Slashdot Mirror
The Science of Avatar
Jamie noted a bit on
The Science of Avatar running on Ain't it Cool, written by a professor of astrophysics who has worked on searching for planets and SETI. I believe I might be the last person on earth who hasn't seen it; here's hoping I can find 3 free hours over the holidays.
I haven't seen it because all of my friends have torrented the damn movie, some even watched horrible cam rips with a foreign language and no subs.
Nobody wants to go to the cinema any more.
Fuck you, torrents.
First, Pandora does have an oxygen atmosphere, or how else could you explain the burning torch that Jake Sully lights up in self-defense against the wulf-like creatures at night?
Second, the floating mountains are explained by assuming that the rock is made up of superconducting material ("Unobtainium") and that the flux they keep talking about is actually a strong magnetic field. Superconductors tend to hover in magnetic fields, you know.
--- Eat my sig.
I haven't seen it, and I'm not planning on it. You can't just take Dances with Smurfs and call it something else! That's not kewwwwwwwwww'!
Obvious troll is obvious.
anyone who is excited for this movie is an idiot.
Translation: I'm poor and lonely and will be sitting by myself on /. all Christmas, so I'm going to make overly-generalized statements regarding the intelligence of anyone happier than me!
I refuse to watch it. I am not going to vote with my pocketbook that plot, craft, and character development don't matter, and that all that matters is effects. This sort of thought has made the bulk of Hollywood movies complete crap. I'm lucky if there is one or two movies a year that aren't nauseatingly bad.
Now get off my lawn.
Sheldon
Imagine one of those cheesy SciFi channel Saturday evening low budget science fiction movies on a $300 million dollar budget. That's what Avatar is. Sure the acting is decent and the special effects are spectacular - but the story is boring and predictable. (Come on, 'unobtainium'?) It's as if James Cameron and Disney tried to Westernize a Japanese RPG storyline.
As for the science, well...if you're a neurobiologist with a flare for xenobiology, I'm sure this is a very interesting story. Otherwise, all the technology ranges from "reasonably possible in the not too distant future" to "still very much science fiction".
Then again, why would you want to go to a theater. Action movies are best watched alone, with the sound up to reference, on a big screen, in your house (3D notwithstanding, I suppose). If you need a friend to hold your hand, grab your Signature Visa (you do have one, right?) and get two tickets on Fandango with the B1G1 promo and offer to take someone to the movies "on you."
I haven't decided if I'm going to see it in the theater, mainly because I find the crowds annoying and the snacks too expensive. I'll probably get it and watch at home when it comes out, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I disagree with his assessment that life has a high probability of being significantly different than on Earth. Consider how incredibly rare life on other planets is. It's quite likely that in order to exist at all it would have to be similar to Earth. In other words, it's so rare that Earth may in fact be close to the only possible solution (given the laws of the universe, its makeup, and life).
I haven't seen it and don't intend to...it looks like it was made for furries and substitutes flashy graphics for substance.
Even if their neural interfaces are a bit out there. We've been growing humanized mice for years. I wonder if all they really needed to do, however, was to generate a chimera by seeding an embryo with a human nervous system before the immune system starts to develop. We've learned quite a bit about developmental biology from avian chimeras, mammalian chimeras are a bit more challenging but can be achieved.
I haven't seen it, either... the previews made it look like someone took the plots of Fern Gully and Dances with Wolves, mixed them together, added some blue paint and ~space travel~ and dumped it out on a movie screen. If I want a story about space travel and learning not to belittle other cultures, Piers Anthony wrote the Cluster series thirty years ago. It's about due for a re-read.
written by a professor of astrophysics who has worked on searching for planets and SETI.
Thought I recognized the name - wasn't he part of this team?
#DeleteChrome
All planets with life have trees, reptiles, insects, and of course bipedal creatures who have two eyes, four limbs, a head with two eyes one nose one mouth, and generally caucasian-human features. Those humanoids have technology in line with something in our history, they use speech, they have two sexes and reproduce like we do, and they breathe and eat things we can breathe and eat.
