NASA deems 2012 "absurd", Blade Runner "realistic"
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Space agency NASA has named and shamed Roland Emmerich’s world-ending disaster flick, 2012, as the most absurd and scientifically flawed sci-fi blockbuster in recent memory
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WIRED
Space agency Nasa has named and shamed Roland Emmerich's world-ending disaster flick, 2012, as the most absurd and scientifically flawed sci-fi blockbuster in recent memory.

At a private meeting at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, scientists held a critical light to some of Hollywood's most preposterous and illogical science fiction movies, and campaigned for films to invest in more authentic science fiction.

The agency noted its regret on collaborating on

Armageddon, where a team of oil workers -- led by Bruce Willis, naturally -- are deemed the perfect group of guys to blow up a Texas-sized asteroid with a nuclear bomb. Scientists at Nasa walked away from The Core, where Hilary Swank drills into the Earth's centre to restart the planet's rotation, after reading the script.

But, according the agency, these sci-fi failures pale in comparison to 2012, a catastrophic end of the world scenario that played into the real world idea that the world will end in December of next year, according to a prediction by the ancient Mayan calendar.

The movie sees Chiwetel Ejiofor as a physicist who cottons on to the fact that neutrino particles, carried to Earth on solar flares, are cooking the planets core and causing earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. It all leads to an apocalyptic CGI extravaganza, as 200-million-dollar's worth of computer-generated natural disasters chase John Cusack in his rickety plane.

Nasa says that neutrino particles are real and have been known to interfere with radiowaves, but they're neutral particles, which do not interact with physical substances. Plus, the heating of the Earth's core in the movie is grossly accelerated, and is apparently "absurd" by Nasa senior researcher Donald Yeomans' standards.

But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.

The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."

Science fiction films aren't all bad, though. The agency pointed out that Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner painted a rather convincing image of a near future Los Angeles, and 1997's Gattaca, which looks at DNA and genetic discrimination, was lauded as scientifically "realistic".

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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