End of Days

November 07, 2009

Are you ready for the End of the World? Master of the Apocalyptic Blockbuster Roland Emmerich unveils his latest doomsday disaster on Friday November 13: 2012, starring John Cusack as sci-fi writer Jackson Curtis, a divorced father who occasionally moonlights as a limousine driver. First come the mass suicides in Guatemala in anticipation of the end of the world. Then vast cracks are found in California fault lines; Curtis saves his ex-wife, child and her new boyfriend in the nick of time as Los Angeles crumbles into the sea. Rio, Washington DC, and the Vatican in Rome are all destroyed in short order. Oh, did I mention the sooper sekrit society that is constructing giant arks in the Himalayas to save a small fraction of humanity from impending doom? It's all delivered in Emmerich's trademark cataclysmic style (what io9 has dubbed "disaster porn"). Check it out:

The film's premise derives from a popular doomsday prediction centered on the Mayan calendar. It lasts 5126, at which point the calendar abruptly stops at December 21, 2012. For whatever reason, the Mayans didn't bother to count any further, leading certain highly imaginative, rather hysterical types to conclude this denotes the End of the World.

2012 conspiracy theorists have also bundled in the notion that this global destruction will occur when the legendary Planet X crashes into Earth. Astronomers were intrigued by the possibility in the mid-19th century, shortly after the discovery of Neptune -- they thought it might explain perceived discrepancies in the orbits of the great gas giants. Pluto, discovered in 1930, was initially heralded as Planet X, but it turned out to be too small to effect the orbits of the gas giants. Heck, it's not even technically a planet any more. (There is a dwarf planet called Eris just beyond Pluto, but it's in a stable orbit and isn't going to crash into Earth.)

And because you can never cram too many crazy ideas into a single Disaster Hoax, there are some people who believe Planet X is actually the mythical Nibiru, supposedly known to ancient Sumerians, which has a highly elliptical orbit and passes into our solar system every 3600 years. Earth itself, according to this crackpot theory, was created from a collision between Nibiru and some other object in the asteroid belt. Oh, Nibiru also doubles as a "spaceship" of sorts, in that an alien race supposedly traveled to Earth during one of its passes and founded the human race.

There isn't a shred of evidence for any of this, of course, and any number of articles and blog posts have been written debunking the nonsense -- along with Neil de Grasse Tyson, who does so with typical good humor in the clip below. That doesn't mean we won't thrill to the sight of a cinematic end of the world, because who doesn't love a good disaster flick now and then? But we should really focus our doomsday anxieties to more realistic scenarios.

Hey Mr. Spaceman

October 23, 2009

I've blogged a couple of times about Quantum Quest: A Cassini Odyssey, an animated feature by Dr. Harry Kloor. The full, glorious 3D IMAX experience will make its debut next year, but those who crowded into the CUNY Graduate Center's auditorium Wednesday night got a sneak peek at the 2D lower resolution version of the completed film, followed by a short discussion with Kloor himself, and his special guest: space shuttle astronaut Dan Berry, who made four spacewalks during his NASA tenure. (By the way, the CUNY  Graduate Center has an amazing Science and Arts program and regularly hosts such events.) The event was part of the Imagine Science Film Festival, and sponsored by the Science & Entertainment Exchange.

Quantum Quest is the story of a plucky little photon named Dave who lives in the sun and is drawn into an epic galactic battle between good and evil as the forces of the Core (protons, photons and neutrinos) face off against the antimatter forces of the Void to determine the fate of the universe. The film combines state-of-the-art CGI with actual images taken not just by Cassini-Huygens, but also other NASA missions (SOHO, Stereo, Mars Odyssey, Venus Express and Mercury Messenger).

Berry had a whimsical explanation for how he ended up in science as an astronaut: "I really wanted to fly." As a child he jumped off everything he could -- so much so, his folks bought him a football helmet, "even though I didn't play football; they were just tired of all the trips to the ER." He graduated to building model airplanes, then attaching small motors to the models. "Once you start doing that, you start to figure out how they fly -- and you want to make them fly better."

