The world of Harry Potter is full of marvelous inventions -- flying cars, invisibility cloaks, the penseive, hidden portals -- that are the realm of magic. But researchers in our world have used science to bring these technologies from fantasy to reality.

On Cosmic Log, John Roach outlines examples of Harry Potter technology that scientists are working on, including this description of a possible Harry's invisibility cloak:

This August, researchers at Tufts and Boston universities announced success in creating an invisibility cloak made from silk. For now, the metamaterial, as it is called, works in the terahertz range -- a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio and infrared light -- but the researchers say it could work in the visible range too.

Check out more Harry Potter technology in this slideshow from Discovery News

What Harry Potter technology would you most like to have in your every day life?

In this video, Emory physics professor Sidney Perkowitz discusses Tony Stark's Iron Man suit, the Arc Reactor, and other science and the technology from Iron Man. Surprisingly, he thinks that only the small size of Iron Man's power source requires a major suspension of disbelief, and that some variation of the the rest of the technologies are indeed plausible.

This Extra from BLAST!, looks closer at the exotic McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

BLAST! is a documentary film by Paul Devlin that follows his brother, astrophysicist Mark Devlin, on a research trip to Antarctica to launch a revolutionary telescope on a NASA balloon.

The film airs this week on PBS, WNET-Channel 13 in New York. Upcoming showings: Sat, Nov. 6th, 1:00AM & 1:30PM, Thurs, Nov. 11th, 4AM.

Paul and Mark Devlin were guests on Science Friday last year. Listen to the interview at http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906265 (media player at upper left)

Watch the trailer for BLAST!
Purchase the DVD

The FOX television show Fringe has partnered with the Science Olympiad to produce free downloadable Lesson Plans aimed at students in Grades 9-12. Each lesson plan -- based on a science topic from an episode of Fringe -- includes learning objectives, online resources, a hands-on activity, discussion suggestions, extensions, episode scenes of relevance, and National Science Standards Alignment. For example, one lesson plan teaches students about chain reactions, while another teaches about the different characteristics of music and how it can have physiological effects on the listener.

Learn more and download the lesson plans at https://soinc.org/fringe

Beutel explains:

“This gives us the chance to open up what we do, real space exploration to audiences that we may not already have in a blockbuster film. We’re talking about a worldwide audience and it’s a natural fit in the sense that it is sci-fi and real space exploration but also it allows us to get into the theaters and let kids see what we do, inspire them to look into what NASA is all about and reach an audience we may not normally reach.”

Read more at Universe Today

The film focuses on three Zaballeen boys who have big dreams about their futures: Adham, Nabil, and Osama. The boys in Garbage Dreams are alike and yet so different. Osama is viewed as the trouble- maker who can’t keep a job. In reality, he is misunderstood and longs for somebody who won’t make fun of him. At the end of the film he gets a job working with a foreign trash company. His friends call him a traitor but he is happy to be working where people appreciate him.

Adham’s father has been imprisoned, so Adham has had to assume all the responsibility of being the family breadwinner. This is a burden he never wanted. His real desire is to travel to Europe or America and create a business of his own. Even though his family wants him to marry, that is not on his mind

Nabil is very family orientated. He wants to marry and hopes for the best for his family and the rest of the Zaballeen. At one point in the film, Nabil travels to the Netherlands to study Western recycling methods. He is shocked that the Dutch can recycle only 20 percent because of lack of labor. At the end of the film Nabil is working at the Zaballeen’s recycling school.

The Zaballeen are very inspirational people. There is nothing wrong with their old-fashioned methods because they get the job done. Everybody works in garbage and the film shows how crowded the Zaballeen’s neighborhood is with trash. But it doesn’t bother them because this is how they support themselves. They are precise and recycle everything that a machine would leave behind. When the foreign companies invade, the Zaballeen are forced to make a decision, modernize their ways or get left behind. They choose modernization but only to a slight extent. They adopt a separation system for trash and try to work out a compromise with the companies. They even send their youth to Europe to learn about modern recycling. Two years later, when the film ends, their situation still isn’t progressing.

The sad reality is that the Zaballeen are very underappreciated. We have people in this world who are actually doing something for the planet and others are willing to replace them so easily. Then we turn around and claim that we care about climate change and the environment. This is hypocritical. Profit should not be put ahead of the welfare of others. Osama, Nabil, and Adham are young and so desperately want to succeed. For Osama this means working with the “enemies” and for Adham this means traveling away from his home. It isn’t their fault and they shouldn’t have to be put in a situation where they must make these choices. Garbage Dreams shows just how much we need to get our priorities straight and give more attention to the things that really matter.

Also see Rosalee's review of The Age of Stupid.

With ice caps melting in the Arctic and the rising of global temperatures, how many more years do we really have on Earth? The Age of Stupid is a documentary which combines fiction, personal accounts from real people, and animation to illustrate how our ignorance will lead to our demise. The Age of Stupid opens in the United States on September 21, 2009, as part of the United Nations’ Climate Week. The producers want us all to take action against climate change as soon as possible, and they tell you how at notstupid.net.

The film opens in the year 2055. An archivist living in the melted Arctic uses scenes from the early 21st century, a time when we could have saved ourselves, to demonstrate the effects of climate change. The personal accounts come from a young Nigerian woman who hopes to be a doctor, a British family fighting for the environment, a New Orleans seismologist who lived through Hurricane Katrina, an Indian entrepreneur who wants to create a low-cost airline, a mountaineer in the French Alps, and Iraqi refugees in Jordan who have been affected by the war. The fact that these people are from completely different backgrounds goes to show that environmental problems affect everyone.

The film begins by depicting how the Earth could look in another 40 years. London is underwater and Las Vegas is submerged under sand. Then the archivist pulls out videos that demonstrate how climate change is taking its toll today. The mountaineer describes in heartfelt terms what global warming has already done to his home. He needs ladders to climb down onto glaciers he used to walk upon because the glaciers have melted so much.

The British family is environmentally conscious and does everything they can to save energy. They use wind turbines. The people in their community think the turbines are spoiling their view, and ban more turbines. A woman who was against the turbines is asked whether she is concerned about global warming. She says yes over and over, but how can anybody claim to care about global warming and rejoice over banning wind turbines? Not long after the wind-turbine fight, this community suffered severe, unprecedented flooding, probably due to climate change.

Oil also is a major problem for some characters in The Age of Stupid. The United States' main purpose in declaring war on Iraq was cheap oil that does nothing but feed consumption and destroys the environment. In the film, we meet two Iraqi kids without a father who are refugees in Jordan. They hate Americans for all the misfortune they have caused. One child says, “If I see an American, I will kill him.” The video shows them pretending to be soldiers and killing each other. The war also affected them psychologically because now murder is a game. They don't understand how serious the war is.

In Nigeria, an oil-rich country, oil goes to the wealthy who put the nation's health at risk. Near an oil refinery, water is dirty and crawling with diseases. The young Nigerian woman wants to be a doctor and make a difference. She fished in the polluted waters to make money for school, but she cannot earn enough. She hopes that one day, her home will be healthy and she and her neighbors can a live better lives.

