Supernova (2005): If there were a God in Heaven, I wouldn't have missed the beginning

[Podkayne]

I can't believe I walked in on the middle of this underlooked cinematic gem on the Hallmark channel!

Here's what I've gathered so far. Apparently some scientists discover that the Sun is going to go SUPERNOVA.

Which is pretty surprising, on account of the fact that, as a G-type main-sequence star, the Sun is only midway through its life, and it's about 8x1029 kg shy of having enough mass to become a supernova.

But, wait, that's not the only shocking thing! It's going to go SUPERNOVA, like, next week! OMG!!!!!!

The brilliant scientists who made this discovery is Luke Perry, who's looking about 300 years old. He believes the public Must Be Told so that--get this--they can "send up a prayer."

Oooh, 300-year-old Luke Perry also says that even if the Sun doesnot go SUPERNOVA it could melt the ice caps and strip off the Earth's atmosphere, after which "the UV exposure alone will kill us." (Probably also the lack of breathing. But what do I know.)

But before he can Tell the People the Truth, he gets rescued/kidnapped by eeeevil Lance Henricksen, who is an eeeevil elitist who thinks that "civilization" should be saved . . . by which, he tells 300-year-old Luke Perry, he means "us, the educated, the skilled, the trained."

All signs point to Lance Henricksen being an atheist, too.

Now Luke Perry is careening around Lance Henrickson's eeeeevil underground bomb-shelter thingie on an ATV! Go, 300-year-old Luke Perry!

Damnit, Replay TV tells me that this is the only scheduled showing!!! Curses!!!!

[Lumpy]

If the sun is going to go supernova, almost certainly rendering the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. which sounds like the better plan to you?:

(1). Prepare an underground shelter where you and a remnant of the human race can try to survive, and make sure that your efforts aren't blocked by worldwide panic, or:

(2). Tell everyone so that they can pray for supernatural intervention.

[Snooooopy]

But before he can Tell the People the Truth, he gets rescued/kidnapped by eeeevil Lance Henricksen, who is an eeeevil elitist who thinks that "civilization" should be saved . . . by which, he tells 300-year-old Luke Perry, he means "us, the educated, the skilled, the trained."

What about some hot chicks, too?

[Baldwin]

That underground shelter better be several light years away. If it were possible for the Sun to go supernova, the Earth would just be hot plasma. I'm guessing Stephen Hawking didn't co-write the screenplay.

Jesus, what happened to Lance Henricksen's career?

[Acqua Minerale]

If the sun is going to go supernova, almost certainly rendering the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. which sounds like the better plan to you?:

(1). Prepare an underground shelter where you and a remnant of the human race can try to survive, and make sure that your efforts aren't blocked by worldwide panic, or:

(2). Tell everyone so that they can pray for supernatural intervention.

If the sun goes supernova (not possible), an underground shelter will work as well praying or playing golf.

[Steve MB]

If the sun is going to go supernova, almost certainly rendering the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. which sounds like the better plan to you?:

(1). Prepare an underground shelter where you and a remnant of the human race can try to survive, and make sure that your efforts aren't blocked by worldwide panic, or:

(2). Tell everyone so that they can pray for supernatural intervention.

If the Sun did go supernova (ignoring for the moment the reasons why it can't), the only effective shelter is "be somewhere else". Even deep underground, or even hiding behind Jupiter, the flood of neutrino radiation would be so great that the one-in-a-quadrillion a human body would absorb would constitute a lethal radiation dose.

[DrFidelius]

What about some hot chicks, too?

But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

[DxZero]

But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor

[Voyager]

I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor

But what about the mineshaft gap?

[Voyager]

What about some hot chicks, too?
When the sun goes supernova, they'll be real hot.


For about a picosecond.

Actually, this sound about what I'd expect from science fiction on the Hallmark Channel. So, tell us, did praying work. Did they hide out? Did God put a big mirror between us and the sun?

[Bryan Ekers]

Which is pretty surprising, on account of the fact that, as a G-type main-sequence star, the Sun is only midway through its life, and it's about 8x1029 kg shy of having enough mass to become a supernova.

Well, it also has to be part of a binary star system. Maybe after Jupiter gets converted by the monoliths in 2010....

[Angua]

I feel your pain Podkayne. I had to sit through the entire thing over Christmas because my family thought it'd be fun.

My dad sat there, telling me in all honesty that it really could happen someday, and when I pointed out that no, the Sun was far too small to ever go supernova, I got my brother arguing with me, telling me that no way, the Sun absolutely could go supernova. Er, right.

Anyway, the ending is a spectacular anti climax, with, rather predictably, the Sun not going supernova and the team of scientists, including their head of group, scratching their heads wondering what the heck just didn't happen there. So, they recheck their computer code, and lo and behold, they find that some muppet had put a plus sign instead of a minus sign into the code that they'd used to calculate what the Sun was doing. What sort of group head lets something like "the Sun is going to go supernova" get out without triple checking the code, getting observational evidence (its not hard, its our nearest bloody star!), and verifying it with other groups?!