The path to doing that? SCIENCE! Do that, and you can grow up to be an astronaut and help build an international space station. That was the culmination of Berry's lifelong dream, and I don't think I've ever heard an astronaut speak so eloquently about The View From Up There. It's not the same thing as being inside the small, cramped shuttle: the windows are tiny so you can't really get the full panoramic effect. Berry's spacewalks gave him the opportunity to get outside the shuttle, and the visor on his space helmet gave him a full field of vision of the Earth. "That moment of watching the Earth, the camera just doesn't capture the details, the beauty of Earth," he said, describing the "gemstone qualities" our pretty blue planet set brightly against the dark backdrop of space.

Both Kloor and Berry shared a childhood love for science fiction -- Kloor's mother was writing a science fiction novel while he was in the womb -- and in Berry's case, he played fantasy games with his siblings about traveling to Saturn and distant stars. He's a fan of Quantum Quest because of the way it combines real science with imagination. "A lot of science is about imagination, channeling creativity to explore the world," he said.

While much of the scientific content in Quantum Quest is highly accurate -- there really are lakes of methane on TItan, and protons really do surf the solar wind -- Kloor admits to adhering to the "Bugs Bunny Principle" for the basic premise. Once you've personified subatomic particles as Dave the Photon and Neutrino Rangers, who are able to converse, is it really worth being a stickler for "How can they talk to each other in the vacuum of space where sound waves can't propagate?" That is nerd-gassing taken to extremes. Kloor has done countless test screenings for audiences of all ages, and finds that "Kids never get confused between the fiction and the science." It's those with advanced science degrees that appear to have lost their willingness to suspend disbelief.

The film has an undeniable educational component, but it's not a straight documentary either. That is part of its charm -- and, one hopes, its effectiveness. "One kid might only learn that a photon is a particle of light; another might pick up on the fact that the four fundamental forces don't affect the Neutrino Ranger," says Kloor. And that's good enough for him.

By the way, among the many Hollywood luminaries who lent their voices to the film is Chris Pine, currently Tinsel Town's hottest young actor for his role as the young Captain Kirk in JJ Abrams' blockbuster Star Trek reboot earlier this year. The actor was unable to make the CUNY screening, but here's Pines chatting with Kloor by phone at this summer's ComicCon session devoted to Quantum Quest:

To the Moon

June 02, 2009

Regular readers know that my day job is director of the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange, boldly connecting scientists with writers, producers and directors in Hollywood in hopes of fostering ever-more-creative collaborations. And the Exchange now has its very own blog, The X-Change Files (natch!), with contributions from yours truly, as well as an impressive roster of leaders in both science and entertainment: husband/wife producer/director team Janet and Jerry Zucker (the Airplane movies, Ghost); Matt Partney, a writer for C.S.I.: Miami; Lawrence Krauss (author of The Physics of Star Trek); and Sidney Perkowitz (author of Hollywood Science).

We'll be covering all aspects of the intersection of science and entertainment -- aspects like a fantastic new film coming out June 12 called Moon. It's just the sort of quality filmmaking with a scientific bent that the Exchange hopes to promote even further. Written and directed by Duncan Jones (who also happens to be David Bowie's son), the film tells the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a lonely lunar miner on the dark side of the moon, whose only companion is a robot named GERTY (sinisterly voiced by Kevin Spacey, with a nod to HAL). Sam is just finishing a three-year stint of unrelenting isolation -- and it all goes to hell in record time, as the clip below makes clear.

Would-be lunar colonizers, beware! 

Their Own Little World

May 11, 2009

If you could build your own private universe, just for the one you loved, what would it look like? There could soon come a day when we will have the computing power and tools to do just that -- at least in a virtual sense. Add in ongoing advances in virtual reality (haptic interfaces, brain-computer interfaces), and who's to stay we couldn't trick the brain into thinking our virtual creation is "real"?