India has only two planes in the entire country. So, an Indian businessman is on a mission to create a new cheap airline, making it easier for people to travel. But air travel contributes a great deal to global warming. Even though the Indian’s intentions are good, the outcomes will be destructive. The question right now is whether the good he is doing outweighs the bad. It can be argued many ways, but the film clearly shows how dangerous the effects of global warming can become.

The Age of Stupid will become more than a documentary if we don't change our ways; it will become reality. Resources won't last forever and the Earth is literally falling apart. The Age of Stupid emphasizes that if there was ever a moment to make a change, it's now. Every little thing we do can help as long as everybody participates. The first step to accomplishing this is to acknowledge that climate change is a threat. It’s difficult for people to accept this but it’s time to stop ignoring or denying that it's occurring. Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina is due to climate change. The archivist's first and last words in the film are that the human race committed suicide. We could have stopped climate change, but we did nothing. Let's prove him wrong!

Also see Betty's review of The Age of Stupid.

The Age Of Stupid is a movie that blends documentary techniques and fiction to focus on the effects of climate change. The producers, two young women who devoted five years to making the movie, say that they are not interested in awards, but rather mobilizing young people to combat climate change.

The movie opens in the year 2055 after nothing has been done to stop climate change. The narrator looks back to 2008 and tries to figure out why we humans paid no attention. Then the movie tells the stories of seven real characters from different countries who are trying to help t

Some stories told in the movie are very touching for example 23 year old Layefa Malemi wants to become a medical student, so she sells fish and gas to near by neighbors to save up for college. She wants to live like an American and wear good clothes and drive a fancy car but instead she lives right off the Niger Delta where there is no clean drinking water, no electricity or good food to eat. She says, “I’m not happy living this kind of life. At 23 I should be in a better place. I want our place to be like America. I want our people – at least me myself – to live that kind of life. It’s a beautiful life. If you were living that life you wouldn’t want to die. You’d want to stay on Earth forever.” Reading this quote makes me a little sentimental because I wish that every one could live comfortably; this video just reminds me of those who don’t.

Another story told are the lives of 8-year-old Jamila and 9-year-old Adnan Bayyoud. Their house was bombed on the second day of the Iraq war. Since then they have fled to Jordan leaving their older brother Malik behind because of medical issues. The bond that these two brothers and sister have is inseparable. Everyday they go to the market and sell second hand American shoes. Adnan states, “We wear our shoes till they fall apart, but they just throw theirs (Americans) away.” While hearing this quote, I thought about it and then realized that it is true. I now save shoes and sneakers until I but another pair and donate it to the Salvation Army or to a family in need.

Watching these stories and listening to the narrator speak about climate change gave me a huge wake up call that we cannot just ignore. We should want to take the necessary steps and try to prevent it while we can.

I think this movie is a must see for all. Even if you think you know about climate change the movie shows it in ways that you haven’t seen before. Just to think about the possibility of no human life in 2055 is devastating. I will be 62 years old in 2055 and I want to be alive. To try and help these issue things like campaigning can help so, the government can pay more attention to this extremely critical topic. Also you can go watch the film and bring along some of your friends, so that they are informed too. Things like refilling old water bottles and composting are going to make a change. Unfortunately recycling is pointless at this time and will not point the problem in a positive direction.

Even so, the aliens have advanced technology, and we meet three aliens, including a child, who are scientists and technically adept. A private arms dealer, Multi-National United (MNU), is put in control of the creatures but they are not interested in alien well-being. The only positive outcome, as far as MNU is concerned, is to figure out how to use the aliens’ weaponry, which requires meshing machines with alien DNA.

The action starts when Wikus Van Der Merwe, a peace-loving MNU employee, is infected with the creatures’ DNA, and becomes a hunted man. Suddenly, he is worth a fortune because he can use alien weaponry.

This movie is a must-see and deserves five stars! It also offers parallels with current military research. At one point, Wikus is able to mesh with a giant suit of alien armour that protects him as he fights back. In fact, the United States is trying to develop new technology that works with the human body so that soldiers are safer on the battleground.

In 2003, the U.S Army Research Service and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began working together to create a soldier’s “smart” battle suit. A “smart” battle suit would work with a soldier’s own muscles and nervous system. It would help protect, shield, and heal soldiers in the field, meaning that both soldiers and their families at home could feel more secure - not so different from the alien technology seen in District 9!

Director Ron Howard seems to think so. He believes stereotypes of women in science or of women as thinkers and leaders have broadened. He told reporters at a press conference the idea that it’s harder to cast a female as a scientist is probably behind us. "I wanted to present two very intelligent people going on this journey together," he said. "In Ayelet I found a blend of intellect and a kind of humanity, plus she’s beautiful and had a really good chemistry with Tom (Hanks) in the audition." Zurer is known for her pervious roles in Nina’s Tragedies, Adam Resurrected, and as Eric Brana’s wife in Munich and is also an accomplished TV actress.

CERN is so pleased about its association with the movie that it has launched a specially dedicated site to explain the science behind the story. Here are links to the news the site and news releases based on the press conference.

Nevertheless, I want to celebrate the portrayal of a physicist as brainy, beautiful, and sexy, who knows more than the men around her, and has a leading role in a blockbuster. And even though stereotypes may be diminishing, there are very few women physicists, let alone those specializing in particle and nuclear physics. According to the National Science Foundation, women got 225 (16.6 percent) of PhDs in physics compared to 3,262 (49.2 percent) in the biological sciences awarded in 2006. The good news is that the number of women who got physics PhDs increased from 12.6 percent in 1999. But they constitute a mere 0.76 percent of all science, math and engineering doctorates (a total of 29,854) awarded in 2006. Here are the NSF tables for all doctoral degrees, 1999 – 2006, and doctoral degrees awarded to women during the same time interval.

Here is a site dedicated to accomplished women physicists and my essay and book review in Scientific American about why there are so few women physicists.

According to the CERN Courier, an International Journal of High-Energy Physics, the laboratory itself suffers from a dearth of women scientists. Here’s a 2007 article on the topic from the European perspective. Author Marianne Johansen of Stockholm University reports:

Physics has always had a relatively low proportion of female students and researchers. In the EU there are on average 33% female PhD graduates in the physical sciences, while the percentage of female professors amounts to 9% (ECDGR 2006). At CERN the proportion is even less, with only 6.6% of the research staff in experimental and theoretical physics being women (Schinzel 2006). The fact that there is no proportional relationship between the number of PhD graduates and professors also suggests that women are less likely to succeed in an academic career than men.

Happily, in both the novel and the movie, Vetra conducts biology and physics research at the Swiss nuclear research laboratory. She has collaborated with her father in research on antimatter using the Large Hadron Collider, but their work has inadvertently produced an antimatter bomb capable of bringing down the Vatican in a flash of light.

I say “happily” because Zuler’s Vetra will serve as a role model for thousands of girls and young women. She’s a far cry from the mad scientist’s (merely) beautiful assistant. In one scene, Vetra points to a computer diagram of the antimatter device and explains to the men surrounding her. “The antimatter is suspended, there, in an airtight nano-composite shell with electromagnets on each end,” she says. “But if it were to fall out of suspension, and come into contact with matter, say with the bottom of the canister, the two opposing forces would annihilate one another. Violently.”