The only real question -- the really important one -- is do they natively speak modern English, or do they speak something which sounds a little bit different from some other Earth language? That is how you can tell just how utterly alien they are.
Didnt saw the movie yet, but the weapons i saw in trailer at least didn't impressed me a lot, all what must be advanced just to be there, and one of the fastest evolving technologies in history changed so little? Last week reread Hyperion, and finishing Endymion, and the military advancement pictured there (specially how you fight getting to that point of technology) looks more like the evolution rate that it should have.
I've seen the film, in IMAX 3D (gave me a two day headache) - and I guess I missed the giant stone arches near the end of the film.
But, somebody who worked on the film anonymously emailed the writer of the article to explain some of the problems they saw. Namely: the gas giant rotating faster than it possibly could. And there is speculation that the floating mountains contain unobtainium, which is a room temp superconductor.
The mountains were formed on the land, and "broke off" sailing upwards over the magnetic pole of the planet. They are repelled by the magnetic field underneath them, counteracting gravity.
This is very silly, as minor magnetic perturbations would make the mountains flail about wildly, just as trying to hold a magnet up in the air with another magnet is very difficult.
Also, he doesn't address what properties of unobtainium exist that would likely "save Earth". Why would a rock that was a room temperature superconductor save Earth? You couldn't build nuclear power plants from it. Perhaps it has properties that make it 1000x more powerful than uranium? None of this gets addressed.
My God man, it's got Furries, stay away. Stay far away.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
I found this very plausible given what we know about superconductors: The Hallelujah Mountains are floating islands that circulate slowly in the magnetic currents like icebergs at sea, scraping against each other and the towering mesa-like mountains of the region. On Pandora, the magnetic effect causes huge outcroppings of Unobtainium to rip loose from the surface and float in the magnetic vortices. The stone 'arcs' you saw in the film supported this, where the minerals actually deposited along strong magentic lines, leaving those huge 'skeleton' looking structures.
I can only assume the large deposit under the tree is either too deep down to have torn lose from the surface, too spread out or sparse to tend to rip out, or it is held into place by the huge root system of the tree itself. Given that a tree that large would take eons to grow to that size, the deposits may have formed there during that time due to some sort of cataclysm, or some other natural process. The movie never explains exactly what Unobtainium is other than it's obvious natural magnetic properties. The piece floating on his desk leads more towards semiconductor properties at room temperature.
...not. I have no plans to see it.
It is a work of fiction and a movie. Meant for entertainment value. I enjoyed the movie, and thought it was a great experience. Those of you who don't want to see it, don't. But stop being a mindless drone (that you accuse others of being), by trashing something you have no experience of. Get a life!
WoW losers are losers.
We don't know who you are. Not yet. But don't be surprised to wake up some day, half human, half possum. This is the fate of those who cross us.
Everyone seems to be making the ASSUMPTION the the Na'vi are preindustrial.
1. The Na'vi can link directly to many other animals that are happy to serve them, and and the Na'vi in return care for them.
2. Planet wide network for storage, upload and download of information, long term store, processing, and on demand local grid processing, including the ability to do a total upload of a person.
3. Unobtainium, a planet wide "natural" super conductor that allows for floating mountains.
4. Eywa, the operating system put in place to regulate everything, including guiding the Na'vi to stay in harmony with everything else.
It seems to me that the Na'vi went though their own singularity, and what we see as primitive is the biotechnology leftovers from a older culture, but they have set themselves and their decedents with a ideal environment, the ability to live, have kids, grow old, then upload when the time is right. Use large off-planet element nuclear synthesis to create the unobtainium, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability ), and setup the biosphere and the infosphere for long term in habitation by ignorant people. In a head to head comparison of Na'vi vs humans, the Na'vi are superior in almost everyway.
Medicine - Eywa takes care of that much better.
