgerow, and now we’re going into a tight
2
The equivalent of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, but for medical subject areas.
shot, following that rat under the hedge, and we see it climb over a sheep’s
skull laying buried there, and the camera keeps moving in through the socket
of the sheep’s skull, as it does blowflies fly out past the camera. We come in
and we’re in time-lapse now as we see a load of fly eggs laid inside the sheep’s
skull turn into maggots. At that point a bird enters through the other eye
socket, and eats some of the maggots. It flies up to feed a fledgling in the nest.
As it’s fluttering to land, the nest tips, the fledgling falls to the ground, and
there’s nothing either can do. The fledgling dies and, again, in time-lapse
photography, you see the fledgling decompose and be eaten by various kinds of
beetles and slugs and other things. Darwin awakes with a jolt from that dream.
So what I believe we just did there was a threefold thing. One, it’s a visually-
accurate account of his meadow bank sequence. Secondly, it’s highly dramatic
account. . . an account of the death of a young creature. What it draws you into
is the core drama of the story: what does it feel like to be a naturalist—who
routinely and objectively watches the young of species being preyed on? What
does it feel like when you feel like your daughter has been preyed upon by
God? If God is all-powerful, why did he take my daughter? How do you, as a
naturalist, somehow process that information? How do you deal with it
emotionally? So what we tried to do there was take science, keep all of the
good science, keep the observational naturalism of it, and at the same time
transmute it into drama that reinforces the core emotionality and drama of our
story. Throughout the film we tried to do that. And so I think a great deal of
Darwin’s science is in there, but it’s masquerading as drama, or the drama is
incarnated inside the science.
Hollyweird Science: It has been said that “Writing is rewriting,” and
never were truer words spoken than for a feature screenplay. With a
screenplay, though, it’s very likely you’re not doing your own rewrites.
True?
Perlman: I think there’s a bit of a misconception that people have that
screenwriters go off into a room, and they write a draft, maybe two drafts, and
the movie gets made. That is very rare that that happens. There are usually
tons and tons of drafts, and tons and tons of writers on a project. Usually the
larger and more expensive the project is, unless you’re the writer/director. . .
even in the case of there being a writer/director. . . the more likely it will be
that other writers get put on the project as well.
Stentz: You would never see in television what you have with some big
blockbuster movies, where you literally have different writers hired to write
different versions of the same script, and then another writer comes in and
stitches together the pieces that the studio and the director like the best into a
Frankenstein’s monster.
Perlman: I think a lot of the reasoning comes from the sphere of taking that
big financial risk when these movies are 150 million dollars and up, you want
to make sure your movie is as good as it can be. So you might hire multiple
directors or multiple writers and stitch together multiple drafts, and that’s to
be expected when you go in on a big movie, unfortunately. We can all hope
that it doesn’t end up that way, but it’s pretty standard.
Miller: Would I love it if writers were hired and kept on all the way through
and were never replaced? You bet, I think that would be terrific. I also think
that would be awful, because sometimes you’ve got a mismatch between the
writer and the material and no matter how great that writer might be they’re
just not connecting and you can see it on the page and it does the film no good.
You might never find the writer who’s correct, but in the best of all possible
worlds, producers, directors, should be endeavoring to keep the same writer on
the film. For Zack and I, Rule Number One: The story is boss. The truth of
the matter is that, nine times out of ten, it’s not the story that ends up being
boss, it’s the politics of the process that can become boss, and that’s
unfortunate.
Hollyweird Science: Then, even though you may have been paid, you
have to fight and scratch and claw to get credit for your writing?
Stentz: The more writers that get thrown at a feature script, the more that
each writer’s vision tends to be diluted, and the harder it is to determine who
gets the credit for it when all is said and done and it goes into arbitration.
Perlman: The Writers Guild is protective of writers, and they have a process
where, any time there’s more than one writer on a project, which is almost
every movie, they have a jury of anonymous screenwriters who read all the
drafts of the project, and go through a list of requirements, of what was
contributed to the final screenplay that was shot, and then they assign credit
based on that.
Stentz: If you’re the last writer, and there are, like, eight writers before
you. . . being the last one in is actually a huge advantage, because if you’re
skilled, what you do is play all of the previous writers against each other and
allocate a little bit of what’s in the script to each of them, then say, “I was the
only one who’s contribution rose above the threshold required for credit.”
Hollyweird Science: Harsh. Even if there’s only one writer, which rarely
happens these days, aren’t there still many voices speaking through the
final draft of a screenplay?
Perlman: Well I think with the larger studio movies, especially if you’re not
directing your own film, you have an enormous number of people giving
notes, and that’s just part of being a screenwriter. I’d say 90% of the job of
being a screenwriter is taking notes from other people. Part of it is because—
unlike shooting a film in your back yard and then posting it on the Internet,
which you can definitely do, and do great work that way—when you’re
making a film with a high budget that requires a lot of special effects and
actors, it all requires money. Anybody who gives money to a movie wants to
have a say in how the movie turns out, because they want to have a return on
their investment. That makes perfect sense. So there’s a lot of cooks in the
kitchen, and the more money that’s involved, usually the more cooks there are.
So you just have to take notes, and that’s part of the reality.
DeSanto: A lot of times studio notes come from multiple people, so they are
contradictory. I wish there was studio boot camp where studio execs, before
they actually started working at the studio had to go through pre-production,
production, post-production, and development on a movie because a lot of
things that they are asking for. . . anyone who’s been in the trenches of actually
making something a reality would know a lot of times that it’s not possible or
it’ll unravel the sweater as it were.
Schut: I faced some painful decisions on Season of the Witch where I literally
was told, “You either implement this change, or. . .” The reality is that they’ll
find somebody else who will. Then you risk losing your credit on the film, so
it’s a very painful choice for writers, but that’s the reality of film. If you don’t
want to deal with other voices, other creative people and other collaborators,
then you probably want to go into novel writing or something else where you
will be the final arbiter and the only voice. Film is a format that I really really
love, but it goes back to the Paul Schrader quote: it is a very collaborative
venture, and all those people are going to have a say in it. So unless you can
wrap your head around that unwieldy form of art, probably you should go into
novel writing or something else.
Stentz: And people wonder why there’s better storytelling in television than
film by and large.
Hollyweird Science: Is it generally true that science advisors interact
with the first draft writers early on, and then rarely after that for subse-
quent rewrites?
Stentz: That has been my experience. I’ve gotten to be good buds with Sean
Carroll, who was one of the science advisors on Thor, but long before we were
ever involved. Oftentimes, when you come on and are involved, it will be
made clear, “Hey, you have access to a science advisor if you want one,” but
most of the time, the science issues are sort of/kind of already set, and I’ve
never heard of later writers availing themselves of that particular opportunity.
Miller: You know, here’s what happens. It’s not that the advisor is any less
valuable, it’s that, as the process moves forward, the fundamental story
decisions or story concerns that emerge—ones that must be addressed—get
to a level that is beyond the underlying assumptions of the science. The
premise of the story, of the movie, has been established, and the considerations
over dialogue, or what information is presented in a scene, can move far past
the need for accuracy or clarity. Not that those things aren’t important, but the
level at which everybody is thinking is different because they’ve moved on to
thinking purely about the drama. The quantity of interaction, and quality of
interaction with the science advisor changes because your priority list of
questions changes.
Hollyweird Science: It seems that it’s clearly a possibility that the
science the first writer so dutifully and painstakingly wrote into the first
draft, with or without a science advisor, can be summarily written out by
subsequent writers, or by the director if he or she writes a draft of the
script?
Schut: Yes, definitely. We’re experiencing that now with Inversion. We
came up with what I thought was a pretty fun and grounded take on the
science, and who knows what’s going to happen to that? It may or may not be
changed. I know that that’s not the only risk in being rewritten; the writer faces
a million things like that. As writers, when you’re rewritten, you risk losing
characters, you risk losing moments of dialogue, scenes, character’s decisions,
all kinds of things. Science is only one of the victims.
Miller: I’m not sure that it’s about the producer, the director, the writer
condescending to the science advisor and saying, “Well thank you for all of
your advice in this process, we don’t need you anymore,” It’s that they feel as
though they’ve moved on. At some point they’re so harried by the other
creative decisions that have to be made that it’s almost the last thing on their
minds. You know what it is? It’s like the good kid. The good kid is just sort of
standing around going, “Wait a minute, I’m being the good kid, why is the
bad kid getting all the attention?” Well the bad kid is getting all the attention
because the bad kid is a giant pain in the ass, and everybody wants the pain in
the ass to stop.
Hollyweird Science: So is the science pretty much set once the script
heads to production?
Miller: Occasionally, you’ll have a director for whom science is CRU-
CIALLY GODDAMNED IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT’S HIS MOVIE,
and that’s just how it’s going to work. Or you have a writer who just keeps
banging that drum, either loudly, or very quietly, by going back to the science
advisor and saying, “So, um, tell me about irritable bowel syndrome again.”
Amiel: I like having science advisors on set, any kind of technical advisor,
actually. There’s so much that you’re creating—pulling out of your own ass—
imaginatively, that having somebody there to say, “Well this is how it would be
and should be,” whether it’s an ecclesiastical advisor when I was working on
The Borgias, or science advisors, or historical advisors is extremely useful.
Hollyweird Science: You actually have advisors on the set when filming?
Amiel: [On The Core] There are various points where characters—Stanley
Tucci’s character Zimsky, and Aaron Eckhart’s character Josh—are lecturing
on, or talking about, deep Earth physics. They’re rendering it into equations;
they’re talking about movement of molten iron. We had science advisors on
hand throughout that, to make sure that what we were talking about was
authentic and accurate. Even stuff that was going on in the background of the
scene, they’d all been written up and kind of authenticated by a deep Earth
physicist.
Hollyweird Science: Is the writer even on the set when they’re shooting?
Stentz: In film, you are contractually obligated to get one set visit as a writer.
Schut: I think there is something in the contract, but it feels to me like it’s
more of a courtesy. Unless the writer is actively rewriting pages on set, and I
have had to do that, but in general it’s sort of a courtesy.
Hollyweird Science: You have a completed film. What then?
Stentz: In general, the director takes the reins when he comes onboard.
They take the lion’s share of glory—for better or worse—and they also
shoulder the lion’s share of the blame if it doesn’t come together the way
they want.
Amiel: As a filmmaker—especially of commercial films—you find yourself
something like Moses’ mother. You conceive this child in love. You carry it
through this long gestatory period. You bring it to birth through labor and
blood and sweat. Then you hand it to the distribution midwifes, the marketing
mavens, who thank you cursorily and then elbow you out of the way as they
take the baby from you. You watch it put into the marketing basket, and you
see it float off down the river like Moses. And you don’t know, at that point,
whether your baby is going to get picked up by Pharaoh’s daughter and turned
into a prince, or eaten by the fucking crocodiles. You don’t know, and you
have no control. Yes, the product is that thing which will earn you the money,
the acclaim, or the opprobrium, whatever it ends up being, but I have come to
understand that process, for me, is everything, and the product is secondary.
Hollyweird Science: In attempting to help make the science of your film
accurate, a science advisor may represent constraints to the creative
process. Is there a trade-off? Is science equally likely to open creative
avenues?
Miller: Generally, I think that technical advisors and science advisors are
looked upon as “Dr. No.” They’re the person who says, “Well that doesn’t
work” or “You can’t do that.” They can also be the person who says, “Well, it
can only work this way” or “You can do this” or “This might work,” and that’s
a more positive version of it.
Perlman: I am on the steering committee for the Science and Entertainment
Exchange in Hollywood, and one of the things that we do to address this issue
is to bring filmmakers and scientists together—informally as well as for-

