Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio
Speaker 1: and allow of all things tech, and it is time
Speaker 1: for a classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally
Speaker 1: published on October two thousand thirteen, and that would be
Speaker 1: Halloween Ean or Halloween Eve, which is already an eve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's titled There's a Halloween Event on the Horizon. I
Speaker 1: remember this. It's where I got to talk about the
Speaker 1: movie Event Horizon and the wonderfully terrible technologies in that film.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoy it. We thought we'd take
Speaker 1: a horror movie and look at the science and technology
Speaker 1: in that horror movie as well, just kind of discussed
Speaker 1: what that horror movie is all about, sort of the
Speaker 1: same way we did Independence Day back for the fourth
Speaker 1: of July. Now, there aren't that many horror movies that
Speaker 1: we could think of that have a heavy tech angle.
Speaker 1: There are some, and there are plenty, and we also,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we we wanted to do something
Speaker 1: that isn't um as completely offensive as it could be.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's the movie that we chose
Speaker 1: is rated are and um, I think both of us
Speaker 1: enjoy it, uh for yeah from a kind of tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek way sometimes you I I genuinely enjoy this film,
Speaker 1: but it is not what I would call a good movie.
Speaker 1: It is Event Horizon. Yes, it is a space movie.
Speaker 1: It's a movie set in space. It's all about space.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and give you an overview of what
Speaker 1: the basic plot is in case you haven't seen it, right,
Speaker 1: although I will say that that this this discussion is
Speaker 1: going to involve lots of spoilers, and and like I said,
Speaker 1: we do enjoy this movie. I want you to see
Speaker 1: it and to not be spoiled when you go into it.
Speaker 1: So if you have not ever seen the film, and
Speaker 1: you are of an appropriate agent constitution to watch a
Speaker 1: thing with with kind of gory violand and uh mild
Speaker 1: new occasional cursing, then maybe maybe just turn this podcast
Speaker 1: off and wait until you can watch the movie. Right now,
Speaker 1: I will say, since the film came out in all
Speaker 1: bets are off. So here we go. Basic plot. All right,
Speaker 1: You've got a ship, it's called the Event Horizon and
Speaker 1: it's supposedly a research ship that's meant to explore the
Speaker 1: further reaches of our solar system, and on its maiden
Speaker 1: voyage it disappeared somewhere just beyond Neptune. Now that happens
Speaker 1: in the year seven years later, a research alright, rescue
Speaker 1: ship rather sent out, sent out with a particular engineer,
Speaker 1: a scientist who had worked on the event Horizons propulsion
Speaker 1: system actually designed the entire ship. Yeah, so he's he's
Speaker 1: going along with them. They don't know what their mission
Speaker 1: is when they first leave, but they are to go
Speaker 1: out to Neptune and try and find the origin of
Speaker 1: a mysterious transmission that apparently came from it's coming from
Speaker 1: the horizon, and and rescue the ship the crew if
Speaker 1: it all possible, Right, So they go out there, and
Speaker 1: bad stuff happens, y'all. First of all, it turns out
Speaker 1: that the event Horizons secret propulsion system is something that
Speaker 1: is called a gravity drive in the movie, and the
Speaker 1: ideas that it kind of incusses with space, right, it
Speaker 1: creates a black hole essentially, and we'll get into that
Speaker 1: a little bit more later on. That's yeah, Well, we'll
Speaker 1: discuss the entire black hole thing at length because it's
Speaker 1: interesting It's what's really interesting is how much of the
Speaker 1: science the movie at least attempted to get right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to give it a lot of kudos. I do.
Speaker 1: I do think that it really tried, Like gold Star,
Speaker 1: you tried. It didn't just use black hole as some
Speaker 1: sort of magic, magic placeholder, right. They tried to find
Speaker 1: a way of explaining this, and there there is some
Speaker 1: scientific basis for some other stuff they talk about anyway.
Speaker 1: But because it's a horror movie, Um, when it tried
Speaker 1: to create this whole in space time to travel through, instead,
Speaker 1: it accidentally ended up in a hell dimension. Yea, brought
Speaker 1: a bunch of Hell back with it, and so that's haunted.
Speaker 1: The ship is haunted by Hell and or is Hell itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could actually be possessed. It's a little weird. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the idea of being that that when the gravity
Speaker 1: drive is is activated, the ship travels through a dimension,
Speaker 1: in this case a hellish dimension of pure chaos and evil,
Speaker 1: as what character says, and uh, and that yeah, it
Speaker 1: brings something back and the crew is deader than dead,
Speaker 1: super dead. Yeah, they are so dead. You see lots
Speaker 1: of really really dead people and uh, and then the
Speaker 1: rescue mission comes aboard and tries to do what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do, and then hilarity ensues. We won't spoil everything,
Speaker 1: but essentially, obviously you have to dismantle the rescue ship
Speaker 1: or else they could just leave, so that gets taken
Speaker 1: care of. Then you have to separate out the crew
Speaker 1: members for various reasons, and then have terrible things happened
Speaker 1: to them. And all this happens at great gore and
Speaker 1: uh and detail and entertaining. It's not at all not Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: but it's fun. I I really appreciate that the film
Speaker 1: and and this was this was directed by Paul Anderson.
Speaker 1: A Paul Anderson. He has some initials in there somewhere
Speaker 1: that I'm completely missing, and I did not write them down.
Speaker 1: But he's the same guy who directed the Mortal Kombat movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: he said that he wanted to have a turn at
Speaker 1: directing something a little more eyebrow. No, he was talking
Speaker 1: about gory. He wanted to make. He wanted a chance
Speaker 1: to make an R rated picture after That's right, because
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat was PG thirteen. Um and and I and
Speaker 1: I do, like I said, I want to give the
Speaker 1: film a lot of kudos, you know. Okay, so it
Speaker 1: starts out with this brief timeline, and I'd say that
Speaker 1: it was a hopeful but not completely ridiculous timeline. They
Speaker 1: were saying that the first permanent moon colony in this
Speaker 1: in this science fiction setting was in uh and that
Speaker 1: commercial mining on Mars began in two considering that, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got some some outfits here on Earth that are
Speaker 1: trying to get to Mars around that's time period, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the lunar colony in is way too ambitious, but well,
Speaker 1: but back in there was no way of knowing that
Speaker 1: the space program was going to going to have so
Speaker 1: many financial hits. Um so, yeah, getting into it. One
Speaker 1: thing that confused me was the idea of even having
Speaker 1: a ship. Now the cover the event Horizons Outer Solar
Speaker 1: System Exploration, which a cover story, yeah it was to
Speaker 1: say code black, but the real reason, that's the actual
Speaker 1: thing that they said in the film. And I'm still
Speaker 1: not sure what that means. It sounds really nifty, right,
Speaker 1: I guess it just means super duper secret, y'all. You
Speaker 1: have to know the secret handshake in order to get
Speaker 1: access to it. But the thing that made me confused
Speaker 1: was just the idea of even building a ship for
Speaker 1: that sort of thing we've built so that people can
Speaker 1: get out onto the surface if Neptune and walk around
Speaker 1: and on gas giants. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, really hot gas giants where the winds are
Speaker 1: two point one thousand kilometers per rights has the most
Speaker 1: high worse winds in the entire Solar System. Not a
Speaker 1: not a very nice place to go visit, yea. So
Speaker 1: it's and lots of methane in the atmosphere too, not
Speaker 1: great hydrogen and helium also in the atmosphere. It's not
Speaker 1: a very great planet to to go visit if you
Speaker 1: don't have some massive protection around you. It just seems
Speaker 1: weird because we could do robotic probes that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff for that sort of thing, but whatever, so uh,
Speaker 1: they'll also just get all the way. This is one
Speaker 1: of those space movies where we do hear sounds in
Speaker 1: space and the initial sequence turns out to be a
Speaker 1: dream sequence. So you can't entirely blame the fact that
Speaker 1: you're hearing a thunderstorm on Neptune from space on on
Speaker 1: the fact that it's Yeah, it's some sort of hallucination,
Speaker 1: hallucination or dream or something. But assuming the rest of
Speaker 1: the movie is not a hallucination or dream, which as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, that's not the intention. Point.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of examples of hearing sound in space, absolutely
Speaker 1: not necessarily that the characters hear it, but the audience.