Shades of The Matrix? Not necessarily. We can use that power for good. Check out this viral video called World Builder, a short 9-minute film by Bruce Branit, a visual effects artist based in Kansas. The story is siple enough: a man uses cutting-edge holographic tools to create a world for the woman he loves. Branit shot the live action in a single day, although it took a full two years to complete all the computer graphics.

World Builder has been making the rounds in the blogosphere over the last couple of months; at last count over a million people had seen it. It's a nice reminder of what is already possible, both scientifically and creatively.

He Watches the Watchmen

February 25, 2009

Science fiction/superhero fans are on tenterhooks waiting for the imminent release (in a couple of weeks) of the long-awaited film adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel. I've been reading it the last few days, and man, is it an impressive piece of fiction. Dark, disturbing, unrelenting in its depiction of a doomed society, yet with glimmers of hope here and there to ward off any bitter aftertaste.

I won't bore you by rehashing the premise; you can learn all you need to know right here. Suffice to say, it deals with a group of retired (and deeply flawed) superheroes who regroup when their former members start getting picked off one by one, to try and save the world from nuclear Armageddon -- or to save humanity from itself.

The tagline for the movie is catchy: "They watch over us. But who watches them?" When it comes to the science behind the superheroes, the answer is Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota and author of The Physics of Superheroes. When the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange -- then still in its pilot phase -- was looking for a good technical consultant for the film, Kakalios was an obvious choice. Who better to consult on a movie about the science of superheroes than someone who literally wrote the book on the subject.

And yes, there is lots of science in Watchmen, most notably Dr. Manhattan, a nuclear physicist who got disintegrated in a nuclear accident (oopsie!) and somehow figured out how to rearrange his atoms into some semblance of a human form. Oh yes, he can teleport, and manipulate atomic structure at will. But that's just one example. There's science in just about everything if you look for it. Check out this YouTube video the university just released, in which Kakalios gives the skinny on the science:

CERN: Ready for Its Close-Up

February 19, 2009

The lucky folks at CERN witnessed bona fide red carpet treatment last week, when director Ron Howard showed up to unveil exclusive footage from his forthcoming film, Angels and Demons -- with actors Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer also on hand to lend a little extra star power. (I can't believe I missed this event until now.) For those unfamiliar with Dan Brown's sequel to The Da Vinci Code, it is partially set at CERN, with the plot revolving around a gram of antimatter stolen from the facility to create a bomb.

 

As many science-minded sorts have pointed out, this isn't all that realistic a scenario. Sure, CERN has been making anti-hydrogen atoms and such since 1995, but a gram is a lot of antimatter, and they haven't produced enough to light a light bulb for a few minutes, never mind make enough for a bomb (or to power Star Trek's Enterprise, more's the pity). New Scientist's Short Sharp Science blog quotes CERN spokesman John Eades: "It would take 10,000 times the age of the universe to accumulate the explosive power of a single large nuclear bomb. A hundredfold 'improvement' in this would bring it down to merely the period of recorded history."

Well, that's a relief. Of course, the novel was written long before the Large Hadron Collider completed construction, fueling hysteria about mini-black-holes and other universe-destroying scenarios. Imagine the fun sorts of scenarios one could devise using strangelets or mini-black-holes!

Still, Howard made sure to consult with physicists to improve the scientific plausibility of the film's premise. (My husband was among the physicists consulted, and as I recall, one piece of advice he gave had nothing to do with antimatter, but with the utterly implausible moment in the novel when Robert Langdon jumped off a cliff and survived by turning his shirt -- or was it a windbreaker? -- into a parachute.) But I think it's safe to say it won't be entirely factual because this is all about telling an entertaining story -- and hopefully piquing people's interest in the underlying science as a bonus.

As CERN press officer James Gillies said at the event, "By telling people that CERN exists, Dan Brown has provided us with the opportunity to share the excitement of fundamental research with a whole new audience. And in the case of antimatter, the truth is every bit as strange and exciting as fiction."

The LHC was sadly sidelined soon after its much-ballyhooed switch-on, after an electrical short damaged 50 of its big magnets used to steer the particles around the accelerator. Right now, the best estimate is for operations to resume this November; the machine won't be fully operational again until 2010.

