4 ms·

I don't see how they can justify that "artists impression" of a moon they know nothing about. It has no use other than to mislead.

by c3534l 11y ago

nathancahill 11y ago
Dunno why you're being downvoted, we're still undoing years of misleading from artists impressions of dinosaurs.
- 542458 11y ago
  I dunno - I have a hard time getting mad about that. I mean, the "cost" of those misleading artist's impressions as found in Jurassic Park and others (which were largely in line by the best scientific estimates at the time) is a few largely harmless misconceptions that many adults carry around. Conversely, the benefit is getting millions of children and adults excited about natural history, geology, biology and science in general. Sounds like a pretty good tradeoff to me.
  - zeven7 11y ago
    What did Jurassic Park get wrong?
    - 542458 11y ago
      Off the top of my head, brachiosaurs likely couldn't lift themselves onto their rear legs to feed, DNA from mosquitos in resin is probably a pipe dream, raptors had feathers and were probably quite stupid, and the t-rex probably had really good eyesight but wouldn't be fast enough to chase down a jeep - however, those are more recent conclusions. There was also a lot of creative license taken with the size of a lot of the dinosaurs in the film - generally, they were scaled up to make them more impressive. Dilophosaurus spitting to attack is pure fabrication as well.
      - pavlov 11y ago
        On the other hand, movies generally must take creative license to build up a satisfying plot within a 2-hour running time limit. Casablanca is not a realistic portrayal of a Nazi regime and Citizen Kane doesn't tell the truth about Hearst.
        mattmanser 11y ago
        Yes, but Rick Blaine doesn't shoot laser beams from his eyes and Jedediah Leland wasn't 12 feet tall.
        pavlov 11y ago
        Nobody has seen a live dinosaur, and most people haven't met a real 1930s Nazi. So the image of both is pretty much determined by popular culture. The German Nazi party had 6 million members, most of whom were nothing like the bad guy in Indiana Jones. Similarly Jurassic Park isn't a true-to-life portrayal of actual dinosaurs.
    - ehnto 11y ago
      I once watched those movies in a group of paleontologists. Apparently a bunch of stuff!
    - c3534l 11y ago
      Well, the T-Rex had feathers for one. Actually, most of the dinosaurs in that movie had feathers. And raptors were tiny little creatures. Still, you have bones to try to reconstruct a dinosaur. It's just a painting of what any old moon or planet could look like. It's like trying to draw a police sketch based on the description of "it was a person." It's actually worse than that because we do kind of know generally what people look like having billions of examples of them to draw from.
      - mc32 11y ago
        True but it was a... movie... made for entertainment value --and as a nice side effect captured the imagination of millions of children (as well as adults'). So, yeah ,they got known details wrong and in retrospect, as we currently understand, got further things wrong... But again, it was a "blockbuster" movie, not a high brow film or a scientific study. Thus, I don't have anything against how they portrayed the beasts. I think it's understood they took visual license and incorporated sci-fi.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
twinkletwinkle 11y ago
Because the public likes pretty pictures, and NASA needs the public to be excited about space exploration.
mholt 11y ago
If I didn't know the New Horizons photos of Pluto were real, I would have thought they were just "artists impressions" too, because the real thing was stunning. Sure, the drawing is probably inaccurate, but the real thing is probably at least as interesting.
- tvmalsv 11y ago
  I agree. And, sometimes the "artist's impression" is fairly decent when it's done by someone with a technical background drawing (no pun intended) from actual scientific data to make educated guesses. I realize that isn't the norm, but I've seen a case of it.
unchocked 11y ago
Less excusable is showing a top-down view of the solar system and failing to include Makemake's orbit on it.
hoorayimhelping 11y ago
From the abstract: http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2016/18/pdf.pdf http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2016/18/pdf.pdf >We find that the properties of Makemake’s moon suggest that the majority of the dark material detected in the system by thermal observations may not reside on the surface of Makemake, but may instead be attributable to S/2015 (136472) 1 having a uniform dark surface. This “dark moon hypothesis” can be directly tested with future JWST observations.
justsaysmthng 11y ago
> "artists impression" of a moon they know nothing about. And there's a big probability that they never will. Still I like to look at an imaginary drawing of something rather than at nothing. It makes absolutely no difference since nobody on this Earth will get to see the real thing anyway. At least not in this lifetime.