According to a CERN press release, Zurer described particle physicists as "strange" and "extraordinary." She also told journalists, "I wanted to understand the relationship between the person who invented something quite powerful and the emotion, stress, and guilt that she carries throughout the film because of the possible devastation it could cause."

To research her character, Zurer relied more on Dan Brown's book and on the Internet than on real female physicists, the press release said. Zurer did interview the female chair of UCLA’s astronomy department, according to the L.A. Times, Zurer (and Tom Hanks) also read Nobel prize winning physicist Leon Lederman's book The God Particle. According to Publishers Weekly’s review, the "God particle" is Lederman's term for what “other physicists call a Higgs boson––a hypothetical particle that might hold a key to the subatomic world of quarks and leptons. To find out if a Higgs boson indeed exists, this Nobel laureate in physics conceived of the Superconducting Super Collider.”

Here’s to Brown for creating the character of Vetra, Howard for his direction, and Zuler for the extent to which she did research the researcher and for her performance. But in this case, I hope for an unnatural exception––we don’t need anti-female particle physicists. Nevermind that sort of antimatter.

By the way, an explosion on the order of the one in Angels and Demons is sci fi. Antimatter is safe because it is difficult to make. And at the rate we produce it today, it would take a few billion years to fill a balloon.

- Karen A. Frenkel
For information about me please visit my website, www.karenafrenkel.com

Between the Folds

Director Vanessa Gould says her documentary is about “the magical process of transforming two dimensions into three dimensions.” But she also says it’s scope is far larger. Beyond the potential of an uncut paper square, the film is about “the potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently.” Gould shows us that through origami, these folders’ lives have been altered, thus, the film also tells stories of transformation.

We meet folders from all walks of life who speak eloquently of their art. A French artist who created a mermaid, Jack in a box, and a violinist likens each piece to jazz improvisation. A Caltech engineer chucked his career to “manipulate paper” using mathematical and genetic ideas to create realistic-looking insects, birds, and fish.

Akira Yoshizawa (1911 – 2005), the self-taught, Japanese grandmaster of origami is their inspiration. He invented wet-folding, a technique that uses water to dampen paper so that it can be manipulated more easily and pressed into curves. He also originated a diagramming system so that others could reproduce increasingly complex designs. An elk he fashioned in 1985 involved 200 steps, for example. It was but one of 50,000 models Yoshizawa created in his lifetime. He never sold any.

We also meet a folder who makes an analogy between playing Chopin etudes, saying you need to overcome your emotions to get to the next level of folding. An Israeli teacher uses origami to make geometry more visual to her students. They fold and smile, she says, they find happiness. A post-modernist explores what shapes come of merely one fold, finding this creative limit a “freeing lesson.” At the other extreme are the most intricate polyhedrons and sculptures that resemble multi-petaled flowers. Click here to visit some of these participants’ websites.

A father and son team, Eric and Martin Demaine, have pioneered computational origami, using algorithms to model the ways materials can be folded. Eric, who is also a glass blower, is an associate professor of computer science and a member of the artificial intelligence laboratory at MIT. Here is his page. And here are some of the problems he’s interested in solving. the Museum of Modern Art has exhibited the Demaines’ works since 2008. Here are three works in the show.

The principles of computational origami have been applied to the design of car airbags and protein folding. Proper protein folding is necessary because only unfolded surfaces interact with other molecules in the environment. Recently, diseases have been linked to faultily folded proteins. Alzheimer’s results from too much of an incorrectly folded protein and cystic fibrosis and cancer are related to a lack of correctly folded protein. Here’s the link to a Nature backgrounder on this topic. Furthermore, understanding how natural proteins fold could help biologists learn how to create properly folded artificial proteins.

Between the Folds did not go into this level of detail, which might have made it more significant to those with a practical bent. Nevertheless, it is a very intriguing film on many levels, literally with multiple dimensions.

- Karen A. Frenkel
For information about me please visit my website, www.karenafrenkel.com

With only two hours to convey seven lives over a twenty-one year span, Doctors’ Diaries only gives a glance of the sleepless nights and rigorous classes to get through med school, the intense hands-on residencies, and the life each doctor forges out of their training. Observing the three women and four men at Harvard and beyond as they struggle with large workloads, classes that involve human corpses, attempts to have intimate relationships and interests outside the medical world, life in busy hospitals; all while coming of age. This is truly a look at an evolution and a non-linear, sometimes out of balance, path to a life they all dreamed of. And that path never seems to stop winding, as each doctor narrows down their field interests, have families, and become teachers and role models to the next generation of doctors.

The word doctor originates from a word that meant teacher, scholar, religious teacher, or someone respected because of their knowledge. Today, doctors are some of the most educated people and their knowledge of our bodies is invaluable. While their ability to teach us about living healthy is important and evident to most- Doctors' Diaries points out another lesson we can learn from doctors that is not often appreciated. In the current economic climate where headlines only seem to tell of corporate greed and selfishness, the enormous amount of sacrifice all seven doctors go through to get to where they are today- six are practicing medicine and one is in the non-profit world- is refreshing. Besides the six plus years of medical school and residencies, the doctors of this film have accepted a life of working long hours- and their personal lives, interests and sometimes health suffer. Their sacrifices are proof that there are people who have a desire, or a calling, to help those around them by using their talents for the benefits of others. It is a nice reminder that there are still people in our country who are concerned with the quality of life for everyone.

Doctors' Diaries will air on PBS Tuesday April 7th and Tuesday April 14th, 2009.

We meet three graduate students and experience their day-to-day travails and triumphs as they try to isolate proteins and try to determine their structures. The most senior grad student is Robert Townley, who has already hit a scientific roadblock at a previous lab, so a lot it at stake for him. He keeps a video diary that is woven into the film. His holy grail is the structure of AMPK, a protein that may be important in the treatment of diabetes and obesity. His junior cohorts are Kilpatrick Caroll and Gabrielle Cummberley.

Their work involves the techniques of crystallography; purifying proteins, getting them to crystallize, zapping them in a sychrotron to get structural data, and finally determining their structures on a computer. It is a testament to the filmmakers’ good judgment that they chose a lab that relies on these techniques because many are highly visual, and trips to the local synchrotron help overcome the claustrophobia of benchwork. It also helps that Townley is an avid rock climber and we accompany him on his vacation as he challenges a summit.

During most of the film, though, we shuttle between the students’ lab and personal lives and Shapiro’s life as a principal investigator as he carefully mentors all three. His style reveals much about the type of scientist he is and what he values—curiosity, ambition, perseverance. When Townley’s protein fails to yield data, Shapiro tells us, “ You learn from failure and you learn almost nothing from success.”

In fact, much of the film is concerned not so much with the specifics of research, but with what sacrifices people are willing to make for the sake of discovery. This is as it should be; the public needs to better understand what goes on in the minds of those working in Ivory Towers. Structurally, the narrative piques our curiosity, keeping us guessing which student will be most resilient if their protein fails to crystallize. We want to know who will doggedly start again from scratch. Who is driven enough, who is emotionally and physically strong enough, and focused enough, to let their PhD outweigh his or her personal life?

