History abounds with examples of unsung science heroes, researchers and visionaries whose tireless efforts led to enormous breakthroughs and advances, often without credit or lasting widespread esteem. This is particularly true for women and minorities, who have historically been under-represented in STEM-related fields. English mathematician Ada Lovelace is broadly considered the first great tech and computing visionary — she pioneered computer programming language and helped construct what is considered the first computing machine (the Babbage Analytical Engine) in the mid-1800s. Physical chemist Dr. Rosalind Franklin performed essential X-ray crystallography work that ultimately revealed the double-helix shape of DNA (Photograph 51 is one of the most important images in the history of science). Her work was shown (without her permission) to rival King’s College biology duo Watson and Crick, who used the indispensable information to elucidate and publish the molecular structure of DNA, for which they would win a Nobel Prize. Dr. Percy Julian, a grandson of slaves and the first African-American chemist ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences, ingeniously pioneered the synthesis of hormones and other medicinal compounds from plants and soybeans. New movie Hidden Figures, based on the exhaustively researched book by Margot Lee Shetterley, tells the story of three such hitherto obscure heroes: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, standouts in a cohort of African-American mathematicians that helped NASA launch key missions during the tense 19060s Cold War “space race.” More importantly, Hidden Figures is a significant prototype for purpose-driven popular science communication — a narrative and vehicle for integrated multi-media platforms to encourage STEM diversity and scientific achievement.

The participation of women in astrophysics, space exploration and aeronautics goes back to the 1800s at the Harvard College Observatory, as chronicled by Dava Sobell in The Glass Universe, a companion book to Hidden Figures. These women, every bit as intellectually capable and scientifically curious as their male counterparts, took the only opportunity afforded to them, as human “computers,” literally calculating, measuring and analyzing the classification of our universe. By the 1930s, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a precursor that would be subsumed by the creation of NASA in 1958, hired five of these female computers for their Langley aeronautical building in Hampton, Virginia. Shortly after World War II, with the expansion of the female workforce and war fueling innovation for better planes, NACA began hiring college-educated African American female computers. They were segregated to the Western side of the Langley campus (referred to as the “West Computers”), and were required to use separate bathroom and dining facilities, all while being paid less to do equal work as their white counterparts. Many of these daily indignities were chronicled in Hidden Figures. By the 1960s, the Space Program at NASA was defined by the two biggest sociopolitical events of the era: the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. Embroiled in an anxious race with Soviet astronauts to launch a man in orbit (and eventually, to the Moon), NASA needed to recruit the brightest minds available to invent seemingly impossible math to make the mission possible. Katherine Goble (later Johnson), was one of those minds.

Katherine Johnson (portrayed by Taraji P. Henson) was a math prodigy. A high school freshman by the time she was 10 years old, Johnson’s fascination with numbers led her to a teaching position, and eventually, as a human calculator at the Langley NASA facility. Hand-picked to assist the Space Task Group, portrayed in the movie as Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), a fictionalized amalgamation of three directors Johnson worked with in her time at NASA, she had to traverse institutionalized racism, sexism and antagonistic collaborators in her path. Johnson would go on to calculate trajectories that sent both Alan Shepard and John Glenn into space, as well as key data for the Apollo Moon landing. Supporting Johnson are her good friends and fellow NASA colleagues Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe). Vaughan herself was a NASA pioneer, becoming the first black computing section leader and IBM FORTRAN programming expert. Jackson became the first black engineer at NASA, getting special permission to take advanced math courses in a segregated school.

Katherine Johnson’s legacy in science, mathematics, and civil rights cannot be understated. Current NASA chief Charles Bolden thoughtfully paid tribute to the iconic role model in Vanity Fair. “She is a human computer, indeed, but one with a quick wit, a quiet ambition, and a confidence in her talents that rose above her era and her surroundings,” he writes. The Langley NASA facility where she broke barriers and pioneered discovery honored Johnson by dedicating the building in her name last May. Late in 2015, Johnson was bestowed with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Featured prominently in Hidden Figures, technology giant IBM has had a long-standing relationship with NASA ever since the IBM 7090 became the first computing mainframe to be used for flight simulations, with the iconic System/360 mainframe engineering the Apollo Moon landing. Although IBM mainframes are no longer in use for mathematical calculations at NASA, they are partnering through the use of artificial intelligence for space missions. IBM Watson has the capability to sift through thousands of pages of information to get pilots critical data in real time and even monitor and diagnose astronauts’ health as a virtual/intelligence agent.

More importantly, IBM is taking a leadership role in developing STEM outreach education programs and a continued commitment to diversifying the technology workforce for the demands of the 21st Century. 50 years after Katherine Johnson’s monumental feats at NASA, the K-12 achievement gap between white and black students has barely budged. Furthermore, a 2015 STEM index analysis shows that even as the number of STEM-related degrees and jobs proliferates, deeply entrenched gaps between men and women, and an even wider gap between whites and minorities, remain in obtaining STEM degrees. This is exacerbated in the STEM work force, where diversity has largely stalled and women and minorities remain deeply under-represented. And yet, technology companies will need to fill 650,000 new STEM jobs (the fastest growing sector) by 2018, with the highest demand overall for so-called “middle-skill” jobs that may only require technical or community college preparation. Launched in 2011 by IBM, in collaboration with the New York Department of Education, P-TECH is an ambitious six-year education model predominantly aimed at minorities that combines college courses, internships and mentoring with a four year high school education. Armed with a combined high school and associates’ degree, these students would be immediately ready to fill high-tech, diverse workforce needs. Indeed, IBM’s original P-TECH school in Brooklyn has eclipsed national graduation rates for community college degrees over a two-year period, with the technology company committing to widely expanding the program in the coming years. Technology companies becoming stakeholders in, and even innovators of, educational models and partnerships can have profound impacts in innovation, economic growth and diminishing poverty through opportunity.

Dovetailing with the release of Hidden Figures, IBM has also partnered with The New York Times to launch their first augmented reality experience. Combining advocacy, outreach and data mining, the free, downloadable app called “Outthink Hidden” combines the inspirational stories portrayed in Hidden Figures with digitally-interactive content to create a PokemonGo-style nationwide hunt about STEM figures, historical leaders, places and areas of research across the country. The app can be used interactively at 150 locations in 10 U.S. cities, STEM Centers (such as NASA Langley Research Center and Kennedy Space Center) and STEM Universities to learn not just about the three mathematicians featured in Hidden Figures, but also other diverse STEM pioneers. Coupled with the powerful wide impact of Hollywood storytelling and a complimentary book release, “Outthink Hidden” could be an important prototype for engaging young tech-savvy students, possibly even in organized, classroom environments, and promoting interest in exploring STEM education, careers and mentorship opportunities.

There are no easy solutions for reforming STEM education or diversifying the talent pool in research labs and technology companies. But we can provide compelling narrative through movies and TV shows, and, increasingly, digital content. Perhaps the first step to inspiring and cultivating the next Katherine Johnson is simply to start by telling more stories like hers.

View a trailer for Hidden Figures:

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ScriptPhD.com covers science and technology in entertainment, media and advertising. Hire our consulting company for creative content development. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes.

Dr. Kevin Grazier has made a career of studying intergalactic planetary formation, and, over the last few years, helping Hollywood writers integrate physics smartly into storylines for popular TV shows like Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Defiance and the blockbuster film Gravity. His latest book, Hollyweird Science: From Quantum Quirks to the Multiverse traverses delightfully through the science-entertainment duality as it first breaks down the portrayal of science in movies and television, grounding the audience in screenplay lexicon, then elucidates a panoply of physics and astronomy principles through the lens of storylines, superpowers and sci-fi magic. With the help of notable science journalist Stephen Cass, Hollyweird Science is accessible to the layperson sci-fi fan wishing to learn more about science, a professional scientist wanting to apply their knowledge to higher-order examples from TV and film or Hollywood writers and producers of future science-based materials. From case studies, to in-depth interviews to breaking down the Universe and its phenomena one superhero and far-away galaxy at a time, this first volume of an eventual trilogy is the essential foundation towards understanding how science is integrated into a story and ensuring that future TV shows and movies do so more accurately than ever before. Full ScriptPhD review and podcast with author and science advisor Dr. Grazier below.