Speaker 1: Here's it also a good point from from this general
Speaker 1: area of the film. They're um, they're showing spaceships as
Speaker 1: being three dimensional and spaces being three dimensional and things
Speaker 1: coming at each other from different angles, which I absolutely
Speaker 1: approve it. Right, it's not all in the same plane
Speaker 1: like it would be in most Star Trek. Not all
Speaker 1: Star Trek, but most start certain points. Star Trek really
Speaker 1: only discovered that space is multidimensional, I think, like in
Speaker 1: the game. Yeah, and so there's also some other interesting
Speaker 1: things that they do have artificial gravity in this in
Speaker 1: this universe. We don't know how they generated, although they
Speaker 1: appear to have some other means of controlling gravity with
Speaker 1: the gravity drive. They talk about using electro magnets to
Speaker 1: control the flow of gravitons. Uh, gravitons right now are
Speaker 1: a hypothetical particle. We think they exist based upon the math,
Speaker 1: but we have not identified or observed gravitons. But but
Speaker 1: I'm cool with this science fiction film positing that we're
Speaker 1: going to discover the graviton particle within the next forty years. Okay,
Speaker 1: cool with thirty years. Yeah right, that's right. Sorry, I'm old.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So so it's it's yeah, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where maybe if they discovered gravitons, they
Speaker 1: also figured out how to create artificial gravity, because what
Speaker 1: they are not doing is creating it through rotating a
Speaker 1: spaceship or space station in order to use the centripetal
Speaker 1: force to kind of fake gravity, right, so you know,
Speaker 1: we're well, we'll give him that too. I won't. I
Speaker 1: don't understand ever, shaving with a straight razor. I don't
Speaker 1: have to shave my face, so I just don't think
Speaker 1: that's a wise idea to do in space. But then
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've got artificial gravity, you're pretty This
Speaker 1: is this is Sam Neil's character, Samuel playing the the
Speaker 1: physicist who, as it turns out, designed this event horizonship
Speaker 1: and um and he's got some problems that the film
Speaker 1: goes into pretty extensively, and so the straight razor, as
Speaker 1: it turns out is symbolic, right, You find out that
Speaker 1: his wife committed suicide with a straight which makes me
Speaker 1: even more concerned for him that he's using that to
Speaker 1: shave with. Yeah, y'all, this is a bad This is
Speaker 1: going bad places. The psychologist would probably have a few
Speaker 1: things to say about it. Uh. I thought that the
Speaker 1: space station that Sam Neel's character is on at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the film was a little odd in that
Speaker 1: it's think of a massive grid made out of like
Speaker 1: scaffolding or if you've ever worked on a theater set
Speaker 1: where you've got the grid that you hang the lights
Speaker 1: off of that looks like the skeleton of this space
Speaker 1: station and just looks like a massive grid of this stuff,
Speaker 1: like the set to Stomp or something. Yeah, and occasionally
Speaker 1: you have these habitats that are you know, you can
Speaker 1: tell that they're these these things that are connected to
Speaker 1: the gritting grid structure that are where everyone lives, but
Speaker 1: they don't seem to be connected to each other, Like
Speaker 1: they're on different parts of the grid and this thing
Speaker 1: isn't informed to be connected. Yeah, you wouldn't really want
Speaker 1: to spacewalk in between them. Spacewalking is pretty dangerous and
Speaker 1: lower orbit, which a little okay title comes up that
Speaker 1: says lower. I didn't pay attention at that point, and
Speaker 1: I took notes, and I could not remember where if
Speaker 1: the space station was an orbit around Earth or Mars,
Speaker 1: because there were comments that made me think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: they were in orbit of Mars. So that makes some
Speaker 1: of the rest of this discussion much easier for me.
Speaker 1: But I did think it was neat that it looked modular,
Speaker 1: which meant, you know, that makes sense. You would want
Speaker 1: to be able to build onto any sort of permanent
Speaker 1: space station, uh in a way that would allow you
Speaker 1: to not have to reinmit the wheel every time. So
Speaker 1: if it's modular, you just add a new module on.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, So all right, I'm giving it that too.
Speaker 1: The rescue ship is called the Lewis and Clark, named
Speaker 1: after the explorers who quote unquote discovered lots of stuff
Speaker 1: in America if you can consider people who had been
Speaker 1: living there for hundreds and hundreds of years to be
Speaker 1: not important enough to say they discovered it, but they um.
Speaker 1: I thought the design of this was a little weird,
Speaker 1: particularly the bridge. I wrote down that their seating structure
Speaker 1: that main cappens tear drives me crazy. It's so, this
Speaker 1: is a bridge in which all of the you know,
Speaker 1: crew member chairs are normal kind of chairs. They can
Speaker 1: roll around a little bit, but they basically a fixed
Speaker 1: so the ground, kind of like office chairs chairs, ish um.
Speaker 1: And this captain's chair is suspended from this kind of
Speaker 1: track in the ceiling like a like a roller coaster seat.
Speaker 1: And it looks really goofy and I'm not share what
Speaker 1: they were going. Lawrence Fishburn, who plays the captain, sits
Speaker 1: in this chair. It means that his feet are actually
Speaker 1: dangling off the ground. He's not. He doesn't have contact
Speaker 1: with the ground. It allows him to turn degrees and
Speaker 1: move along this track, but so would a chair with
Speaker 1: wheels on it and or standing up. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't understand this because if you were to argue, well
Speaker 1: this way, if there were some sort of problem, his
Speaker 1: chair wouldn't go sliding all over the room. But then
Speaker 1: everyone else's chairs seemed to have that ability. There's one
Speaker 1: guy who pushes back from his workstation and rolls halfway
Speaker 1: across the bridge. So if you're not going to do
Speaker 1: it for everybody, don't do it for anyone. That's what
Speaker 1: I say. Let's make this fair. Gosh, darn't it um?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I just thought that was a weird thing. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I I did want to say that, I that I
Speaker 1: do actually like the design aesthetic of the Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark because it's more functional than pretty most of the time,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it's very much based in the
Speaker 1: general aesthetic of today's NASA ships. Right, it looks it
Speaker 1: looks like it's functional. It doesn't look like it's made
Speaker 1: out of you know, it's not. It's not some sort
Speaker 1: of Star Wars type thing where everything is pristine and
Speaker 1: beautiful as long as you're working for the Empire. It's
Speaker 1: it's definitely it's more on the firefly range where this
Speaker 1: this looks like this is something that does work. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it's a set necessarily, right. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit roomier than perhaps a real spaceship
Speaker 1: would be in order to have those those good cameras,
Speaker 1: but better than that, I'm willing to give them that.
Speaker 1: It reminded me a little bit of like an expanded submarine,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what you would expect down the
Speaker 1: propulsion system. I thought was really interesting. They talk this
Speaker 1: is kind of just mentioned offhand and dialogue. That's an
Speaker 1: ion drive, which those really existing. Yeah, yeah, so an
Speaker 1: ion drive uses thrusters and ionized particles. Those are charged
Speaker 1: particles in order to accelerate, and they can generate these
Speaker 1: charged particles and excite them in two major ways right now.
Speaker 1: We have the electrostatic force, which involves usually bombarding particles
Speaker 1: with electron beams so that you build up a negative charge.
Speaker 1: And there's also the electro magnetic approach, where you use
Speaker 1: electromagnets to excite these ions at any rate. Either way
Speaker 1: you're using this, you can output these ions and create thrust.
Speaker 1: But the thing about this is that it builds acceleration
Speaker 1: and the accelerating force is very low, so it reaches
Speaker 1: very fast acceleration at the end of this process, but
Speaker 1: it takes a minute to get it takes a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking about like it's it's continuously accelerating, so it's
Speaker 1: not like it accelerates and then just stops, but at
Speaker 1: the rate of acceleration is very low. So I'm a
Speaker 1: little concerned that they wouldn't be able to get from
Speaker 1: Earth to Neptune and any reasonable amount of time using
Speaker 1: an eye on drive. I mean I guess you could
Speaker 1: do it, but I think it would take longer than
Speaker 1: fifty six days, which is how long it takes within
Speaker 1: the film. Actually did do the math, and the current
Speaker 1: ion fusters that we've got can reach speeds of some
Speaker 1: ninety kilometers per second, which is over two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: miles per hour in space, which is pretty screaming compared
Speaker 1: with like the Space Shuttle, which is about eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers per second UM. But even if the vehicle could
Speaker 1: go at that speed, the entire distance from Earth to Neptune,
Speaker 1: which it could not see above ree, it takes a
Speaker 1: long time to warm up UM, it would still take
Speaker 1: five dred and fifty three days unless I did the
Speaker 1: math wrong, which I don't. I don't think it sounds
Speaker 1: about right because the distance between Earth and Neptune is
Speaker 1: about four point four billion kilometers, and granted, we're talking
Speaker 1: about forty years in the future, and forty years can
Speaker 1: bring a lot of technological changes. I think it's a possibility,
Speaker 1: but it's a stretch, yeah, cutting it down. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just talking about such huge distances, and keep in
Speaker 1: mind four point four billion kilometers that's the average distance
Speaker 1: between Neptuno an Earth change. So I calculated that um
Speaker 1: from the closest point at which it's about four point
Speaker 1: three billion miles, right, Yeah, And and even then you
Speaker 1: have to plan it, like just as we had to
Speaker 1: plan the Curiosity or over to land on Mars months
Speaker 1: in advance, because you know the orbits as the their
Speaker 1: you know, the plants continue to move across their orbital
Speaker 1: past even after you launch the ship, because they do
Speaker 1: not just hold in place. Yeah, so you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't just launch when they're closest, because they'll be moving
Speaker 1: apart from each other from that moment moving on. So
Speaker 1: it's complicated. You'll um. But at any rate, in order
Speaker 1: to not be bored for some fifty days on this ship,
Speaker 1: that die or die I guess the crew goes into stasis. Right.