And that opens a tiny window of opportunity for Fermilab's Tevatron collider back in US. The Tevatron has a long illustrious history of discovery, most recently the top quark, but it has failed thus far in its quest to find the elusive Higgs boson. The LHC damage buys Fermilab some time to make a last-ditch effort for one final scoop before it fades into the scientific sunset. Or, as Lyn Eans of the LHC said to Fermilab's Dmitri Denisov at a AAAS session last week, "The race is on!" I personally enjoyed the whimsical take of the Physics Buzz blog, which imagined some creative trash-talking between the two:

Then Denisov said, "It's a race. Whoever is first is first."

And then LHC is all like "No way!" To which Fermilab says "Bring it!" and then LHC is all like "As if!"

Or maybe, per Abstruse Goose, it's all just a big conspiracy on the part of the Higgs boson, sabotaging the LHC in order to remain hidden from prying human eyes, per this open letter from "CERN":

Photos: (top) Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer and director Ron Howard ouside CERN. Source: CERN. (bottom) Cartoon panel by Abstruse Goose; h/t: Joanne at Cosmic Variance.

The World is Flat

January 26, 2009

In 1884, a humble English schoolteacher named Edwin Abbott Abbott published a modest little novella called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions and inadvertently brought the concept of extra geometric dimensions out of the Ivory Tower and into the mainstream. Isaac Asimov once described the book as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions," and many a physicist and mathematician will tell you the tome is among their favorites. I first read it just out of college, and was immediately charmed.

Part science fiction, part satire (and a pointed commentary on Victorian social hierarchy and the Establishment's animosity towards revolutionary new ideas), Flatland takes place in a two-dimensional world inhabited by 2D circles, squares, rectangles and a variety of polygons. Our narrator is a nameless Square who dreams about a one-dimensional world (Lineland) where nobody believes that anything lies beyond their simple linear existence -- certainly not an entire world in two dimensions.

But then the little Square meets a three-dimensional Sphere, who tells him about Spaceland, existing just beyond the ken of Flatland's inhabitants. Seeing is believing, so the Sphere takes the little Square on a tour of Spaceland, literally broadening his horizons. Once back home, the Square tries to tell others about this brave new world, and is denounced and eventually imprisoned for his trouble. (There's also a dream sequence involving Pointland, inhabited by a single point who thinks the Square's attempts to talk to him are just his own thoughts -- solipsism personified.)

There have been several attempts to adapt the book to film, most recently via the animated short, Flatland: The Movie, featuring the voices of Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell, Michael York, and Tony Hale:

Flatland is not a Utopian society (it's awfully repressive intellectually, for starters), and all men (and women) are not created equal. Men are polygons, and the number of sides they have determines their social class -- triangles are the lowest of the low, while a circle is considered a perfect shape. Women are relegated to being comprised solely of lines. And since a line moving towards an observer invariably appears to be merely a point, women are required by law to sway back and forth so that the men can see them coming. Apparently there were some "accidents" where men in Flatland were stabbed to death by oncoming women. (Right. An "accident." Ahem. I'm just saying that maybe one of the bastards had it coming.)

Anyway, extra dimensions became all the rage, well into the 20th century, where the notion of a fourth (or more) dimension influenced major artists like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. In fact, Dali's famous painting, "Crucifixion," depicts Christ nailed onto a four-dimensional hypercube as a cross; Dali subtitled the work "Corpus Hydrocubus."

Post-Einstein and his concept of a unified spacetime, of course, time is considered the fourth dimension, so when scientists in the early 20th century began contemplating extra dimensions, they spoke of the "fifth dimension" -- and beyond. But just as the 2D shapes in Flatland couldn't see Spaceland, we can't perceive the fifth dimension. Mathematicians and physicists wanted a solution to the conundrum, and a Swedish mathematician named Oskar Klein obliged in the 1920s by arguing that the fifth dimension could be so tiny -- curled up, or "compactified," into a tiny ball smaller than the Planck length -- that noy even atoms could pass into it.