[Menocchio]

So, in other words The bad guy was right, albeit for the wrong reasons? At least his plans would have just have lead to the elites spending the weekend underground and coming out a bit embarassed, and not have lead to global panic and rioting, as the hero's plan would have.

[Angua]

Not quite. The bad guy believed, IIRC, that it was going to happen too, he just, stupidly, thought that it was survivable*. Its been a while since I watched it, and I immediately tried to scrub it from my brain.



*Ignore the fact that if the Sun could have gone supernova, the Earth would have been vaporised more or less instantly.

[Menocchio]

Yes, but it sounds like if the bad guys had gotten away with it, the world would have been in a better position. Yes, they would have wasted a lot of money on the uber bomb shelter, but at least they wouldn't have sent the entire world into a panic for no reason whatsoever.

It's the classic "designated villain". He's only bad because we've been told he was.

[Revtim]

The brilliant scientists who made this discovery is Luke Perry, who's looking about 300 years old. He believes the public Must Be Told so that--get this--they can "send up a prayer."This brings up interesting philisophical questions (much like most of the immortal lines uttered by Luke Perry, or any of the other fine actors and actresses of the Hallmark Channel).

If Luke's character feels that prayer is a request to God to actually change the future, then one must assume God was planning on roasting humanity unless they begged for mercy. In this case, Luke's character believes in a cruel God indeed.

If he felt that the future is already part of God's unchanging plan, and prayer is merely for the psychological benefit of the prayer, then the character is making, IMHO, a mistake in judgement. Surely it would be better to not inform the public, even with the benefit of prayer, than to make make them suffer with the bad news.

Perhaps these questions will be further explored in the sequel, "Meteor! Oops, forgot to carry the one, never mind..." starring the guy who played "Screech".

[priapus]

But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
That's a strange love there

[Podkayne]

My dad sat there, telling me in all honesty that it really could happen someday, and when I pointed out that no, the Sun was far too small to ever go supernova, I got my brother arguing with me, telling me that no way, the Sun absolutely could go supernova. Er, right.Did your family, um, notice that you were, um, not around the house quite a lot over the last few years? Were they informed that, during that time, you were, um, sitting around learning about things like, say, what kinds of stars could go supernova, and what kinds couldn't? Or do they think you've been hanging out at the mall? ;)

Thank you for the summary! I'm glad you saw the end, because my husband got home and insisted on changing the channel.

(1). Prepare an underground shelter where you and a remnant of the human race can try to survive, and make sure that your efforts aren't blocked by worldwide panic, or:

(2). Tell everyone so that they can pray for supernatural intervention.*Narrows eyes at Lumpy* Are you some kind of an atheist or something?

[Podkayne]

What sort of group head lets something like "the Sun is going to go supernova" get out without triple checking the code, getting observational evidence (its not hard, its our nearest bloody star!), and verifying it with other groups?!To be fair, Lance Henricksen did spend most of his onscreen time chasing aroudn 300-year-old Luke Perry trying to get him to check his boffin's math.

[Yllaria]

I'm guessing Stephen Hawking didn't co-write the screenplay.

That one was worth a quick **snerk**.

So, would this be a good movie for a group-heckle?

[Smeghead]

the team of scientists, including their head of group, scratching their heads wondering what the heck just didn't happen there. So, they recheck their computer code, and lo and behold, they find that some muppet had put a plus sign instead of a minus sign into the code that they'd used to calculate what the Sun was doing.
:eek: Seriously?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

That's the worst plot twist I have ever heard anywhere. Oh, man. This sounds like it makes 10.5 look like Citizen Kane. Now I must see it.

[Angua]

Did your family, um, notice that you were, um, not around the house quite a lot over the last few years? Were they informed that, during that time, you were, um, sitting around learning about things like, say, what kinds of stars could go supernova, and what kinds couldn't? Or do they think you've been hanging out at the mall? ;)


Mwahaha! ;) My brother, bless him, knew that there was a mass limit, poor thing just got confused about what the mass limit was. I had to go get his own text book to provide him with a cite. :D

To be fair, Lance Henricksen did spend most of his onscreen time chasing aroudn 300-year-old Luke Perry trying to get him to check his boffin's math.

Fair enough. I didn't see much of that, I was too busy laughing at the main premise.

Smeghead, seriously, that's the "twist", its lame, its unconvincing, and crap.

[Podkayne]

So, would this be a good movie for a group-heckle?Oh, yes, I think so! We're leaving out all the subplots. Tia Carrara plays a government agent of some kind, who turns on eeeevil Lance Henricksen when a meteor (!?) strikes St. Louis, where her family lives. (We know this because, apropos of nothing, 300-year-old Luke Perry askes her, 'So, how's your family?' after the meteor (!?) hits St. Louis.)

There's some kind of side plot about some criminals escaping from a prison transport or a chain gang or something.