mally—on field trips and on events.
Schut: They sent me up to Vandenberg for a rocket launch, one of the big
ones, one of the largest rockets ever launched on the West Coast. Stuff I
learned from that rocket launch made its way into a project I was writing for
Gale Anne Hurd, a giant robot thing, an adaptation of the Japanese anime
property Gaiking. That’s something I never could have invented, but I had the
wonderful fortune of being there.
Perlman: One of the goals [of the Exchange] is to, basically, create a
network where people can easily just reach out to somebody and say, “Hey,
I’m writing this astrophysics project, I’m not sure what would happen if this
spaceship came too close to a black hole. What would that look like? How
would that manifest?” Maybe the response is something that would be fantas-
tically cinematic; maybe the response would be impossible to film and not very
interesting and useful for the story. One of the things that has been really
fruitful from that experience is that the scientist/consultants will say something
along the lines of, “Well, X may happen, but there is a small chance that Z may
happen, and it could look like this, but it’s hypothetical. Then you can sort of
run with that a little bit and take something that isn’t necessarily straight-up
completely 100% accurate, but within the realm of possibility, that a film-
maker, who doesn’t have a background in astrophysics, would never have
thought to explore.
Schut: I think the best. . . the most valuable part for me in bringing
scientists into the creative process is that it’s like a little voyage of discovery
for us. Because we’re learning about things that we really don’t understand, so
there are ideas that come out of that that are better than anything I could come
up with on my own. With Inversion, that was a really wonderful process. So I
feel like even though the science is questionable, and I’m sure when that movie
comes out, people are going to look at it and have a good laugh, and say, “This
could never happen,” the truth is it may not ever happen, but there is some real
science behind the process, and there’s a lot of stuff in there that is based in
science. To me that’s kinda cool.
Miller: What I want from a technical advisor is somebody to help me
understand how things work, and why they work that way. If you can lay
out for me a mechanism, and help me understand the rules of the mechanism,
then I can derive a lot of consequences, and those consequences are always
dramatic, because drama emerges simply from rules and collisions with rules—
whether it’s personal, social rules, or whether it is natural laws, or physical laws,
regardless of what you’re talking about, rules are where the drama comes from,
because the hero has to follow them and obey them. Problems, crises, emerge
because people follow the rule because systems follow the rule.
If you can tell me how or why a widget works, I can begin to come up with
ways that the widget or the scenario or the system generates drama, I can
largely figure out what the hero might try to resolve the problem, what will fail
and why, what might be an out-of-the-box way of looking at what the solution
is, and then I can turn to my advisor and say, “OK, here’s where I started,
here’s how I progressed, here’s where I ended. How would you tweak it?” In
the best of all possible worlds, you’re not giving your science advisor permis-
sion to tell you the boundaries of the box. You are giving your science advisor,
or your technical advisor, permission to think outside of it for you, because
you demonstrate some minimal competence with the box.
Perlman: Science comes in different places depending upon the project,
depending on the needs, but it can be surprisingly freeing as opposed to
restrictive if you talk to scientists who are creative.
Hollyweird Science: We’re going to change gears now and focus our
discussion on television. It used to be that if you couldn’t make it, or were
washed up, in film, then television was there as a landing pad. That’s not
the case anymore—in fact, television is, in many ways, taking the creative
lead. Anybody want to agree or disagree?
Perlman: I think television’s very exciting. It’s an exciting world, and I think
that some of the best stuff that’s happening right now is coming out of
television because there is a desire to push boundaries, and I think there’s
also more writer control, which is usually a good thing. I think that it’s also
because the costs are lower; the risks are lower on a show than on a big budget
film. Sometimes people can take more risks in television—and then just cancel
it if it’s not doing well—than they could with a film where they might sink
$200 million into the advertising, the marketing, and the distribution and
then have it flop. There are certainly very high-budget TV shows that flop, but
there are a lot more opportunities to try and do things with less of a crippling
repercussion if the project does not go well.
Amiel: What’s enormously alluring, to me, about television is that the novel
is still alive and well. . . in television. Some of the best television now, I think,
for example The Wire, is Dostoyevskian in scale. I think, as a work, it stands
beside any towering work of literature on the planet. I think Mad Men is
fantastic. Breaking Bad is wonderful. These days, with film in desperate and
deep recession, many many film professionals are finding refuge in television
because they can’t do work that they care about in film. Television is really
doing some extraordinary work, it’s still writer-driven, it’s still a place where
you can discuss tough ideas, and where you can create a world, expand it,
populate it with incredible depth and incredible details. So I increasingly love
television these days.
Hollyweird Science: Most viewers likely don’t realize how different a