The filmmakers also achieve tension in their treatment of Shapiro, who is up for tenure. Contrapuntal with watching his students’ research unfold, we are privy to the tenure process. We catch glimpses of the meeting of his peers as they decide whether to award him tenure. Shapiro also tells us about his first paper to be published in Nature, “which can make of break your career,” and the painful irony that his father, with whom he had reconciled after a year of not speaking, died that very morning.

At the film’s conclusion, viewers learn which student will continue in research, pharma, or remain a technician and whether Shapiro gets tenure. I’m not going to give that away and spoil things for you. But I do want to raise a few questions about the film’s purpose and reach. Because of Townley’s video diary and more emphasis on his journey than on the others’, Naturally Obsessed is a great candidate for broadcast on Public Television, especially POV. But the college science pipeline is suffering a dirth of students and clearly junior high- and high school students could benefit from seeing this documentary. I’m just not sure they’ll find their way to it. That would be a pity because Naturally Obsessed manages to celebrate the glory of discovery and also realistically show how hard and competitive science is. (And so is anything worth doing to the best of your ability, actually.) So I hope there are plans to split this one-hour film into two parts so that it can be shown in junior highs and high schools across the land. Because classes are 45 minutes long, after watching half, teachers and kids could discuss it for the remaining 15 minutes. Perhaps Naturally Obsessed will be shown in assemblies, too. I hope so, now that our new president is making it cool to be curious and studious. Naturally and technologically.

- Karen A. Frenkel
For information about me please visit my website, www.karenafrenkel.com

Recently I attended the opening of The Atom Smashers, a documentary by
Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross from 137 Films. It was held,
appropriately, at the Museum of Science and Industry. Unfortunately,
this had the effect of providing us with what is probably the smallest
screen in the city of Chicago. That can easily be forgiven because the
film itself was exceptional.

In blurb form, The Atom Smashers is about scientists at the Tevatron,
a 4 mile diameter machine hosted at Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory (Fermilab) in the suburbs of Chicago and currently the
worlds largest particle accelerator. They are racing to find something
called The Higgs Boson before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an even
bigger machine being built in Switzerland, is completed and beats them
to the discovery.

In contrast to what you’d expect from that description, very little
time is spent explaining what the Higgs is, or why people are looking
for it. Much of the sequence introducing the Higgs shows the
individual scientists’ deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the question
“What, really, is the Higgs Boson?” The most unexpected and surreal
setting — then director of Fermilab Leon Lederman appearing on
Donohue, complete with blackboard and multi-colored chalk — is notable
not for the exposition, but for what appears to be his complete
failure to communicate to the audience why the Tevatron was worth
building. In the few voice-over sequences the animation are
uncomplicated, they strive not for the Pixar sheen that seems the goal
of most current documentaries, but instead channel the disordered yet
simple blackboard of the working scientist.

That resonance with work-day science is also the first hint to the
film’s strength. This is a documentary, not about the science, but
about the scientists; not about the highly structured world of ideas
in which they live, but about the emotional life surrounding that
world. We see the Fermilab model airplane club and the rock band,
complete with band leader Ben Kilminster’s dream of being a rock star.
We watch the tango lessons hosted by theorist Marcela Carena. We
follow the stresses of the life of Robin Erbacher and John Conway —
trying to start a family while commuting weekly between teaching in
Davis, California and researching in Batavia, Illinois. We are
invited, in contrast to the norm in science documentaries, to see the
scientists as ordinary people, with ordinary problems, ordinary
hobbies, and ordinary families.

The Atom Smashers’ stripping away of science exposition does not mean
that the science is lost. It shines through beautifully in two ways.
One of the main sub-stories concerns how John Conway and his group
found a “bump” in the data that hinted that the Higgs might be within
reach. (He blogged about this here and here.) The group members share
their excitement at the initial finding, the nervousness,
apprehension, and flat-out hard work as they extend the analysis in an
attempt to confirm the signal, and finally the disappointment when the
follow-up shows no effect. This is a treat in a science documentary: a
story about an exciting lead that turns out to go nowhere. It’s
understandable that these would usually be skipped, but ignoring them
presents a very skewed picture of life as a scientist. John’s story
represents the bulk of scientific work; follow a lead until it dies,
shrug, then go on to the next thing. The thought of making a
breakthrough is what keeps most researchers excited about going on,
but the moments of true discovery are far between.

Excitement is the second aspect of science that shines in the film.
The main plot-line concerns the race as Fermilab physicists try to
find the Higgs before the LHC is turned on. (With the LHC’s increased
energy and volume of data, a victory over the Tevatron is a fait
accompli once the new machine is running.) There is a clear sense that
every person working there wants desperately and whole-heartedly to
find the damn thing. While it’s entirely possible that someone seeing
the film will leave with no better idea what the Higgs is than when
they entered, no one could watch it without picking up the sense of
enthusiasm for the search. This is what completes the picture of
scientists as people. Their job is one of passion and drive. We are
not shown robots, mechanically pushing buttons on their colossal
machines and reading out the secrets of the universe off the
ticker-tape output, but instead people who are much more akin to
athletes, driven to extraordinary feats by the twin desires of wanting
to better themselves and to beat the other team.

It is in their pursuit of this sense of competition that the
filmmakers commit their only real error. They choose to portray the
Higgs search as a race between the Tevatron in the United States —
“us” — and the LHC in Europe — “them”. But, almost every physicist
working on the Tevatron is also involved with one of the experiments
at the LHC. As Erbacher said in the panel discussion after the
screening, in this case “them is us”. There is, in fact, a tremendous
amount of competition, but it is between the different experiments at
the same machine. These are CDF and D0 at the Tevatron, which have
been competing for years, soon to be replaced by ATLAS and CMS at the
LHC. While many would be happy to have one of the Tevatron experiments
make the discovery first, no one is going to complain if it’s found a
few years later, because they’ll be part of that as well. Even more
importantly, there is a point where the sports analogy fails. In
baseball there is a World Series every year and some team will win it,
the only question is which one. When hunting for a discovery the
question is whether there will even be a “World Series” for someone to
win. While everyone wants to be the team that wins, what they want
most is for the game to be played. In particle physics it’s been 13
years since an important discovery, and 25 since there was a
revolutionary one.

This one flaw is far from fatal, and The Atom Smashers is the best
treatment of the lives of physicists that I have ever seen. I would
highly recommend seeing it if given the chance.

Rob Townley, one of these students, had found himself in his 4^th year of graduate school, having, in his words, “burned all of his bridges” and in limbo without a lab to go to. Clearly he had left the lab he had been working in on less than ideal terms and was hilariously honest about what a troublemaker he was. I understood exactly how he felt, having been in the same position in my own graduate work, only I was in the fifth year of my graduate career at that point (and not nearly as candid or hilarious as Rob about how difficult I was). Rob was lucky that at that relatively late stage in his career he was accepted into another lab, and was doubly lucky to find Dr. Shapiro. In order to get my PhD, I had to stay in the lab I started in because no other mentor (that I wanted to go to) was willing to take me at such a late stage. The “fire in my belly” and a sense, expressed by one of the other graduate students in the film, that I would be “quitting” if I gave up, gave me the resolve to mount an argument convincing enough to my original mentor to keep me on.

