Director Alfonso Cuarón's film Gravity just had an amazing weekend, raking in a record-breaking $55.6 million at the box office. There was just one little snag: Beloved astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson showed up on social media to poke some scientific holes in the story about astronauts stranded in space.
The internet's favorite astrophysicist took to Twitter last night with a string of fact-checks of Cuarón's film, questioning everything from why the movie's space debris orbited from East to West to why the hair on Sandra Bullock's head didn't float as freely as it should have in the weightlessness of space.
"The film #Gravity should be renamed 'Zero Gravity,'" wrote Tyson, who will be hosting the Fox documentary Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey next year. His other nitpicks, which he called "Mysteries of #Gravity," included why "satellite communications were disrupted at 230 mi up, but communications satellites orbit 100x higher" and "how Hubble (350mi up) ISS (230mi up) & a Chinese Space Station are all in sight lines of one another." Tyson did, however, give the film credit for drawing attention to the very real Kessler syndrome (aka the problem caused by all the debris floating in space that causes *Gravity'*s big bang) by tweeting "the film #Gravity depicts a scenario of catastrophic satellite destruction that can actually happen." (Check out more of Tyson's tweets above.)
Last year, the astrophysicist offered a similar critique for Titanic, which he took to task for misplacing the stars above Rose's head near the end of the film.
“Neil deGrasse Tyson sent me quite a snarky email saying that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, when Rose is lying on the piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars, that is not the star field she would have seen," director James Cameron said after reshooting to correct the mistake. It seems as though it would be difficult for Cuarón to reshoot to correct the issues Tyson brought up, but it'll be interesting to see if he responds to the critique.
Of course, as soon as Tyson's tweets began hitting the web, many users responded to remind him that, Gravity is, in fact, just a movie. "Quick. Someone tell @neiltyson what science fiction means," read one @ reply. Another reminded the vocal science advocate that "for all it's bullshit I bet Gravity creates some future NASA staffers in a generation."
But in the end, even Tyson was won over by the film. "My tweets hardly ever convey opinion," he said in another tweet. "Mostly perspectives on the world. But if you must know, I enjoyed #Gravity very much."