Most people who watch movies and TV shows never went to film school. They are not familiar with the intricacies of three-act structure, tropes, conceits and MacGuffins that are the skeletal framework of a standard storytelling toolkit. Yet no genre is more rooted in and dependent on setup and buying into a payoff than sci-fi and films conceptualized in scientific logic. Many, if not most, critiques of science in entertainment don’t fully acknowledge that integrating abstruse science/technology with the complex constraints of time, length, character development and screenplay format is incredibly demanding. Hollyweird Science does point out some egregious examples of “information pollution” and the “Hollywood Curriculum Cycle” – the perpetuation bad, if not fictitious, science. But after grounding the reader in a primer of the fundamental building blocks of movie-making and TV structure, not only is there a more positive, forgiving tone in breaking down the history of the sci-fi canon (some of which predicted many of the technological gadgets we enjoy today), but even a celebration of just how much and how often Hollywood gets the science right.

Conversely, the vast majority of Hollywood writers, producers and directors don’t regularly come across PhD scientists in real life, and have to form impressions of doctors, scientists and engineers based on… other portrayals in entertainment. Scientists, after all, represent only 0.2 percent of the U.S. population as a whole, and less than 700,000 of all jobs belong to doctors and surgeons. And while these professions are amply represented on screen in number, that’s not necessarily been the case in accuracy. The insular self-reliance of screenwriters on their own biases has led to stereotyping and pigeonholing of scientists into a series of familiar archetypes (nerds, aloof omniscient sidekicks), as Grazier and Cass take us through a thorough, labyrinthine archive of TV and movie scientists. But as scientists have become more involved in advising productions, and have become more prominent and visible in today’s innovation-driven society, their on screen counterparts have likewise become a more accurate reflection of these demographics – mainstream hits like The Big Bang Theory, CSI (and its many procedural spinoffs), Breaking Bad and films like Gravity, The Martian, Interstellar and The Imitation Game are just a recent sampling.

If you’re going to teach a diverse group of readers about the principles of physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics and energy forms, it’s best to start with the basics. Even if you’ve never picked up a physics textbook, Hollyweird Science provides a fundamental overview of matter, mass, elements, energy, planet and star formation, time, radiation and the quantum mechanics of universe behavior. More important than what these principles are, Grazier discerns what they are not, with running examples from iconic television series, movies and sci-fi characters. What exactly is the difference between weight and mass and force, per the opening scene of the film Gravity? How are different forms of energy classified? Are the radioactive giants of Godzilla and King Kong realistic? What exactly happens when Scotty is beamed up? Buoying the analytical content are a myriad of interviews with writers and producers, expounding honestly about working with scientists, incorporating science into storytelling and where conflicts arose in the creative process.

People who want to delve into more complex science can do so through “science boxes” embedded throughout the book – sophisticated mathematical and physics analyses of entertainment staples, trivial and significant. Among my favorites: why Alice in Wonderland is a great example of allometric scaling, the thermal radiation of cinematography lighting, hypothesizing Einsteinian relativity for the Back To The Future DeLorean, and just how hot is The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four? (Pretty dang hot.)

The next time readers see an asteroid making a deep impact, characters zipping through interplanetary travel, or an evil plot to harbor a new form of destructive energy, they’ll have a scientific foundation to ask simple, but important, questions. Is this reasonable science, rooted in the principles of physics? Even if embellished for the sake of advancing a story, could it theoretically happen? And for Hollywood writers, how can science advance a plot or help a character solve their connundrum? In our podcast below, Dr. Grazier explains why physics and astronomy were such an important bedrock of the first book – and of science-based entertainment – and previews what other areas of science, technology and medicine future sequels will analyze.

In the long run, Hollyweird Science will serve as far more than just a groundbreaking book, regardless of its rather seamless nexus between fun pop culture break-down and serious scientific didactic tool. It’s a part of a conceptual bridge towards an inevitable intellecutal alignment between Hollywood, science and technology. Over the last 10-15 years, portayal of scientists and ubiquity of science content has increased exponentially on screen – so much so, that what was a fringe niche even 20 years ago is now mainstream and has powerful influence in public perception and support for science. Science and technology will proliferate in importance to society, not just in the form of personal gadgets, but as problem-solving tools for global issues like climate change, water access and advancing health quality. Moreover, at a time when Americans’ grasp of basic science is flimsy, at best, any material that can repurpose the universal love of movies and television to impart knowledge and generate excitement is significant. We are at the precipice of forging a permanent link between Hollywood, science and pop culture. The Hollyweird series is the perfect start.

In an exclusive podcast conversation with ScriptPhD.com, Dr. Grazier discussed the overarching themes and concepts that influenced both “Hollyweird Science” and his ongoing consulting in the entertainment industry. These include:

•How the current Golden Age of sci-fi arose and why there’s more science and technology content in entertainment than ever
•Why scientists and screenwriters are remarkably similar
•Why physics and astronomy are the building blocks of the majority of science fiction
•How the “Hollyweird Science” trilogy can be used as a didactic tool for scientists and entertainment figures
•His favorite moments working both in science and entertainment

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ScriptPhD.com covers science and technology in entertainment, media and advertising. Hire our consulting company for creative content development. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes.

The Martian, is a film adaptation of the inventive, groundbreaking hard sci-fi adventure tale. Like Robinson Crusoe on Mars, it’s a triumph of engineering and basic science, a love letter to innovation and the greatest feats humans are capable of through collaboration. Directed by sci-fi legend Ridley Scott, and following in the footsteps of space epics Gravity and Interstellar, The Martian offers a stunning virtual imagination of Mars, glimpses of NASA’s new frontier – astronauts on Mars – and the stakes of a mission that will soon become a reality. Below, ScriptPhD.com reviews The Martian (an Editor’s Selection) and, with the help of a planetary researcher at The California Science Center, we break down some basics about Mars missions and the planetary science depicted in the film (interactive video).

That the film version of The Martian even exists is a testament to the unlikely success story of Andy Weir’s novel. A self-described science geek and gainfully employed computer programmer, he started writing a novel on the side, self-publishing chapter by chapter on an independent website. Word spread naturally, readers flocked, eventually, a completed book found a publisher and inevitably Hollywood came calling. Sounds about as realistic as… an astronaut being abandoned on a planet and having to make his own way back to Earth. But this is the exact fast-paced, thrilling plot behind one of the biggest hard sci-fi adventures of all time. Amidst an unexpected Martian sand storm, the crew of Ares 3 (the third fictionalized manned mission to Mars) becomes separated and erroneously thinks one of their members, Mark Watney, has died. They scramble to evacuate the red planet, leaving him very much alive with minimal food, water and tools to fend for himself and no communication to speak of.

With chemistry, botany, physics, engineering, home garage junk science and some self-deprecating humor, Watney must protect himself in the harsh Martian setting, figure out a way to let NASA know he’s alive, craft an escape plan, all while managing to overcome one after another devastating setback. At its heart, The Martian is a pure self-reliant survival tale, a staple of popular fiction. Despite its space setting and unapologetically elaborate scientific plot, it’s a story about a really smart guy who is – in the words of one of the many 70s disco songs throughout – stayin’ alive.

The movie adaptation remains mostly faithful to the central plot, necessarily trimming a few of Mark Watney’s perilous side adventures and unnecessarily supplanting Weir’s sardonic dialogue and one liners. The film sometimes lacks the ubiquitous sense of immediate urgency and desperation present throughout the book, but it makes up for it with more polished transitions and the ability to “think big” that is unique to cinema and critical to a science fiction. Most importantly, Matt Damon (as Watney) ably juggles vulnerability, scientific confidence and geek-chic sarcasm of an iconic sci-fi character.

One of the strengths of Weir’s book is the reader’s ability to visualize every detail of the Mars landscape and its phenomena through intricate first-person storytelling. The most important transition from such a detailed book to film is translating that visual realm, from the rolling red Martian plains and hills to the contrast of the confined space shuttle his crew is in to the chaotic flurry of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The vastness of the Martian terrain, incurring both abject loneliness and giddy awe in Watney (with whom we spend the majority of the film) is brilliantly rendered by Scott’s wide angles and grand, sweeping shots. It renders more power to a scene in which the astronaut, unsure if he’ll make it out alive, asks that his parents be told how happy he still is as a scientist, despite everything. “Tell them I love what I do. It’s important. It’s bigger than me.” In that moment, we truly believe him.