Despite the difficulties experienced by Rob and his fellow students, I found myself grinning throughout most of the film, laughing at certain points that were all too familiar. Watching the students burn their fingers retrieving glycerol stocks of desired bacterial strains from the -80° C freezer or liquid nitrogen, growing up countless liters of the bugs in 2 liter flasks on shakers in the warm (37° C) room, vortexing test tubes, making liters of buffer, engineering DNA plasmids (which were transformed into bacteria) and loading and running hundreds of gels by electrophoresis reminded me of the everyday experiences that took up so many years of my life (in college, as a technician, and as a graduate student).

There were also moments in the film when I remembered the sadness and desperation of repeatedly failed experiments. A particularly poignant moment was when Rob spoke of such desperation that he did basically no work in the lab for 3 months – he was just too despondent after so many failures. I did the same thing at one point, although I used that time to write a proposal for a new project that ultimately got me my PhD (and my neck out of the proverbial noose). Many PhD students go through something like this, and as individuals will react in their own way. But the all too real feeling of wanting to quit repeatedly, experienced by most if not all graduate students, was very effectively conveyed.

Another aspect of graduate work in science that was very effectively conveyed in the film was the “luck” factor. No matter how hard, intelligently, diligently and doggedly a researcher works, it can take years before any of his/her work bears any fruit at all, and learning how to conduct independent research at the same time makes it all the more difficult. Dr. Shapiro described the balance mentors have to try to strike in terms of the amount of guidance they provide a student, and I think he must be one of the more successful mentors around. Shapiro happened to be at the screening last night and was invited by the panel moderator to speak to the audience following the conclusion of the film. There was one thing he said which brought me a feeling of intense joy and vindication, which was that prior to participating in and viewing the film, he did not have a real appreciation for how hard it really is for graduate students. I just wanted to shout “thank you, thank you, thank you!”

For anyone who doubted whether the new administration would be savvy of the importance of science in America, Obama's inaugural speech provided a great sense of hope. Ann Marie (the Executive Director of TalkingScience) and I watched the inaugural ceremony with a crowd of women (and even a few men) who packed into The White House Project's brunch at Caroline's comedy club on Broadway. When Obama told the world that he will work to "restore science to its rightful place," we couldn't help but break out into a wild, nearly hysteric applause. We also have high hopes that Obama will be an advocate of gender equality in the sciences.

In a recent New York Times article titled In 'Geek Chic' and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science, journalist Natalie Angier interviews Dr. Mary Ann Mason, a professor at UC Berkley's School of Law. Dr. Mason gathered extensive data regarding the personal lives and family dynamics of scientists at the top of their field, and her findings show significant disparities between men and women. In sum, Dr. Mason's interpretation of the data suggests that women researchers are expected to make larger sacrifices in their personal/family lives as a result of their professional aspirations. Dr. Mason believes that Obama can help by signing an executive order to provide more practical family leave and parental benefits to the recipients of federal grants, many of whom are research scientists.

Obama has long been a proponent of womens' equality in the workplace, and now that he is in a position to make a difference on a level which could set a precedent that fosters equality in science and society, many are confident that President Obama will make the change.

Among other things, we talked about how Dara came up with the idea for the film and the challenges of weaving science into a romantic comedy.

KAF: How and when did you decide to become a filmmaker?

DB: At university I was studying communication studies and philosophy, photography, sound design, and writing. I realized that film had all of these elements.
I have the habit of talking to myself and I realized that I think in dialogue. I was a daydreamer and always trying to record my thoughts. Also, I was interested in poetry and short stories and dabbled in journalism. I’m interested in documentaries, too, and I don’t think they and feature films are exclusive. Good feature films often are inspired by documentaries––it’s all about finding good characters and researching them.

KAF: I see that since you said “university” without an article that you are not American.

DB: I was born in Montreal. I moved to Toronto to work as a production assistant and in four years I became assistant director. It was all about being a fly on the wall and watching films in action. I felt after a while that I was only in production and I wanted creative control. A producer suggested applying to NYU’s film school. I applied only there. I’ve been in New York for seven years.

KAF: What was the inspiration for In Vivid Detail?

DB: I had a friend who was getting her PhD in education at Harvard. They have a center for prosopagnosia. She came to New York for a convention and showed me a photo online of a guy with the disorder. People who have it can’t watch films because they get characters confused. I read of a farmer who can’t tell people apart, but can differentiate his cows. Many articles were written since and the Queen of Sweden announced recently that she is face-blind.

It came to me quickly that the way I wanted to tell about this disorder, which is so complicated, was to structure it within the framework of a love story.

I followed the idea of breaking the whole into parts and putting a puzzle together again. That led to the idea that he could put her face back together. Often people misunderstand and think the syndrome is due to a visual problem. So I made him an architect because that is visual and people would know there was nothing wrong with his eyes so the problem had to be neurological.

In Old Montreal artists on the cobble stone streets are always drawing portraits. That was how I got the idea of him tracing her face. By tracing her face and breaking her down into small squares he could, in his own way, see her face––put it together.

KAF: How did the idea to integrate the disorder into a romantic comedy arise?

DB: Overall, I wanted to show two people trying to understand each other. The idea for a romantic comedy came into my head and I never felt that it should be something else. The only other work done about prosopagnosia was a murder mystery novel called Face Blind, which was a New York Times best-seller. I’m meeting with the author and a screenwriter. They’re interested in making the book into a feature.

KAF: Was it a challenge to find the right balance of emotional content with scientific content?

DB: The hardest part is how to include science and embed it so that it’s not exposition. We (she and husband co-writer Kieran Dick) wanted to plug in all the details so that everything would lead up to the big reveal of what he has.

We tried to be subtle. At first you think he’s a little odd, but a second time you see the film, you realize that he doesn’t make eye contact, the opening shot with him playing with a puzzle was a hint going back to the Descartes quote before the action: “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve.” Kieran knew the quote. On the girlfriend’s end, she tries to stop him at a red light because she doesn’t fully understand yet. Every scene had to incorporate the symptoms or the problems and challenges and about them reaching an understanding.

KAF: What was it like collaborating with your husband?

DB: It was good. We’ve done that before, Writing is our strongest way of collaborating. I tend to come up with an idea and go for it and he slows down and is patient and fleshes it out and thinks about the ideas. So together we complete a script. He has an engineering and art background.

I’m glad he had a moment in the spotlight when he received the award for me, although I was sad I couldn’t’ be there.

KAF: What are you working on now?

DB: Since making In Vivid Detail I have lots of ideas for more stories that weave science into the narrative. It’s a little like documentaries in that you have to explain accurately. I love that process.

We’ve completed another script called Myrabella’s Secret. It’s about an unusual friendship between a mechanical engineer and a musician who is on brink of success. The musician suffers from musical hallucinations.