Speaker 1: They do give the excuse of of of at the
Speaker 1: speeds that we're going, your skull would liquefy, which is
Speaker 1: not true. That is super inaccurate. Okay, yeah, they're talking
Speaker 1: about they would endure forces of excess of thirty g
Speaker 1: s or around thirty g s. That's thirty times the
Speaker 1: gravitational force you feel here on Earth. All right, here's
Speaker 1: some other issues. First of all, going into stasis. That's
Speaker 1: always a problem, right as far as we understand it today,
Speaker 1: because anything that is going to slow down your bodily
Speaker 1: functions is not really that good for you and montion
Speaker 1: the time movies portray it as freezing or in this case,
Speaker 1: it's being in this giant s. Yeah, it's it's more
Speaker 1: liquid than goo. I would say it comes on like water,
Speaker 1: but it's um. That's just not good for your body. No, No,
Speaker 1: your skin will absorb liquid, especially once the oils begin
Speaker 1: to wash off. That's why if you spend too long
Speaker 1: in the bath or the pool, your fingers start to
Speaker 1: prune up. Your epidermis is absorbing water. And wherever the
Speaker 1: epidermis and dermis meat it's anchored, that's where you have
Speaker 1: those those valley parts, the crevices that are in the
Speaker 1: pruny skin, and then the bulgy bits that's where all
Speaker 1: the liquid has been absorbed. So imagine that all over
Speaker 1: your body. It's not great. It gives rise to potential
Speaker 1: for bacterial infections. It's bad stuff. Also, your muscles would
Speaker 1: atrophy after you had been spending that much time we're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, two months in in non you know, motionless,
Speaker 1: you would be in bad shape by the end of that.
Speaker 1: They don't appear to be at all affected in that way.
Speaker 1: They cough a bit and that's it. Yeah, Sam Neil's character,
Speaker 1: who is not used to it, kind of stumbles a
Speaker 1: little bit and like isn't sure if he wants coffee,
Speaker 1: And that's that's about the that's the worst problem he has.
Speaker 1: But the other side of it, the whole thirty G issue. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, the the record for enduring gravitational forces
Speaker 1: goes to UH, to John Stapp who for a very
Speaker 1: very short moment experienced a force of forty six point
Speaker 1: two gs. He was doing UH acceleration tests. You know,
Speaker 1: this was part of the whole like how much can
Speaker 1: a person endure um turns out, you know, anything above
Speaker 1: say twenty geez or so you're talking eyeballs out gravitational forces.
Speaker 1: That's what they refer to it as. By the way, guys,
Speaker 1: so at four six point two his eyeball stayed in
Speaker 1: his head. They didn't pop out. That's a relief, but
Speaker 1: he did suffer permanent eye damage. He had vision problems
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He did live a
Speaker 1: good long while after that. It wasn't like he you know,
Speaker 1: suffered serious health issues that led to his death. But
Speaker 1: he did have serious health issues, they just were chronic
Speaker 1: and lasted, you know, for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: So uh, but at for the six point two g's
Speaker 1: even at that incredible amount of force supply to you,
Speaker 1: your skull will not liquefy. Your brains and eyeballs might
Speaker 1: if if you're exposed to it for long enough period
Speaker 1: of time, you know, so a certain fifty two days,
Speaker 1: like a couple of months, Yeah, you might have some issues,
Speaker 1: uh at that point. So yes, it would be deadly. However,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that submerging someone in liquid would not
Speaker 1: mean that you had to get out of jail free
Speaker 1: card for enduring that amount of force, especially not water.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's how it works. No, if you
Speaker 1: if you were suddenly put under the ocean at a
Speaker 1: depth where the pressure would be enough to crush you, you
Speaker 1: you still get rushed, even if you know the whole
Speaker 1: thing in the abyss where they have to breathe in
Speaker 1: the liquid oxygen is meant to say that if you
Speaker 1: have yeah, if you have air inside your lungs, then
Speaker 1: that's going to pop your lungs. But by putting liquid
Speaker 1: you can endure more pressure, you still are not able
Speaker 1: to endure endless amounts of pressure, So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that that would necessarily help. But then that brings us
Speaker 1: to the kind of computer devices they use, which are tablets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's a pretty Again, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty good estimation of what they were going to have.
Speaker 1: And you know, no one working on this movie clearly
Speaker 1: had talked to Steve Jobs, and I knew that the
Speaker 1: iPad was going to come out. Yeah, we U seven.
Speaker 1: That might have been a little premature. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's they use tablet computers. I think by twenty
Speaker 1: four you will probably have moved beyond your basic tablet.
Speaker 1: But again, you're extrapolating from now as opposed to from
Speaker 1: That's another thing that I'm willing to give them a
Speaker 1: pass on due to the fact that all of the
Speaker 1: tech on their ship, which I think is purposefully clunky,
Speaker 1: and I think it's for purely aesthetic reasons. But um,
Speaker 1: but I can excuse it by the fact that all
Speaker 1: of the tech on their ship needs to withstand the
Speaker 1: same forces, these incredible skull liquefying forces. Um and so
Speaker 1: that therefore, if it's a little bit clunky, maybe that's
Speaker 1: why just butting in here to say where It'll be
Speaker 1: right back to talk more about event horizon in just
Speaker 1: a moment, But first let's take a quick break. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get back to event horizon, and let's finally talk
Speaker 1: about this gravity drive thing. Yes, it's it's bizarre. Well okay,
Speaker 1: so so we hear the scientific explanation of it before
Speaker 1: we ever see the thing, Yes, we do. He says
Speaker 1: that the gravity drive will create an infinite curvature of space,
Speaker 1: resulting in a singularity. And uh, here's the thing, guys,
Speaker 1: that's a real thing. Singularity infinite, well real in the
Speaker 1: sense of this is how we understand black holes right now,
Speaker 1: according to general relativity, right, yeah, this is absolutely a
Speaker 1: concept that is based in reality. Now, super proud of
Speaker 1: the way that they described it. The scientist character goes
Speaker 1: into this kind of long spiel and and all of
Speaker 1: the other guy so like go like in English please, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I kind of wish that they had let him
Speaker 1: go for another half hour because I could have listened
Speaker 1: to this hilarious because first he says, well in layman's terms,
Speaker 1: and it's really pretty simple. I mean, it's the simplest
Speaker 1: description of a black hole you can get to without
Speaker 1: super dumbing it down, which he ultimately does do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's he's he describes a retaining magnetic field
Speaker 1: focusing a narrow beam of gravitans to fold space time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then this creates a wormhole through which a ship
Speaker 1: can travel. And the idea of being that you can
Speaker 1: fold space time so that the two points that you
Speaker 1: are interested in, your beginning and your destination are adjacent
Speaker 1: to one another, even if in reality they are across
Speaker 1: the universe from each other. So let's use an example.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you get an old style roadmap. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a paper roadmap. Okay, you've got a paper roadmap,
Speaker 1: and you are you want to travel between New York
Speaker 1: City and Los Angeles, California. And normally you would have
Speaker 1: to trace a pathway that would go along highways, and
Speaker 1: you would travel thousands of miles. But what if you
Speaker 1: could just fold the roadmap so that New York City
Speaker 1: and Los Angeles were touching one another on the two sides,
Speaker 1: and then you were able to magically jump between New
Speaker 1: York City and Los Angeles. Then unfold the map so
Speaker 1: it's back to its regular space. Suddenly it looks like
Speaker 1: you've traveled faster than light. You have crossed thousands of
Speaker 1: miles in an instant, apparently violating Einstein's theory of relativity,
Speaker 1: except for the part where Einstein and Rosen and the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties I believe came up with a concept of
Speaker 1: wormholes that allows for this, which says that if you
Speaker 1: have um a mass on that little New York blip
Speaker 1: and a mass on the l A blip that are
Speaker 1: that are both massive enough to push spacetime towards itself
Speaker 1: in in the way that spacetime is hypothetically a folded
Speaker 1: moving sheet of spacetime because matter curves space time, and
Speaker 1: spacetime determines how matter moves. And then eventually you're going
Speaker 1: to get these two points touching. And then if they
Speaker 1: were touching enough that they could break through, essentially you're
Speaker 1: talking of them. You're removing you're removing distance. Right, You're
Speaker 1: you're no longer traveling because you're not traveling faster than
Speaker 1: light at that moment. At that moment, those two distances
Speaker 1: are touching. So are those two points are touching, So
Speaker 1: there isn't a distance between them. If there were distance
Speaker 1: between the men, you move faster than light. That's what
Speaker 1: Ninstein says, Hey, stop breaking the law. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about how is this related to actual real
Speaker 1: world physics. So from what we understand what black holes,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. You gotta you got a star that's
Speaker 1: at least eight solar masses are larger, and as that
Speaker 1: star dies, it loses energy, the it begins to collapse
Speaker 1: in on itself, and so it starts to collapse in
Speaker 1: gravitational forces get stronger. You get this tiny point that
Speaker 1: gathers all the mass. We usually refer to it in
Speaker 1: math as being a point that has zero volume, but
Speaker 1: because there is mass within that zero volume and as
Speaker 1: infinite density. So you've got this point of infinite density
Speaker 1: that's creating this incredible gravitational pull in a large region
Speaker 1: around it. Now we define the region around it where
Speaker 1: let's say there's a let's say there's an imaginary boundary
Speaker 1: that you can see around a black hole, which you
Speaker 1: which there would not be. Yeah, but let's let's imagine
Speaker 1: that you can see this boundary, and you know that
Speaker 1: boundary represents the the section of space where if you
Speaker 1: were to pass beyond that boundary, you would no longer
Speaker 1: be able to escape the gravitational pull of that black hole.