For a narrative in which the main character is forced to “science the s—t” out of his predicament, not knowing that back on Earth NASA is doing the very same, one would expect an endless supply of science and technology magic. In that regard, neither the book nor the movie disappoints. But what is truly surprising is the degree of plausibility and accuracy woven throughout the space survival tale. While all recent space films, including Gravity and Interstellar, have been meticulously well researched and inventive, The Martian compounds imagination with incredible scientific reality. For one thing, much of the technology already used by NASA is incorporated into the story. For another, author Andy Weir and director Ridley Scott reaffirmed how hard they worked to get the science right. “Originally The Martian was a serial that I had posted on my website chapter-by-chapter,” said author Weir. “If there were errors in the physics or chemistry problems or whatever, [my readers] would email me. It was great. I got sort of crowd-sourced fact checking. And while some of the science is still not quite air-tight, not only does The Martian take its science very seriously, it managed to thoroughly impress the toughest customer of all – NASA itself!

(For a full Mars primer and breakdown of the planetary science seen in the film, see ScriptPhD.com’s excusive video below.)

With all of the people furiously working to keep Watney alive – the NASA ground crew, Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers, the Ares 3 crew, and even Watney himself – the real hero and main star of The Martian is science itself. Science facilitates Watney’s survival of the initial Martian storm, allows him to generate food and water to stay alive, traverse the unforgiving landscape and engineer a series of clever technological adaptations to establish communication and series of hopeful escape plans. Most importantly, it allows for an unlikely international alliance to save Watney. “It just goes to show,” [NASA Director] Teddy [Sander] said. “Love of science is universal across all cultures.” This important line from the book is reiterated in the film.

NASA has stated that it aspires to execute a manned mission to Mars by about 2030, a project no doubt buoyed by the exciting revelation that the Curiosity rover has found evidence of flowing water nearby. Expensive, dangerous missions, however, rely on public support for momentum – particularly because NASA research is publicly funded. And movies are often an important cultural gateway to engender and grow such support. NASA advisors of sci-fi film The Europa Report hoped it would inspire a real mission someday. One of ScriptPhD’s favorites from the last few years, Moon, and ambitious sci-fi hit Interstellar have the potential to re-ignite a new space race.

In an exclusive podcast with ScriptPhD.com a few years ago, noted astronomer and science communicator Brian Cox fervently advocated that NASA embrace its greatest challenge to date – manned exploration of Mars: because it’s hard, because we are meant to push the boundaries of the far edges of our galactic frontiers, because space exploration is the greatest universal manifestation of our ability to innovate and engineer. To the extent that The Martian manages to inspire and ignite this idea wih the mainstream public, it will stake claim as more than just a sci-fi benchmark. It will be seen as a catalyst for exploration history. After all, NASA did just announce plans to finally explore life on Jupiter’s moon Europa as depicted in Stanley Kubrik’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Interested in learning more about all the planetary science that goes into executing a Mars mission? The likelihood of Watney’s survival and some of the technical and scientific feats he pulls off on the red planet? I was privileged to head out to the California Science Center, location of the first ever Viking Mars rover prototype, to break down the science of Mars missions with Devin Waller, a planetary scientist and former Mars researcher.

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ScriptPhD.com covers science and technology in entertainment, media and advertising. Hire our consulting company for creative content development. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes.

The last 25 years have brought an unprecedented level of scientific and technological advances, impacting virtually all dimensions of society, from communication and the digital revolution, to economics and food production to nanotechnology and medicine – and that’s just a start. The next few decades will rapidly expand this progress with exponential discovery and innovation, amidst more pressing global challenges than we’ve ever faced before. The opportunities to develop faster, better and cheaper products that improve modern living are limitless – Tesla electric cars, energy-saving fuels and machines, robotics – but they all share a common basic need for developing and studying materials in a more efficient manner. This will require a real-time acceleration of sharing, analytics and simulation through readily accessible databases. Essentially, an open-source wiki for materials scientists. In our in-depth article below, ScriptPhD.com explains why materials science is the most critical gateway towards 21st Century technology and how California startup company Citrine Informatics is providing revolutionary new information extraction software to create a crowdsourced, open access database available to any scientist.

There has been a public access revolution of sorts transforming science. A necessary one, at that. Science funding is in crisis. The peer-review process is under heavy scrutiny. And scientists are turning to transparency to help. Some notable billionaires are circumventing public funding and privatizing science. Molecular biologist Ethan Perlstein has used crowdfunding to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public at large for a basic research lab. Last fall, as the Ebola crisis gripped the world’s attention, an expert researcher at The Scripps Research Institute (where I received a PhD) appealed to public crowd funding to raise $100,000 for vaccine research. With platforms like Experiment, RocketHub and KickStarter proliferating support for science, the public at large has begun to serve as an important incubator of innovation. More importantly, researchers are increasingly rethinking traditional academic publishing and recognizing the value of open data sharing through publications and databases. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is the biggest non-profit advocate and publisher of open access research. Mainstream journals like Science have begun publishing free web-based alternatives that are immediately accessible. Calls for unified data sharing have grown louder and more widespread. Even the FDA has announced plans for crowdsourcing a genomics research platform to improve efficiency of diagnostic and clinical tests and their analysis. Far from hindering the scientific process and output, these efforts have accelerated alternative means of funding, data acquisition and exchange, collaboration and ultimately, discovery.

Think about virtually any practical aspect of life and it relies on materials. Transportation of any kind, Kevlar vests, sports equipment, communication devices, clothing, growing and making food… it’s impossible to think about modern society in even the most impoverished developing countries without them. Now think on a bigger scale. Superconductors. Carbon nanotubules. Graphene. The materials of the future that make even these breakthroughs obsolete. So crucial is materials science to all facets of economics, research and quality of life, that in 2011, the United States Government launched a Materials Genome Initiative. A partnership between the private sector industry, universities, and the government, its primary goal is to utilize a materials genome approach to cut the cost and time to market for basic materials products by 50%.

The only problem with materials research? Data. And lots of it. Aided largely by digital services and a proliferation of technology research – not to mention marketplace for the products that it makes possible – there is so much data produced today that the process of testing, developing, tweaking and inserting a material into a product takes about 20 years, according to the National Academy of Sciences. To combat this, materials scientists and engineers have growingly embraced a similar open access philosophy to that of life scientists. Leading science publisher Elsevier recently launched an infrastructure called “Open Data” to facilitate materials science data sharing across thirteen major publications. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory just created the world’s largest database of elastic properties, a virtual gold mine for scientists working on materials that require mechanical properties for things like cars and airplanes. NASA has even opened a Physical Science Informatics database of all of its space station materials research in the hopes that the crowdsourcing accelerates engineering research discovery, applicable both to space and Earth.

Citrine Informatics, a startup company in California, is hoping to unify these concepts of data sharing and mining through open access web-based software (boosted by crowdsourcing) to build a comprehensive, open database of materials and chemical data. Essentially, Citrine is rolling out a cloud platform (Citrination) that will act as a digital middle man between data acquisition and product development. And rather than storing it in vastly differing locations under differing access guidelines, Citrination’s algorithms gather all available data (from publications to databases to publicly shared data from private companies) in order to show properties under different conditions, including when they might fail. A simple, mainframe registry database allows users to upload data, build customized data sets and see all known properties of a particular material under all different physical conditions (see below). Rater than testing and retesting internal materials data internally, thus lengthening R&D pipelines, research labs can simply model based on available information and adjust experiments accordingly.

“What we do represents a big change in the status quo,” co-founder Bryce Meredig says. “A lot of the scientists in these industries don’t have a natural inclination to turn to software to solve these problems.” Until now. The software will be made free to not for profit research institutions and will sell to materials and chemical companies that want to avail themselves of the wealth of data. Citrine has used a large recent infusion of grant funding to raise their ambition beyond a database and towards applications like 3D printing, renewable energy technology (co-founder Greg Mulholland was recognized by Forbes as a 30 under 30 leader in energy) and the next generation of devices.

The practical benefits to society as a whole of extending open access and crowdsourcing to materials science are tremendous. On an individual level, virtually every computer and mobile device we put in our hands, every gadget and machine we buy in the future will depend on improved materials. On a more wide-scale level, materials will be at the forefront of solving the most complex, important challenges to our planet and its inhabitants, none more important than the energy crisis. Food production, water purification and distribution, transportation, infrastructure all will rely on creating sustainable energy. More ambitious endeavors such as space travel, medical treatments and advanced research collaborations will be even more reliant on new and improved materials. The faster that scientists, researchers and engineers are able to mine data from previous experiments, replicate it and design smarter studies based on computerized algorithms of how those materials behave, the faster they can produce breakthroughs in the laboratory and into the marketplace. The stakes are high. The scientific rewards are infinite. The time to open and use a free-access materials database is now.

