Science!!!

Alright, so yesterday's post was what 19th century aristocracy would have a called "a whinefest". Today's post is a change of pace, because it involves me going insane trying to understand the science of movies of questionable quality.

What is it about the Riddick movies that makes them always provide something for me to think about? I've spent a lot of time on Pitch Black, trying to figure how the dominant form of life on a moon which only experiences night every 24(?) years or so can be a creature harmed by all forms of visible light. They don't seem to be in hibernation all the time, rather they lurk below the surface, and attack anything that's safe for them to approach. I suppose a few members of the population could sustain themselves on cannibalism, but that would be a difficult circumstance for them to arise under. There had to be some other life there before, but we were never given a sign of it. What were they eating before idiot humans landed there? What are they going to eat when no more idiot humans so up? But Tuesday brought an entirely new head scratcher.

So it's 9 o'clock. I've just finished being vaguely dissatisfied with House, primarily due to the fact that House hasn't received a severe beating, especially after his comment to Cuddy ('It's a good thing you failed at becoming a mother, because you suck at it!' Ouch. Uncalled for, House). I switch to TNT, which is in the middle of showing Chronicles of Riddick, and Vin Diesel's being transported to a planet called Crematoria. I wonder why it got that name. I put aside my surprise (and gratitude) that TNT hadn't drowned me in advertisements previously alerting me to the fact they were going to show this (seriously TNT, no matter how many times you tell me you're showing Titanic, I'm not watching it. Go to hell) and start watching it. Pretty quickly, we're shown the planet in question is only half-hospitable. It's 750 degrees on the day side, but only 50 degrees on the night side. Well, I used to be big into astronomy, especially the planets, so I started trtying to figure out how that would work.

Venus has surface temperatures of eight or nine hundred degrees, but it's not significantly cooler on the night side, due to the ridiculously thick carbon dioxide atmosphere that's traps all the heat. So that's not what's happening. Mercury reaches 700 in the sun, and -150 on the night side, because there's relatively no atmosphere to trap the heat, so it all escapes back into space. Well, the temp doesn't drop that much, and people run around and breathe on the surface just fine, so that doesn't answer it either.

Oddly enough, Earth is probably the best comparison, with locales like Death Valley, where the temperature can shift from 120 down to 30 or so at night. Similar, but to a much lesser degree. I theorized that the air gets so heated, the molecules so excited, that they begin moving at speeds which almost exceed escape velocity. The molecules escape to the edge of the planet's atmosphere, the excess heat energy has been bled off, the molecules cool, and then fall back into the atmosphere, retaining only a small amount of the original heat energy. Primary problem with this hypothesis: It's me doing a half-assed cobbling together of what physics I remember from high school, what seems like some chemistry (I got a C the last time I took that), and I think some meterology I learned in 8th grade science. In short, there's no telling how many physical laws that idea violates.

Desperate, I wound up discussing it with my friend Tevion, who put forth two theories:

1) Due to the extreme heat, the planet consists almost entirely of heavy metals, which absorb the heat and conduct it through the surface to the night side. This accounts for the retained heat, and the much lower temperature is explained by the atmosphere being thinner than Earth's perhaps similar to being at high altitude constantly. I know the metal aspect is possible, since that's pretty much all Mercury is made of, metals and silica.

2) The planet is so close to the star, it's under extreme tidal effects, leading to increased geothermal activity, and the prison is built on a geologically active area, so that there's lots of magma moving near the surface, but not presenting itself in the form of a full-blown volcano. I'm not really sure that's possible, but it sounded pretty damn cool.

We finally agreed that trying to figure the science of a Vin Diesel movie, while amusing, is problem a fruitless endeavor. Still, it was something to puzzle over in my quiet moments.

{Edit, 5/17/07: Turns out it's actually -300 on the night side, so it's basically Mercury. Except with a breathable atmosphere. So that still doesn't make much sense}