Speaker 1: This is the point of no return. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is the point where even light itself cannot escape
Speaker 1: the black hole. It just will go right towards the singularity,
Speaker 1: depending upon what the singularity, how the singularity is formed,
Speaker 1: will get into. Then a second yeah, um, so that
Speaker 1: point that that that area, that region is called the
Speaker 1: event horizon. And I would like to stay for the
Speaker 1: record right now. The terrible idea it is to name
Speaker 1: your ship after the point of no return. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's like calling calling your your boat the Iceberg magnet.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to call your boat Iceberg
Speaker 1: magnet or perhaps akin to naming your undersea paradise after
Speaker 1: something out of the Book of Revelation. It's just a
Speaker 1: terrible or even atlantis. Yeah, you don't, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to necessarily go with that connotation if you
Speaker 1: think about it for too long. But yes, so the
Speaker 1: event horizon is named after this region of space where
Speaker 1: if you pass through it, you are pretty much guaranteed
Speaker 1: to go into the Singularity. You want to say pretty
Speaker 1: much guaranteed. There are some caveats, all right. So because
Speaker 1: there are different types of black holes, we quantify and
Speaker 1: we classify black holes based on three basic features. These
Speaker 1: are pretty much the only features black holes have according
Speaker 1: to our theory of relativity, because they're weird things. They
Speaker 1: have mass, they may or may not have spin, and
Speaker 1: they may or may not have a charge. So the
Speaker 1: basic black hole that is probably the simplest version, although
Speaker 1: not the most commonly found in the universe, is the
Speaker 1: Swortz Child black hole, which has no spin. It does
Speaker 1: have an event horizon, and essentially this this black hole,
Speaker 1: you can just think of it as a single point
Speaker 1: in space of that infinite density that is pulling you
Speaker 1: toward it if you get beyond that event horizon. So
Speaker 1: it's just everything goes towards the center of that point.
Speaker 1: You don't have any rotation there. You know, you can
Speaker 1: try to use thrust to keep you from accelerating into
Speaker 1: the point, but it's just after a point, it's there's
Speaker 1: no point in doing that anymore either. Um you're done.
Speaker 1: Spaghetification is on the way, which is where that's the
Speaker 1: the idea that as you get closer to the black
Speaker 1: holes gravity, things elongate and become noodle like, thus the spaghetification.
Speaker 1: It is probably not terribly pleasant, although I'm guessing you
Speaker 1: would not be alive at that point anything. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: not um, but I think more frequently theoretical physicists say
Speaker 1: that this probably happens more frequently, and also certainly more
Speaker 1: frequently in films. Is predicted the the care black hole. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Care k e r R. So the Care black
Speaker 1: hole is formed from solar masses. Uh. And because stars
Speaker 1: usually are rotating, there's a rotational force that has to
Speaker 1: conserve the angular momentum. This is this is another law
Speaker 1: that you have to follow. It has to conserve that
Speaker 1: angular momentum. So the black hole itself is spinning, right,
Speaker 1: which is where you get those pretty graphics with with
Speaker 1: that kind of rotational cloud of stuff falling into a
Speaker 1: black The black hole at the center of the Milky
Speaker 1: Way is rotating. Therefore, it's dragging space as it rotates,
Speaker 1: which causes this rotational force that ends up affecting the
Speaker 1: entire galaxy. It's pretty remarkable stuff, right. Well. The other
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this is that that spinning means the
Speaker 1: singularity at the center of a care hole is not
Speaker 1: a single point like it is in schwartz Child. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's an infinitely thin ring that is also spinning, and
Speaker 1: they are a little more complicated. They don't have just
Speaker 1: the event horizon. They also have something called the ergosphere.
Speaker 1: This is the region of space that is distorted because
Speaker 1: of the rotational force of this black hole. So this
Speaker 1: is an overly simple model that I'm going to give you.
Speaker 1: It does not directly relate to how we see this
Speaker 1: happening in in the universe. But imagine putting your hand
Speaker 1: in a container of tranquil water and then moving your
Speaker 1: hand around and seeing how it disturbs the water. The
Speaker 1: ergosphere is kind of like that. It's this region where
Speaker 1: that rotational force is dragging the space time and distorting
Speaker 1: it as a result, which is kind of funky. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also another little region that's the static limit, that's
Speaker 1: the boundary between the ergosphere and normal space time that
Speaker 1: is not being directly dragged and distorted by this black hole. Well,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing about this theory is that one interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that some people have proposed the hypothesis that
Speaker 1: if you were to encounter one of these black holes
Speaker 1: and you were able to enter the event horizon in
Speaker 1: a particular way where you could sling shot around that
Speaker 1: thin rotating singularity. You might not fall into the singularity.
Speaker 1: You might get shot out again, but you get shot
Speaker 1: out at a different point in space time. Thus you
Speaker 1: would have this wormhole theory. I don't know that you
Speaker 1: can necessarily control exactly where you would end up or
Speaker 1: when you would end up, because spacetime. And there's also
Speaker 1: the possibility this could allow for time travel, so that
Speaker 1: increases the Grandfather paradox, and there's other issues that we'd
Speaker 1: have to get into. That's an entirely different podcast. I
Speaker 1: don't recommend trying that without about time. I tried doing it,
Speaker 1: but then I went back in time and stopped myself,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, I just can't guys. I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: just do it again. And the way back machine is
Speaker 1: still in Mongolia, so we're kind of stuck. But so
Speaker 1: this is a hypothetical possibility, yes, I mean, and and
Speaker 1: all of this, we should say is based upon theoretical astrophysics,
Speaker 1: which if you couldn't tell from the name, I mean,
Speaker 1: we've never gone out in a ship and checked out
Speaker 1: a black hole and been like, oh, that's how it works.
Speaker 1: It's you know, this is all based on the way
Speaker 1: that we observe electromagnetic radiation behaving in spaces around what
Speaker 1: we have called black holes. Yeah, and and it's also
Speaker 1: based on a lot of math that we've tried to
Speaker 1: make work out. But things like infinite density and zero volume.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to deal with that, so it's impossible
Speaker 1: for us to truly conceive of it. It's beyond our
Speaker 1: our ability to do so. And in fact, some people
Speaker 1: have gone so far and I don't think it's that
Speaker 1: far really, but to say that singularity is really more
Speaker 1: of a placeholder. Like the terms we're using our placeholders
Speaker 1: that are good enough for now, but we need better
Speaker 1: clarification and some integration of the quantum model of physics.
Speaker 1: My end up clarifying these terms so that we we
Speaker 1: don't just have these vague placeholders. Right there is speaking
Speaker 1: of quantum stuff there. Scientists start theorizing that this is
Speaker 1: happening at the quantum level, like a like at the
Speaker 1: plunk kind of level of particles. Wormholes are being created,
Speaker 1: uh a lot. Yeah, Well, that was one of the
Speaker 1: things that they talked about with the large hadron colliders,
Speaker 1: that these collisions could result in tiny little black holes
Speaker 1: that are on the you know, atomic or smaller scale
Speaker 1: and last less than a you know, like a like
Speaker 1: a nanosecond long. That's how long they last. But it
Speaker 1: may of course that knowing that they were going to
Speaker 1: make some black holes, that made some media outlets go, oh,
Speaker 1: we're all gonna get sucked into a black hole and die.