This article was sponsored by Citrine Informatics.

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ScriptPhD.com covers science and technology in entertainment, media and advertising. Hire our consulting company for creative content development. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes.

As part of an ongoing recommitment to its sci-fi genre roots, SyFy Channel is unveiling the original scripted drama Ascension, for now a six hour mini-series, and possible launch for a future series. It follows a crew aboard the starship Ascension, as part of a 1960s mission that sent 600 men, women and children on a 100 year planned voyage to populate a new world. In the midst of political unrest onboard the vessel, the approach of a critical juncture in the mission and the first-ever murder onboard the craft, the audience soon learns, there is more to the mission than meets the eye. Which can also be said of this multi-layered, ambitious, sophisticated mini-series. Full ScriptPhD review below.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely fueled by the heigh of Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and fears of mutual nuclear destruction, the United States government, in conjunction with NASA, launched a project that would have sent 150 people into various corners of space — from the Moon, to Mars and eventually Saturn. Code-named Orion, the project officially launched in 1958 at General Atomics in San Diego under the leadership of nuclear researcher Frederick deHoffman, Los Alamos weapons specialist Theodore Taylor and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. Largely fueled by Dyson, Orion’s aim was to build a spacecraft equipped with atomic bombs, that would propel the rocket further and further into space through a series of well-timed explosions (nuclear propulsion). The partial test ban treaty of 1963 ended the grandiose project, which remains classified to this day.

Ascension is the seamless fictional transition borne of asking “what if” questions about the erstwhile Project Orion. What if it never ended? What if it was still ongoing? What would be the psychological ramifications of entire generations of people born, raised and living on a closed vessel? Is human habitation of other planets an uncertainty or inevitability? And so Project Orion continued on as Project Ascension, under the hands of Abraham Enzmann. A crew of 600 was sent off into space not knowing the fate of humanity, frozen in time, and as far as they know — all that would be left of mankind.

Ascension carries on in the vein of stylish series such as Caprica, Helix and Defiance, with sleek sci-fi gadgetry and a spaceship capable of mimicking an entire world (including a beach!) for 100 years. This is no dilapidated, aging Battlestar Galactica. However, because time is frozen in the 1960s, all technology, clothes and cultural collections reflect that era — think Mad Men in space. Nostalgia reigns with references to the Space Race via speeches from President Kennedy, along with film and television cornerstones of that era.

51 years into the mission, on the evening of the annual launch party celebration, a kind of Ascension independence day, the unthinkable happens: the first ever murder onboard the ship. Captain William Denninger puts first officer Aaron Gault in charge of investigating. Soon, the motives for the murder become convoluted amidst internal politics and the looming “Insurrection,” a point of no return in which communication with Earth is no longer possible.

This year’s space epic Interstellar explored the science of traveling 10 billion light years away from Earth – ambitiously but not without factual fault. And to be sure, Ascension will address the challenges and physics of nuclear propulsion to the far reaches of space, starting with a radiation storm midway through the first episode. But rather than bogging itself down in the astrophysical minutiae of space travel, Ascension smartly focuses on the human drama and existential questions such a voyage would incur, precisely what made Battlestar Galactica such compelling sci-fi television. Would there be internal psychological ramifications to this journey? All residents of the ship seem to go through an adolescent period termed “The Crisis,” where they come to grips with the fact that they have no future, and a pre-determined fate. Furthermore, the murder victim’s young sister appears to be a “seer” with telekinetic insight into the nefarious inner workings of the ship.

Would there be class division and political turmoil aboard such a confined community? There is a decidedly troublesome rift between the ranking officers of the upper quarters and the “Below Deckers”: butchers, steelworkers and other blue-collar craftsmen that appear on the edge of a revolt. Compounding their efforts are the Captain’s wife, Viondra Denninger (whom fans will recognize as Cylon Number Six from BSG), a cunning, manipulative power broker and the man seeking to wrestle control of the ship from her husband. Back on Earth, we meet Harris Enzmann, the son of the dying Project Ascension founder. Seemingly a low level government engineer, nor remotely interested in preserving his father’s legacy, his role in Project Ascension is convoluted yet significant.

Project Ascension is indeed an experiment critical for human survival — just not the one anyone onboard thinks it is. Amidst an awakened collective imagination about space exploration, including 2015’s IMAX Mars mission movie Journey To Space, this is one sci-fi mission worth taking.

View a trailer for Ascension:

Ascension is a three-day mini-series event on SyFy Channel, beginning Monday, December 15.

~*ScriptPhD*~

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Space movies are almost always grandiose in their storytelling aspirations. The enormity of space, the raw power of the shuttle, the existential quandary of whether we are alone in a vast Universe, and (as is the case in Gravity) an almost-inevitable crisis that must be resolved to steer the astronauts onboard to safety. There is one critical detail, however, that most fail to convey visually—solitude. Dr. Katherine Coleman, who spent thousands of hours aboard the shuttles Columbia and the International Space Station, and who was a primary mentor to star Sandra Bullock, recounts isolation—spatial separation, physical movements, zero gravity and a distant Earth—as the biggest challenge and reward she faced as an astronaut. With a tense, highly focused storyline centered almost entirely on one brave scientist, Gravity is a virtual space flight for the audience, but also a gripping examination of emotional and physical sequestration. Through this vista, we are able to perceive how beautiful, terrifying and enormous space truly is. Full ScriptPhD.com Gravity review under the “continue reading” cut.

It is in this backdrop that we are first introduced to Mission Specialist Ryan Stone (Bullock), a medical engineer turned novice astronaut sent to repair an arm of the Hubble Telescope, and ebullient, assertive veteran Mission Commander Matt Kowalski (Clooney), out on his last voyage in space. During a routine scanning system installation on the exterior of their shuttle, an intentional demolition of an obsolete satellite sends shrapnel debris unexpectedly hurling through space right in their direction. This nightmare scenario, called the Ablation Cascade, was first hypothesized back in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler. Once the density of objects flying in low Earth orbit became high enough (everything from space junk to satellites to intergalactic matter), a collision between two of those objects would lead to further collisions with other nearby objects, each creating more dangerous debris hurling through space. With catastrophic damage to their shuttle, Kowalski and Ryan are the sole survivors with no access to NASA Mission Control and no ability to steer their shuttle home. Limited oxygen supply and a series of tragic consequences soon leave the two astronauts to survival instincts and a last-ditch escape via an international space station as their only hope for returning to Earth.

Much like its smart 2013 predecessor, Europa Report, Gravity is a highly technical, pinpoint-accurate movie that relied on input from NASA astronauts and physicists for every level of execution. Director Alfonso Cuarón, working on his first big screen film in seven years, worked painstakingly alongside a talented crew to implement previously-unproven digital technologies aimed at transporting audiences into weightless space.

Dr. Michael Massimino, a Hubble service specialist with missions on Space Shuttles Columbia and Atlantis, provided insight into space travel and space walking. In addition, Clooney and Bullock spent hours training for zero gravity conditions, while artistic directors and technical crew built special stage-size light boxes and green screens to be able to create remarkable CGI renderings of space from all angles. “Even if [Gravity] was a work of fiction,” Cuarón remarked at a recent screening preview, “We wanted everything, especially the physics of space, to be as accurate as possible.”

Despite the thrilling story and technical fidelity, there is a stylistic beauty to Gravity rooted in simplicity, a silent abyss in the midst of intergalactic chaos. Cuarón’s desire to showcase space as a central physical and thematic piece of his movie is reflected in every frame. He perceived Gravity to be an existential film about “a woman drifting into the void and confronting adversity.” Rather than being tethered to the constraints of a time and place, however, the solar elements of space are the surge of life that inspires her to keep going.

“I used to think that astronauts wanted to go into space for the thrill and adventure,” Bullock reflected. “When I spoke to them, though, I was so moved by their deep love of that world and the beauty of Earth from their perspective. It’s amazing to realize how small we are in this massive universe.” These are the very details that are magnified on screen as the story unfolds – a tiny human being drifting in the enormity of space, a comforting human voice on the radio amid total abyss, a teardrop defying gravity, the magic of another sunrise viewed from millions of miles away.