medium television is compared to film. Is it a reasonable statement to say
that if you work exclusively in either TV or film, you may have little idea
how the other is produced?
Perlman: I think so, absolutely. I think it’s a reasonable statement to say that
you don’t know how the other one is produced until you start working in it
and learning.
Miller: I think that it’s very easy for people who spend their lives working in
one world or the other of the entertainment industry, be it film or television, to
first either assume that everything is the same in the other world, or to make
the assumption that it’s all just a mystery, and cannot be understood. The
reality is somewhere in between. There are vast vast differences between how
the two things are made, and who does what, and how people have to think
about story and storytelling, but there is an enormous amount of crossover.
That’s where I think people really mess themselves up.
Stentz: It’s fascinating. I think that’s going to decrease in the next few years
because a lot of screenwriters are jumping into television, but we hear stories
like: a “Very High-Profile Feature Writer” wanted to sit down and write a pilot
and he had no idea what a pilot looked like. He actually had to ask someone to
tell him: “These are how many acts you have. You have to put ‘Fade In’ and an
‘End of Act’ at the end of each one.” It was astonishing. It’s like: You have
watched television right? You know how it works structurally and you do this
for a living. There’s an astounding amount of ignorance in some cases.
Perlman: I’m just starting to get my toe into television a little bit, and it’s
very surprising to me how different it is. It’s fascinating, and the culture is
different. There’s a different attitude towards writers, which is. . . great.
Writer’s have a lot more power, and a lot more control and say in television
than they do in film. I think it’s also more collaborative, in general. There’s
also a very different deadline schedule, so you have different pressures. All of
these elements, there’s so many other elements too, really mix together to
create a different cocktail of writing and entertainment than film. There’s a lot
of crossover, there are a lot of people who do both, but there’s definitely a
learning curve regardless of whether you’re going from TV to film, or from
film to TV. It’s a different world. It’s nice to know that there is this other
industry that you can start over in and, in some ways, be starry-eyed and not
yet jaded, and go into another branch of writing.
Hollyweird Science: At this point we say thank you and goodbye to Jon
Amiel, Tom DeSanto and Nicole Perlman, but welcome new panelists
Kevin Murphy (showrunner for the series Caprica and Defiance), Jaime
Paglia (co-creator and executive producer for Eureka), Naren Shankar
(showrunner, CSI and The Expanse), and Kath Lingenfelter (writer and
supervising producer for Caprica, House, M.D., and Westworld).
As with our discussion of film, with the ultimate quest of exploring how
science makes it on screen, let’s first understand the mechanics of a
television series. We discussed the roles of directors, writers, and pro-
ducers in film, but the job descriptions of people having those titles can be
astoundingly different in television. Instead of the director assuming the
creative lead, it is the showrunner. What is the job of a showrunner, and
how does that differ from an executive producer?
Murphy: A showrunner is usually a writer, often the creator of the particular
series, and is essentially the CEO of the corporation. You can be an “Executive
Producer,” and it can mean anything. “Showrunner” means only one thing: it
means that the buck stops with the person who has that title.
Stentz: By and large, writers are much more empowered in television than
in film. In TV, the power center is much more the showrunner, the writer/
executive producer. It’s his or her vision that is in the driver’s seat, even though
they have to answer to a lot of the same people that people in films do.
Murphy: Essentially the showrunner is responsible for the casting of the
show, is responsible for the aesthetic look of the show, the style of the show,
choosing the music, building the sets, supervising and doing much of the
writing, hiring the directors, hiring the production personnel. When some-
one’s not working out, often you’re the person who has to sit down and fire
them. It’s a really really wide-ranging job.
Hollyweird Science: Despite the showrunner’s collateral duties, many
and varied as they may be, he or she is, basically, a writer?
Schut: My experience is that the producers are all writers, and they’re all
custodians of the TV series.
Miller: In television, the writer is God. There are a lot of reasons for that.
The most important reason is that the writer is the creator. The writer is
usually the person who sold the idea to the studio and to the network, wrote
that pilot, got that pilot made, and now every day until the show is cancelled, is
in charge of deciding where it goes. Because a television show is writer-driven
and script-driven, it is this organic thing that grows, and doesn’t stop growing
until it’s just dead. You know, there is no one logically who you could hand the
reigns to, other than the head writer.
Murphy: One of the interesting things about being a writer/producer is
often you sit around in your underwear, doing the very solitary pursuit of
writing, and you torture yourself to come up with this script... and in television
writing what’s really strange about the medium is when you have great success,
they say, “Wow you sat around in your underwear and you wrote a really great
script, now we’re going to make you the CEO of a small corporation that has a
$2 million weekly cash flow. Good luck to you.”
Hollyweird Science: So the showrunner is an executive producer, and is
in charge. This is clearly different than in film where EP can mean pretty
much whatever you want it to mean.
On a television show, we often see multiple executive producers and
many other brands of producers. Describe their roles?
Schut: When you’re hired on a TV show as a writer, as you work your way
up that writer ladder, as you reach the top of the writers’ room, and as you
become a lead creative writer on a show, you get an associate producer or
producer title or co-producer or an executive producer title, but you’re still a
writer.
Stentz: Somebody who doesn’t work in TV sees all of those names at the
front—there’s co-producer, the producer, the supervising producer, the
co-executive producer, and the executive producer—they don’t realize that
they’re seeing the writer equivalent of military rank titles.
Hollyweird Science: Only one gets the “Produced by” credit. Tell me
about that person.
Miller: Their job is to manage the money and the schedule so that what’s
presented to them can be made, and also what hasn’t been presented to them
yet can be made. . . which is where it gets really interesting. They are basically
the equivalent of a COO in a corporation, Chief Operations Officer. They
make things happen. They make the ship move. They don’t make decisions,
they just make sure that everything goes in the direction it’s supposed to go,
they tell the showrunner when stuff is going to work, or when it’s not going to
work, they ride herd on the production staff in terms of keeping to budget and
schedule, and they are, ideally, an honest broker between the showrunner,
who’s trying to make a show, and the studio who’s trying to spend as little
money on it as possible.
Hollyweird Science: It sounds quite different than film where the studio
looks to the director to drive the creative direction of the production. In
television the studio and/or network looks to the showrunner, and the
director is more an episodic “gun for hire”?
Stentz: God knows, there’s a huge difference in quality in directors, in TV,
and having a great director in TV can make a huge difference in the quality of
the episode, but, by and large, the creative vision in television is that of the
showrunner. The directors understand that they come in and that they
ultimately answer to the showrunner and answer to the writers. While they
bring ideas to the table, their job, at the end of the day, is to implement the
creative vision of the showrunner. So it’s very different in that way.
I hate to use the term “gun for hire,” because some directors end up having
very long and fruitful relationships with particular shows, and help set the
visual vocabulary for them. I don’t mean to understate the importance of good
directors, but in almost every case in TV their vision is that of implementing
the vision of the showrunner.
Murphy: Which also leads to the other part of the job of a showrunner,
which is managing the expectations and desires of your studio and your
network. Because, ultimately, the network are the buyers, and you are the
supplier. You need to make sure that the buyer is always always happy. And
you need to make sure you’re doing everything you’re doing on time, on
budget, and to an acceptable creative level, which is managing the expectations
of the studio.
Miller: The authority the executive producer has, that the showrunner has,
isn’t total. Like a feature director, he his still responsible to the people who
said, “Yes,” to deliver to them what they believed they bought. You can’t sell
them one show and then do another. You can’t sell Patty Duke and then do
Arrested Development, as hilarious as that might be.
Hollyweird Science: How far in advance do you plot out the direction
of your series?
Shankar: On The Expanse, we have the two novelists [Ty Franck and Daniel
Abraham] who are collectively James S. A. Corey. They’ve been involved in
our writers’ room from the very beginning, they’ve been there for the entire
run of the show, the development of everything. Their books are incredibly
detailed, and we’re just bringing those details visually into the piece.
Miller: In television you should know where your episode ends, you should
have a complete script and shoot it, but I promise you that it is OK if you don’t
know what the last episode of season five is going to be when you’re shooting
episode two of season one. You are perfectly cool. And, in fact, the opposite is
true. If you believe with metaphysical certitude that you know exactly what the
last episode of season five is going to be when you are shooting season one
episode two, you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot, and you’ve never done it before,
and you don’t understand what happens in a production that complicated,
that complex, over that amount of time.
Hollyweird Science: Would you also say that you’re not fully availing
yourself of your writers’ creativity in that instance?
Miller: Exactly, and you are also failing to recognize that reality has its own
plans. No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, right?
Paglia: [On Eureka] we’d try to take a little writers’ retreat before we start
breaking episodes to just talk about the broad strokes about what we want the
season to look like, and, most importantly, what’s going to happen with the
characters, and sort of mapping out individual arcs for all of them.
We would keep one wall dedicated to the character arcs over the course of
13 episodes. On another wall we would have our “A” story concepts, and once
we sort of settled on what those concepts were going to be, we would just sort
of pull from there and find the way that they thematically made the most sense
in the course of a season. Sometimes it would be from us in the offseason
thinking about things or ideas that we wanted to do, so we would have a place
to start. And then a lot of it was our writing staff doing research, reading
online, reading science magazines, reading sci-fi. Sometimes you come up with
ideas, a technology we could use, that would be really interesting.
So we take some of the ideas that come out of that time together, and we go
into the writers’ room and we narrow it at that point—at least the sort of
backbone of what we have—for our character storylines. And we sort of try to
thematically find science “A” stories that will match those individual character
storylines for the episodes that we’re mapping out. Then taking the best of
those ideas, those are the ones that ultimately win the day.
Hollyweird Science: Same question we asked for film: How are indi-
vidual episodes crafted, from the point where it’s a gleam in the writer’s
eye to the time it hits the screen?
Schut: I certainly didn’t have a clue when we started on Threshold, I had just
done film stuff, which is very different: you have all the time in the world, you
work alone, and then you turn your script in. Then you get a round of notes,
and you go back to work again, there are some meetings, you go back to work
again. Television is a huge difference.
Stentz: Most of the time there is a writing staff of anywhere between six and
12 people sitting around the room. . . Someone will have an idea, even the
showrunner the person in charge of the show, or one of the writers will pitch
an idea.
Schut: You have all kinds of incredibly talented writers around a table
together, and you come up with brilliant ideas. Of those, we would winnow
it down, and half of the ideas don’t work once you start to beat it out, but half
can, and do, work. What’s great is that you could never come up with this stuff
on your own. It really takes people with different backgrounds and different
experiences to come up with these ideas. There’s a lot of stuff in Threshold that
there’s no way I would have come up with on my own. So that’s kinda fun.
Lingenfelter: Typically, you pitch a story area to your showrunner, your
