Soft Science
As someone who loves and values science it saddens me to see how badly it gets mangled by Hollywood. I know for entertainment purposes in a sci-fi movie there needs to be a suspension of disbelief but sometimes it's beyond the pale.
I recently saw The Core with Aaron Eckhart. Most people will readily admit that this one was a shit-bomb. Bad writing, ridiculous premise. But holy shit was the science behind it bad.
1) The entire core of the earth is not molten. There is a liquid outer core surrounding a solid inner core.
2) The majority of nastiness that comes from the sun isn't stopped by the earth's magnetic field, but the atmosphere.
3) A jolt of electricity would not stop the dynamo action of the liquid part of the core. The dynamo action has nothing to do with electricity. It's caused by convection currents due to heat differentials, which are in turn caused by decaying radioactive elements.
4) Even if the core were stopped from spinning somehow the currents would reestablish themselves because the heat differentials would still be there.
5) There would not be freaking mountain sized diamonds at the core of the earth. Carbon is way too light to have settled near the core in such quantities when the earth was still molten. It's the same reason why you don't have entire mountains on the surface of the earth made of iron.
This movie gets an F.
I recently saw The Core with Aaron Eckhart. Most people will readily admit that this one was a shit-bomb. Bad writing, ridiculous premise. But holy shit was the science behind it bad.
1) The entire core of the earth is not molten. There is a liquid outer core surrounding a solid inner core.
2) The majority of nastiness that comes from the sun isn't stopped by the earth's magnetic field, but the atmosphere.
3) A jolt of electricity would not stop the dynamo action of the liquid part of the core. The dynamo action has nothing to do with electricity. It's caused by convection currents due to heat differentials, which are in turn caused by decaying radioactive elements.
4) Even if the core were stopped from spinning somehow the currents would reestablish themselves because the heat differentials would still be there.
5) There would not be freaking mountain sized diamonds at the core of the earth. Carbon is way too light to have settled near the core in such quantities when the earth was still molten. It's the same reason why you don't have entire mountains on the surface of the earth made of iron.
This movie gets an F.