Far more than just a creative interpretation of space, Gravity is that rare piece of art that can inspire and entertain, a true game-changer in a crowded space film genre. As Dr. Massimino emotionally reminded the press during the preview screening, centers like NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA are still doing important research as part of a space program that is very much thriving and as critical as it has ever been. Gravity is a magical way to bring the masses into space and inspire a new generation of support for NASA. “This movie will make folks understand what we do and why it is so important,” Massimino hopes.

As a love letter to space exploration and the sheer strength of human tenacity, Gravity exceeds all expectations.

Gravity goes into wide release in theaters and IMAX on October 4, 2013.

View an extended Gravity trailer:

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In 2007, new NASA research suggested that underneath the vast ice sheaths of Jupiter’s moon Europa lay oceanic water, which is a key element to support life. The Galileo probe, which had been orbiting the moons of Jupiter since December of 1995, was constantly orbiting and swooshing near the sixth largest moon in the solar system, collecting pictures and data that could prove the existence of liquid water. Then in 2011, scientists hit a proverbial jackpot—evidence for two liquid lakes the volume of the North American Great Lakes underneath a region of jumbled ice blocks termed the ‘Conamara Chaos.’ Even in the wake of such exciting discoveries, critical budget cuts severely threatened NASA’s space program, including the Mars rover and Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. This same time frame gave concurrent rise to private space travel, led by the commercial venture Virgin Galactic and ambitious research company Space X. The merger of limitless industry resources with the possibility of uncovering alien life seems like a perfect Hollywood pitch. Such is the scenario explored in the brilliant documentary-style sci-fi thriller Europa Report. A full ScriptPhD review under the “continue reading” cut.

First conceptualized in 2009, prior to NASA’s landmark discovery of Jupiter’s large lakes, Europa Report explores the fundamental question driving space discovery: “Are we alone?” With private funds and advanced technology at their disposal, the fictitious Europa Ventures space exploration company enlists seven brilliant voyagers for the groundbreaking “Europa Mission,” the first venture beyond Earth’s orbit since 1972. Masterminded by company founders Drs. Samantha Unger and Tarik Pamuk, who also narrate the film and drive the story forward in current time, the multi-year investigative mission (16 months on Europa alone!) would combine state-of-the-art science with modern entertainment. Europa Report’s first act parlays the mundane lull of life in space—exercise to stave off atrophy, recycling urine for distilled water, ship engineers Andrei Blok and James Corrigan bickering in close quarters—overshadowed by the hints of future tragedy.

Indeed, approximately six months into their journey, the Europa Mission communications with ground control are cut off by an unexpected solar storm. From here, the film cleverly seesaws between the present and chronological flashbacks, as the crew bravely decides to press on with their journey. The film’s tempo subtlely, but effectively, picks up with a series of tragic events that affect the crew. When the ship is stranded on the moon’s surface due to heat beneath the ice surface, the crew take drastic steps, led by pilot Rosa Dasque to ensure that the precious data they collected is not for naught.

Europa Report is easily the most realistic depiction of travel and life in space since 2009’s Moon and the 1960s standard-bearer 2001: A Space Odyssey. Committed to the accuracy of its sets, shuttle, space imagery and scientific data, Europa Report relied on heavy consultation with NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SpaceX and other scientific leaders from the planning and execution of the mission to what the surface of Europa would look like. Filmmakers worked with astrobiologists to conceive theoretical, yet plausible, Europa life forms from the bioluminescent ones that exist deep in the Earth’s oceans. The depiction of the Europa landing is one of the most exciting science movie moments I have ever seen on screen.

With the help of NASA and SpaceX, set designer Eugenio Caballero built a fully authentic spaceship, including living quarters, control area and zero gravity wirework. After production was complete, the visual effects team replicated the Europa exterior environment based on data and imagery collected during the Galileo mission. Perhaps as a result, some of the film’s strongest sequences occur when Dr. Katya Petrovna tenuously ventures on the icy surface to collect data and explore the surroundings, leading to the heart-stopping conclusion that both seals the team’s ultimate fate and reaffirms the value of their mission.

“This project felt like a unique opportunity to do something plausible but forward thinking, somewhere between NASA and Star Trek,” said Ben Browning, whose company Wayfare Entertainment developed the film.

Europa Report is constructed to feel like a documentary or voyeuristic web stream of a very real (and altogether possible) scientific experiment. That a reality show would be borne of such an undertaking is a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, the film leaves several important overarching existential questions that we must examine in our inevitable quest to search the galaxy for extra-terrestrial life. Even if we find life forms in the outer galaxy, do we really want to know what’s out there? Or perturb it? In the case of Europa Report, a terrifying conclusion conjures up as many fears as it answers exciting possibilities. Secondly, as technology makes extreme space travel to previously-unreached distances possible, we must never forget the element of danger that fuels the bravery of the astronauts and scientist that

undertake these endeavors. Lastly, is the commercialization of space a good idea? In the wake of celebrities buying shuttle rides into Earth’s orbit and space ventures funded by billionaires, who will maintain regulatory oversight and scientific integrity?

Ultimately, it’s inevitable that there will be a real-life mission to Europa, or even beyond. And an even bigger possibility that a groundbreaking discovery of current life in outer space will be made. But until that day, Europa Report unveils a grand science experiment before our eyes and perhaps, even a glimpse into the future.

View a trailer for Europa Report:

Europa Report goes into limited theatrical release on August 2, 2013 and is available On Demand.

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For every friendly robot we see in science fiction such as Star Wars‘s C3PO, there are others with a more sinister reputation that you can find in films such as I, Robot. Indeed, most movie robots can be classified into a range of archetypes and purposes. Science boffins at Cambridge University have taken the unusual step of evaluating the exact risks of humanity suffering from a Terminator-style meltdown at the Cambridge Project for Existential Risk.

“Robots On the Run” is currently an unlikely scenario, so don’t stockpile rations and weapons in panic just yet. But with machine intelligence continually evolving, developing and even crossing thresholds of creativity and and language, what holds now might not in the future. Robotic technology is making huge advances in great part thanks to the efforts of Japanese scientists and Robot Wars. For the time being, the term AI (artificial intelligence) might sound like a Hollywood invention (the term was translated by Steven Spielberg in a landmark film, after all), but the science behind it is real and proliferating in terms of capability and application. Robots can now “learn” things through circuitry similar to the way humans pick up information. Nevertheless, some scientists believe that there are limits to the level of intelligence that robots will be able to achieve in the future. In a special ScriptPhD review, we examine the current state of artificial intelligence, and the possibilities that the future holds for this technology.

Is AI a false dawn?

While artificial intelligence has certainly delivered impressive advances in some respects, it has also not successfully implemented the kind of groundbreaking high-order human activity that some would have envisaged long ago. Replicating technology such as thought, conversation and reasoning in robots is extraordinarily complicated. Take, for example, teaching robots to talk. AI programming has enabled robots to hold rudimentary conversations together, but the conversation observed here is extremely simple and far from matching or surpassing even everyday human chit-chat. There have been other advances in AI, but these tend to be fairly singular in approach. In essence, it is possible to get AI machines to perform some of the tasks we humans can cope with, as witnessed by the robot “Watson” defeating humanity’s best and brightest at the quiz show Jeopardy!, but we are very far away from creating a complete robot that can manage humanity’s complex levels of multi-tasking.

Despite these modest advances to date, technology throughout history has often evolved in a hyperbolic pattern after a long, linear period of discovery and research. For example, as the Cambridge scientists pointed out, many people doubted the possibility of heavier-than-air flight. This has been achieved and improved many times over, even to supersonic speeds, since the Wright Brothers’ unprecedented world’s first successful airplane flight. In last year’s sci-fi epic Prometheus the android David is an engineered human designed to assist an exploratory ship’s crew in every way. David anticipates their desires, needs, yet also exhibits the ability to reason, share emotions and feel complex meta-awareness. Forward-reaching? Not possible now? Perhaps. But by 2050, computers controlling robot “brains” will be able to execute 100 trillion instructions per second, on par with human brain activity. How those robots order and utilize these trillions of thoughts, only time will tell!

If nature can engineer it, why can’t we?