showrunner says, “That sounds good.” Then the showrunner will get on a call
with the studio and network and say, “Here are ideas for our next four
episodes,” and will pitch those ideas, they’re very broad strokes. Then the
studio and network will say, “OK, we like this, we don’t like that, we like
this. . .” And then the writers will go and make a one- to two-page proposal
that is much more specific about what these ideas are, and send that to the
studio. Then they say, “That’s great,” or give their notes and adjustments.
Then you break that idea in the [writer’s] room.
Hollyweird Science: That’s the second time that term has come
up. Jaime mentioned breaking stories earlier: elaborate, please.
Lingenfelter: Breaking a story is figuring out what are the major moves
within a story, what are the twists and the turns. So you’re figuring out the 1-2-
3-4 of the story you’re telling. So what is actually happening? Why is it
happening? How does it tie in?
Paglia: All the writing staff sits in the room and they literally break out each
beat of the episode scene by scene. That means that we take a first stab at it,
where you come up with the broad strokes, like “This could be an ACT OUT
scene,” “Maybe somewhere in ACT THREE we’ll have this happen.”
Lingenfelter: A lot of times you’re working with more than one story, so
you’ve got your “A” story, which is the main story for an episode, and then
there will be a “B” story that involves a side issue or side characters, and
sometimes a runner. So you’re trying to figure out the moves for each of those
stories, and have them interweave in an entertaining and plausible way.
Paglia: And it’s a very loose process to begin with, and you just keep honing
that until you have very detailed cards for each scene that’s going to happen in
the entire episode.
Lingenfelter: So you break a story, that can take three days to a week of
having several really good minds in a room together to figure out what are each
of the moves of the story, and then once you have those beats down, by act—
TV currently does a teaser and six acts and what separates each act is a
commercial break, so you want to have some sort of cliffhanger [at the end
of each act]. You want people holding their breath and GASP so they’ll stick
around through the commercial to the next act.
Paglia: We would also let our science advisor know what the storyline was
going to be that we had settled on, and if he had any feedback for a way to
make the story more scientifically accurate at the story breaking/outline phase.
Stentz: They’ll outline the story and then the writers will go off and write it.
Hollyweird Science: Wait, there were two steps there: writing an outline
and writing a script.
Paglia: The outline is, basically, fleshing out the details of the story from the
story break.
Lingenfelter: Once you’ve broken the story and you’ve decided what are the
major twists and turns of an episode you go and you write the outline which
will be 9 to 13 pages you hope, usually it ends up about 15 pages and you’re
describing each scene that you intend to write.
Schut: I know most shows write it down as a paper document, but when I
think of an outline in the TV world, I really think of the dry erase board that’s
broken up by acts—that has every single beat that is in every single scene.
Everything is on that board. So, yeah, they may ask you to go and type it up,
but, really, when that board is laid out, the heavy lifting is done.
Lingenfelter: If you were in a room and you were to verbally take the studio
or network executive through your episode, this is how they would experience
it—as it is on the outline on page.
Paglia: So I’d say the story break is about 60 percent there, and an outline
hopefully gets you about 75 percent there.
Lingenfelter: Then the studio makes their notes, you address those notes,
you submit it to the network, network does their notes, you address those
notes.
Hollyweird Science: Then you start writing?
Lingenfelter: Then you think what you have is a specific perfect template for
the script, but then you sit down to write the script and you realize that there
are about a thousand decisions you haven’t made yet, and you realize the
outline doesn’t help you with those. It’s weeks and weeks of pounding away on
it... just working and working and working, and discovering what it isn’t until
you land on what it is. You try to make it to 54 pages without walking into
traffic.
Schut: I had some very short turnarounds on a number of TV episodes I’ve
written, and I remember they were pretty tough to meet, but they would have
been impossible if you didn’t have an outline. The fact that I had an outline is
the only way I got through them. On one of them I think I got six days or eight
days. It was pretty nuts.
Lingenfelter: And then you go through the notes process all over again. You
submit that draft to your supervisor who gives you notes, which you address,
and then you submit it to your show runner who gives you notes, which you
address, and then you submit it to the studio and network so on.
Shankar: The rewriting process. It’s where some people just break apart on
the rocks in terms of the writing process. For me, and I’ve said this before to
other people, one of the great things about a scientific education, I felt, was
peer review: you put research together when you write a paper, and then you’d
sit back with you colleagues and tear it apart to see if it could withstand the
strength of the hypothesis, and if the experiment was a good one.
Good rewriting is kind of the same way. Even if you’ve written something,
you have to sit back and now take a look at it as an audience member and ask,
“Does this make sense?” “Are there emotional truths to this thing?” “Are we
making the best story that we can?” And you have to literally tear it down to see
if the foundation is strong.
Stentz: The script will get notes from the showrunner and some of the other
writers, they’ll do another couple of passes on the script, usually the
showrunner will do a final pass to make sure that the voice of the episode
harmonizes with the overall tone of the show, and then you’ll go through the
notes process with the studio and the network and then it goes to get shot, and
the actors weigh in. Then it’s on the air.
Hollyweird Science: It sounds like you get an awful lot of network and
studio notes in television.
Stentz: You get a lot of notes in film too. The nice thing about television is
that, because the trains are moving, and stop for no one, things have to get
turned around and people have to make decisions. They can’t just dither and
go back-and-forth on something forever, because something needs to get shot.
Paglia: We would also always have our science advisor read the final scripts
for scientific accuracy, to sort of look at the dialogue and say, “OK, that’s
close.”
Hollyweird Science: In other words, when they say art is never finished,
merely abandoned, your production schedule gives you a hard and fast
time when it must be abandoned.
Stentz: The ticking clock is what most empowers writers on TV.
Lingenfelter: The really, really fantastic thing about television is that pro-
duction is reality, so there comes a point in time where you can’t mess with any
more and you just have to shoot it. The ink is still wet and you’re still typing
and they tear it from you and give it the actors and start filming.
Schut: I loved the immediacy of just one day you’re writing the script, and
then you’re turning it in the next day, and they’re building sets the day after,
and they’re rehearsing, and boom. It’s like a freight train, you had to try to stay
ahead of it, it was just so quick. The film stuff that I’d been working on moved
relatively slowly compared to that.
Miller: The pace of production in television means that while you are
shooting one episode, you are prepping another, you are posting3 a third.
These things are happening simultaneously. On a film these are discrete
periods of prep, shoot, post. A director can be involved in all of those things,
and make decisions in all of those phases of the game. On some level, they are
making those sorts of decisions on an episode-by-episode basis as they are hired
in television, although it is truly subject to the whim of the showrunner.
Paglia: Generally we liked to have about two weeks for an outline, and four
weeks for a script. That, inevitably, gets compressed more and more over the
course of a season where you’re down to, maybe if you’re lucky, ten days,
oftentimes less than that. It’s nice to have a little lead time where you can be
writing earlier in the season to get as many scripts done before you start
shooting, because that’s when the production machine starts, and they start
3
Post-production.
chewing up pages they’ve been shooting faster than the writers can generate
them. So, ideally, you start a season off with half a dozen episodes already
written, and you’re working on the back half of the season at that point in the
writers’ room.
Miller: If more feature writers had the time to really get experience going
through the process of getting something made, if more features writers spent
some time in television, just getting their asses kicked, for, like, a year. . . it
would be transformative for the feature industry.
Hollyweird Science: How welcome is the writer on set in TV?
Stentz: There will generally be some sort of a representative of the writer’s
voice on set. It’s not always the writer of the individual episode—different
shows have different philosophies about whether people should supervise their
own episode—but there will be someone.
Schut: The writer on television. . . he’s there because the writer on television
is the guiding force. So they’re there every single day.
Hollyweird Science: In the process of crafting science fiction series,
where can science enter the picture?
Murphy: [On Defiance] It’s very “free form jazz,” the process. The way we
go about doing it with our science advisor, is we write the outline, we send the
outline, we get comments back. We write the script, we do the best we can, we
fake it the best we can, and we get comments back. If there’s a specific
question, we’ll pose that question, because that may be something that
ultimately informs how we write the story.
Paglia: Our science advisor would come in before the start of the season, and
give us a PowerPoint presentation about some of the cool things that are
happening in science, and new cutting-edge research and development stuff,
just to see if there’s anything in there that’s interesting for us to possibly use as
the germ of an idea.
Murphy: Something that Bradley [Thompson] and David [Weddle]—
writers who were working with the Star Trek shows, who also worked on
Galactica and they’re working on Defiance—said that on Star Trek they would
just put in brackets in a script “TECH”. and so when somebody would say,
“Well the dilithium crystals. . .” or what have you, it was just like “[TECH]”,
and then someone who was on staff would insert the tech talk to make it
appear fantastic jargon.4
4
That someone was Andre Bormanis, whom we met in Hollyweird Science.
Lingenfelter: I felt like. . . who is that sort of Amazonian knight that protects
Lady Catelyn on Game of Thrones? The female knight that’s like her body-
guard5? I feel that for science. . . I did on House. I think there has to be
somebody on staff that is an advocate for science. I think, right now, the
majority of entertainment is done two ways. One is “Wow, that’s a really cool
science concept, that inspires a story and that’s my launching point.” Or “I’ve
written this story without really considering science. Now I’ll fit the science
in.” Both are guilty of committing the same crimes of bad science. What I’d
love is for science not to exist in those two extremes of storytelling, but rather
to be something that continues: it’s a conversation that continues throughout
the story-making process. And I think that’s what’s great about the Science and
Entertainment Exchange, it’s because you have this access that, throughout,
the story and the science can evolve together. It’s not only two points of entry,
at the beginning or at the end.
Hollyweird Science: If a science advisor is hired in television, then, it’s
because the showrunner hired him or her, correct? Doesn’t that imply,
then, that there’s a commitment to science at the top, and across the
board, for that show? Why else would an advisor be brought aboard?
Miller: Understand that when a science advisor, when a technical advisor, is
part of the showrunner’s inner circle, it’s because the premise of the show, the
show that has been sold, is, in some way, reliant upon a concept. It can be a
science fiction show, it can be a procedural. What the science advisor provides
is key to the premise of the show as it’s been sold. The specifics of the premise
may change from episode to episode. In a film, the premise largely stays the
same, right? In a television show, you may be exploring different aspects of the
premise, or different premises that are related, and the nature of your technical
advisor may be science, may be police, may be doctor, may be lawyer, but
you’re reaching out to somebody who has a particular expertise that is
important to the drama that you are trying to convey.
Hollyweird Science: Similar to a question we raised when discussing
film, can you think of instances where better science equals better story?
Murphy: In the pilot of Defiance there is an “arkfall.”6 Some of our
descriptions and some of our conceptual digital designs were based upon
conversations that we had early in the life of the series about what would the