Speaker 1: And thus we had things like, you know, has the
Speaker 1: world been destroyed by the large Hadron collider and you
Speaker 1: go to the u r L and it would say no. Um.
Speaker 1: But one interesting thing, there's a paper published in the
Speaker 1: Physical Review Letters recently by Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pool,
Speaker 1: and it was about a quantum black hole model in
Speaker 1: which the black hole doesn't have a singularity, but rather
Speaker 1: is a gateway. So this gateway would put you into
Speaker 1: possibly another universe, not necessarily another dimension, but another universe. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's some issues with this that we'd have to explore.
Speaker 1: It may very well be true, and it may be
Speaker 1: that this is the beginning of replacing those placeholders like
Speaker 1: singularity with more specific terms. But some of the problems
Speaker 1: involved things like, well, you probably still wouldn't survive any
Speaker 1: kind of trip through a black hole, the tidal forces
Speaker 1: you would undergo as you would go through this intense
Speaker 1: gravity would still squish you and kill you if you
Speaker 1: did somehow find a way to survive. There's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that what universe you would UH end up in would
Speaker 1: have the same laws of physics that our universe has,
Speaker 1: and thus you end up dying anyway because physics don't
Speaker 1: work um. And then there's the problem of, well, if
Speaker 1: there are black holes in various universes, they're connecting each
Speaker 1: other together, where are the outputs, because we don't see
Speaker 1: any in our universe. Where are the white holes? These
Speaker 1: these holes where matter from the black hole on the
Speaker 1: other end is being spewed out into the universe. Because
Speaker 1: if the black hole end is pulling everything in, the
Speaker 1: white hole end must be pushing everything back out. And
Speaker 1: if we don't see evidence of that in our universe,
Speaker 1: either that means that we only have exits, no entrances,
Speaker 1: or there's some other problems with this UH this UH theory,
Speaker 1: or it may just be that we haven't found a
Speaker 1: way to observe it yet. I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: turns out the white holes are the source of all
Speaker 1: dark dark matter, which represents more mass than anything else
Speaker 1: we can observe. We don't know what dark matter is.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. If it turns out to be that,
Speaker 1: you can mail my Nobel Prize our addresses on the website.
Speaker 1: So at any rate, we're going to assume that in
Speaker 1: the movie they want to open up a care black
Speaker 1: hole k E er R, not c A r E,
Speaker 1: and they're going to use that to zip over to
Speaker 1: some other part of the universe, and that things went wrong.
Speaker 1: So I think you think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: that's more or less what they meant based upon what's
Speaker 1: said in the film. I feel like that's extrapolating, but
Speaker 1: a fair extrapolation. I mean, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: he was talking about a pretty straight wormhole kind of situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm just trying to justify it anyway. Again. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be that that the science and event horizon
Speaker 1: back in was ahead of its time, and that the
Speaker 1: quantum research that we're talking about right now ends up
Speaker 1: being exactly what or more or less what they were
Speaker 1: saying in that movie, which would be kind of cool
Speaker 1: because then you're like, well, the science was wrong, but
Speaker 1: then it was right. Again based upon our understanding. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to say now that we've
Speaker 1: got the black hole stuff out of the way. But
Speaker 1: before we do, let's take another quick break to thank
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Speaker 1: you get the extended free trial and they know we
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Speaker 1: you know, one of the things I love about Hulu
Speaker 1: Plus is getting access to old shows that I did
Speaker 1: you know, I I remember loving when they were on,
Speaker 1: but hadn't really revisited in a long time. One of those,
Speaker 1: of course, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Uh. Josh Sweden
Speaker 1: really made his name with this series, and it was
Speaker 1: really it changed television. There's so many shows now that
Speaker 1: obviously follow in that same kind of model. So if
Speaker 1: you never actually seen that series, I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: go check that out. All right, so let's get back
Speaker 1: to the movie. Now. We've talked about the gravity drive,
Speaker 1: we talked about that iron propulsion, we talked about whether
Speaker 1: or not your skull would liquefy. Surely we've gotten through
Speaker 1: all the problems, right, We were actually still pretty early
Speaker 1: in the movie. This only takes us up through before
Speaker 1: they're even on the titular event horizons. We've got a
Speaker 1: lot of ground, We've got a lot of space to cover. Yeah, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: So alright. There's a good side and a bad side
Speaker 1: to this, Lauren. The good side is that pretty soon
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about supernatural stuff which has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with technology, and then we're okay, right, right,
Speaker 1: because when you start talking about hell dimensions invading, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll give that a pass because I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't have any data how that would work. It doesn't
Speaker 1: involve technology or any science that we understand at this moment,
Speaker 1: so therefore we cannot comment on it. However, there some
Speaker 1: science stuff we can talk about. Yeah, okay. So so
Speaker 1: when our search and rescue crew of Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: arrived at the event horizon, it is I guess it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be an orbit of Neptune. That's that was
Speaker 1: what I felt it was supposed to be. It's in
Speaker 1: the orbit around Neptune, but it's it's kind of within
Speaker 1: Neptune's atmosphere because there are all of these big storms
Speaker 1: going on, and it is accurate that there would be
Speaker 1: big storms on Neptune. Um. It is much much like Jupiter.
Speaker 1: It has these very giant, very violent, um slightly quicker storms.
Speaker 1: The storms on Jupiter are much longer lasting. Right. But
Speaker 1: here's the problem is that if that ship were in
Speaker 1: fact in within the atmosphere, the atmosphere would slow the
Speaker 1: ship's pathway down so much that would have just the
Speaker 1: orbit would have decayed much more rapidly. The ship would
Speaker 1: be crashing into Neptune. So the clouds there are a
Speaker 1: problem because it would suggest that it's too late the
Speaker 1: If it's truly an orbit, it would be above the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But since it's in the atmosphere, I think that you
Speaker 1: have to say this is for the spooky effect, because
Speaker 1: how can you have a haunted house movie in space
Speaker 1: without a thunderstorm going on outside? Right, I'd say pretty easily. Um,
Speaker 1: you can totally. I mean I've seen Alien and that
Speaker 1: basically work, which isn't a haunted house situation, but still close.
Speaker 1: It's close. I mean, you know, you fall, we're playing
Speaker 1: upon the same primal fears obviously. Um, I'm just amazed
Speaker 1: there weren't space wolves howling outside the windows of the ship.
Speaker 1: But actually there there were enough characters having hallucinations that
Speaker 1: I am I am, I am actually shocked that space bowlves. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we missed it because some of those were like
Speaker 1: montages of really fast clips of you know, this just
Speaker 1: looks like a Clive Barker nightmare scenario smashed into half
Speaker 1: a second. So maybe there were some space wolves in there,
Speaker 1: we don't know, but there definitely was a storm. Um.
Speaker 1: If anyone, by the way, wants to photoshops and spacewolves
Speaker 1: into some footage from from the Horizon, I would look
Speaker 1: in at you, Aaron Cooper, and I'm absolutely willing to
Speaker 1: read your name on air. Yeah. So, um, all right,
Speaker 1: what about the way that they before they get onto
Speaker 1: event horizon, they decide to take a look and see
Speaker 1: if there's anything alive on it. They do a life scan, right, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of life scanning related technology that happens
Speaker 1: in this middle portion of the film. And uh and yes,
Speaker 1: one is from the Lewis and Clark. And then once
Speaker 1: they get onto the ship, they've got these little shiny
Speaker 1: laser related hand devices. Mostly looks like a laser that's
Speaker 1: put through a splitter of some sort, And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how that would work. Maybe it's uh, I'm thinking thermal,
Speaker 1: that's the closest it was. Something that is warmer than
Speaker 1: the than the surrounding environment would suggest a life form
Speaker 1: or if you've got extremely sensitive audio technology, I suppose
Speaker 1: that you could scan for heartbeats or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Now we know that in other science fiction
Speaker 1: shows and movies, things like Star Trek, they have life
Speaker 1: form scanning technology that can even identify things like uh, creatures,
Speaker 1: blood type if they have a right or a brain
Speaker 1: wave or something like. Yeah. But there's no explanation here,
Speaker 1: not not that we necessarily expect it. I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: if this movie were to explain every single piece of
Speaker 1: science and something really long, and I would watch it forever, actually,
Speaker 1: that would be I would love that movie. It would
Speaker 1: be called Arthur C. Clark's Tooth in than One is
Speaker 1: what it would be called. And there'll probably be fewer,
Speaker 1: fewer hell demons, but maybe more space wolves. I'm honestly
Speaker 1: more confused about that that visual of the of the
Speaker 1: split laser thing on board, because if you're using I mean,
Speaker 1: if if it's just a method to let the operator
Speaker 1: know where he's pointing the beam, where she is pointing
Speaker 1: the beam, then then I guess that counts. But otherwise,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's a visual light spectrum analysis, it's
Speaker 1: not going to penetrate anything, and they're clearly trying to
Speaker 1: sweep rooms with it would make it pretty easy, which
Speaker 1: means that you could do something else like use your eyes, right,
Speaker 1: you know those things that each of the characters had
Speaker 1: no well full a while anyway, some of the characters
Speaker 1: don't end up with eyes because spoiler alert, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: where we're going, we don't need that's That's exactly what
Speaker 1: he says. Uh, So I have here in my notes.
