Science in TV/Film

Science fiction fans and movie-goers might be counting down the days until the 3D re-release of Jurrassic Park hits theaters on April 5th, but scientists and conservationists are now counting the ways that they could make the movie’s premise – in which the DNA of dinosaurs’ blood is preserved in a mosquito fossilized in amber – come to life.

It’s called “de-extinction,” and it already happened for the first time ten years ago. 

When the last bucardo, a subspecies of the Spanish Ibex, died in 2000, it would be natural to believe that this was the end of the species. But thanks to an intrepid group of wildlife veterinarians, the DNA from the last remaining burcado, a female named Celia, had already been preserved. 

February 14, 2013 – We’ve all been there, standing in front of a Valentine’s Day display at the shop on the corner, you can feel a cold sweat coming on. The barrage of pink and red is almost too much for your brain to process! You have to make it out of this situation with the perfect gift for your valentine, and of course, you’ve waited until the last possible second to pick something up. The candy seems too sweet. What happens if they have an aversion to nougat? A giant card, perhaps? You decide against it after picturing yourself lugging it home on the bus, plus, it would be too hard to get it past the front door without detection. 

Back to the Future Part II crashed into our lives almost 23 years ago, complete with hoverboards, facial recognition software, and a baseball team based in Miami.       

With 2015 not far off on the proverbial horizon, we thought we’d take a look at what Back to the Future Part II got right, and what has not quite made its way into our cultural lexicon.

When I made a list of the all-time ten best science fiction films for my book Hollywood Science (2010), I was surprised to find that three of them feature artificial creatures: machine-like robots in Metropolis (1927) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and human-like androids in Blade Runner (1982). Artificial beings are big in other science fiction films too. A keyword search on “robot” in the Internet Movie Database yields hundreds of feature films, from The Master Mystery (1920) through Westworld (1973), RoboCop  (1987) and A. I. (2001) right up to Real Steel (2011) and this year’s Prometheus, with more in production.