Spock s Planet Saving, Volcano Stopping Device . Here s where things get really hairy. Spock has som

So, by now, we ve all seen Star Trek Into Darkness. Some of us loved it, some of us hated it, some of us said, meh. But, forget about what you thought south america luxury cruises of the movie for a second. What did you think of the science? Let s take a more in depth look at some of the most sciencey moments from STID. It goes without saying, but I ll say it anyways, that this review contains SPOILERS!!!
The Nibiru volcano scene was revealed in the IMAX preview of STID last December. We basically saw the entire scene back then, but there are a few points that I didn t catch the first time around that I ll touch on here.
For the most part, they get this part right. Speaking as a volcanologist who loves to nitpick geology scenes in movies, there is not much for me to gripe about in Into Darkness. Of course, the visual artists did dramatize the scene a bit, but for everything they got wrong there s another detail they got right.
What was wrong visually? I can tell you from experience that the inside of an active volcano doesn t look quite like what we saw in STID. The biggest flaw? Flames. Too much fire and brimstone. Yes, volcanoes produce hot steam, ash, and magma, but what s depicted in STID looks more like a forest fire embers and flames swirling around Spock. Again, this is a somewhat minor point, so it s forgivable.
The visual details that are spot on. The geologist in me was giggling south america luxury cruises with joy when she saw Spock standing atop real lava! The ropey, black rock beneath Spock s feet is really something that came out of a volcano: south america luxury cruises a type of lava rock called Pahoehoe. And, if one was to flash freeze molten volcanic rock as Spock s cold fusion device did, it d look a lot like what we saw on screen: jet black volcanic glass. The best part of the volcano, though, south america luxury cruises was the bubble burst. A gigantic bubble of gas rose through the lava lake and formed a huge dome of lava that loomed south america luxury cruises far above Spock s head. The pressure built up inside the bubble until it burst open, sending bits of molten rock flying in one large catastrophic explosion. That is EXACTLY what happens south america luxury cruises in real lava lakes.
BONUS: Fumaroles on a nearby planetoid! Recall the scene where Carol Marcus and Bones shuttle down to a nearby planetoid to have a go at diffusing of the mysterious photon torpedoes. What you probably didn t realize was that this was a volcanic scene, south america luxury cruises too! My eyes immediately jumped to the flat plain of lava rock (scoria, a type of basaltic volcanic rock) where Carol and Bones were fiddling south america luxury cruises with the torpedo. In the background was a beautifully rendered fumarole a crack in the ground where volcanic gasses escape into the atmosphere. The look and feel of the scene was completely scientifically realistic. What s even better is that it felt like a barren, vast, wasteland. No vegetation, no animal life. This made it really feel like some small volcanic moon or planetoid . I ll go out on a limb here and say this is in my opinion the most realistic looking planetary body I ve ever seen in a movie. Props to the visual artists! Below is a couple of examples of real world locations reminiscent of the torpedo disarming scene in Into Darkness.
south america luxury cruises We cannot take the heat, cap n! Here s where the volcano scene took a turn for the less believable. Both Sulu and Scotty south america luxury cruises suggest that the heat from the volcano is too much for the shuttle or the Enterprise to withstand. Huh? Let s count the logical fallacies, shall we?
Spock s volcano suit. How is it that a human(oid) in a special suit can stand INSIDE OF THE VOLCANO literally feet from the lava, but a shuttlecraft (or, heck, the Enterprise herself!) south america luxury cruises cannot withstand the heat? Are we really supposed to believe that Spock s magical volcano suit is made out of stronger stuff than starships? Why not make the whole ship out of that suit, then??
We ve seen starships like the Enterprise or even shuttlecraft fly through much hotter places than a volcano. Just entering the planet s atmosphere would subject the Enterprise to temperature of around 3000 F (1650 C), which is hotter than the hottest lava on Earth s surface, typically around 2200 F (1200 C). But, even crazier, we ve seen shuttles and starships fly very close to suns, which are more like 8000 F (4500 C). I think big E would be able to handle a little old volcano, don t you?
Let s get even more sciencey. The graph below shows the temperature experienced by a Space Shuttle orbiter on reentry to Earth s atmosphere. The hottest lava on Earth is around 2200 F. The Space Shuttle, the first flight of which was in 1981 can withstand temperature of up to 2500 F. Nineteen Eighty One. In 200 years, I hope we will have advanced far beyond even that!
