Books & Movies
Star Trek used wormholes to traverse space – what’s the science behind them?
Since Star Trek began sending its crews out to explore strange new worlds 60 years ago on September 8, 1966, the franchise has both imagined and inspired new concepts for travel across the vast distances of space. Among the most intriguing are “wormholes”: mysterious tunnels through spacetime that connect otherwise distant places. Star Trek always …
‘Project Hail Mary’ shows how intellectual humility can be a guiding force
Early in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s science fiction blockbuster “Project Hail Mary,” middle school teacher Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, is tasked by an international coalition to uncover the biology of a strange microbe known as an “astrophage” that has been absorbing energy from an ever-dimming Sun. Grace is a molecular biologist by …
‘In Saturn’s Rings’: One man’s journey to make a space film
When filmmaker Stephen Van Vuuren first saw images of Saturn retuned by the Cassini spacecraft, he saw something more in them. He not only saw the beauty of the ringed planet, he saw a motion picture camera flying through space. Van Vuuren grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, with dreams of being an astronaut. …