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Science of TRON

Listen to audio from the "Science of TRON" panel, featuring director Joe Kosinski, producer Sean Bailey, and science consultants Sean Carroll & John Dick. Learn More

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Poetry in Motion

Posted by The Exchange on 06/11/2009 | 0 comments

What do Happy Feet, Polar Express, the Lord of the Ringstrilogy, Beowulf, and The Strange Case of Benjamin Button have in common? They are all films that employ the latest advances in motion capture technology -- or rather, what was cutting-edge in motion capture back in 2007, when those films were first being made. Scientists continue to come up with breakthrough technologies to make Hollywood's special effects even more magically convincing.

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The Science of the Hangover

Posted by The Exchange on 06/09/2009 | 0 comments

Ah, the hangover. Most of us have had one of these at one time or another after sucking down one too many at a bar or party. But what is this miserable reminder of the dangers of excess and what might we do (besides the most obvious solution: easing up on the sauce) to avoid this unfortunate consequence? With The Hangover’s strong showing at the box office over the weekend, we thought it might be an interesting to look at the science of the hangover.

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Where Have All The Good Bees Gone

Posted by The Exchange on 06/04/2009 | 0 comments

In November of 2007, Jerry Seinfeld lent his multitude of talents to Bee Movie, in which he played a young bee, wanting more in his life than the dull drone of the hive. Striking out on his own, his spunky character had a series of misadventures including an unlikely relationship with Renee Zellweger. As it turns out, in the real world, worker bees are leaving their homesteads in America at an alarming rate.

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Going Up!

Posted by The Exchange on 06/02/2009 | 0 comments

Pixar's new movie, UP, raked in a healthy $68 million in ticket sales over the weekend, and seems poised to be another hit for the Oscar-winning animation studio. It's the tale of an elderly curmudgeon named Carl Frederikson (voiced by Ed Asner) who decides to get away from it all via a unique mechanism: he strings an enormous bunch of helium-filled balloons to his house, lifting it high into the air.

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Follow the Evidence

Posted by The Exchange on 05/28/2009 | 0 comments

The hit TV series C.S.I. coined the catchphrase "follow the evidence," and its popularity helped significantly boost the number of young people keen on studying forensics as a career. But a report by the National Academy of Sciences released earlier this year concluded it was time to put a bit more science in forensic science. (h/t: 3 Quarks Daily)

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Science Channel Goes to the Movies

Posted by The Exchange on 05/26/2009 | 0 comments

There's a lot of science that goes on behind the scenes of film and television, not just what appears on-screen. Earlier this year, the National Academy of Science's Science and Entertainment Exchange assisted the producers of a new Discovery/Science Channel series called Science of the Movies with finding scientists in a wide range of fields to explore what goes into making a blockbuster movie or hit TV series.

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Science Fiction and Future Predictions

Posted by The Exchange on 05/22/2009 | 0 comments

With Terminator Salvation - a film on which The Science & Entertainment Exchange did a consult - hitting theaters this weekend, it’s hard not to get excited about watching John Connor staving off the impending destruction of humanity in the fourth installment of the franchise. But, let's not completely take this action film at face-value. The latest Terminator movie releases in a very different era than did its predecessors. Starting in 2007, robots actually did start carrying guns in Iraq. More and more, we are outsourcing risky combat assignments to machines.

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Culture Shift

Posted by The Exchange on 05/20/2009 | 0 comments

A couple of years ago, at a friend’s party, I wound up chatting with one of the writers/producers on the hit TV series Bones. When I mentioned I was a science writer, he visibly paled and became instantly defensive: “I know, I know, the science on our show is unrealistic, DNA results never come back that fast….”

I assured him I loved the show and the occasional scientific liberties didn’t bother me, because the stories and the characters were so compelling. But I thought it was a shame that this very smart man only heard from the scientific community when they were complaining about whatever the show got wrong. So he associated scientists with factual nit-picking and finger-pointing, when in fact, science is every bit as creative and innovative as writing for film and television, and can be a treasure trove of inspiration to a writer seeking funky new plot twists and characters.

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