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.

Re:I haven't seen it

[TheKidWho]

That's unfortunate, while the story is ho-hum the 3D visual effects are simply amazing.

Ava-who?

[stokessd]

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

Re:Ava-who?

[mdm-adph]

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.

Want a comparison? Watch Avatar, enjoy it, and then watch something like Transformers 2, and then see if you don't vomit from sheer disgust.

Re:You aren't missing anything

[TiberiusMonkey]

er... Unobtanium is a word that's been used for sometime now, like before I was born. Knowing the word already and then hearing it in the film I felt that either the character was making fun of how amazing this metal was, or that James Cameron was poking fun of the "made up material/substance" we so often see in sci-fi to explain things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium [wikipedia.org]

Re:TFA is full of flaws itself

[seven of five]

Please, dude, not unobtainium. upsidaisium [tv.com]

Unobtainium doesn't have unpaired electrons.

Re:You aren't missing anything

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, I understand that it's an inside joke between the audience and the writer.

Why do you think it was an inside joke?

Like GP, I, too, had the impression that the word was simply used by a character in a movie in its proper meaning - he used it to refer to an exceedingly rare and hard to obtain material with not fully explained and otherwise "magical" properties [wikipedia.org].

Re:I haven't seen it

[zorg50]

For anyone that lives in or near Rhode Island, all IMAX shows in Providence Place are $6 on Tuesdays. It's definitely worth the price of admission; just be sure to preorder your tickets.

Re:Floating Mountains explained

[je ne sais quoi]

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.

You mean difficult like this [fys.uio.no]? Or how about this [youtube.com]? Looks pretty easy to me. Minor magnetic perturbations would not make the mountains flail about wildly because they have a high MASS. It would take a great big magnetic fluctuation to do move a large mass. I wager that the only thing that could do that would be a magnetic pole flipping, but since the human race hasn't seen one of these in our recorded history we have no idea how they take place so I think we can forgive that one.

Re:Floating Mountains explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, it is hard because you have two small magnets. If you tried this with a magnet the size of a planet and another the size of a mountain, let me know.

He has no need to get two planet sized magnets, it has been proven that it is impossible to stabilize an object with static magnetic forces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem

Re:Jurassaic lawn

[ShatteredArm]

That's true to an extent, but at the same time, those previous technological advances only improved story telling. They didn't replace it. If they use the computer graphics to merely supplement a good story with good acting and a well thought out script, there won't be any reason to resist. But if Avatar is any indication of what is to come, that won't be the case.