Speaker 1: This is a says, not so much a note as
Speaker 1: an observation. This is just one of those things that
Speaker 1: I picked up on while I was watching the movie.
Speaker 1: The docking bay, that the event horizon, well, that the
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark uses to access the event horizon is
Speaker 1: for reasons that are never explained. Docking Bay thirteen. It's
Speaker 1: X I I I in Roman numerals, so it's thirteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Doctor Weir Sam Neil's character. We didn't name him
Speaker 1: earlier in the podcast, but Lauren reminded me that the
Speaker 1: character does affect have a name. Is not just Sam
Speaker 1: names the character. Um. Dr Weir says that it's the
Speaker 1: main docking bay. So I don't know why your main
Speaker 1: docking bay would be thirteen. I guess this is just
Speaker 1: one of those little you know, winks of the to
Speaker 1: the audience, or you could explain it as being, um
Speaker 1: a representation shin of of how much doctor we are
Speaker 1: need psychiatric help. Yeah, that will get a lot more
Speaker 1: indication of that in a very short while. When they
Speaker 1: get aboard the Event Horizon. So they do the scan.
Speaker 1: It does not come back with any anything that would
Speaker 1: suggest a life form. But then they say, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do this the old fashioned way, room
Speaker 1: by room. Well, they say that there's these weird like
Speaker 1: kind of amorphous sort of sort of blobs of life
Speaker 1: forms kind of everywhere, and that they're not seeing any
Speaker 1: individual human people, which is what they're looking for. So
Speaker 1: they decided to go onto the ship exactly. So, a
Speaker 1: couple of the guys they create an umbilicus, a pathway
Speaker 1: that will connect the two ships. This is something else
Speaker 1: that confused me, all right, So the Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: has artificial gravity. The Event Horizon normally would have artificial gravity,
Speaker 1: but that system is down. Exactly, they connect an umbilicus
Speaker 1: between the Lewis and Clark and the Event Horizon. As
Speaker 1: soon as the characters get into the Umbilicus, they're in
Speaker 1: a zero G environment. Back aboard the Lewis and Clark,
Speaker 1: you still have artificial gravity. I'm wondering where you cut
Speaker 1: that off, Like, how does the artificial gravity know literally
Speaker 1: the artificial gravity the gravitons get into your air supply,
Speaker 1: and so if you're not sharing air supplies, then you're
Speaker 1: not sharing. Almost certain air supply did not supply any
Speaker 1: of the music in this movie. I'd have to go
Speaker 1: back and watch it again to see if air supply
Speaker 1: is in this film, but I don't think it is
Speaker 1: all right. So anyway, that was another little goofy bit.
Speaker 1: So they do a quick tour of the ship. You
Speaker 1: have some characters going towards the front of the ship,
Speaker 1: which is where the bridge is, in the living quarters,
Speaker 1: the medical center, all of that is on the front end.
Speaker 1: And this is before they get all of these systems
Speaker 1: back up. So everyone is in uh, you know, low
Speaker 1: gravity um and and it's very everything is still extremely cold.
Speaker 1: They don't have temperature online right. They have magnetic boots
Speaker 1: which allow them to stick to the floor. I appreciated
Speaker 1: that they at least said like, hey, we've got magnetic boots,
Speaker 1: and they even showed a little like this is it
Speaker 1: engaging kind of kind of sequence from I thought that
Speaker 1: was a nice knot too maybe this could be like
Speaker 1: reality science. Ish. I did have a problem in that
Speaker 1: they talk about how the temperature is below freezing and
Speaker 1: you see frozen droplets of water floating through the event horizon.
Speaker 1: But there's also this water bottle. I assume it's a
Speaker 1: water bottle, looks very much like a water bottle, and
Speaker 1: it is clearly full of liquid and liquid forming noises.
Speaker 1: So how did that not freeze? Unless, of course it's
Speaker 1: not water in that water bottle. It could be another
Speaker 1: liquid that has a lower freezing point. Um, I can
Speaker 1: only assume that it is the viscera of hell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking vodka. But anyway, all right, so uh,
Speaker 1: you know, honestly, I'm pretty sure that vodka is the vista.
Speaker 1: So it's probably fairly act both of our Okay, we're
Speaker 1: both right. That's I'm cool with that. So some of
Speaker 1: the people go towards the forward part of the ship,
Speaker 1: where by the way that the forward part of the
Speaker 1: ship where the bridge and living cores and everything, all
Speaker 1: of that is separated by an incredible long hallway from
Speaker 1: the gravity drive engineering section. Actually specifically, the gravity drives
Speaker 1: really the only thing we ever see on that other
Speaker 1: side of the ship, right, even though it's the largest
Speaker 1: part of the ship. We really just see the gravity
Speaker 1: drive and in the the the labyrinthian hallways that surround
Speaker 1: the gravity drive for no apparent reason because we're needs help. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: this long neck I thought was pretty odd when I
Speaker 1: first saw the design of the ship. I was like,
Speaker 1: why would you want a neck that long? And the
Speaker 1: only thing that I could come up with is if
Speaker 1: within the world they talk about, you know, the gravity fluctuations,
Speaker 1: maybe those fluctuations could adversely affect the crew, and by
Speaker 1: creating this distance, by creating this long neck like corridor,
Speaker 1: you minimize that. Maybe that's the reason, so I can
Speaker 1: justify I'm willing to give them that way, ye so,
Speaker 1: But otherwise you're just thinking, like, why is the ship?
Speaker 1: It's basically a plot device. It looks cool, and it
Speaker 1: looks cool, and you get that good dramatic tension of
Speaker 1: needing to have people run up and down it, and
Speaker 1: an important fly up and down it when the gravity
Speaker 1: is not you know, but or float I guess would
Speaker 1: be the more accurate, right, speaking of so they do,
Speaker 1: they do turn on the ship's interior gravity, so no
Speaker 1: one has to have spent expensive effects anymore for for
Speaker 1: a while, for a while until we get to the end,
Speaker 1: and so we see lots of water splashing down onto
Speaker 1: the floor and things like that. It was neat, neat
Speaker 1: little effect. We'll have a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: about the tech in event horizon after this short break.
Speaker 1: Did you notice the ship's log that it's on. It's
Speaker 1: on an optical disc DVD or CD. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: was made so we have to give it that allowance.
Speaker 1: But it was so funny to me that there's a
Speaker 1: disc and it's caught inside the computer system, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My specific note I think was like, oh yes, optical disc, yes, right,
Speaker 1: you know why go back? Yeah, we're just lucky it's
Speaker 1: on a track. Uh yeah. So the ship's log is
Speaker 1: stored in an to cold disk, which we thought was adorable.
Speaker 1: And this is about when the crew discovers this gravity drive.