incoming arc be? How big of a footprint would there be? What would be left?
What would it look like? That helped provide a framework for how we ended
up writing the scene. So in the finished product, one of the points that our
5
Brienne of Tarth, played by Gwendoline Christie. Christie also plays Captain Phasma in Star Wars: The
Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
6
The crash landing of an abandoned “ark” spacecraft.
science advisor made was that it would have to come in at a very very low arc,
so it created the idea where Nolan and Irisa are driving in a Roller, and they’re
tracking the gradual descent of the Ark as it’s coming in, and they’re timing
this to Johnny Cash “Jackson” as they’re chasing the Ark. It gives you the sense
that these insouciant Ark raiders are outlaws, they’re rebels, they love Johnny
Cash. . . Because the idea of it dropping out of the sky perpendicular to the
ground is not the way it would actually happen, it really sort of informed the
way that we wrote the scene. I think that would be a really concrete example of
how better science made better story.
Shankar: On The Expanse, there’s a lot of science in it, but we don’t dwell
on it. It’s not that kind of a show. We’re not exploring the science of it. Our
writers say that they often get questions, “Well where are the robots? Where’s
all the artificial intelligence?” They go, “It’s there.” It’s there in how the ships
get in and out of docks, and how things move around, you’d have to have
it. That’s just not what the show is. It’s like all of these elements and
technologies are in the world, but we don’t focus on them. It’s more of an
aesthetic than anything else.
There’s isn’t a lot of talk about science in the show. There really isn’t. But
there’s a sequence where the gravity is off and somebody’s head has been seared
off by a rail gun round and the blood is still pumping out of his body and
pooling above his head, because there is no gravity. There’s a lot of science in
that scene, but we don’t really talk about it.
Stentz: I mean look at the film Gravity. I know some people nitpicked it,
but let’s just say, for the sake of argument, it got a lot of stuff right. What was
great about it, to me, is you didn’t need a movie with. . . you can imagine a
version of that movie with a snarling villain on the Russian space station
conspiring to keep Sandra Bullock out in space or something like that. By
leaning into the science so hard, the filmmakers made that completely unnec-
essary because, essentially, the laws of physics were the antagonist.
Murphy: Better science makes better story because it makes it easier for you
to believe that these people really know what they’re talking about, and they
know more than you do about the given subject. You trust the storytelling, and
you find yourself invested. It all comes down to the word verisimilitude: I
believe in the world.
Hollyweird Science: Again, same question we asked the film people: Is
it fair to say, then, that rather than simply building constraints to story-
telling, a science advisor is equally likely to open previously unforeseen
creative avenues?
Paglia: On Eureka we had an amazing writing staff, they’d do their research,
they really actually appreciate trying to get the science right, but it’s always nice
to have that extra hand at the end who comes in and just polishes and makes
sure we’re being as accurate as possible.
Schut: I’m sold on it now, since [the last film on which I used a science
advisor], I love having scientists involved as much as possible, because it’s a
little bit like having your own writers’ room—the writers’ room full of stuff
you can’t come up with on your own. [Scientists] have an education that took
a long time, a knowledge base that took an incredible amount of time to
acquire, and a lot of work to acquire, and we get to pilfer it and take the best
little bits and drop them into a story. It’s really a cool process.
Hollyweird Science: That’s all we have the pages for. A big “Thank
you” to all our panelists. Tune into our next book, Hollyweird Science of
the Third Kind, when we’ll examine in detail the role of a Hollywood
science advisor, and answer the burning question, “How do I get that
job?”
Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the
ocean depths, and encourage the arts and sciences.
John F. Kennedy
Afterword: A Tour Through the Lands
of Science and Entertainment
Most people are not scientists. This means that they have a limited ability to
travel to what we might call the “land of science” with its secretive laboratories,
arcane knowledge, unintelligible “science speak,” and strange social rituals. In
fact, research shows that the public most often encounters science through
fictional depictions in movies and television shows. Of course, this has led
scientists and policy makers to become concerned about how fictional depic-
tions of science might impact science literacy and public perceptions of
science. Luckily for us, Hollyweird Science is here with its light hearted,
conversational style and its expert “Science-fu” to serve as an experienced
tour guide through the land of science and its fusion with the world of
entertainment. While the Hollyweird Science team help us separate science
fact from Hollywood fiction, they are also unabashed fans of science-based
popular culture. They are clearly sympathetic to entertainment producers who
are trying to incorporate real science within the artificial realm of fiction. This
means that Hollyweird Science is also providing the public with a tour of the
equally mysterious back lots and sound stages of the entertainment industry.
Hollyweird Science’s sightseeing tour through the dominions of science and
entertainment is important because science and fiction represent two of the
most powerful cultural institutions that humans have developed to understand
and explore their world. The fusion of science and fiction in movies and on TV
has increased dramatically over the last 15 years. This increased use of science
in entertainment means that we are currently experiencing a “Golden Age” for
science-based popular culture. Box office blockbusters such as Interstellar and
Big Hero 6, and television ratings titans like The Big Bang Theory demonstrate
that there is a substantial audience for science-heavy popular culture. Academy
Award winning films including Gravity and The Martian, and Emmy Award
winning TV shows such as House and Breaking Bad have also proven that
science–based popular entertainment can be critically acclaimed in addition to
being financially successful.
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7, © Springer International Publishing AG 2017
406 Afterword: A Tour Through the Lands of Science and Entertainment
We can also consider this a Golden Age for science-based popular culture
because the representations of science and scientists in our fiction have
changed significantly. Contemporary portrayals of scientists in movies and
on TV have become far more positive and complex than previous stereotypes
of the maniacal older white man with fuzzy “Einstein” hair, bushy beard, thick
glasses, and lab coat shouting “It’s Alive!” There has been a remarkable shift in
the depictions of scientists in entertainment away from scientists as the odd
and evil villain to portrayals of scientists as admirable and heroic. The mad
scientist is now essentially a relic of the past. Modern scientist characters
exhibit a moral complexity not found in previous portrayals even in those
who are villainous. There has also been a shift away from depictions of
scientific knowledge as inherently dangerous towards a portrayal of science
as being threatening only when it is unregulated and untethered to ethical
constraints. Fictional portrayals of science have moved from being a mysteri-
ous and dangerous activity to being one that is knowable and controllable.
Hollyweird Science’s interviews with prominent filmmakers and TV pro-
ducers reveal to us that filmmakers and TV producers have embraced authen-
tic science because audiences have become more sophisticated consumers of
entertainment. Audiences are demanding more complicated entertainment
products and that includes scientific content. One of the primary reasons
that entertainment producers have gravitated towards science is that contem-
porary entertainment now emphasizes realism across media and across genres.
This growing desire for realism motivated filmmakers and TV producers to
increasingly look to science to help them ground their texts in a realist
framework. This desire for more scientific content has, in turn, led to an
increase in the number of scientists brought on board to act as consultants for
film and TV productions (including a certain Kevin Grazier who has contrib-
uted advice for a significant number of entertainment productions). The
success of these scientist/entertainment collaborations helps explain why
there is so much more science in our fictional media and why popular images
of science have changed so dramatically over the last 15 years. It is much more
difficult for entertainment professionals to stick with old, worn-out negative
stereotypes like the mad scientist when they are asking real-life scientists for
assistance.
The veracity of science in cinema can be important in shaping public
discourses about science. Movie and TV science can certainly make the public
fear science, but stories about science in movies can also convey the excitement
of scientific research or communicate a sense of awe about the natural world.
However, as Hollyweird Science points out, it is also important that we do not
get bogged down in the act of scientific nitpicking. Scientific facts serve as the
starting point for filmmakers who then use their own professional judgment to
Afterword: A Tour Through the Lands of Science and Entertainment 407
determine if, and how, these facts must be subverted during production. This
means that the public needs to consider all the factors that shape fictional
depictions of science including those imposed by the constraints of media
practices. Ultimately, Hollyweird Science shows us how science can make for
better entertainment and how we can use popular culture to learn more about
science. I think we can all agree that this is a good thing.
David A. Kirby
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Further Reading
Along with some of the many texts mentioned in the text, here are more books
for those interested in going deeper into the topics covered in this volume.
Joh Ronson, Jon. 2015. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. New York/London:
Riverhead Books/Pan Macmillan.
Ronson is an author and independent filmmaker who, himself, has been the
target of an Internet shaming. This is his fascinating and troubling exploration
into the Internet’s seedier side.
Gerry Spence. 1995. How to Argue and Win Every Time. New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
A book about argument that is not nearly as confrontational as the title
suggests. Trial attorney Gerry Spence has never lost a criminal case, and has
tried a number of high-profile cases, including representing the family of
Karen Silkwood.
danah boyd. 2014. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
boyd is a foremost digital anthropologist, researching how social media has
affected the personal lives of its users.
Lee Smolin. 2006. The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall
of a Science, and What Comes Next. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
This book is as much about the culture of physicists as it is about string theory,
with Smolin arguing that problems with the former have played into insuffi-
cient criticism of the latter.
Daniel S. Greenberg. 2007. Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions
of Campus Capitalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
A look at some of the ways the culture of science can be distorted by how it is
funded and the modern imperative for universities to commercialize research.
410 Further Reading
Jennifer Ouellette. 2010. The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose
Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. London: Penguin
Books.
A lively introduction for laypeople into calculus, including exponential func-
tions and the importance of the number e.
Morris Kline. 1973. Why Johnny Can’t Add: The Failure of the New Math.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Although written four decades ago, the book still addresses topics impacting the
innumeracy which permeates education today, particularly in the United States.
George Gamow. 1947. One Two Three. . . Infinity. New York: Viking Press.
An early pop science book in a similar mold as Hollyweird Science, this is an
entertaining book that explores fundamental concepts in math and science,
written at a level understandable by laypeople.
David J. Hand. 2008. Statistics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
A quick primer on the basics of the use (and abuse) of statistical methods
Charles Petzold. 2008. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s
Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine. New York: Wiley.
A step by step explanation of Alan Turing’s most influential paper, and a paper
that’s almost impenetrable for non-experts without the aid of a book like this.
Simon Singh. 1999. The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy From Ancient
Cryptography. New York: Anchor Books.
A very readable history of code making and breaking that has an excellent
chapter on the Enigma machine.
Douglas Hofstadter. 2007. I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books.