The human brain is a marvelous feat of natural engineering. Making sense of this unique organ singularly differentiates the human species from all others requires a conglomeration of neuroscience, mathematics and physiology. MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung is attempting to do precisely that – reverse engineer the human brain in order to map out every neuron and connection therein, creating a road map to how we think and function. The feat, called the connectome, is likely to be accomplished by 2020, and is probably the first tentative step towards creating a machine that is more powerful than human brain. No supercomputer that can simulate the human brain exists yet. But researchers at the IBM cognitive computing project, backed by a $5 million grant from US military research arm DARPA, aim to engineer software simulations that will complement hardware chips modeled after how the human brain works. The research is already being implemented by DARPA into brain implants that have better control of artificial prosthetic limbs.

The plausibility that technology will catch up to millions of years of evolution in a few years’ time seems inevitable. But the question remains… what then? In a brilliant recent New York Times editorial, University of Cambridge philosopher Huw Price muses about the nature of human existentialism in an age of the singularity. “Indeed, it’s not really clear who “we” would be, in those circumstances. Would we be humans surviving (or not) in an environment in which superior machine intelligences had taken the reins, to speak? Would we be human intelligences somehow extended by nonbiological means? Would we be in some sense entirely posthuman (though thinking of ourselves perhaps as descendants of humans)?” Amidst the fears of what engineered beings, robotic or otherwise, would do to us, lies an even scarier question, most recently explored in Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi horror epic Splice: what responsibility do we hold for what we did to them?

Is it already checkmate, AI?

Artificial intelligence computers have already beaten humans hands down in a number of computational metrics, perhaps most notably when the IBM chess computer Deep Blue outwitted then-world champion Gary Kasparov back in 1997, or the more recent aforementioned quiz show trouncing by deep learning QA machine Watson. There are many reasons behind these supercomputing landmarks, not the least of which is a much quicker capacity for calculations, along with not being subject to the vagaries of human error. Thus, from the narrow AI point of view, hyper-programmed robots are already well on their way, buoyed by hardware and computing advances and programming capacity. According to Moore’s law, the amount of computing power we can fit on a chip doubles every two years, an accurate estimation to date, despite skeptics who claim that the dynamics of Moore’s law will eventually reach a limit. Nevertheless, futurist Ray Kurtzweil predicts that computers’ role in our lives will expand far beyond tablets, phones and the Internet. Taking a page out of The Terminator, Kurtzweil believes that humans will eventually be implanted with computers (a sort of artificial intelligence chimera) for longer life and more extensive brain capacity. If the researchers developing artificial intelligence at Google X Labs have their say, this feat will arrive sooner rather than later.

There may be no I in robot, but that does not necessarily mean that advanced artificial beings would be altruistic, or even remotely friendly to their organic human counterparts. They do not (yet) have the emotions, free will and values that humans use to guide our decision-making. While it is unlikely that robots would necessarily be outright hostile to humans, it is possible that they would be indifferent to us, or even worse, think that we are a danger to ourselves and the planet and seek to either restrict our freedom or do away with humans entirely. At the very least, development and use of this technology will yield considerable novel ethical and moral quandaries.

It may be difficult to predict what the future of technology holds just yet, but in the meantime, humanity can be comforted by the knowledge that it will be a while before robots, or artificial intelligence of any kind, subsumes our existence.

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In the year 2042, time travel has not yet been invented. But by the year 2072, that is no longer the case. Nevertheless, it is outlawed, inaccessible to all but the most powerful and violent gangs in an economically repressed dystopia. Due to scientific advances of that era, it is impossible to dispose of a body without a trace, so the criminal gangs use the time travel to execute their “trash,” sending the bodies back in time to be executed by hit men called Loopers. The body vanishes from the future, but never existed in the present. Unless something goes terribly awry. Such is the setup of Rian Johnson’s bleak, brilliant sci-fi film Looper, a shrewd commentary on how we use technology, the value of a human life and whether a destiny can be changed. It is easily the best sci-fi film since 2010’s Inception, and surely one of the best of this year in any genre. Full ScriptPhD review, below.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper, a very desirable and profitable position in a time over-run with vagrant raids, poverty, hopelessness and violence. The job has a 30-year finite time span, at which time the Looper is sent back into time to be exterminated, and a younger, genetically identical version of him starts job all over again. This is called “closing the loop.” The consequences, shown early in the film, of not closing the loop are dire, both for the younger Looper and his older counter-part. But Joe, an emotionally detached junkie, treats his executions with a regimented ennui. Until one day, when a loop fails to show up at the expected hour. In a split second, Joe recognizes the man as the older version of himself (Bruce Willis), and the brief hesitation allows Old Joe to escape, unleashing the fury of the warlords on both of them across the boundaries of time.

The future painted by Johnson is noir-lugubrious but stops short of the over-the-top post-apocalyptic dreariness of Blade Runner or Children of Men. Instead, the issues of social equality, money and humanity that we struggle with today are exaggerated under the umbrella of traditional sci-fi existentialism. The Looper future is also one filled with abject unfairness. Hungry vagrants that steal food out of desperation are shot immediately by armed citizens. A mobster (Jeff Daniels) sent from the future to run the loopers quenches his boredom by running the city with tyranny, leaving the dirty work of closing loops to violent thugs. Worst of

all is the news from the future of the appearance of a tyrannical warlord named The Rainmaker, who is closing all the loops one by one.

At first, the relationship between Young Joe and Old Joe is antagonistic. All Old Joe wants to do is survive and warn his younger counterpart not to repeat the mistakes he made, especially trying to avoid the death of his wife. All Young Joe wants to do is close his loop, collect the money and make right with the mob. But they grow to grudgingly protect one another amidst a greater goal—finding and eliminating the younger version of The Rainmaker in the present. A series of mysterious maps and codes lead Young Joe to a farmhouse where a young woman, Sarah (Emily Blunt), and her son Cid (Pierce Ganon) are hiding out. As it dawns on Young Joe that Cid is the Young Rainmaker, he wrestles with whether a deleterious future can truly be avoided either for himself or Cid, all while chasing Old Joe and being chased himself.

From the sci-fi element, Looper craftily wedges evolution of technology in a future world not so unlike our own. There is time travel, a quirky genetic mutation that affects 10% of the population (they can levitate quarters!) and expected audiovisual upgrades to touch-screen technology. But there are also familiar elements—books, records, refrigerators and even cars—that make these developments feel natural and real. Even time travel is treated not as an exotic luxury but a quotidian burden. The one and only scene of time travel in the film shows a rather simple metal tube that transports people to a time point in an empty field.

Whether time travel is actually possible in reality is a point of continuing contention with physicists. First referenced in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, time travel has been a steady staple of the sci-fi canon, but it wasn’t until Albert Einstein unraveled the four dimensions of space with his Theory of Relativity in 1915 that the notion seemed tenable. And of course, in theory, time travel is a very real occurrence, since we know that time passes more slowly the closer you approach the speed of light. Physicists such as Stephen Hawking have grappled with other time-space phenomena such as wormholes and quantum theory that might facilitate time jumping. Most scientists, however, are unified in their belief that if a time machine were ever built, it would be used exclusively for going forward in time, and not backwards, for many of the same quandaries proposed in Looper, particularly whether you can change the course of events that are destined to happen in the future.

But Looper doesn’t contend with any of that. It just assumes physicists have solved these hurdles and focuses on a smart, intricate, well-written story. It’s a film that treats its audience with respect, asking for patience in the more complicated plot points, and rewarding it with a satisfying, shocking crescendo worthy of its metaphysical journey. Indeed, Looper might be the first film of the 21st Century to provide a truly real purview into the ethical quandaries, and frightening realities, that time travel might present to us should it ever come to pass.

Preview trailer here:

Looper goes into release nationwide on September 28, 2012.

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Dr. Michio Kaku recently consolidated his position as America’s most visible physicist by acting as the voice of the science community to major news outlets in the wake of Japan’s major earthquake and the recent Fukushima nuclear crisis. Dr. Kaku is one of those rare and prized few

who possesses both the hard science chops (he built an atom smasher in his garage for a high school science fair and is a co-founder of string theory) and the ability to reduce quantum physics and space time to layman’s terms. The author of Physics of the Impossible has also followed up with a new book, Physics of the Future, that aims to convey how these very principles will change the future of science and its impact in our daily modern life. (Make sure to enter our Facebook fan giveaway to win a free copy this week!) Dr. Kaku graciously sat down with ScriptPhD.com’s physics and astronomy blogger, Stephen Compson, to talk about the recent earthquake, popular science in an entertainment-driven world, and his latest book. Full interview under the “continue reading” cut.

Hang on Mom, I’m Building an Atom Smasher!

