Phil Plait, creator of the popular astronomy blog bad astronomyattributes his interest in outer space in part to his childhood love of sci-fi movies like angry red planet and Robinson Crusoe on Mars.
“I’m a big sci-fi idiot,” says Plait in episode 541 of the Geek Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I’ve seen all the TV shows, movies and everything, I’ve read tons of books. I love science fiction.”
In his new book, under alien skies, Plait explores what various cosmic vistas would look like to a person physically present, studying them with ordinary human eyesight. “I open each chapter with a short panel, basically a fictional story,” he says. “Most of the time it is in the second person. So I say ‘You are on this planet’, ‘You are standing on the bridge of your starship’, ‘You are standing there watching a dust storm approaching you on Mars’. And in that way, hopefully, it’s an even more immersive experience for the reader.”
Plait hopes the book will serve as a valuable resource for science fiction writers and filmmakers looking to inject an extra dose of reality into their speculative visions. “In fact, I’ve worked as a consultant for movies and TV shows, and even a couple of video games,” he says. “So I know that process of advising writers, or other people involved in the entertainment business, on what the real science is.”
As much as Plait enjoys watching science fiction that incorporates real science, he recognizes that the ultimate goal of any book or movie is to tell a good story. “Even if they don’t understand the science correctly, that’s okay, because you’re still inspiring people,” he says. “What if they get the science right? Hey, bonus.
Listen to the full interview with Philip Plait on Episode 541 of Geek Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Phil Plait on Mars:
On Earth, the sky is blue during the day, and then when the sun goes down, a red sky can be seen around the sun, due to the haze and debris that floats in the air, which tends to absorb or scatter the light. blue and green light The final process is that that light doesn’t reach your eye, only the reddest matter does, and then the sun looks red and the sky looks red around the sun. But on Mars it is the opposite. There’s all this dust in the air, and that dust is iron oxide, it’s rust, and it floats up in the atmosphere and dyes the sky red. But at sunset, it tends to scatter the blue light towards you. So, during the day, the sky is red, but at sunset, and at sunrise, of course, too, the sky is a little blue.
Phil Plait on scientific consulting:
Got an email from one of the digital effects people [on The Expanse] saying, “Hey, we have an opportunity where we get closer to Jupiter. What would that look like?” So I wrote a few paragraphs and then I submitted it, and then when that episode aired, I was like, “Oh look! They did all that.” That was great. … I did a consultancy for the film. Arrival, and again that was a completely bizarre circumstance where I was consulting with a production company about something completely different, and they said, “Hey, we’ve got this script for this movie, if you want to take a look at it and check the science of it .” And I did, I made some notes and I put it back and I forgot about it. And then years later the movie comes out, and I’m watching it and I’m like, “Hey, wait a minute! I remember this scene. So it was really cool. It’s funny how those things work sometimes.
Phil Plait on asteroids:
Many small asteroids are actually what we call “rubble heaps.” They are huge collections of rocks, from small ones smaller than pebbles to boulders that could be as big as a house or more. But they are not a solid object. It is not a gigantic rock in space. …If you were in a spaceship approaching a mile-wide asteroid, it has negligible gravity. So you’re in your spaceship and you’re hanging off the side of this thing, and you jump from your spaceship onto the asteroid, it may not have a solid surface for you to land on. You could sink past the top of your spacesuit, just so you could stand on this. So I thought it was a fun way to open that chapter, with an astronaut basically trapped inside an asteroid, a few meters below, and his compatriot has to come looking for him.
Phil Plait on globular clusters:
There is another type of cluster called a globular cluster, and these are roughly spherical clusters of hundreds of thousands or even a million stars. … When you go out at night, from the darkest place on Earth you will see a few thousand stars in the sky, and it seems that the sky is covered with stars. But in a globular cluster there could be 50 times that many stars in the sky, and many of them would be so bright, because these are red giant stars or other stars that are very luminous and very bright, and quite close to this one. planet, because these clusters are not so big, that you can read by them. They would cast shadows on the ground. And then you could have thousands of stars like that in your sky.