This book reprises and extends Hoftstadters core arguments from his seminal,
but dense, opus G€odel, Escher, Bach, about how conscious arises in brains, and
why machines should be able to do the same.
James Barrat. 2015. Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of
the Human Era. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
A sobering exploration into what will happen when machines achieve human-
level intelligence.
George Dyson. 2003. Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship.
New York: Holt Paperbacks.
Written by Freeman Dyson’s son, this book details the Orion project and its
plan to launch spacecraft propelled by nuclear explosions.
Further Reading 411
Francis J. Hale. 1993. Introduction to Space Flight. New York: Pearson.

Currently this book is out of print, but if you can get your hands on a copy it
will teach you how to plot missions to other planets with little more than high-
school math.
George Pendle. 2005. Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist
John Whiteside Parsons. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
An account of the stranger-than-fiction life of one of the founders of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
Gerard K. O’Neill. 2000. The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.

Burlington: Collector’s Guide Publishing.
This reprint of O’Neil’s massively influential 1977 work shows the incredible
vision and ambition of a man who wanted to make space colonies a reality.
Valentin Lebedev. 1993. Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space. New York:
Bantam Books.
This English translation of the memoir of one of the crew members of the
Salyut 7 series details many of the unglamorous aspects of living in space.
William E. Burrows. 1998. This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age.
New York: Random House.
A lively history of the early days of space flight, and how the early leaders
influenced each other and those who came later.
Mary Roach. 2011. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.
New York: W.W. Norton.
Another book that examines the unpleasant, unglamorous, undignified, and
downright gross aspects of space travel, but in a lighthearted and highly
amusing way.
Blake Snyder. 2005. Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever
Need. Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions.
An excellent, and influential, book on screenwriting. . . as well as a little bit of a
glimpse into Hollywood culture. Although ostensibly the “last book on
screenwriting you’ll ever need,” there are two sequels.
Film References
Franchise or film series Film title Year(s) Chapter(s)

