GRAVITY Eugene Linden : endangered animals, rapid climate change, global deforestation, fragging

THE HAMMER OF THOR… AND LIZ AND BARBRA AND GEORGE AND KAMALA

Lately, I’ve returned to my roots in investigative journalism. I’m trying to get to the bottom to a recurrent episode of collective madness where every four years a marauding posse of celebrities, media figures, and supreme court justices go rampaging through the political landscape w...

GRAVITY

Friday October 18, 2013

I hugely enjoyed the movie Gravity. The vistas and effects, particularly in 3-D, are nothing less than stunning. Great survival story. But, there was one thing that bothered me, and it was not a little thing. In the film’s crucial scene, as George Clooney valiantly unhooked himself from Sandra Bullock so that the added drag of his weight didn’t break the thin lines that constituted the only thing that connected them to the crippled space station, I wish I been floating there with them in order to scream at him: “You don’t need to do this! There is no drag in space! You’re weightless you idiot!”

In this scene, they are both tumbling along outside the station as space debris perforates everything around them. The only thing that prevents them from being lost in space is that Sandra Bullock becomes entangled in some lines connected to the station amid the carnage. After the lines hold in the initial shock, and in a prolonged, heart-wrenching scene, the Clooney character calmly says that he’s going to unhook himself from Ms. Bullock otherwise the lines will break. This self-sacrifice might be understandable if they were hanging from a plane 100 miles closer to earth with earth’s thick atmosphere and gravity in play, but, but, but George … if the lines held after the initial shock and you and Sandra are now floating in concert with the remains of the station, there would be no more drag or gravity to deal with. Which makes this climactic scene colossally and comically dunderheaded in a film entitled Gravity, which promises to bring alive the impossibly harsh realities of life in space. Why did he even float away? The space station was not under power. When he unhooked, he should have just hung around with a sheepish look on his face. Am I wrong?

Short Take

The Laws of Physics for Babies

[I published this years ago, but with friends having babies, I thought it might be a useful resource]

THE LAWS OF PHYSICS FOR BABIES

Close observation of babies has led me to believe that the infant universe is characterized by its own physics, quite distinct from particle physics or the Newtonian laws of motion. I welcome and will periodically post suggestions about additional laws of the baby universe.

LAWS OF MOTION:

1) The Inflationary Universe: Obects tend to recede when you reach for them.

2) The Boomerang Effect: Once successfully grabbed, however, objects usually reappear after being thrown, with the special exception of objects made of glass or metal.

3) The Relativity of Gravity:

a) Gravity and Acoustics. Gravity can be temporarily reversed by generating noises, but only in the presence of other people. The speed of this reversal is directly proportional to the decibel level of the sounds generated.

b) Gravity and Context. Gravity spontaneously and unexpectedly reverses itself when approaching stairs, antiques, and the Thanksgiving dinner table.

FLUID DYNAMICS: 1) Animal Spirits: Fluids have a vital forces that causes them to splash and spill unless contained in bottles and sippy cups.

MATERIALS PHYSICS:

1) Conservation of Shape: Once broken or bent, objects tend to reappear in their original configutation.

2) Transformation: When reached for, shiny metal objects tend to recede and then become transformed into plastic or rubber.

GRAND UNIFYING CONSTANT: The Attractive Pull of Mommy: the one universal force.