Supernova (2005)

I can’t remember the last time I was so outraged by the scientific inaccuracies of a movie in my life. Well, it’s not really a movie, more like a SyFy channel miniseries called Supernova (2005).

The premise of the movie is that an astronomer discovered that the sun was approximately 1 week away from going supernova. Freakin’-a, I can’t even finish writing the premise without already finding 5 things wrong with that statement. Now, I worship Luke Perry as much as the next Beverly Hills 90210 fan, but if his career wasn’t over after this show, I don’t know what else could finish it.

I’m no expert, but I can tell you a few things that I know from watching series about the Universe on the History Channel:

1. A supernova is when a massive star (100 times the size of our sun) reaches the end of its life, and it collapses to its center right after expanding in a huge explosion. It is impossible for our sun to go supernova because it is simply not big enough. When our sun finally dies, it will become a white dwarf, which is a different phenomenon of end-of-life for a star.
2. Suppose our sun was about to die. Take my word for it, it would be impossible to calculate the exact time of collapse to the week. The evolution of stars go over millions of years, and their lifespan is certainly not measured in days.
3. The plasma “fire balls” they keep referring to are completely misrepresented. There are a few things wrong with this picture. It is true that the sun may emit plasma flares, however, they are not fire balls! These are flares of electron-free charges (basically naked nuclei), which are not lit up on fire! Should a flare actually be pointed towards Earth, they would be attracted to our magnetic poles. The surge would be so great, that it would indeed cause blackouts and render satellites useless… but not for just a little while! It would be permanent. But none of that is happening in the movie. Instead, they are showing something similar to a massive meteor shower.
4. More things wrong with the flares: they show the sun flaring out in rings. Dude, sorry to break it to you, but flares occur in single spots on the sun, NOT as rings of energy.
5. If you really want to nit pick, you can easily have a field day with the representation of those fireballs. If they are coming from the sun, people should be seeing them coming straight on, not sideways as if they were entering the atmosphere at an angle. They are also extremely slow coming in! The flare will not travel at the speed of light, since we are in fact talking about physical matter, but they would be FAST: literally coming at millions of kilometers per hour. Why do they look like they are falling leasurely down through the sky??? Are they actually slowed down THAT much by AIR??? Which brings me to my next point of visual misrepresentation: they keep falling onto Earth in different angles! Take a look at this picture. If the flare is coming from the sun, why on Earth (no pun intended) would they come from different angles! Look at their tail trajectory. Seriously people?

There are many things wrong with this series. And they are not subtle. Even I knew the sun’s death meant becoming a white dwarf, and I’m not even an astronomer! Did they not have consultants on set??? Did they talk to ANY reputable astronomer? Or did they think just because it was SciFi they would be able to get away with anything they wanted? Or maybe more people would tune in to see a show called Supernova rather than one called White Dwarf.

Warning: spoiler alert

Oh, and by the way, the final resolution was that the genius scientist (our dearest Luke Perry) found that his own calculations were wrong by a SIGN error (should have been a minus sign, not a plus sign). He caught it, and saved the world! By the way, just minutes before that scene, my father (an amateur astronomer himself) actually called it: “he probably just had like one sign wrong.” My father gets the credit for calling that one.

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