5 ms·

Contact was written by Carl Sagan... I believe the science holds together.

jerf 5y ago
There isn't much "science" in it to hold together. Obviously the entire wormhole machine, the wormhole trip, what was on the other side, etc. was fantasy, and what's left is just receiving signals.
- daishi424 5y ago
  Wormhole devices in movies keep puzzling me for quite some time - why does a significant number of them look like rings rotating around each other? Contact is one example, another is Event Horizon. The Terminator also had a similar looking time machine.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    Not sure if there's some pseudo-physical explanation, but I've imagined it has something to do with visualizing the three dimensions that are manipulated. Interestingly both Event Horizon and Contact (movie) are from 1997...
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Pretty sure it mostly stems from initial illustrations for The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    I suspect the reason is as simple as it looks cool and dramatic on screen.
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    I've often thought about this. Currently, our sole way of manipulating spacetime is by cramming a heck of a lot of matter in one spot, which is to say that we don't really do much of it. Any way short of crushing down mountainsful of matter into a thimble would necessarily be more complex, with more moving parts. I can only think that rotation would come into play, and if one dimension is good, three would have to be better if you want to shred spacetime. I don't think it's doable but in the sense that you want something to visually convey it, it may as well be the equivalent of lightning to stand in for electricity.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Almost all science fiction has some leap of imagination to make the story work. The Expanse tv show (and books) have the Epstein Drive and the protomolecule stuff. Obviously Star Trek is even more fantastical, so is Dune, or almost any space science fiction. Maybe Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars is an exception (one has to assume fully terraforming Mars in a couple centuries is in fact doable), but there's no movie or tv show for those books.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Even then the Mars trilogy leans really heavily on the longevity treatments to make the narrative work.
- disconcision 5y ago
  i still maintain that the most interesting read on contact is as hard sci-fi. there aren't any aliens. the machine was a trans-cranial magnetic induction rig designed by hadden to punk the world's preeminent atheist with a religious experience, and by extension, punk humanity.

jerf 5y ago

There isn't much "science" in it to hold together. Obviously the entire wormhole machine, the wormhole trip, what was on the other side, etc. was fantasy, and what's left is just receiving signals.

daishi424 5y ago
Wormhole devices in movies keep puzzling me for quite some time - why does a significant number of them look like rings rotating around each other? Contact is one example, another is Event Horizon. The Terminator also had a similar looking time machine.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  Not sure if there's some pseudo-physical explanation, but I've imagined it has something to do with visualizing the three dimensions that are manipulated. Interestingly both Event Horizon and Contact (movie) are from 1997...
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Pretty sure it mostly stems from initial illustrations for The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I suspect the reason is as simple as it looks cool and dramatic on screen.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  I've often thought about this. Currently, our sole way of manipulating spacetime is by cramming a heck of a lot of matter in one spot, which is to say that we don't really do much of it. Any way short of crushing down mountainsful of matter into a thimble would necessarily be more complex, with more moving parts. I can only think that rotation would come into play, and if one dimension is good, three would have to be better if you want to shred spacetime. I don't think it's doable but in the sense that you want something to visually convey it, it may as well be the equivalent of lightning to stand in for electricity.
goatlover 5y ago
Almost all science fiction has some leap of imagination to make the story work. The Expanse tv show (and books) have the Epstein Drive and the protomolecule stuff. Obviously Star Trek is even more fantastical, so is Dune, or almost any space science fiction. Maybe Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars is an exception (one has to assume fully terraforming Mars in a couple centuries is in fact doable), but there's no movie or tv show for those books.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Even then the Mars trilogy leans really heavily on the longevity treatments to make the narrative work.
disconcision 5y ago
i still maintain that the most interesting read on contact is as hard sci-fi. there aren't any aliens. the machine was a trans-cranial magnetic induction rig designed by hadden to punk the world's preeminent atheist with a religious experience, and by extension, punk humanity.