KAF: Oliver Sacks has written about that, hasn’t he?

DB: He mentioned it, but his book came out after we started our script.

KAF: What does the award mean to you?

DB: I remember the day I got the Sloan grant. I was working on Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) in a field in the pouring rain. It was gross and disgusting. And I got the phone call congratulating me. I started jumping up and down. Steve Martin is in Cheaper by the Dozen and he was staring at me. But there is so much rejection in this industry and you have to take the time to celebrate what you’re doing. Even if you don’t get it, you have to more forward with your work. Sloan’s reputation helped with getting the high-caliber cast and locations, and equipment was donated. It was very helpful.

You can find out more about the film at http://www.Invividdetail.com
For information about me, please visit my website, www.KarenAFrenkel.com

Here’s what Ms. Sharzer told me about the dawn of her career and the inspiration for The Wormhole:

KAF: How and when did you decide to become a filmmaker?

JS: I always loved film, but there wasn't a "eureka" moment when I decided to become a filmmaker. It was a process. When I graduated from film school, I was fully prepared to continue working as an editor if I couldn't make a go of it as a writer/director. I got a few lucky breaks early in my career that encouraged me to keep at it. It's been seven years since I finished The Wormhole and I'm only now beginning to feel like I know what I'm doing.

KAF: What was the inspiration for The Wormhole?

JS: I knew about the Sloan Foundation Grant and was in the process of finishing a feature script to submit in 2001. I found out that very few people applied for the production grants, which were substantial, especially for a struggling film student already in debt. I had very little money to make my thesis film and racked by brain for a topic. The problem was I knew nothing about science and had no time to learn anything new. I came across the expression "wormhole" and it immediately conjured up a funny image if taken literally. I thought, if my hero were a child, he could be literal with it as well. I just needed a reason for him to have to travel back in time. I woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled out the script. It varied very little from that first draft. I thought about a moment in my childhood that had a distinct "before" and "after"––the death of my aunt. It gave me the emotional charge of the story, though the circumstance is purely fictional.

KAF: Why did you choose to make a film with science integral to the plot?

JS: The production grant was the initial inspiration, but I found that the science opened up the film to be about something more than simply a personal family story. The science brought a little scope and fantasy into it.</p>

KAF: How much did you know about black holes before?

JS: Very little. I took a basic astronomy course in college and that was about it.

KAF: What inspired you to depict the grandmother as a scientist?

JS: The part was originally written for a man. At the time, I was auditing an incredible acting class taught by Suzanne Shepherd and it suddenly occurred to me that the character could be a woman and it would be so much more interesting and unexpected. I asked Suzanne to be in the film and thankfully she said yes. She also insisted that we shoot at her country house which is the location you see in the film.

KAF: Was it a challenge to find the right balance of emotional content with scientific content?

JS: I didn't want the movie to be preachy or pedagogical with respect to the science. I wanted us to get just enough of her lecture to spark the idea in the boy's mind. Some people were surprised I received the grant for a movie with so little science in it. But I've found the Sloan Foundation, to their credit, to be very broad in their expectations of what's scientific and what may make for a good film. At the end of the day, the story matters most and they understand that.

KAF: What does the award mean to you?

JS: I'm ashamed to admit I got a D in high school Physics, so the award of Scientific Merit is the ultimate irony. And I'm thrilled that the film holds up after a number of years. If the film is a success, the credit goes to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for inspiring us film geeks to think outside the box.

KAF: What area you working on now?

JS: I'm currently writing two dance movies and a TV pilot for MTV. I'm also casting two different independent films, hoping to shoot at least one of them in 2009.

- Karen A. Frenkel
For information about me please visit my website, www.karenafrenkel.com

Normally, filmmakers add a huge dose of fiction to a dash of science in order to make a movie that is palatable to a mainstream audience. Fiction has no limits; it takes us as far as the imagination can dream-- so it's not surprising that these types of stories often draw a larger audience than, say, practical texts that detail hard facts proved by scientific research and peer-reviewed by dozens of nerds whose vocabulary is chock full of 14 letter words that include so many x's and y's that not only does a population of non-scientists moan with mental agony at the mere thought of reading such articles (myself being included in this group), we also refuse to play against scientists in scrabble. All of that is to say that fiction often helps to make a scientific idea digestible-- it doesn't often work the other way around. However, I just came across an exception to this general rule of thumb at the Imagine Science Film Festival's screening of The First Vampire.

The lighting is terrible, the costumes are cheap, and the acting is below average—but the thirty seconds devoted to a few paragraphs of scientific justification that flashed across the screen just before the credits rolled made 23.5 minutes of watching a painfully terrible story-line unravel worthwhile.

Yes, science is capable of saving more than lives: it can save fiction too! And if you choose to keep reading, I'll save you from having to waste 23.5 minutes of your life to get to the interesting tid bit of science at the end of The First Vampire:

The legend of the vampire is likely based on porphyria, which are rare and incurable genetic diseases that strike about one in every 200,000 people. Symptoms of porphyria include a vampire-like aversion to sunlight and garlic and a craving for blood.

Something about the sun's rays seems to irritate the skin of those who suffer from porphyria to a such a degree that the skin becomes disfigured, may sprout unbecoming patches of hair in unusual places, and sometimes a body part (a finger, for example) falls right off.

Porphyria victims also have an averse reaction to garlic, which contains a chemical that exacerbates the symptoms of the disease.

Today, those who suffer from porphyria are treated with injections of heme, a product of blood. This treatment was not available in the Middle Ages, so perhaps victims of the disease self-medicated by seeking out blood where-ever they could find it, whether from beasts or humans.

Note: I would caution anyone who may have a roommate without health insurance (or at least a friend in the medical field who could hook them up with some heme) and who is also pale, hairy, and missing a few fingers. It's not just fiction after all...vampires are for real!

On the eve before Halloween, the Imagine Science Festival culminated by bestowing the Nature Scientific Merit Award on Jessica Sharzer for The Wormhole (2002) and the Nature People's Choice Award on Dara Bratt for In Vivid Detail (2007). Each filmmaker received a $2,500 check. These works, in which science was integral to the plot, emotionally gripped the judges and audiences. But more on that in a moment.

The ceremony and screening took place in Greenwich Village at Kenny’s Castaway’s. The event and the festival itself, however, were anything but horror-filled shipwrecks. Festival Artistic Director and Founder Alexis Gambis and Program Director Kate Jeffrey were pleased that 1,500 people attended screenings over ten days and that each venue attracted different audiences. While those at CUNY’s Graduate Center and Rockefeller University were (predictably) mainly academics, Brooklyn’s Union Hall and Pratt Institute attracted laypeople, artists, and designers. “We are trying to reach out to the public to break stereotypes and show that we’re hip and young,” Gambis told me, “We really achieved our goal of bringing science to the people.”

Nature Medicine’s Editor in Chief Juan Carlos López and a festival sponsor, and Darcy Kelley, Columbia University Professor of Neuroscience, one of the judges and a festival advisor, were on hand to present the awards. So I asked them about the criteria for the Scientific Merit Award and the judging process. “The most important element was that they be imaginative,” said Kelley. The judging committee, which also included scientist-turned-filmmaker Ari Handel and WNYC RadioLab’s Jad Abumrad, were unanimous in choosing The Wormhole.

