I know the film has been out for a while and there may be a topic already but it is not possible to search “Eight Below” on the antiquated search function here.
I’m no scientist but the factual mistakes in this “true life” movie kept taking me out of it. So correct me if I’m wrong but; isn’t it always dark during the Antartic winter? The movie, which takes place during the winter, depicts the dogs experiencing day and night, mostly day.
Does the aurora australis really move and flutter in the sky like curtains in the wind? I thought the footage I’ve always seen of it moving like this was time-lapse photography that made it appear to move quickly. And does it project it’s colors onto the ground?
Is the frozen breath of dogs and people in the Antartic visible? It never is in the movie.
If a meteor from the planet Mercury landed on Earth could it’s location be pinpointed so that one could walk up to it on an Antartic mountainside and pick it up off the top of the snow?
Do dogs left in freezing isolation develop human traits like sharing? And psychic communication abilities?
If a meteor from the planet Mercury landed on Earth could it’s location be pinpointed so that one could walk up to it on an Antartic mountainside and pick it up off the top of the snow?
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I haven’t seen the movie, but I know that scientists collect huge numbers of meteors in Antarctica. Not because more meteors (or is it meteorites? I can’t remember) land in Anarctica than anywhere else in the world, but because it’s all white, and Antarctica is a desert, so the dark-colored meteors stand out, even if they’ve been there for years and years. Elsewhere they’d be camoflagued by other rocks or dirt, or covered by erosion, etc, etc.
Scientists figure out where the meteors are from after they’re collected. Thousands of meteors hit the Earth each day (mostly really tiny ones), so it’s not like scientists are like, “Ooh, a Mercurian meteor just landed in Antarctica close to the tip of South America! Let’s go collect it!” They don’t search for a particular meteor, they just search for meteors in general, so it’s more like, “Ooh, this meteor we collected in Antarctica close to the tip of South America is from Mercury. Cool!”
I can’t answer for the aurora australis, but the aurora borealis moves and flutters like curtains in the wind. That’s actually a really good description of how it moves.
As far as it projecting its colors onto the ground, I’ve never seen that.
I think you are slightly wrong. My understanding (no guarantees here) is that the issue is that there are no naturally occuring terrestrial rocks on top of the Antartica icecap. How would they have gotten there? Thus, any rock you find must be a meteorite. It’s not an issue of whether they’re easy to see, but of easily distinguishing between earth rocks and meteorites.