Michio Kaku’s multi-faceted success may seem to be, as Einstein said, the hallmark of true mastery over any advanced subject. But to fully appreciate the extent of Dr. Kaku’s gift for patient summary to the scientifically ignorant, ask yourself when you last saw an internationally respected physicist appear on Fox & Friends.

“It’s not that you want to be this kind of person when you’re a young kid,” the doctor tells me in the middle of his post-quake media marathon: “I’m sure that when Carl Sagan was a young astronomer, he did not say that he wanted to do this. When Carl Sagan was a kid, he read Science Fiction. He read John Carter of Mars and dreamed about going to Mars, that’s how he got his start. For me it was daydreaming about Einstein’s unified field theory. I didn’t know what the theory was, but I knew that I wanted to take a hand in trying to complete it. So you don’t really plan these things, they just sort of happen.”

Another breadwinning talent that sets him apart from high-level physics peers is that Dr. Kaku isn’t afraid to address technologies and phenomena that only exist in science fiction. His Physics of the Impossible is a scientific examination of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel. One of the reasons ScriptPhD.com exists is that too many scientists will dismiss such concepts offhand, but Dr. Kaku has made a career of treating them seriously in published works, his radio broadcasts, and his TV show Sci Fi Science on the Science Channel. His latest book Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 puts forth the bold argument that technology will imbue men and women with godlike powers in less than a hundred years, with specific examinations of the current field and estimated times of arrival on things like artificial intelligence, telekinesis (through implanted brain sensors) and molecular medicine that will dramatically extend the human lifespan.

ScriptPhD: Most scientists are very cautious about making the kinds of predictions that you do in The Physics of the Future. Why do you think it’s important for scientists to address the unknown?

Michio Kaku: Because the bottom line is the taxpayer has to decide what to support with their tax money. With funds being so low, we scientists have to learn how to sing for our supper. After World War 2, we gave the military the atomic bomb. They were so impressed they just gave us anything we wanted: accelerators and atom smashers, all sorts of high-tech stuff. And then with the Cold War, the aerospace program pretty much got whatever it wanted. Now we’re back to normal: lean times where every penny is pinched, and we have to realize that unless you can interact with the taxpayer, you’re going to lose your project.

Like what happened in 1993, we lost the Supercollider. That I think was a turning point in the physics community. This eleven billion dollar machine was lost and it went to Europe in a much smaller version called the Large Hadron Collider. We failed to convince the taxpayer that the Supercollider was worthwhile, so they said, ‘We’re not going to fund you.’ That was a shock. When it comes to non-military technology, where the public definitely has a say in these matters, unless we scientists can make a convincing argument to build space telescopes and particle accelerators, the public is gonna say, ‘These are just toys. High tech toys for scientists. They have no relationship to me.’ So it’s important for very practical reasons, if only to keep our grants going, that we scientists have to learn how to address the average person. President Barack Obama has made this a national priority. He says, ‘We have to create the Sputnik moment for our young people.’ My Sputnik moment was Sputnik.

Chasing Martian Princesses

SPhD: What could be the Sputnik moment for the children of today?

MK: We have the media, which is such a waste in the sense that you can actually feel your IQ get lower as you watch TV. But there is the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel and different kinds of programming where you can use beautiful special effects to illustrate exploding stars and Mars and elementary particles. This didn’t exist when I was young. There were no Television outlets. It was just dry, dull books in the library that talked about these things. With such gorgeous special effects on cable television to explain these things, there is no excuse. These are cable outlets where we can reach the public, millions of them, with high technology.

I had two role models when I was a kid. The first was Albert Einstein. I wanted to help him complete his unfinished theory, the unified field theory. But on Saturdays I used to watch Flash Gordon on TV. I loved it! I watched every single episode. Eventually I figured out two things. First: I didn’t have blond hair and muscles. And second, I figured out it was the scientist who drove the entire series. The scientist created the city in the sky, the scientist created the invisibility shield, and the scientist created the starship.

And so I realized something very deep: that science is the engine of prosperity. All the prosperity we see around us is a byproduct of scientific inventions. And that’s not being made clear to young people. If we can’t make it clear to young people they’re not going to go into science. And science will suffer in the United States. And that is why we have to inspire young people to have that Sputnik moment.

SPhD: So you think that science fiction is a good avenue for bringing people into science and getting them excited about it?

MK: We scientists don’t like to admit this, it’s almost scandalous. But it’s true. The greatest astronomer of the twentieth century became the greatest astronomer of the twentieth century because of science fiction.

His name was Edwin Hubble. He was a small country lawyer in Missouri and he remembered the wonderment and passion he felt as a child reading Jules Verne. His father wanted him to continue in law; he was an Oxford scholar. But Hubble said no. He quit being a lawyer, went to the university of Chicago, got his PhD and went along to discover that the universe was expanding. And he did it all because as a child he read Jules Verne.

And Carl Sagan decided to become an astronomer because of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars series, because he dreamed of chasing the beautiful martian princess over the sands of mars.

Here’s what I don’t like about modern science fiction. A lot of the novels are sword and sorcery. Instead of creating a society for the future, they’re going back to barbarism, they’re going back to feudalism and slavery. Once in a while, yeah, I like to read it, but I get the feeling that it’s not pushing civilization forward.

When I was a young kid , it was called hard science fiction – rocket ships, journeys to the unknown, incredible inventions like time machines and stuff like that, it was less sword and sorcery, less about having big muscles chasing beautiful women and killing your enemies, less Conan the Conquerer. Science fiction stories that talk about the future are much more uplifting for young kids and also point them in the right direction. Sword and sorcery is not a good career path for the average kid.

SPhD: On average, what do you think of the modern media’s treatment of physics?

MK: The Discovery Channel and the Science Channel are one of the few outlets where scientists can roam unimpeded by the restraints of Hollywood, which says you have to have large market share and you can’t get big concepts to people. And one person who paved the way for that was Stephen Hawking and I think that we owe him a debt in that he proved that science sells.

I remember when I wrote my first book, the publishing world said ‘Look, science does not sell. You’re going to be catering to the select few. It’s not a mass market we’re talking about.’ But there were already indications that that wasn’t true. Discover magazine, Scientific American, they both have subscriptions of about a million. And then of course when the Discovery Channel took off, that really showed that there was something that the networks did not see, and it was right in front of their face. And that was science and documentary programming.

It was always there – like Nova was a top draw for PBS – but the big networks said ‘It’s too small, it’s underneath the radar.’ So then with cable television, all the things that used to be under the radar, jumped to the forefront, Stephen Hawking outsells movie stars.

And I think that really shows something. It’s a hunger for people out there to know the answers to these cosmic questions, like what’s out there? What does it all mean? How do we fit into the larger scheme of things in the universe? There’s a real hunger for that, and of course if you watch I Love Lucy all day, you’re not gonna get the answer.

Cavemen, Picture Phones, and Horses

SPhD: On the other hand, there is a basic human instinct to resist scientific and technological change. In your book you describe this as the Caveman Principle:

“Whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time… Having the fresh animal in our hands was always preferable to tales of the one that got away. Similarly, we want hard copy whenever we deal with files. That’s why the paperless office never came to be… Likewise, our ancestors always liked face to face encounters….By watching people up close, we feel a common bond and can also read their subtle body language to find out what thoughts are racing through their heads…So there is a continual competition between High Tech and High Touch…we prefer to have both, but if given a choice we will choose High Touch like our caveman ancestors.”

I wondered if those weren’t generational changes that we might see come to pass in children who have grown up reading and socializing through screens.

MK: Yes slowly. There is, of course, latitude in the caveman principle. More and more people are warming up to the idea of picture phones. Picture phones first came out in the 1960’s at the World Fair, but you couldn’t touch

them with a ten foot pole. People didn’t want to have to comb their hair every time they went online. Now people are sort of getting used to it. It varies, like for instance now we have more horses than we did in 1800.

SPhD: Horses?

M: Yeah! Horses are used for recreational purposes. There are more recreational horses today than there were horses for a small American population in 1800.

Take a look at theater. Back in those days, people thought that theater would be extinguished by radio, then they thought television would replace radio, then they thought the internet would replace television, which would replace radio, movies, and live theater. The answer is we live with all of them.

We don’t necessarily go from one media or one thing to the next, making them previous and obsolete, there is a mix. You could become very rich if you know exactly what that mix is, but that’s the way it is with technology, we never really give up any old technology, we still have live theater on Broadway.