Such so-called "Kaluza-Klein models" languished for a bit after that, until the 1970s, when string theorists adapted this extra-dimensional approach to unify all four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force) into a giant Theory of Everything. To get all those pieces to fit together in string theory requires a whopping nine dimensions of space and one dimension of time (ten spatial dimensions if we're talking about "M" theory). The extra dimensions are supposed to be "compactified," which is why we can't experience them directly.

So how do we know they're there? Well, we don't, any more than Abbott's plucky little Square knew Spaceland existed until he visited it. We have some very pretty math buttressing the argument, and while it's a long shot, it's possible that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider could provide evidence of extra dimensions. Seeing is still believing.

String theorists, fortunately, do not inhabit a repressive, willfully ignorant world like Flatland. They might take some heat from their more skeptical colleagues now and then, and in the last couple of years there's been a bit of a backlash. But their story has a happier ending than Abbot's little Square. They are free to openly explore radical new ideas, inspiring art, literature, theater and such in turn. Whether string theory turns out to be right, or is eventually replaced by a better model, the world is a richer place for it.

Photo: "Crucifixion (Corpus Hydrocubus)," Salvador Dali, 1954.

Learning Curve

January 19, 2009

Last summer I wrote about Quantum Quest, an animated 45-minute film set entirely in the subatomic world, where the forces of the Core (protons, photons, neutrinos) battle it out with the antimatter forces of the Void to determine the fate of the universe. Now in post-production, the film is starting to generate a bit of buzz, although it's garnered mixed reactions from those who've either heard about it, or had the chance to view a few clips at last year's Comic-Con. (You can see a preview here.)

On the one hand, NASA is heavily involved, and while we're all NASA fans here (at least of all that cool science NASA funds), it's not the first name that pops to mind when you think of quality children's entertainment. On the other, some truly major names have lent their voices to the project, including William Shatner (who voices the Core) and breakout star Chris Pine ("Dave," a plucky little photon), who will play the young Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams' forthcoming Star Trek "prequel." Add in Samuel Jackson, Jason Alexander, Mark Hamill, Amanda Peet, Brent Spiner, Sandra Oh, and James Earl Jones, and you've got some serious celebrity street cred going -- enough for Variety to sit up and take notice.

I'm of a more optimistic bent than the skeptics, especially since the film's writer/producer, Harry Kloor (Jupiter 9 Productions) stopped by my office last week to give me a sneak preview of where things stand thus far. Kloor is a scientist -- with not one, but two shiny PhDs -- and deeply engaged with education and outreach, but he's also an unabashed sci-fi fan with bona fide writing chops, having written a few episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, among other TV credits.

That makes Kloor kind of the ideal person to tackle a project like Quantum Quest. I saw rough cuts, with incomplete animation (no texturing, for instance) and storyboards as placeholders in a couple of spots, but even so, it's clear that Kloor has taken pains to delight as well as to teach. The science "lessons" are woven into the storyline, rather than dryly lecturing to the audience. Plus, the animation is excellent, incorporating actual footage taken from various NASA missions, including Cassini-Huygens, SOHO, Mars Odyssey, and Mercury Messenger.

But the story reigns supreme. The script has a decent plot, lively pacing, humorous asides, clever physics in-jokes, fun characters, and if the message gets a bit ham-fisted towards the end -- well, it's no more so than any other family flick, and certainly less nauseating than, say, Barney.

Kloor expects to complete the animation by June, and finish the final touches by this fall, shooting for a November release. And he's looking to partner with various organizations to produce educational materials that teachers can use in the classroom, based on the characters in the film. His philosophy is that you don't need to lecture to kids -- you just need to pique their interest and make them want to know more. Do that, and they'll probably do what all of us grown-up geeks did as kids: we heard about something cool and looked it up.

That's a philosophy I happen to agree with: I can totally see kids Googling "neutrino," or wanting to learn more about the Cassini-Huygens mission after seeing the film. There's just one problem: the science in Quantum Quest occasionally goes far beyond anything that's readily accessible to a non-scientist.