Kelley and López agreed that few films wove together enough scientific material with good storytelling, quality filmmaking, and acting. According to Kelley and López, some films had great acting and not enough science, or poor acting supporting a great story but the filmmaking and science were inadequate.

Attendees chose In Vivid Detail after rating each film from one to five. The romantic comedy won the highest score. That film was Kelley’s second choice, but she said the other judges didn’t relate to it, and López thought it did not contain enough science.

Finding the right balance is immensely challenging and Kelley acknowledged that film shorts are a particularly difficult form. It is hard to rapidly establish an emotional connection between viewers and the characters. Since both films are under twenty minutes, the achievements are all the more noteworthy.

The Wormhole (runtime 17 minutes) tackles the emotions of a boy mourning his kidnapped brother. He wants to rewrite the past and after hearing his grandmother lecture to her class about wormholes that connect black holes to white holes, interprets the science literally to try to resolve his feelings of loss. (Personally, I think this beautiful and sensitive film deserves a prize just for depicting the grandmother as a cosmologist.) In Vivid Detail (runtime 18 minutes) explores the impact on a budding romance of a man’s childhood brain injury. He suffers from prosopagnosia, which prevents him from recognizing faces. At first his girlfriend is skeptical that he really has this neurological disorder, but then struggles to understand and accept it.

Unfortunately, both award-winning directors were out of town. Accepting for The Wormhole, composer Christopher Libertino commented that there is “lots of crosstalk between the arts and sciences” and expressed thanks for the festival. Bratt’s husband Kieran Dick and also the writer, accepted for In Vivid Detail and quipped “I thank Nature and nature in general.” Because they were absent last night, I couldn’t ask the directors (who both happen to by NYU film school graduates) about the way they presented science or the amount, their decision-making process, or why they felt compelled to make a film including science at all. Maybe that will be my next blog.

So in the meantime, let me ask your opinion of Carl Djerassi’s thoughts on this topic. In his essay, “Contemporary Science-in-theatre: A Rare Genre,” Djerassi, inventor of the birth control pill, author and playwright, comments, “The moment many scientifically illiterate persons learn that some scientific facts are about to be sprung on them, they raise a mental shield. It is those people—the ascientific or even antiscientific—that I wanted to touch through the medium of fiction.” But he says a few sentences later, “Open admission of a desire for pedagogic smuggling immediately raises the warning flag associated with the charged term ‘didactic.’ ”

He shows us that this dilemma is as old as the hills, pointing to the Roman poet Horace. He argued 2000 years ago in Ars Poetica for delighting the reader at the same time as instructing him. Djerassi says that although many use the word didactic pejoratively, according to Webster’s Dictionary it really means, “intended to convey instruction and information, as well as pleasure and entertainment.” (Djerassi’s italics). “So what is wrong,” he asks, “with learning something while being entertained?” See: http://www.djerassi.com/sciencetheatre.html

OK, Halloween, with its costumes and masks, is over. But we can still haunt those anti-science spirits with some lively discussion. Why do you think that today we feel we must disguise science instruction within entertainment? People like the luxury of air conditioning, the convenience of computers, and love their iPods, but somehow don’t want to understand the science fundamental to applied technology. Are we experiencing the death of curiosity about our universe? Why do many people stigmatize scientific investigators? What do you think has happened to our society over the centuries resulting in this change? Looking forward to your thoughts.

A man whose home is in a suitcase and a woman whose home is in her head are the subjects of the final film- Great Genius and Profound Stupidity. The director, Benita Raphan, takes on these historical eccentrics to demonstrate that genius and stupidity are twin concepts. The woman, Helen Keller, was deaf and blind since before the age of two. Without any visual or audio memories, she is somehow able to lyrically describe her surroundings with rare insight. And yet, if she had not had intervention, she would have been instituted and ignored. The man, Paul Erdos, is a homeless mathematical genius. Living out of two small suitcases, Erdos is a rolling stone. Math is everywhere and his sole purpose is to gain insight from anyone and everyone. He had five to six hundred co-authors and contributors and was broke his entire life: any prize money won was donated. No money, home, family or belongings does not equal success in our society, and yet perhaps that is what left Erdos free to accomplish what he did.

Raphan demonstrates how close genius and stupidty are with the final eccentric genius: Ian Carrison, a nine-year old who talks about particle physics the way most boys his age talk about Harry Potter. Interviews of Carrison discussing complex math problems in a breathless voice that couldn’t keep up with his excitement were so atypical and bizarre that they evoked laughter from the audience despite the previous lessons of geniuses who were laughed at. Perhaps we are allowed to laugh, so long as we quickly open our minds and use our imagination to accept the great geniuses and the profoundly stupid alike.

--By Laura Pelcher

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi can't sleep at night. His anxiety over the world’s problems causes him to have bad dreams. One night, with a bite of a pepper, his anxieties are eased. Paprika, directed by Kati Anguelov, is an animated film with a simplistic art direction that tells the simple yet transformative tale of the little pepper man who whispers the secret of Vitamin C to Gyorgyi. The illnesses plaguing people would finally have a worthy opponent in the powers of the little pepper man and Gyorgyi’s work to isolate Vitamin C. Paprika is a tidy portrayal of a discovery that positively affects humanity throughout time and a scientist who is widely appreciated rests nightmare free.

The Visionary, a film about Nikole Tesla, the man behind alternating current energy, tells of ordinary flaws and circumstance that can bring down even the most extraordinary of minds. Tesla is caught in a circus climbing a rope ladder to an uncertain future without a net to catch him. Confidence and funding make up the proverbial net that Tesla lacks. Whether it is his relentless jealousy and mistrust of Thomas Edison, his father’s disappointment in his chosen path, or his fear of public opinion, he is unable to finish his most imaginative and largest project- the Wardenclyff Tower. Though he projected it would revolutionize the way the world communicates, J.P. Morgan is unable to see how he will personally benefit and cuts off funding.

Did Tesla simply tire of competing with Thomas Edison and did he grow weary of being a showman in order to receive respect and financial backing? It is hard to know why Tesla largely withdrew from his previously active social life. The circus setting, while cliché, is an effective way of quickly showcasing the mindset of a genius reduced to petty games in order to have the room to reach his full potential. Tesla’s work is so essential to our modern society that without it “the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark and our mills would be idle and dead” as described by the man who awarded him the Edison Award. To think that a genius like Tesla was stifled should forever stand out as a lesson of what not to do when we look at the future of science in our country.

--By Laura Pelcher

The alluring and intimidating genius figure was exposed, extracted and displayed under a microscope for further investigation on the Imagine Science Film Festival’s Portrait of a Scientist night. The varied results had only one consistent factor: each scientist had an overwhelming desire to discover in hopes that a deeper understanding of this world would lead to more humane conditions.

