Part of Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s charm is proving or disproving science fiction in pop culture and now he’s set his eyes on ‘Men in Black.’ Unfortunately for the main plot point in Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ classic science fiction comedy masterpiece, the entire plot of the film rests on a concept that isn’t scientifically accurate.
This tidbit came out during the San Diego Comic-Con panel for ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’ when wTyson as asked about the film, and the genius went into basic details on why it wasn’t feasible:
“It was imagined 100 years ago or so as we started probing into the atom, and we discovered, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a nucleus and particles orbiting it, like a solar system.’ And is it that way all the way down and could it be that way all the way up. And what we discovered is that as you go into the small, the laws of physics manifest differently and effect matter differently than they do in the large. And this is the difference between general relativity — Einstein’s theory of gravity — and quantum physics. They manifest differently on those two different scales. So, it’s not just a scaling relation all the way down. And inside the atom—we’ve been inside the atom—we’ve been inside the proton—we’ve been inside the neutron. There are quarks there. We’ve found fundamental particles. It’s not like there’s a solar system inside the quark. So, no there is no Galaxy on the belt of Orion.”
Not everyone is going to be happy to have their thunder stolen like that Mr. Tyson.
Joking aside, I’ve always loved when Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the science of cinema and why it does, or more often than not doesn’t work.
Did you think that there could have been a full universe held within Orion’s belt in ‘Men in Black’? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Cinema Blend