Take my personal favorite characters, the Gell-Mann Ghosts sent after Dave and his neutrino pal to keep them from completing their mission. Google "ghost" and "Gell-Mann" (as in physicist Murray Gell-Mann), and you won't find much information. Even Googling "ghosts" and "physics" turns up mostly paranormal debunking sites. That might be because, while physicists do indeed talk about "ghosts" in their research, it's more of a side dish than the main course -- and it can mean more than one thing, depending on the context.

Fortunately, I have my own personal household physicist to enlighten me. In one context, "ghosts" are hypothetical particles that don't exist. (Neutrinos are sometimes called "ghost particles," but this is something else altogether.) If they did exist, they would have negative energy -- and this, says Sean, would be very bad, in part because it would mean theory did not agree with experimental observations: "Empty space would be catastrophically unstable if there were ghosts." (The existence of "ghosts" would be very good, however, if you wanted to build a stable trasversable wormhole. Many theoretical models call for a form of negative energy to hold such a structure open long enough for an object to pass through.)

See, normally, in particle physics, a muon decays into an electron by spitting out neutrinos, and then the electron is stable. Heavy particles decay into lighter particles, per the Standard Model. If there were negative energy, then we should also see this process in reverse: an electron would "decay" into a muon by producing "ghosts." We don't -- ergo, these sorts of "ghosts" are largely confined to some of the more exotic physical theories.

The above seems like the most likely candidate for Kloor's Gell-Mann Ghosts, except these particles are not the same thing as antimatter (remember, the Void's forces are antimaterial): antimatter has positive energy, and actually exists. We can even make small amounts of the stuff in particle accelerators. Also? "Ghosts" in this context don't have anything to do with Murray Gell-Mann.

Gell-Mann was tangentially involved in a different usage of the term "ghosts," related to Feynman diagrams and quantum field theory. Sean tried to explain it to me, and this appears to be the gist: Feynman diagrams are a handy method for calculating how probable a given "event" will be in quantum field theory, but the process requires one to also include -- solely as a "bookkeeping device" to get the math to come out right -- diagrams with particles that can only exist within the diagram and cannot escape into the outside world to be observed. Much like we don't see "free quarks", these "ghosts" can never be observed all by themselves. Physicists are actually still arguing about this.

Apparently the term "ghost" also crops up in the context of cosmology. Sheesh. No wonder there's no good lay language discussions to be found online. I suppose I could have asked Kloor to explain the science behind his Gell-Mann Ghosts, but where's the fun in that? I invite any theoretical physicists out there to weigh in with their own ideas of what might be behind the "ghosts" in Quantum Quest. Maybe we can all get a spot of advanced science education.

Photos: (top) Dave the Photon and The Core, from Quantum Quest. (middle) Coach Mackey and Milton, war hero turned "free quark" miner. (bottom) Dave the Photon's "home," the core of the Sun. Source: Jupiter 9 Productions.

The Weirdest Christmas Movie Ever Made

December 23, 2008

Filming on Mars, Martian condos, even Martian dust devils -- these have all been blog post topics this year on Twisted Physics. So why not feature a Martian Christmas movie in honor of the holiday season? I'm talking about the one and only 1964 sci-fi film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which has the dubious distinction of being regularly ranked among the worst movies ever made. (It also introduced the world to an 8-year-old Pia Zadora as one of the Martian children, so the filmmakers have a lot to answer for.)

I've actually watched this celluloid disaster, albeit not completely sober: I had pals who turned the film into a kind of annual holiday drinking game involving pitchers of margaritas. Basically, the Martians decide their children need to develop freedom of thought and a sense of fun, and what better way to accomplish this than by kidnapping Santa Claus and bringing him to Mars to make toys for their own kids? A couple of Earth kids get kidnapped, too, for no apparent reason, plus there's an evil Martian who's intent on killing Santa. Eventually Santa wins over the race by "bringing fun, happiness and Christmas cheer."