I don't see how they can justify that "artists impression" of a moon they know nothing about. It has no use other than to mislead.

by c3534l 11y ago

I don't see how they can justify that "artists impression" of a moon they know nothing about. It has no use other than to mislead.

nathancahill 11y ago

Dunno why you're being downvoted, we're still undoing years of misleading from artists impressions of dinosaurs.

542458 11y ago
I dunno - I have a hard time getting mad about that. I mean, the "cost" of those misleading artist's impressions as found in Jurassic Park and others (which were largely in line by the best scientific estimates at the time) is a few largely harmless misconceptions that many adults carry around. Conversely, the benefit is getting millions of children and adults excited about natural history, geology, biology and science in general. Sounds like a pretty good tradeoff to me.
- zeven7 11y ago
  What did Jurassic Park get wrong?
  - 542458 11y ago
    Off the top of my head, brachiosaurs likely couldn't lift themselves onto their rear legs to feed, DNA from mosquitos in resin is probably a pipe dream, raptors had feathers and were probably quite stupid, and the t-rex probably had really good eyesight but wouldn't be fast enough to chase down a jeep - however, those are more recent conclusions. There was also a lot of creative license taken with the size of a lot of the dinosaurs in the film - generally, they were scaled up to make them more impressive. Dilophosaurus spitting to attack is pure fabrication as well.
    - pavlov 11y ago
      On the other hand, movies generally must take creative license to build up a satisfying plot within a 2-hour running time limit. Casablanca is not a realistic portrayal of a Nazi regime and Citizen Kane doesn't tell the truth about Hearst.
      - mattmanser 11y ago
        Yes, but Rick Blaine doesn't shoot laser beams from his eyes and Jedediah Leland wasn't 12 feet tall.
        pavlov 11y ago
        Nobody has seen a live dinosaur, and most people haven't met a real 1930s Nazi. So the image of both is pretty much determined by popular culture. The German Nazi party had 6 million members, most of whom were nothing like the bad guy in Indiana Jones. Similarly Jurassic Park isn't a true-to-life portrayal of actual dinosaurs.
  - ehnto 11y ago
    I once watched those movies in a group of paleontologists. Apparently a bunch of stuff!
  - c3534l 11y ago
    Well, the T-Rex had feathers for one. Actually, most of the dinosaurs in that movie had feathers. And raptors were tiny little creatures. Still, you have bones to try to reconstruct a dinosaur. It's just a painting of what any old moon or planet could look like. It's like trying to draw a police sketch based on the description of "it was a person." It's actually worse than that because we do kind of know generally what people look like having billions of examples of them to draw from.
    - mc32 11y ago
      True but it was a... movie... made for entertainment value --and as a nice side effect captured the imagination of millions of children (as well as adults'). So, yeah ,they got known details wrong and in retrospect, as we currently understand, got further things wrong... But again, it was a "blockbuster" movie, not a high brow film or a scientific study. Thus, I don't have anything against how they portrayed the beasts. I think it's understood they took visual license and incorporated sci-fi.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

twinkletwinkle 11y ago

Because the public likes pretty pictures, and NASA needs the public to be excited about space exploration.

mholt 11y ago

If I didn't know the New Horizons photos of Pluto were real, I would have thought they were just "artists impressions" too, because the real thing was stunning. Sure, the drawing is probably inaccurate, but the real thing is probably at least as interesting.

tvmalsv 11y ago
I agree. And, sometimes the "artist's impression" is fairly decent when it's done by someone with a technical background drawing (no pun intended) from actual scientific data to make educated guesses. I realize that isn't the norm, but I've seen a case of it.

unchocked 11y ago

Less excusable is showing a top-down view of the solar system and failing to include Makemake's orbit on it.

hoorayimhelping 11y ago

From the abstract: http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2016/18/pdf.pdf http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2016/18/pdf.pdf >We find that the properties of Makemake’s moon suggest that the majority of the dark material detected in the system by thermal observations may not reside on the surface of Makemake, but may instead be attributable to S/2015 (136472) 1 having a uniform dark surface. This “dark moon hypothesis” can be directly tested with future JWST observations.

justsaysmthng 11y ago

> "artists impression" of a moon they know nothing about. And there's a big probability that they never will. Still I like to look at an imaginary drawing of something rather than at nothing. It makes absolutely no difference since nobody on this Earth will get to see the real thing anyway. At least not in this lifetime.