Semmelweis, directed by Jim Berry, lead off the night with the tragic tale of Ignaz Semmelweis’s important discovery and his following demise. Set in Austria in the mid 1800s at a teaching hospital focused on treating women suffering from childbirth fever, Semmelweis did not think outside of the box, but rather dusted it off before looking. Semmelweis discovered that death by childbirth fever was not the price women had to pay for the gift of giving birth, the current explanation; instead it was due to unsanitary conditions. The doctors treating pregnant women were guilty of killing them with their unwashed and bacteria-entrenched hands. When Semmelweis stood on a soapbox to spread the practice of soap and water, he was pushed off by doctors stuck in established medical practices. Watching women literally die in the hands of their doctors was enough to drive Semmelweis mad and eventually he became institutionalized.

The film, shot in black and white was eerie and effective. The camera movements grew more erratic and the church bells that indicated death grew louder as Dr. Semmelweis went mad. The shots of bloodied hands and dirtied fingers juxtaposed with shots of dying women made it difficult to not leave my seat to find some Purel.

BLAST!, a new documentary by Paul Devlin, is a jolting, riveting, ride. At its New York premiere last week, audiences witnessed two efforts by astrophysicists to launch their telescope (named Blast) whose mission during its journey via air balloon is to photograph galaxies. At the opening, Devlin cleverly teases us with what seems to be a failed launch and then flashes back 18 months to the scientists’ first attempt to send off the telescope. It is to fly from Sweden to Canada, gathering data about galaxies near and far. The investigators, who include Devlin’s brother Mark, their Post Docs, and graduate students have spent five years designing and building the multi-million dollar scope, so a lot is at stake. But weeks of inclement weather delay the launch. Devlin, known for SlamNation which documented a national poetry contest, here shows us the personal sacrifices the team endures while separated from their families. They wait a month for the weather to clear. And one morning the sky opens up, but most of the team is absent from the launch site because meteorologists failed to predict the opportunity. The moment is lost. But during the fifth week, Blast finally floats away toward its destination.

To the scientists’ frustration, however, its lens is out of focus, the data sent back useless. We travel with them to Canada where, with NASA’s help, they retrieve the expensive, badly damaged equipment. Its half-a-million dollar primary mirror is shattered. Astrophysicist Barth Netherfield waxes religious, asking why a Christian would become a scientist. His answer: Any belief must be subject to investigation and he considers his life’s work a way to understand God’s creation.

Devlin’s teaser was so effective that at this point I worried that nothing would come of the expedition, that the documentary’s message was that science is rugged, risky, too hard––that few reap its rewards. But while repairing Blast and fitting it with a new mirror, senior members of the team comment that their students must learn science in the field, not just in the classroom. Seeing that they remain undaunted assuaged my concerns. But it is Thanksgiving and in an especially painful moment, Mark Devlin phones home only for one of his young sons to hang up in a fit of resentment over his dad’s absence.

The boy understands his father’s work, though, and explains that next he will be in Antarctica. In a haunting moment there, we see the hastily abandoned headquarters of Shackelton’s team. The Blast team made the pilgrimage out of respect for earlier scientists and the dangers they faced. Next, Devlin treats us to the pristine beauty of this frozen world—in one shot we see two scientists standing on ice, a thin line beyond them dividing white from white. It is the horizon. But the goal of Blast’s creators is beyond that––to understand dark matter and dark energy.

We are back in the first moment we witnessed at the opening. Instead of failing, though, a few seconds later Blast takes off. Only a scientists’ glove is sacrificed in a tangle of ropes as Blast frees itself from its berth. There is majesty in the long shot showing us the gleaming metallic instrument and the balloon reach the heavens.

This time the information Blast yields is formidable, but the remaining task is to retrieve the hard drives after Blast lands. Again we suffer uncertainty because when NASA separates the parachute from the balloon, it loses contact with Blast. The team locates the scope, which has been dragged 120 miles in the snow (the distance from Philadelphia to Washington, DC). They recover it, but the container holding the hard drives is missing. In a small plane, the team flies above the vast snow plains searching, searching. Finally, three miles from where Blast lies, they spot the container. Now agnostic Mark Devlin quips that the evidence is strong that God may exist.

Cut to maps of data showing new and old galaxies that, oddly, resemble red blood cells on a histology slide. It is a triumphant moment for the scientists, but they say the glory is in sharing with colleagues the data that they so painstakingly gathered. The more analyses, the better.
Sounds like a great science adventure story with a happy Hollywood ending, right? The Europeans think so, according to Devlin, and the six-month-old documentary has been well-received abroad. But Devlin can’t get BLAST! on the air in the States. American programmers are afraid there is no audience, they say it is marginal and “very niche” because its about science, he told me. Consequently, he has been marketing BLAST! by emphasizing the adventure story, personal sacrifices the scientists made, and stressing that science just supports the story. “We’re trying to change expectations of what science programming can be and that’s an uphill battle,” he says.

Furthermore, he says he mistakenly he thought that including religious views and family segments would resonate with those prejudiced against science and help overcome that. So when Netherfield volunteered his feelings about faith, Devlin included them, deepening the dimensions of Netherfield’s character. But Devlin told me that although for Netherfield science and religion are not at odds, The Religious Right could take issue with his statement that beliefs should be investigated and claim that it is subversive. But Devlin thinks Netherfield is brave to put his religious views to the test. Do you think it would have been right to edit out those comments and avoid a discussion about religion?

Trying to please one group alienated others; the film’s core audience, those already interested in science, and agnostics, are turned off by the references to religion. And some science teachers, says Devlin, object to discussions of religion in their classrooms, which could happen if they screened BLAST! They are under enough pressure when it comes to evolution, let alone astronomy.

Devlin chose not to succumb to what he calls the “anti-intellectual atmosphere here.” He has been targeting core audiences at museums, universities, and alternative venues that appreciate independent filmmaking. But without broadcast distribution, only limited attendees film festival will see this informative work, which vividly demystifies what astrophysicists do and illustrates the thrill of their success.

What do you think Devlin should do? TV programmers seem to be constrained by ratings and are therefore maintaining the anti-science status quo. But how can we compete, as a nation, when such a science adventure story is shunned?

And if scientists see that filmmakers are sacrificing or minimizing science content, might scientists become less willing to cooperate in future films? In BLAST!, Devlin and his sources worked collaboratively; the scientists themselves shot footage in Antarctica, offering us glimpses into their ways that a filmmaker’s presence might have hindered.

What do you think is the best way to get these two cultures, as C. P. Snow called them back in the 1950s, to overlap? Send me your thoughts.

BLAST

Here are a couple of Fermat's puzzles to ponder, just in case you are invited to a mysterious dinner party before you're able to see the film:

1. In “False Land” everyone always lies. In “Truth Land” everyone always tells the truth. A stranger is trapped between two doors, each one guarded by a jailer. One of the guards is from "False Land," and one is from “Truth Land,” but the stranger doesn't know which jailer is from where.
One door leads to freedom, and the other doesn't. The stranger can only ask one question to one jailer. What should he ask to be sure that he knows which is the door to freedom?

2. How can you time a period of nine minutes when you only have two sand clocks, one that measures four minutes and one that measures seven minutes?