Education - A direct mental link for sharing of information.
Physical form - not much is explained beyond carbon fiber in the skeleton, but onscreen of what Jake goes though is beyond what a normal human can handle.
Information storage, processing & retrieval mostly superior, with the exception of speed given the late start the other animals had in the battle.
Long term care of their wold and sustainability - Although the world seems genetically engineered for the Na'vi,over time some drift has occurred as not all animals retain their friendliness, but in times of crises, can revert back.
Given that this is part 1 of 3, and the hints on screen and referenced to, this is my suspicion. Most people have problems thinking about the singularity as it is so encompassing, enabling, and yet compressing. The Na'vi are just one result of who remains after a biological singularity.
Aside from all the "Dances with Jurassic Alien Giant Smurfs" comments...
I do believe this movie could be inspirational (somewhat) to some future
slashdotters... whatever all the people complaning says... I think it is
a beatiful example of what can be achieved pushing current state
of the art technology...
Nevermind it might be an overblown cartoon or whatever... but being :)
a fan of sci-fi I do think the cool-factor and wow-factor for a kids that
watch this card is going to nudge just a few select few into computers
or tech-related paths some time in their future just as many of us
older ones were nudged if ever so slightly towards cool tech stuff
by all the start trek and whatnot stuff on tv back in the days
So, I grant it might not have the best plot in the world... but I
bow my head to it because of the cool factor and how it might
inspire lots of kids to say "wow, they did that with computers?
I want to do that"... then again, once they bump head on with
all the math requirements and get discouraged once they
realize the big bucks are in being a boss and doing business
management or whatever they might ditch the idea... but still...
if you can make a few kids dream of the future... a good future...
it is worth it I say...
Look, the plot is basically Dances with Wolves in Space, but still -- this movie was an example of amazing, expensive effects paired with an actual story.
It's just a guess, but I'd say that Avatar is more likely to be loosely based on the life story of Gonzalo de Aroza and Zazil Ha than being some sort of brazen of Dances with Wolves ripoff. As far as I know Aroza's story has never been filmed which is a pity since it is a better story than what most fiction authors are capable of coming up with these days. That said I agree with you Avatar is an amazing movie.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Why the Christ has this not been mentioned? If you have a planet with lower gravity, the lifeforms will grow taller, but be weaker. No way should the Na'vi be stronger than the humans. And another thing, why is the prof pointing out all the other flaws in the science of the movie, and then turning around and saying 'oh but its ok because I'd drink Jim Cameron's nyerk any day'. Jeez, the science in Avatar was HORRIBLE! Giant retarded screens everywhere, guns that shoot bullets... We have lasers, NOW, why on Earth would we still be using bullets in 140 years? And yet another thing, why did they send in ground troops at the end? They were dropping a giant bomb and clearly had aerial superiority, ground troops were a stupid idea. Lets be honest here, science in Avatar is utter rubbish, everything's the way it is because it looks cool, end of discussion.
Yawn. That's right, I typed it, "Yawn."
~Hal
I have just had the misfortune / bad judgement to try to sit through Avatar.
By 40 minutes in I could stand it no more, and starting flicking forwards, within another 10 minutes I'd skipped to the end.
Spoilers?
Nope, you can't give spoilers on something that has a plot thinner than Debbie Does Duluth, there is no story there, period, what there is is CGI.
If you are of an age to remember Roger Dean (Yes album covers amongst other things) then you have basically seen the stuff that the CGI was clearly designed upon, laws of gravity do not apply, laws of physics do not apply, laws of biology and locomotion do not apply.
I'm not talking fanciful creatures and landscapes, I'm talking totally impossible, acid trip inspired creatures and landscapes.
The only spoiler I can think of is, and I kid you not, the basic plot-line centres around a mining operation on an alien planet, mining an ore called "unobtanium"... yeah... the only thing rarer than unobtanium is a decent script.