Speaker 1: The doctor Weir has created um and it looks like
Speaker 1: something out of Hell Razor. Yeah, I said, it looks
Speaker 1: like the same designer who made the limit configuration, which
Speaker 1: is the puzzle box and hell razor. In this case,
Speaker 1: it's Dr Weir must have seen that, because that's what
Speaker 1: the interior of his gravity drive room looks like. I
Speaker 1: am so I'm so worried for him. I honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think that he was doing well when he was
Speaker 1: creating this. The entire esthetic design of this ship is
Speaker 1: very much in contrast to the design of the Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark, which is kind of rough and tumble and
Speaker 1: and has been lit in a utilitarian and the interior
Speaker 1: of this ship reminds me of nothing more than like
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century insane asylum. You've got this this very
Speaker 1: these very brick like metal panels in various places, and
Speaker 1: we've got all of this weird Victorian style detailing and
Speaker 1: crazy machinery. So it's kind of a combination of that
Speaker 1: asylum and like, imagine that you've been shrunk down and
Speaker 1: then thrown into the home Depot power tools section, so
Speaker 1: you've got these enormous like drill like things that are
Speaker 1: turning around you for no apparent reason. Um I And
Speaker 1: there's there's a corridor in the end of the film
Speaker 1: that has shaped like a coffin, And I'm just like
Speaker 1: you guys. Seriously, you guys, this is amazing. No One
Speaker 1: no one said like, hey, Dr Weir, do you want
Speaker 1: to take a vacation and go to Disney World. I
Speaker 1: will also say this is going back to the the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the film I have read. I assume this
Speaker 1: is true. It seems like it's true that the idea was,
Speaker 1: what if we had the Shining but said it in space,
Speaker 1: in which case, if you're talking about the film version
Speaker 1: of The Shining, you know Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicholson's character
Speaker 1: is already pretty freaking crazy before he shows up at
Speaker 1: the Overlook Hotel. Totally. Dr Weir kind of falls that model. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I did want to say that it's actually clever
Speaker 1: that the that drive itself is built like a giant gyroscope,
Speaker 1: like a giant hellish gyroscope, because um, because real spaceships do.
Speaker 1: In fact, you use gyroscopes in their inertial navigation systems,
Speaker 1: albeit not giant puzzle box looking ones. Right, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: one that you're talking about in the movie. It's imagine
Speaker 1: a globe that's inside of a ring, that's inside of
Speaker 1: another ring, and all of these can can rotate independently
Speaker 1: of each other. Yeah, and when it lines up, it
Speaker 1: flashes light at you and bad things happen. Um dr.
Speaker 1: We're assures the crew that the gravity drive is not on,
Speaker 1: totally on, and it's totally not safe. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: because the ship, as it turns out, is alive. Uh
Speaker 1: I said that. Another thing that was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a little weird. The characters are
Speaker 1: forced aboard the Event Horizon because the Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: is compromised. All right, there's a whole breach and their
Speaker 1: air supply. UM starts going, I'm not gonna make another joke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the everyone, everyone aside from a repair crew, goes
Speaker 1: aboard the Horizon. The repair crew tries to repair the
Speaker 1: damage to the Lewis and Clark. So they discovered that
Speaker 1: the oxygen, to be more specific, the carbon dioxide levels
Speaker 1: are rising and are going to hit because the scrubbers
Speaker 1: are something something I don't know, The CEO two scrubbers
Speaker 1: are not not functioning properly, and even if they brought
Speaker 1: the ones aboard from the Lewis and Clark, it would
Speaker 1: only give them a little extra time. They only have
Speaker 1: twenty hours of breathable air on the event Horizon, which
Speaker 1: is enormous, is a huge ship. It's very large. I
Speaker 1: cannot believe that they only had twenty hours of breathable air.
Speaker 1: That's maybe maybe the gravity drive eats oxygen. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the hell demons that are in that are living in
Speaker 1: heavy breathers. That could be. I mean, I mean, statistically,
Speaker 1: I think most hell demons are and they've been on
Speaker 1: that ship for seven years, so it's possible. Um. I
Speaker 1: also say that the another fun little fact. This is
Speaker 1: another not so technical thing, but just one of those
Speaker 1: things that if you've watched a lot of movies you appreciate.
Speaker 1: So they have the Sick Sick Bay, a medical center
Speaker 1: which supposedly has never been used. Well on a counter.
Speaker 1: In this medical bay, they have an array of medical tools,
Speaker 1: most of which are most are made just for films.
Speaker 1: They're not actual analogs to real medical tools, although there
Speaker 1: I mean, and a lot of them are our corners
Speaker 1: tools more than medical tools. Really, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you're not going to see in actual medical
Speaker 1: practice outside of the Victorian era. So, but if you
Speaker 1: had ever watched a movie like the Tim Burton's Batman
Speaker 1: or Little Shop of Horrors, you will recognize some of these.
Speaker 1: They're the same medical devices that have shown up in
Speaker 1: movie after movie whenever there's some form of medical horror
Speaker 1: element to the film. So I thought I appreciated that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: especially amongst all of these incredibly are not incredibly high
Speaker 1: tech looking, but but more fancy, shiny, inexplicable bits of
Speaker 1: medical tech that they've got floating around. Right. Well, moving forward,
Speaker 1: you know, things go wrong, demons are unleashed, people are hallucinating,
Speaker 1: and then that's when you start to see characters try
Speaker 1: and take action. Dr Weir wants to go and activate
Speaker 1: the failsafe circuit to turn off the gravity track. Right.
Speaker 1: What's weird is how inconveniently placed the failsafe circuit is. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: and it's in this tunnel that, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, is composed of circuit board, which I think
Speaker 1: is probably a categorically bad idea for I mean, first,
Speaker 1: it's sharp, like, it's delicate, you don't really want to
Speaker 1: be crawling around on top of it. It reminded me
Speaker 1: of those scenes and Star Trek the Next Generation whenever
Speaker 1: anything was seriously wrong with the ten miles away, Like
Speaker 1: maybe we should start putting that stuff closer to where
Speaker 1: we work, guys. Furthermore, it's a it's an entire tunnel
Speaker 1: made of circuit board, and he has to go to
Speaker 1: this one very specific panel, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: the only panel within this tunnel of circuit board, and
Speaker 1: pull out another piece of circuit board and do something too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the expansion slot for the event horizon is in an
Speaker 1: inconvenient location. Go buy a different ship, guys. Uh So. Also,
Speaker 1: I have a little plot note here. The commanding officer
Speaker 1: of the Lewis and Clark comes to a conclusion, right
Speaker 1: right she She says to the captain that she thinks,
Speaker 1: based upon I don't believe zero evidence whatsoever, that the
Speaker 1: ship is alive. Now, first of all, she's right, but
Speaker 1: this turns out to be the fantastical element of the film. Yes,
Speaker 1: but how she I made the same note. I was
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not sure where she got that, And
Speaker 1: it was very convenient, like the audience is picking up
Speaker 1: on it, but the characters shouldn't. Necessarily I did. I
Speaker 1: did read that um, nearly half an hour of footage
Speaker 1: was taken out of the film before it went to theaters, possible,
Speaker 1: and and that a lot of that was was more
Speaker 1: along the gore end. And I think that the film
Speaker 1: benefited from not having that in there, because I thought
Speaker 1: that the subtle flashes of gore were very effective here.
Speaker 1: But maybe that was part of maybe that, maybe that
Speaker 1: gave her some of the feelings she had. Maybe not,
Speaker 1: we don't know. The Captain describes what fire and zero
Speaker 1: G is like and gets it almost exactly wrong, super wrong.
Speaker 1: He says that it's like liquid, which Laurence fishburn. So
Speaker 1: he's very dramatic about it. Yeah, not like me. I
Speaker 1: can't I can't manage drama. Well, I can't manage drama,
Speaker 1: but I'm not dramatic. Uh. Yeah, he says it's like liquid.
Speaker 1: I I interpreted that to mean that he thought it
Speaker 1: was like liquid on a surface that has gravity, like
Speaker 1: it behaves like liquid wood on Earth. Um, even if
Speaker 1: you meant liquid and zero G, it's not exactly true.
Speaker 1: If you were to say, light a match in a
Speaker 1: zero G environment or a micro gravity environment, it would
Speaker 1: the flame would form a little globe around the match head,
Speaker 1: and it would probably burn in a very very uh
Speaker 1: faint but very hot flame like you would usually get
Speaker 1: a little blue flame around the head of the match
Speaker 1: sticks upposedly elongated yellow yellow exactly, So fire does behave
Speaker 1: in an interesting way in zero G, but not really
Speaker 1: like liquid um. I have a little bit about Cooper.
Speaker 1: We gotta talk about Cooper. Yeah, yeah, So so this
Speaker 1: is moving. As the plot moves forward, like we said,
Speaker 1: it becomes a little bit more fantastical, and therefore we
Speaker 1: don't have quite as many things to complain about. Are
Speaker 1: lovingly complain about. But yes, so so during one of
Speaker 1: these spacewalks wherein one of the crew members, Cooper is
Speaker 1: trying to repair the Claris and Clark, uh, there's an explosion,
Speaker 1: massive catastrophic explosion that destroys the Lewis and Clark and
Speaker 1: and shuttles this little bit of ship that he was
Speaker 1: standing on, spinning wildly off into space. Right, so Cooper
Speaker 1: is on He's tethered to this piece of the ship
Speaker 1: and the ship is hurtling off into space with Cooper
Speaker 1: on it. Cooper has no real means of he has
Speaker 1: no means of getting He doesn't have like a jet
Speaker 1: packet pack, which is terrible because I mean NASA and
Speaker 1: has jet packs and standard and every space suit and
Speaker 1: I guess standards just slipped anyway standards. First thing he
Speaker 1: does is he matches himself from the rotating UH stuff,
Speaker 1: which is problematic too, and that if you were on
Speaker 1: a rotating piece of equipment and then you let go somehow,
Speaker 1: and considering that you weigh less than the rotating piece
Speaker 1: of equipment, you're going to start moving at a slightly
Speaker 1: different rate of speed, and your your mass is different.