How they could have made this right, while keeping the stakes high for Spock and the crew. Sulu has one line that I wish they d have played up more in this scene. He mentions south america luxury cruises that the ash from the volcano is getting into the shuttle s systems south america luxury cruises and causing all kinds of damage. THIS is extremely plausible! Volcanic ash is very corrosive, especially to electronics. And, it interferes with air intake systems in engines, which is why airplanes can t fly through volcanic ash clouds here on Earth. This would have been the scientifically accurate reason that the shuttle was struggling, and why it d be dangerous to take the Enterprise in. I m not sure why anyone mentioned the heat being a problem at all.
Spock s Planet Saving, Volcano Stopping south america luxury cruises Device . Here s where things get really hairy. Spock has some device capable of stopping a volcano. You know what? It s the beginning of the movie, things are pretty crazy, so as a moviegoer south america luxury cruises I m going to go ahead and accept that humans have developed the technology to somehow render a volcano inert . But, the geologist inside of me wouldn t let it stand when we saw how the thing worked. As said above, the visual was very cool and quite realistic if one were to flash freeze south america luxury cruises some lava, it woud turn into exactly what we saw. But, flash freezing lava in a volcanic crater would not, by any means, stop a volcano from erupting.
Volcanoes are essentially surface expressions of the deep, churning earth. It s where our planet is turning itself inside out the very hot, very pressurized molten rock living deep in the Earth s crust (and sometimes even below the crust) finds its way to the surface in a grand explosion of fire and light. Freezing the top layer of lava at an erupting volcano is like putting the lid on a pressure cooker turned to 11. The pressure beneath that lid is just going to build up until that volcano erupts even more explosively than it otherwise would have. Of course, sci-fi caveat, one could assume that the device somehow managed to penetrate all the way down (we re talking 10 s of kilometers deep) to the source of the volcano and freeze it from the inside out, but I just have a very hard time believing that.
One of the aspects of the film that I really enjoyed, and not everyone will agree with me on this, was the warp core. Particularly, the shots of the outside of the warp core, which were all filmed at a real life science south america luxury cruises facility: The National Ignition south america luxury cruises Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California. When I imagine what a starship s engine room should look like, I certainly don t imagine this . I imagine a massive piece of equipment that looks like something that could accelerate particles fast enough to create anti-matter. Something thats so massive and complex, it is essentially built into the ship itself. In modern facilities, instruments like particle colliders are a part of the building in which they reside it s not like wheeling south america luxury cruises a computer into the middle of a room.
Some have argued that the NIF warp core feels too modern; that we would be miles beyond that kind of technology by the time Starfleet is around. But, I m not so sure. Warp cores are essentially gigantic south america luxury cruises particle colliders that can store massive amounts of antimatter and use it to power the ship. Why wouldn t a warp core of the future to some degree resemble their 21st century ancestors? Besides, maybe this scene will encourage a few kids to learn about particle physics, and that s just fine by me.
In Star Trek (2009) , we are introduced to Scotty s magical transwarp beaming technology. Yes, Scotty invents a way to beam from place to place across insane distances while at warp . This, if you remember, is how Kirk gets back onto the Enterprise. Okay, so it doesn t work perfectly (Scotty ends up inside one of the water tubes in the engine room), but it works. Enter Into Darkness. south america luxury cruises Khan needs a way to get from Earth to Kronos, and he s on the lam so he doesn t have access to a starship. Khan is also involved in Section 31, the secret agency within Starfleet who, we re told, confiscated Scotty s transwarp equation. That s how Khan was able to beam over to Kronos. Thanks, at least, for being internally consistent with the 2009 film, but I still have to point to this as a totally unrealistic plot device, which moreover makes it way too easy for our heroes to get around. What s the point of a fleet of starships when we can simply beam across light years?
It s hard to comment on the real life science of the transwarp long-distance beaming, since to beam a person even a short distance with today s knowledge of physics would cost unimaginable computing power, and the reassembly of a human being would require the energy input equivalent to about 3,200 suns. So, yeah, transporter technology s not in the near future. But, this transwarp thing isn t even good Trek science. It s not even good writing! It just makes it far too easy. It was a forgivable plot device in the first film, but let s just forget it ever happened and move on. Otherwise, we might as well scrap the fleet and just beam everywhere.
This is one movie mistake that almost everyone I ve talked to, scientist or not, has picked up on. Kronos (or Qo noS), the Klingon home world, may be relatively close to Earth, but according to the pilot episode Broken Bow of Star Trek: Enterprise ,