One might think that multimillion dollar budgets + CGI + Roger Dean would create something of great aesthetic beauty at least, even if it were great beauty utterly devoid of a plot, but sadly, that isn't the case.
If they had rendered still scenes, yes, you'd have some great poster art or album covers, but the instant they went for motion it just ruined the whole thing, Roger Dean was never meant to be in motion.
Frankly the whole film smacks of a bunch of CGI geeks being given an unlimited budget and no rules, the desktop publishing equivalent of producing a parish magazine that uses 11,000 different fonts and every single piece of clip art on disk.
The semi-cameo role of Sig Weaver and the whole space mining theme (all of which is revealed in the first 10 minutes) means that you simply can't watch Avatar and not be strongly reminded of Alien (1) and this is yet another fatal wound for what is an already dead and decomposing corpse of a movie.
Alien had real (huge) sets, and the visual effect was stunning, not just because of Giger, but because of depth of focus, Avatar was done with green background and motion cap in someone's garden shed, plus a moonshot's worth of computers running CGI, and it looks utterly fake and feeble.
I have no idea what cinemas charge nowadays, it is irrelevant when films are as truly, horrendously awful, and this film was. It did not cost me a penny, and of course no popcorn, travelling time, shitty adverts or previews, and I managed to skip through the whole thing in 50 minutes, and I want those 50 minutes of my life back.
The new (a couple of years old at least) series of Captain Scarlet (also done in CGI) is quite honestly nothing less than three or four orders of magnitude better than Avatar on every single level imaginable.
As for the Avatar lead species, the hominids themselves, think the illegitimate love child of Jar Jar Binks and Pikachu, yes, really, that implausible, ridiculous, and vile. Kill it, kill it now, with (digital) fire.
I have a revelation for you.
Hollywood is dead.
Really, for less money than it would cost to take two kids to see this steaming pile of crap, you could go out and buy Crysis, which will provide about 40 hours of gameplay (sans god mode), a far better plot, a far more immersive and entertaining experience, and better and more realistic physics.
Seriously, whatever you do this Christmas, do not get talked into sitting through Avatar, do not get talked into paying for anyone else (kids) to see it, and, if you value your kids minds more than marshmallow, do not let your kids anywhere near it.
I am NOT joking.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
What about the science of using magical trees to transfer consciousness from a human brain to a Na'vi brain? Are our thoughts and impulses an interpreted language?
Did you ever notice that intelligen aliens are always portraid as humans with blue or green skin in movies? I'm guessing that it's because they don't have any alien suits that their actors can fit into. Sometimes they'll throw in scales or other colors or a different size on them, but they still follow the 1 head, 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 body, upright posture theme. Many stories include sex with these aliens, and often mixed children.
Do these authors have no better ideas than to take old westerns, and just swap wagons with starships and pistols with laser beams?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
One of the absolutely most important things to them was to stay connected with their god.
When their home was destroyed and their whole world was crashing down around them, in addition to collectively fighting for survival against the invaders, they all turned to their god for help.
But then this movie is only just fantasy, and we humans collectively do a rather shitty job of staying with our God and when the going gets rough, only a small percentage of us turn to God for help.
Merry Christmas everybody!
I saw the film in 3D, which incidentally is the only way to see it -- accept no substitutes -- and while I was amazed overall at the technology, I was somewhat chagrined at the shockingly pedestrian plot. It's like Cameron spent ten years creating this amazingly detailed world and then couldn't think of a story to tell within it. So he ended up adapting a story that had been told a half dozen times already in the last 20 years, and hoped people would be entranced by the pretty lights and not notice that nothing much was going on.
The film is long, (nearly 3 hours) which is ok -- I like movies that take their time telling a story -- but this particular story could easily have been told in 2 hours or less. There's about 45 extra minutes of "look at these effects, aren't I a great director???" which I guess is understandable considering the time and cost of making the thing. But it gets overwhelming after a time, and to no good purpose.