A Beautiful Mind 2001 3
Adam 2009 4
Aeon Flux 2005 3
Alien Alien 1979 9
Alien Aliens 1986 7
Apollo 13 1995 6, 7, 8, 9
Armageddon 1998 P, 9
The Astronaut Farmer 2006 7
Austin Powers P
Avatar 2009 P, 5
Avengers Age of Ultron 2015 5
Back to the Future 1985– 1
1999
Back to the Future Back to the Future 1985 1
Bicentennial Man 1999 5
Blade Runner 1979 P, 5
The Black Hole 1979 1
Brazil 1985 3
Captain Marvel 2019 7
Cherry 2000 1987 5
Cocoon 1985 9
The Cold Equations 1996 3
Colossus: The Forbin Project 1970 4, 5
Conquest of Space 1955 9
Contact 1997 3
The Core 2003 P, 2, 9
Creation 2009 5
The Crying Game 1992 P
Dark Star 1974 9
The Day After Tomorrow 2004 2
Deep Impact 1998 6
Desk Set 1957 4
Destination: Moon 1950 6
(continued)
414 Film References

The Dish 2000 6
Dr. Strangelove 1964 5
The Edge of Tomorrow (aka Live, 2014 2
Die, Repeat)
Elysium 2012 7, 9
The Enemy Below 1957 8
ET: The Extraterrestrial P, 4
Europa Report 2013 6, 9
Ex Machina 2015 4, 5
Fahrenheit 451 1966 5
Failsafe 1964 4
Fantastic Four P
Fantastic Four Fantastic Four 2015 P
Ferngully 1992 5
Frau im Mond 1929 6, 9
Forbidden Planet 1956 4, 5
Galaxy Quest 1999 7
Gravity 2013 P, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9
Guardians of the Galaxy 2014 7, 9
Her 2013 4, 5
Hidden Figures 2017 4
Hulk
Hulk 2003 2
The Hurt Locker 2008 5
The Imitation Game 2014 2, 3, 4, 5
Inside Out 2015 P
The Iron Giant 1999 5
i, Robot 2004 5
An Inconvenient Truth 3
Interstellar 2014 P, 2, 7, 9
Iron Man 2, 5
James Bond 4
James Bond Goldeneye 1995 3
James Bond The World is Not Enough 1999 3
James Bond Moonraker 1979 9
John Carter 2012 P
Jurassic Park P
Jurassic Park Jurassic Park 1993 4
La Charcuterie mécanique 1895 5
Lawless 2012 P
Le Voyage Dans La Lune 1902 5
Life 2017 10
Logan’s Run 1976 4
(continued)
Film References 415

Lost in Space 1998 8
Lost in Space 2016 8
Love 2011 9
The Martian 2015 P, 4, 6, 7, 9
Metropolis 1927 5
Minority Report 2002 4, 5
Mission to Mars 2000 6
Moneyball 2011 3, 4
Moon 2009 4, 6
On the Beach 1959 5
Outland 1981 P, 9
Pacific Rim 2013 P, 9
Pandorum 2009 9
Passengers 2016 9
Paycheck 2003 5
A Perfect Storm 2000 2
Pi 1998 2
Pirates of the Caribbean: The 2003 4
Curse of the Black Pearl
Planet of the Apes 1968 9
Pocahantas 1995 5
Polar Express 2004 5
The Postman 1997 P, 5
Project Moonbase 1953 9
Proof 2005 3
Rain Man 1988 3
Raising Genius 2004 3
Real Genius 1985 2
Red Planet 2000 3, 5
The Chronicles of P
Riddick
Robot & Frank 2012 5
Rocketship X-M 1950 6
R.U.R. 2019 5
The Scarlet Letter 1995 P
Serenity 2005 6
Short Circuit 1986 5
Silent Running 1972 5, 9
The Sixth Sense 1999 P
Sneakers 1992 4
Soylent Green 1973 5
The Space Between Us 2017 10
Stand and Deliver 1988 3
(continued)
416 Film References