If that seems just the ticket for your Christmas eve festivities, rent the DVD today. (The full 80-minute film can be found on YouTube, too, having passed into the public domain, although it's even more blurred and grainy than the original.) Or you can watch the opening credits/annoying theme song with Joel and his Robot Friends in this classic Christmas edition of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (the opening skit features a nefarious invention of his killjoy Evil Overlords, "the wish squisher"). This is a movie that screams out for wisecracking robot friends. All that's missing are the Christmas margaritas.



On Location

December 07, 2008

When director Paul Verhoeven was filming 1990's Total Recall, much of the location footage was shot in Mexico to get the "look" of a Martian landscape. How much cooler would it have been to have actual footage from the surface of Mars itself? A whole lot cooler!

That intriguing possibility was the teaser for an event I attended over the weekend, "How to Shoot Your Next Film in Space," sponsored by an organization called The Hollywood Hill, a group of entertainment industry folks dedicated to supporting innovators in science and technology. One of the featured speakers was Steve Squyres, a scientist with the Mars Rover Mission at Jet Propulsion Lab. Think Spirit and Opportunity, the plucky little rovers still going strong long past their expected expiration date -- those are Squyres' machines, and he speaks of them as affectionately as if they were his own children.

Squyres doesn't really envision, say, Paramount Pictures setting up shop on Mars any time in the near future, but he did argue that high-resolution digital still footage is already available, thanks to NASA's Mars missions, and said footage could be easily worked into terrestrial films using cutting-edge computer animation. In fact, it's already been done with the IMAX documentary Roving Mars, which incorporated extensive footage of the Martian landscape using a combination of the actual rover images and CGI, like this view of the West Valley from atop a low plateau, courtesy of Spirit:

It's no small feat getting high-resolution digital cameras to Mars: trade-offs must be made between camera weight and image resolution (a high resolution camera is heavier than one with lower-resolution, but more weight means it's harder to get the payload into space). So Squyres' team had to design the rover cameras to get the minimum level of desirable resolution for the lowest possible weight -- which they defined as a human geologist with 20/20 vision. What are the Mars rovers, after all, if not robotic geologists?

That's why the rovers are equipped with two "eyes" (small cameras) spaced an equivalent distance apart as two human eyes to get that critical depth perception. We're only talking about 1 megapixel capability here: the average cell phone camera is significantly higher than that. And the robots' computers "might have been cutting edge technology in 1987," Squyres admits. "So, yeah, your cell phones have a lot more pixels and computing power than my rovers. But my rovers are on Mars." So there! The resulting images are small, about the size of a postage stamp, but they can be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle to produce a panoramic high-resolution image of the Martian landscape.

Another limiting factor is that it takes an excruciatingly long time to transfer data from the rovers back down to Earth. Squyres estimates that on a good day, they get the equivalent of three MP3 downloads of data back -- something that takes at most a few minutes via the average broadband Internet connection. But there is no broadband network on Mars. Nor is there a stationary communications satellite around the planet; instead, there is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which passes overhead every 12 hours or so for about 30 minutes. Spirit and/or Opportunity have just that small window to hand off their accumulated data; in fact, they have to wait 24 hours for the next data transmission opportunity, because they shut down during the Martian nights.

Still, the orbiting satellite is also camera equipped, giving JPL's scientists a broad map of the Martian surface which they can then fit to the postage-stamp high-resolution images taken by Spirit and Opportunity to help piece together the impressive panoramic views that adorn their spectacular Website. (Not only can you see Spirit from orbit, you can see its tracks as it explored the Martian landscape. Squyres joked that he'd wanted the tracks to spell out "Hi Steve" when the exploration was complete, but frankly, it was hard enough just to ensure the rover didn't tip over the edge of a cliff.)

All that digitized visual information is freely available and in the public domain, for filmmakers to use as they see fit, according to Squyres. And that's how you get location footage from Mars, such as this eye-popping excerpt from Roving Mars:

Photo: Spirit's West Valley Panorama, taken late 2007. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University (public domain).