The film has been called "Fern Gully 3D", "Dances with Smurfs", "Delgo 2.0" and other things, which isn't quite fair, but I really wish, since Cameron was the first with this really unique story-telling technology, that he had thought of a really unique story to tell. I know, Hollywood has lately been the Land of Nothing New, but I had hopes for this one. Oh well. Now that the technology exists, perhaps an interesting film will eventually be made with it.
At least it's not The Phantom Menace.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I disagree about the 3D effect in use. I had the distinct feeling throughout watching it that Cameron couldn't 'kick' the 2D filming habit. The style of filming - I am talking about how the virtual 'camera' is positioned, how it moves - is completely unrevolutionary. The thing is, it works equally well as a 2D film or in 3D, sure they *had* to consider the Blu-ray/DVD sales after the cinema release, but artistically it seemed like such a waste, Cameron had all this CGI but didn't take advantage of it. There were a few scenes where it was like 'wow - that computer console has H x W x D !', but that was as far as it went!* I watched a 3D film as a kid and it really scared me because it constantly gave the illusion of objects being launched directly at my face! where as that effect was not at all exploited in Avatar.
The Matrix guys developed bullet time and then used it so confidently and so well that it's become a new style. It would've been something if Cameron achieved a similar thing here.
Story and dialogue -wise, yeah it was never going to be special but I guess I am used to this area being weak now. The 3D fail is a new gripe.
*I don't know whether where I was sat in the cinema could have affected the extent of the 3D illusion - I sat fairly far back but maybe the closer to the screen the illusion would have been more immersive.
I didn't see any mention in this article of the unusual cycle this planet would have if it were orbiting a much larger gas giant. Assuming the planet had its own axis of rotation like Earth, and that its revolution around a gas giant had a period of a few days, wouldn't there be an unusual cycle of day/night with a prolonged period of night when the gas giant was between it and Alpha Centauri? There would be a phase of night that was somewhat dark, as the moon received only reflected light from the gas giant, and then there would be much darker night phases when it was on the other side.
Perhaps this was how more intricate bioluminescent life forms evolved on that world?
The effects were spectacular, the score was ok. The plot? A little thin, but for a kid movie not too bad. My kids ate it up and they want to go back. I could sit through it a second time just for the visuals and I never go to a movie twice. I saw it in digital 3D and I recommend that.
The science? You want actual science in a science fiction movie? That's cute. Science fiction isn't about the science - it's a prop to aid in dissociating you from your daily grind so as to focus better on the people. Good stories are always about people.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I bet a lot of folks said similar to that when it went from live theater to silent film, then from visual film plus audio, the "talkies". And so on. Whether it is good or bad, meh, it just becomes different.
A real movie with no effects at all would be shot entirely live, like videoing a theater presentation. Shoot, just use a static camera that covers the whole stage, that would be "more pure".
I haven't seen Avatar yet, holding out for the feelies with sensurround smellovision.
I must say the article's arguments that evolution of creatures that look familiar to us is unlikely falls flat with me. There are numerous instances on Earth where creatures that are not closely related end up with the same adaptations and specializations. An Old World Porcupine and New World Porcupine are barely related (closest common ancestors are without quills) but they look similar and ended up with a very unique adaptation (at least for a mammal).
see also: Covergent Evolution
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Given the heavy environmental message in the movie, does anyone think that Cameron's Avatar will have a greater influence on the green movement than Al Gore? Think of all the kids/teens/pre-adults who saw the movie, were impressed by it, and how it will influence them as they grow up.
If you go to the iMax to watch Avatar in 3-D, the cost of tickets eliminates a lot of the cellphone-carrying rif-raff who will watch Avatar at the lower-cost theaters.
Sneak in your own beverages and food. The worst they can do is ask you to leave. In fact, one time I brought in some Margaritas and was told to leave a theater. I said I would need to have a manager discuss the matter with me. No manager returned and I watched the rest of the movie.