Speaker 1: You're still conserving the angular momentum, so but your mass
Speaker 1: is different. So you're gonna speak, You're gonna turn faster.
Speaker 1: So we can see this on earth if you are
Speaker 1: on say ice skates, and you start spinning and then
Speaker 1: you pull your arms in, or you can try this
Speaker 1: in your office if you like, sit on a chair
Speaker 1: that can spin around and around, have someone start spinning.
Speaker 1: You have your arms out and then start pulling your
Speaker 1: arms in. You will start to spin faster if you're
Speaker 1: do If you're listening to this in an office right now,
Speaker 1: I recommend doing this and just seeing just to see
Speaker 1: what reaction your code until everybody when they ask you
Speaker 1: why you're doing that that Josh and Chuck told you to,
Speaker 1: because we don't want to heat anyway. So if you
Speaker 1: were to actually detach yourself. You would start spinning even faster.
Speaker 1: This is also a problem I have with the film,
Speaker 1: uh Gravity, which I don't think it's a spoiler because
Speaker 1: it happens within the trailer. So anyway, Um. He then
Speaker 1: ends up designed to use his oxygen supply as a
Speaker 1: means of propelling himself back to the event Horizon, and
Speaker 1: he vents his oxygen and rockets back to the ship.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of problems with the way this
Speaker 1: was depicted. Yeah, and just the fact that it would
Speaker 1: be physically impossible, the fact that he would Yeah, he
Speaker 1: would have no way of really directing your flight in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way, and nor would you necessarily be flying
Speaker 1: without going into an even crazier tailspin. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of It's problematic, but you know, dramatic, it's fun Cooper.
Speaker 1: So Cooper becomes a superspaceman and flies back to the
Speaker 1: event Horizon. Um, and then I've got uh, I only
Speaker 1: have one other real note, and I'll and Lauren, I'll
Speaker 1: ask you what else you have to say about this.
Speaker 1: But the last bit is the event Horizon has a
Speaker 1: whole breach in the bridge area, and that this point
Speaker 1: the possessed doctor were spoiler alert, is is attacking Laurence Fishburne,
Speaker 1: not the not the character. It's Lawrence fish They've they've
Speaker 1: gone so meta. No, it's Lawrence Fishburn's captain character. So
Speaker 1: doctor were possessed is attacking the captain and the breach
Speaker 1: the hall has breached. Dr were gets flung out into
Speaker 1: space technically blown out into space, not sucked out because
Speaker 1: the air pressure. So the captain ends up trying to
Speaker 1: crawl up or crawled past where the the hallway ends
Speaker 1: at the bridge, so they can seal it off and
Speaker 1: thus repressurize part of the event horizon and not get
Speaker 1: blown out into space. I'm not sure that you'd be
Speaker 1: able to do that, Like I don't considering how much
Speaker 1: was flying past him, I don't know that you would
Speaker 1: have the strength to hold on, but or that the
Speaker 1: materials they was holding onto it when you're just right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I felt very much the same way. I think
Speaker 1: that if um, I think that would be hard enough
Speaker 1: in the end of pressure differentiation that you've got in
Speaker 1: an airplane, let alone in in the vacuum of space. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's he has herculean strength and he manages to
Speaker 1: make it Laurence Fishburn. He manages to make it into
Speaker 1: the hallway, and not only does he make it into
Speaker 1: the hallway, he's also able to rescue a fellow crew
Speaker 1: member and pull her to safety before closing the doors
Speaker 1: and sealing it off. UM. I also thought that this
Speaker 1: would probably make their problem of very little breathable air
Speaker 1: somewhat exacerbated. Right. And also also I was confused that
Speaker 1: within this very same movie, a little bit earlier on
Speaker 1: one of the other crew members, um head Head, in
Speaker 1: a hallucination driven fit, locked himself an air lock and
Speaker 1: was going to blow himself out into space. And as
Speaker 1: that cabin depressurized, UM, it gave you a lot of
Speaker 1: really great practical gore effects of his of his veins
Speaker 1: starting to pop, and his eyes bleeding, and all of
Speaker 1: these all of these terrible, terrific horror elements. Um And
Speaker 1: and none of that happens to these main characters. He's
Speaker 1: build higher with higher billing, You don't you don't get
Speaker 1: those easily palpable eyeballs. Oh, I see, I see, that's
Speaker 1: that's cool, all right, benefit of the job. When you
Speaker 1: raise a rank, you just get better eyeball. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: at any rate, that is. That's kind of silly. Do
Speaker 1: you have any other notes that you would like to share? Um,
Speaker 1: I guess. Also, speaking of that airlock situation, it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite goofy movie tropes, wearing UM, something terrible
Speaker 1: is about to happen in an airlock and you have
Speaker 1: to hack the door. You always have to hack the door,
Speaker 1: and the hacking of the airlock door is always accompanied
Speaker 1: by um pulling the panel out and mussing about with wires,
Speaker 1: and it always takes approximately four seconds longer to do
Speaker 1: than you actually have. I just I just love that
Speaker 1: that one little silly Well, it's also fun that he
Speaker 1: curls up into a ball, flies out of the airlock,
Speaker 1: is caught by the captain who's in a spacewalk, who
Speaker 1: jumps back into the airlock and manages to get him
Speaker 1: back into the ship. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, as a
Speaker 1: Superman rescue you and it is a Superman rescue that
Speaker 1: that is. I think later on there's a certain point
Speaker 1: at which people out run some space flames. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some space flame out running there's an explosion, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also you know, we didn't really mention it. The
Speaker 1: pathway to get to the gravity drive. The hallway that
Speaker 1: goes through to the gravity drive itself is lined with
Speaker 1: explosives just in case. Yeah, there's there's explosives to separate
Speaker 1: the bridge from the gravity driving case of case failure.
Speaker 1: Everyone who has watched Star Trek nows sometimes it's really
Speaker 1: important to separate the dish from here exactly. You can
Speaker 1: use it as a life I don't think you would
Speaker 1: necessarily need a neck that long to be able to
Speaker 1: do this, but that's okay. Now, the thing I was
Speaker 1: going to talk about is that really short hallway where
Speaker 1: you've got the spinning saw blades of death all around you, right,
Speaker 1: what was that for effect? Yeah? It was creepy. I
Speaker 1: know that Dr Weir said something in passing as they
Speaker 1: were walking down the hallway, but it literally made no
Speaker 1: sense to me. Yeah, me, me neither. I didn't I
Speaker 1: didn't catch what he said. I I kind of like
Speaker 1: I was sort of watching a going like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to rewind for that one, because I'm going to
Speaker 1: explain in any satisfying way what this this hallway of
Speaker 1: saw teeth is doing here. It kind of makes me
Speaker 1: think of all the parodies of Star Wars and other
Speaker 1: movies where the characters are standing right at the edge
Speaker 1: of a really sharp drop in the middle of like
Speaker 1: The Death Star, and like, why don't we put up
Speaker 1: a railing? You know, it's kind of that same sort
Speaker 1: of why did we put all these jagged saw blades
Speaker 1: around this corridor? For? My favorite part about that corridor though,
Speaker 1: is the dramatic tension involved in it, because it is
Speaker 1: one of the few places on the ship that something
Speaker 1: bodily horrible does not happen to anybody, and it so
Speaker 1: sharp it looks like a tumbler specifically for killing people.
Speaker 1: It looks it looks like welcome to the abattoir corridor.
Speaker 1: This is where we will grind you into teeny tiny bits,
Speaker 1: but it never happens. It is pretty interesting. Um but
Speaker 1: but you know, I so so overall, I'm going to
Speaker 1: give this film a um a gold star for trying.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it for what it was. It's a funge
Speaker 1: lucky in a horror movie. There's some great bad acting
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, I think that. I think that Sam
Speaker 1: Neil did uh did did a good job as a
Speaker 1: really overblown dramatic villain. Yeah. I hope you guys enjoyed
Speaker 1: that classic episode. It was so much fun to talk
Speaker 1: about the technology of a specific film. I should do
Speaker 1: more of those. Maybe I should do one about the
Speaker 1: Matrix series, because that would be a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: I think. But if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics, whether it's about a specific film, technology, or
Speaker 1: just a tech topic in general, send me a message
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff hsw not taught
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.