The Silicon Wasteland and Artificial Intelligence

SPhD: Regarding the creation of Artificial Intelligence in The Physics of the Future, you talk about the computer singularity and Moore’s law breaking down in about ten years—

MK: Silicon power will be exhausted for two reasons: first, transistors are going to be so tiny, they’ll generate too much heat and melt. Second, they’re gonna be so tiny they’re almost atomic in size and so the uncertainty principle comes in and you don’t know where they are, so leakage takes place.

SPhD: In the book you are very cautious in your treatment of quantum computers (Presumably the replacement when silicon breaks down) and how long it’s going to take us to develop them – what’s holding that technology back and why shouldn’t we think that they’ll replace silicon right away?

MK: Quantum computers remedy both those defaults because they compute on atoms themselves. The problem with quantum computers is impurities and decoherence. For quantum computing to work, the atoms have to vibrate in phase. But when you separate them, disturbances take place. This is called decoherence, when they vibrate out of phase. It is very easy to decohere atoms that are coherent. The slightest breath, a truck traveling by, even interference from a cosmic ray will ruin the coherence between atoms. That’s why the world record for quantum computing calculation is 3 times 5 is 15 – it sounds trivial, but go home tonight and try that on 5 atoms, take 5 atoms and try to multiply 3 times 5 is 15 – it’s not so easy.

SPhD: What is your definition of artificial intelligence?

MK: Well, that gets us into consciousness and stuff like that. My personal point of view is that consciousness is a continuum, and the same with intelligence. I would say that the smallest unit of consciousness would be the thermostat. The thermostat is aware of its environment – it adjusts itself to compensate for changes in the environment. That’s the lowest level of consciousness – beyond that would be insects, which basically go around mating and eating by instinct and don’t live very long. As you go up the evolutionary scale, you begin to realize that animals do plan a little bit, but they have no conception of tomorrow.

To the best of our knowledge, animals do not plan for tomorrow or yesterday, they live in the present. Everything is governed by instinct, so they sleep, they wake up, but they’re not aware of any continuity – they just hunt or whatever day by day. We’re a higher level of intelligence in the sense that we are aware of time, we’re aware of self, and we can plan for the future. So those are the ingredients of higher intelligence. Since animals have no conception of tomorrow to the best of our knowledge, very few animals have conception of self. For example, you get two fighting fishes and put them together, they’ll try to tear each other apart. When you put them next to a mirror, they try to attack the mirror – they have no conception of self. So we’re higher up. So artificial intelligence is the attempt to use machines to replicate humans.

SPhD: Do you think we’ll need to completely model human intelligence in order to create a satisfactory artificial one?

MK: No, but I think we made a huge mistake. Fifty years ago, everyone thought that the brain was a computer. People thought that was a no-brainer, of course the brain is a computer. Well, it’s not. A computer has a Pentium chip, it has a central processer, it has windows, programming, software, subroutines, that’s a computer. The brain has none of that. The brain is a learning machine.

Your laptop today is just as stupid as it was yesterday. The brain rewires itself after learning – that’s the difference. The architecture is different, so it’s much more difficult to reproduce human thoughts than we thought possible. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I think maybe by the end of the century we’ll have robots that are quite intelligent. Right now we’ve got robots that are about as intelligent as a cockroach. A stupid cockroach. A lobotomized, stupid cockroach. But in the future, you know, I could see them being as smart as mice. I could see that. Then beyond that, as smart as a dog or a cat. And then beyond that, as smart as a monkey. At that point we should put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.

SPhD: The landscape for artificial intelligence seems very fragmented – the research branches in a lot of different directions. Do you think there will be some sort of unification for a grand theory of A.I.?

MK: It’ll be hard, because everyone is working on one little piece of a huge puzzle. Take a look at Watson, who defeated two Jeopardy experts – after that the media thought, ‘Uh oh the robots are coming, we’re gonna be put in zoos, and they’re gonna throw peanuts at us and make us dance behind bars.’

But then you ask a simple question. Does Watson know that it won? Can Watson talk about his victory? Is Watson aware of his victory? Is Watson aware of anything? And then you begin to realize that Watson is a one-trick pony. In science we have lots of one-trick ponies. Your hand calculator calculates about a million times faster than your brain, but you don’t have a nervous breakdown thinking about your calculator. It’s just a calculator, right? Same thing with Watson – all Watson can do is win on Jeopardy. So we have a long ways to go.

Burning Books and Teaching Principles

SPhD: You also talk about education and how the United States will be coming to the end of a brain drain on other countries because of our unmatched universities and the so-called genius visa. You claim that in order to maintain our position in the global economy, we’ll need to produce more qualified graduates from primary education. What changes you think need to be made to our education system to produce those graduates?

M: I don’t wanna insult them or anything, but education majors have the lowest scores among the different professionals on the SAT test. The brightest and most vigorous, the most competent of our graduates do not go into education.

In Japan for example, a sensei is considered very high in society. People bow before them—they give them presents and so on. In America we have the expression, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.’

First, we have to raise the education level of the education majors, then we have to throw away the textbooks. The textbooks are awful. My daughter took the Geology Regents exam in New York State, and I looked at the handbook – I felt like ripping it apart. Really stomping on it, burning it. It was the memorization of all the crystals, the memorization of all the minerals.

In the future you’ll have a contact lens with the internet in it – you’ll blink and you’ll see as many minerals as you want. You’ll blink and you’ll see all the crystals. Why do we have to memorize these things and force students to learn it? Then my daugher comes to me and says something that really shook me up, she comes up to me and says, ‘Daddy, why would anyone want to become a scientist?’

I really felt like ripping up that book. That book has done more to crush interest in science – that’s what science curriculum does, science curriculum is designed to crush interest in science. Science is about principles. It’s about concepts. It’s not about memorizing the parts of a flower. It helps to know some of these things, but if that’s all you do that’s not science, science is about principles and concepts. So we gotta change the textbooks.

SPhD: Given these contact lenses, or any form of uninterrupted access to the internet where we can access information like that and don’t need to memorize anything anymore, what should we be training young people to do?

MK: First they have to know the principles and the concepts, and they have to be able to think about how to apply these principles and concepts. For example, how many principles and concepts are there in geology? Here’s this big fat handbook, memorize this, memorize this, it goes on and on and on, right? But what is the driving principle behind geology?

Continental drift, the recycling of rock, that’s what they should be stressing. What’s the organizing principle of biology? It’s evolution. What’s the organizing principle of physics? Well, there’s Newtonian mechanics, but then there’s relativity and the quantum theory behind that. So we are talking about really a handful of principles, but you’d never know it taking these courses, because they’re all about memorizing stupid facts and figures.

Let me give you another example. I teach astronomy this semester at the college [Dr. Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the State University of New York]. Astronomy books are written by astronomers. I have nothing against astronomers, but they’re bug collectors. Every single footnote, every single itsy bitsy thing about this star, that star, this planet – you miss the big picture. So when it comes time for final examinations, I tell the students:

‘I wanna talk about principles.’ galactic evolution, that’s what I teach the kids about. I don’t teach them to memorize the moons of Jupiter. I don’t even know the moons of Jupiter, I could care less, but that’s what an astronomy test was a generation ago.

SPhD: Would you say that we need to educate humans from the top down and machines from the bottom up?

MK: I think that with machines we should go top down, bottom up, both. And maybe we’ll meet in the middle someplace. That’s how people are, think about it. When you’re very young you learn bottom up, you bump into things. But by the time you’re in school you learn top down and bottom up. Top down because a teacher stuffs knowledge into your head and bottom up cause you bump into things, you have real-life experiences. People learn both ways, but in the past, we’ve only tried to stress top down, realizing that bottom up is common sense.

Physics of the Future is a fantastic read for anyone interested in what’s in store for us over the next century (yes, this time there really will be flying cars). These aren’t Dr. Kaku’s pet predictions, but extrapolations based on the current cutting edge from the experts in every involved discipline. Readers will be shocked at how close these tantalizing technologies really are, and thrilled at the realization that most of us will live to see this amazing future.

Grateful thanks to Dr. Michio Kaku and Josh Weinberg and Joanne Schioppi at The Science Channel for facilitating this interview and our book giveaway. Catch Dr. Kaku on The Science Channel’s Sci Fi Science and read his two books, which are both available for purchase.

~*Stephen Compson*~

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