Another thing to consider when visiting the theater is this handy tool. Highly illegal, but low risk of being caught with it.
I personally have plenty of proof of God's existence.
I've been praying for a white Christmas for many weeks. This is an extremely rare thing for north Texas. The last one I had was 15 years ago. This morning I awoke to 10 inches of snow on the ground and am stuck in my house, unable to even get my car completely out of the driveway... I got it stuck in a 4-foot tall snowbank in my front yard. The last time I prayed for a white Christmas was 15 years ago when my best friend's son was born and it was the child's first Christmas, and my friend had named his firstborn son after me.
My father passed away from terminal cancer in September. I prayed hard for weeks for it to rain whenever the day came that he died. This is a special relationship between me and God for it to rain whenever someone I love dies. I held my dad's hand as he drew his last breath and within the hour a huge thunderstorm came out of nowhere, completely unforecasted, and it rained so hard there were flash flood warnings issued by the national weather service.
God is very real and he does indeed answer prayers. Sometimes the answer is "no" and sometimes the answer is a huge "YES" in a mind-boggling intensity.
He's answered a lot more than simple snow-for-Christmas prayers for me too. Far too many times for me to go into detail here and now, but I hope you get to know Him better someday.
Never forget to take plenty of samples.
Unobtainium floats. The mountains float. The mountains are on Pandora, which is being mined for... unobtainium. The mountains are located in a region of especially strong interference.
I'm thinking there could be a connection...
However, the plot called for the largest deposit of unobtainable to be under the local's giant tree. The non-floating tree. So, I'm not sure what to think here, except that perhaps it was a distortion to serve the plot, or (a nicer justification) that the mountains have much larger deposit, but they are too remote/difficult to mine. That is, the local's giant tree has the largest *accessible* deposit.
A quick search reveals that unobtainium is a room-temperature super-conductor, hence the magnetic levitation trick that we've all seen before; the floating mountains, and the interference. At this point, James Cameron has more credibility than our astrophysicist reviewer. Also, I'm expecting that Orson Scott Card helped out with the script/screenplay/world, because (1) he did so with Cameron's *The Abyss*; and (2) many of the ideas in the film have appeared in Card's work; and (3) Card is a notably mythic-oriented story-teller, as is Cameron. I may be wrong, but You heard it here first!
Have any of you played the actual game based on this movie. Its got its only little pandorapedia which explains why humans came to this earth, why different people are selected to be avatars the wildlife etc. Its really fascinating to read. Mind you the game it self is average, but the information it contains is great.
It explains why they need unobtainium for earth. atm i cant remember why, but it does.
There's something a little like that in the Murasaki Anthology (R. Silverberg, ed.), a collection of SF stories in a shared world by various authors. There is a species (the Chujoans) that looks fairly primitive to the human visitors, but actually turns out to be the descendants of a race with high advanced biotech skills far ahead of our own. The role of the inscrutable hidden god is played by the carpet whales.
There's even a character that goes native, although not voluntarily and not as hero -- well, I guess this last part is kind of a stretch.
It merely shows a reaction which gives off energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Nitrogen_and_phosphorus_biochemistry from "In an ammonia atmosphere"
Or "Chlorine is sometimes proposed as a biological alternative to oxygen, either in carbon-based biologies or hypothetical non-carbon-based ones" further down.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Another science plus for me was seeing Polyphemus and Pandora reflected in the rear-facing side of the 'shield' at the front of the starship. When you're braking into orbit, your propulsion system needs to face the direction of travel more or less...which is exactly what the ship's orientation was. I did not like Mission to Mars for a lot of reasons, one of them was the fact that the ship was pointed at Mars when they were about to perform orbit insertion. That's a brilliant idea if you want to crash, not a good idea if you want to achieve orbit.
The spinning artificial gravity modules of the habitat section were also a nice touch, placed at the far forward end of the starship just behind the shield....a good place to put them if you have a bunch of nuclear reactors at the aft end powering your propulsion system.