If you were looking for a 32-minute video about the dilemmas that faced celebrated physicist Max Planck as the German science academe fell under the control of the Nazi party in the 1930’s, this is the one for you. Science historian Kathy Joseph expounds, rivetingly, on how Planck, a major leader in the development of quantum physics and beloved national figure, wrestled with how much public opposition he could wisely muster to the regime. Initially convinced that the buffoonish right-wingers who came to power in 1933 were a temporary blip, he did his best to preserve the continuity of the German physics community and protect Jewish scientists under his responsibility as president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (predecessor to the institution bearing his name). It is striking that while he miscalculated the course of the fascist movement in some ways, it seems unlikely that there is much he could have done differently to oppose their oppressive policies.
Monthly Archives: February 2022
It’s Only A Paper Moonfall
You dumb moon! Don’t you know it’s day!?
Crossposted from Adventures in Poor Taste
Emmerich’s new spectacle involves a dubious premise that hits the planet in the face, but what do unlikely scientific theories look like when they end up being true?
Roland Emmerich’s newest disaster film Moonfall came out in theaters last week, and while I’m curious to see it, I’m also on paternity leave. My daughter’s as much explosive entertainment as I can take at the moment, so while I can’t evaluate the scientific reality of the movie, I’m not sure I’d even want to at this stage of the Emmerich oeuvre (especially not for a film that seems to involve the idea that the Moon is some kind of alien megastructure).
What I can do instead is pontificate a number of half-formed thoughts based on how the trailer looks! No longer content to merely destroy the surface of the Earth, Emmerich posits a baffling scenario in which Earth’s Moon gradually gets closer and closer to us, wreaking havoc, demolishing cities, and somehow culminating in shuttles scrawled with “Screw The Moon” flying up to fight … what seem to be robots? As custom dictates in such a film, one of the main characters appears to be a scrappy outsider whose hacking/amateur astronomy/conspiracy-theorizing skills bring them to the center of the elite governmental apparatus on a mission to confront the unfolding disaster.
John Bradley’s “Moonfall” character (probably) expounding on an imprecise array of questions, which, by sheer luck, happen to have merit in the universe of Roland Emmerich.
John Bradley (best known from his Game of Thrones role as Jon Snow’s guileless friend from the Night’s Watch, who exists to make Jon seem cooler by comparison) mugs his way through the trailer, implying that though he doesn’t work for the government, he knows more about the unfolding calamity than everyone else. This is a hacky archetype at this point, and one that’s gone some way toward convincing society that geniuses working in isolation, shunned by the establishment, are likely to be brave truth-tellers. (With vaccine hesitancy promoted by hucksters under that mantle having led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the past year, we can see what that notion has done for us.)
But what’s it actually like to be a scientific loner? What do you do when you think you’ve discovered something no one else accepts yet? Imagine you’re an amateur astronomer, unaffiliated with any institution, and you think you’ve discovered that the Moon’s orbit is decaying. How would you get anyone to listen to you?
Aitch-Bar 