Star Trek 1966– 4, 7
Star Trek: The Motion Picture 1979 5, 9
Star Trek Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan 1982 3, 5, 6, 8
Star Trek Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 1984 3, 7
Star Wars P, 4, 7, 8
Star Wars Star Wars: The Force Awakens 2015 P, 4, 5, 6, 8
Star Wars Star Wars: The Empire Strikes 1980 1
Back
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 2016 4, 5
Star Wars Star Wars: A New Hope 1977 4, 5, 8, 9
Star Wars Star Wars: Return of the Jedi 1983 9
Sunshine 2007 P, 6, 9
Swordfish 2001 4
Terminator Terminator 1984 4, 5
Terminator Terminator 2: Judgement Day 1991 5
The Theory of Everything 2014 2
Thor 7
Thor Thor 2011 7
The Three-Body Problem: I 2017 7
Titan, A.E. 2000 9
Top Gun 1986 P, 3
Total Recall 1990 5, 9
Total Recall 2012 5
Transformers P, 2, 5
12 Monkeys 1995 3
21 2008 3
2001: A Space Odyssey 1969 P, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
2010: The Year We Make Contact 1984 5, 7, 9
Unbreakable 2000 P
Wall•E 2008 5
WarGames 1983 4, 5
Waterworld 1995 9
Westworld 1973 5
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate 1971 P
Factory
The Wizard of Oz 1939 3, 4
When Worlds Collide 1951 7
X-Men P, 2
The Zero Theorem 2013 3
TV/Web Series References
Franchise or
film series Series/film title Episode Year(s) Chapter(s)
Adventure Time 2010 9
Agents of S.H.I.E. 2014– 2
L.D.
Airwolf “Fallen Angel” 1984 2
Almost Human 2013 5
Almost Human Skin 2013 5
Andromeda 2000–2005 4, 9
Ascension 2014 6, 9
Babylon 5 Babylon 5 1993–1998 6, 9
Battlestar Battlestar 1978 9
Galactica Galactica
Battlestar Battlestar Day in the Life P, 9
Galactica Galactica
Battlestar Battlestar 2004–2009 1, 5, 6, 8, 9
Galactica Galactica
Battlestar Battlestar Rapture 2007 1
Galactica Galactica
Battlestar Battlestar The Face of the 2008 4
Galactica Galactica Enemy
Battlestar Battlestar The Hand of God 8
Galactica Galactica
Battlestar Caprica Daybreak 2009 8, 9
Galactica
Blakes 7 1978–1981 6
Blakes 7 Orbit 1981 3
The Big Bang 2007– P, 2, 3, 4, 9
Theory
The Big Bang The Relationship 2014 1
Theory Diremption
The Big Bang The Anxiety 2014 1
Theory Optimization
Bones 2
(continued)
418 TV/Web Series References
Franchise or
Bones The Spark in the Park 3
Buffy the Vam- 1997–2003 1
pire Slayer
The Cold 1996, 2011 3
Equations
Cosmos 1980 2
Cosmos: A 2014 9
SpaceTime
Odyssey
CSI P
CSI CSI:Crime Scene 2000– P
Investigation
Defiance 2013 P, 2
Doctor Who Doctor Who 1963–1989; 6, 9
2005–
Doctor Who Doctor Who The Impossible Planet 2006 6
Doctor Who Turn Left 2008 7
Doctor Who Doctor Who Revelation of the 1985 9
Daleks
Dot Comedy P
Eureka 2006–2012 2, 3, 5, 7, 9
Eureka Duck, Duck, Goose 3
Eureka What Goes Around, 7
Comes Around
Eureka Liftoff 9
The Expanse 2015– 8, 9
Farscape 1999–2003; 6, 8
2004
FlashForward 2007 P
Firefly 2002 6
Firefly Objects in Space 2002 9
The Flash 2014– 2
Fringe 2008–2013 1, 2, 3
Futurama 1999–2013 4
Futurama Fry and the Slurm 1999 4
Factory
Game of Thrones 2011– 6, 9
Hackers 1995 4
Halo Halo: The Fall of 2015 9
Reach
Halo Halo: Forward 2012 9
Unto Dawn
Herman’s Head 1991 P
The Hitch- The Hitch-Hiker’s 1981 2, 3, 5
Hiker’s Guide Guide to the
to the Galaxy Galaxy
(continued)
TV/Web Series References 419
Franchise or
House, M.D. 2004–2012 P, 2
Humans 2015 5
The 100 2014– 9
The 100 Inclement Weather 2014 9
The Jetsons 1962 4
Knight Rider 1982–1986 4
Last Week 2014– 3
Tonight
Let’s Make a Deal 1963– 3
Lost 2004–2010 9
Lost in Space 1965–1968 5, 8
The Man in the 2015– 5
High Castle
Manhattan 2014–2015 3, 4
Manhattan You Always Hurt the 2014 4
One You Love
The Mighty 1993 9
Morphin Power
Rangers
Mobile Suit 1979 9
Gundam
Mr. Robot 2015– 4
Mr. Robot Eps1.0_hellofriend. 2015
mov
Mythbusters Wheel of 3
Mythfortune
The Newsroom 2012–2014 3
Numb3rs 2005–2010 2
Numb3rs Noisy Edge 2005 3
Numb3rs Disturbed 2005 3
Numb3rs Prime Suspect 2005 3
Numb3rs Traffic 2005 3
Numb3rs Sacrifice 2005 3
Numb3rs Sabotage 2005 3
Person of 2011–2016 4
Interest
Probe Computer Logic 1988 2
Quarterlife 2007–2008 P
Red Dwarf 1988– 3, 4, 5, 6
Red Dwarf Holoship 1992 2
Rowan and Mar- 1967–1973 P
tin’s Laugh-in
Saturday Night Episode 310 1975– 6
Live
Schoolhouse Hey Little Twelve 1973 3
Rock Toes
(continued)
420 TV/Web Series References
Franchise or
Scorpion 2014– 3
Secret Talents of 2008 P
the Stars
The Secret Life of 2009– 2
Scientists and
Engineers
The Simpsons 1989– 1
Space: 1999 2, 6, 9
Space: 1999 Breakaway 1975 6
Stargate
Stargate Stargate SG-1 1997–2007 1
Stargate Stargate Atlantis 2005–2009 6
Stargate Stargate: 2009 6
Universe
Star Trek 6, 8, 9
Star Trek Star Trek 1966–1969 1, 4
Star Trek Star Trek For the World is Hol- 1967 6
low, and I Have
Touched the Sky
Star Trek Star Trek Balance of Terror 1966 8
Star Trek Star Trek: The 1987–1994 P, 5, 6, 9
Next Generation
Star Trek Star Trek: The Ethics 1992 2
Next Generation
Star Trek Star Trek: The The Measure of a 1989 5
Next Generation Man
Star Trek Star Trek: Deep 1993–1999 9
Space Nine
Star Trek Star Trek: 1995–2001 5, 6, 7, 8
Voyager
Star Trek Star Trek: 2001–2005 6, 8
Enterprise
Survivor 2000– 9
Terminator Terminator: The 2008–2009 5
Sarah Conner
Chronicles
Turn-on 1969 P
The Twilight 1985–1989 3
Zone
The Twilight The Cold Equations 1989 3
Zone
Virtuality 2009 6
The Walking 2010– 3
Dead
War Games 1983 4
Whiz Kids Airwaves Anarchy 1983–1984 4

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Kevin R.

Grazier · Stephen Cass

This collection of entertaining and thought-provoking books will appeal equally to

• Indulge in science speculation – describing intriguing, plausible yet unproven ideas;

• Time travel, superluminal travel, wormholes, teleportation

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11657

ISSN 2197-1188 ISSN 2197-1196 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017939935

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

Los Angeles, CA Zack Stentz

Stephen Cass (on left)

1 Prologue: For Sake of Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 English Versus Sciencespeak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

3 The Many-Body Problem: The Culture of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4 The Scarecrow’s Blunder: Mathematics and Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

5 Let’s Get Digital: Computers in Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

6 Heavy Metal: AIs and Robots in Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

7 Boldly Going: Cinematic Spaceships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

8 The Gravity of the Situation: Orbits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

9 Getting from There to Here: Navigation in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

10 Life. In. Spaaaaace! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

Afterword: A Tour Through the Lands of Science and Entertainment . . . . . . . 405

Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

Film References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413

TV/Web Series References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

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