And there's 300-year-old Luke Perry's family, and their Uniformed Black Maid. His wife and daughter are afraid at his disappearance, but UBM kept reassuring them that she knew everything would be alright.

Oh, and it was inexplicably set in some kind of alternate-world Australia, where 50% of the denizens have American accents.

[JRDelirious]

Goodness gracious, sounds like a true Masterpiece.

[Lumpy]

*Narrows eyes at Lumpy* Are you some kind of an atheist or something?No, just someone who is rather confused about just what you can realistically ask God for.

[Steve MB]

Well, it also has to be part of a binary star system. Maybe after Jupiter gets converted by the monoliths in 2010....
There are two types of supernova (imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/supernovae.html) -- one of them is produced by gas transfer onto a white dwarf from a binary companion, the other by a massive star at the end of its main-sequence life.

[Battle Pope]

When I saw the thread title I panicked thinking they had re-relesed the James Spader film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134983/) :eek:

Our sun exploding would be preferable.

[Noone Special]

*Ignore the fact that if the Sun could have gone supernova, the Earth would have been vaporised more or less instantly.Whddyamean "instantly?" We'd have, like, *at least* 8 minutes from the moment the Sun blew until we were all rendered extremely volatile!
(Figuring out how to recognize the supernova before the first shockwave hits us -- 8 minutes or so later -- is left as an exercise for the screenplay writer. Sounds like it would be right up his/her alley :rolleyes: )

[Angua]

*Ignore the fact that if the Sun could have gone supernova, the Earth would have been vaporised more or less instantly.Whddyamean "instantly?" We'd have, like, *at least* 8 minutes from the moment the Sun blew until we were all rendered extremely volatile!

8 minutes is "more or less" instantly, its not even a kilosecond! :p









I'm an extra-galactic astronomer, I count anything less than half a Hubble time as "short", so what do you expect? ;)

[OtakuLoki]

So, the Hallmark Channel is trying to make us aware that the Sci-Fi channel's made-for-TV movies are really quality SF?

[Threadkiller]

Here is the IMDb (http://imdb.com/title/tt0419373/) page, which contains the verbage:The spirit of Ed Wood is amongst us!
The Sydney Australia authenticity stunned me!
So realistic I'm dedicating my life to destroying the sunThe goofs (http://imdb.com/title/tt0419373/goofs) page only contains this:Errors in geography: When Prof Austin escapes to the beach hut in the Maldives, we see in the background a very large mountain. The Maldives are flat, with the highest point above sea level about 2.4 metres (8ft)So there's room for more.

[Noone Special]

8 minutes is "more or less" instantly, its not even a kilosecond! :pBut, at aphelion, the distance is ~507 light seconds; so, depending whether by kilosecond you mean 1000 or 1024, it may or may not be more than half a kilosecond. Or something.


I'm an extra-galactic astronomer...Where are you from, again!? :eek:

[Voyager]

:eek: Seriously?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

That's the worst plot twist I have ever heard anywhere. Oh, man. This sounds like it makes 10.5 look like Citizen Kane. Now I must see it.
:eek: So, the brilliant scientists are about as smart as Earl and his friends in the Y2K show.

It's comforting to know that the stupidity of Hollywood scriptwriters exceeds the bounds of my imagination.

[ianzin]

8 minutes is "more or less" instantly, its not even a kilosecond! Just a warning for anyone who hasn't as yet had the specatacular pleasure of meeting Ms Angua... she really knows all this stuff, inside out and backwards. She'll even turn up in the pub with her bag stuffed with Ph.D research papers and graphs showing weird scientific gobbledeygook, and I'll bet she could have a chat with Stevie Hawking that would leave him impressed. So, if you haven't met her and I tell you she's like this, you'd picture some kind of spekky super-nerd geek with 'Miss Boring' written on her forehead who only talks in equations, right? Wrong! Wronger than King Wrong of Wrong Land on 'Let's be more wrong than ever before' day. She is always the loudest person in the pub (heck, the world), usually the daftest (and the shortest, but we don't mention that), sinks pints with admirable gusto, always gets her round in, talks faster than a racing commentator, makes excellent baked goods as well and can win any fact-based argument, even when not 100% sober (which is, ahem, fairly often).

So if it's about stars and suns and crap like that, whatever she says, it's right.

[Angua]

But, at aphelion, the distance is ~507 light seconds; so, depending whether by kilosecond you mean 1000 or 1024, it may or may not be more than half a kilosecond. Or something.

Pshaw. Factors of two are nothing! And either way, it is less than a kilosecond. ;)

Where are you from, again!? :eek:

A rocky planet, in a nonedescript planetary system in one of the outer spiral arms of an average barred spiral galaxy in a rather dull, quiet cluster, with surprisingly quiet inhabitants. ;)




*blushes* at Ianzin

[Gorsnak]

Pshaw. Factors of two are nothing!
astronomer n. 1. Someone who is happy if the order of magnitude of the exponent is right.