Thog's Science Masterclass #3

[realthog]

 
"The sun has reached its half-life, a scientific term for the time it takes for 'one unstable element to decay and transform into another,' and irrepressible solar flares blaze around the world."
    -- Roya Rastegar, reviewing the movie Half-Life in "Sci-Fi Heroes Take on the System", 2008

Comments

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

Tsk. I live with the child of a nuclear health physicist. Half-life of the sun? Puh-leeeese.

But at least the flares are irrepressible. I like to see cheerful flares.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And what's really exciting about those flares is that they're down here!

It'd be nice if Rastegar knew what the term "half-life" meant.

[quietselkie.livejournal.com]

He's got the general idea of half-life, but he's missing a lot, and it's not really a concept readily applied to that great fusion machine in the sky. And with the flares, astute and educated readers could legitimately extrapolate the "flares blaze around the world" to be solar flares that reach all the way to the earth in their flaming state. As opposed to exciting the aurora...

Sooooo much shortcut science in such a small synopsis.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

. . . another argument in favor of viewing critics and reviewers with a grain of salt.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The sun is made of (say) uranium and its flares are on the earth? Is the moon made of Gruyère?