An astrophysicist reacts to Carl Sagan's Contact

[@DrBecky]

So I said it would have to be summer for them to observe Vega from Australia forgetting what I’d *just* said about being able to do radio observations during the day 😂 I guess once an optical astronomer, always an optical astronomer 😂

[@osmosisjones4912]

Wasn't Volts also lab assistant .

[@theukdave2433]

If I remember WAY back to some astronomy modules at uni, doesn't radio telescope resolution go by the distance separating the receivers, so the VLA would probably have a finer resolution than Arecibo ... it will surely have lower sensitivity as you say, but perhaps resolution is what was being referred to in the film? I mean, probably not, I guess they were trying to find faint signals, but still!

[@marksusskind1260]

About hearing the signal, think dramatic license: it's more dramatic to show someone listening to sounds from space than watching curves move and shake on a monitor.

[@charlesbradshaw3281]

@@theukdave2433 You are correct, the VLA has much more resolution, but less sensitivity than Arecibo. Also, Arecibo is limited by it's pointing, since directivity in the antenna beam depends more on the earth's position. In the movie, the signal was enormous for a radio (10s or 100s of Janskies, I forgot which).

[@charlesbradshaw3281]

@@marksusskind1260 I actually had the "no way" response to Ellie's listening to an interferometer, but, when I asked some of the old timers at the VLA, I was told that they used to do that. The way you hear a signal is to detect it with the output of a spectrum analyzer. You can hear any amplitude modulation simply by connecting ear phones or a speaker to the detected output. In the movie, the signal was amplitude modulated, as are pulsars. The movie actually used radio astronomers from the VLA as technical advisors.

[@skyshadow5]

The scene where the dad tells the little girl what she pointed at, and Dr. Becky's reaction, is what happened 2 nights ago with my 9 yr old daughter. I live on the south coast of England and we were looking south at about 19:30 and she asked what the bright star was (Rigel) and the coloured one further up (Betelgeuse). After listening to the reaction I was so pleased with myself for knowing these and being able to answer my daughters' questions.

[@DrBecky]

That’s so lovely

[@sulevturnpuu5491]

@@DrBecky And her questions got satisfactory answers and a possible astronomer canceled...

[@jamestheotherone742]

I have done the same with both of my kids. I was pleased as punch that it was my daughter that noticed on her own that Betelgeuse had visibly dimmed last year.

[@cytonicstarspren4384]

@@DrBecky Are we going to get a video on the analogous black hole created in a laboratory this week? I am quite excited by the achievement and I think you would be too!

[@deirdrehbrt]

I'm a musician and an engineer, and I had a young guitar student once. My lab and my studio were in the same space in an old mill building in NH, and when this one boy would come for lessons, he was often more interested in the things I was working on. I used to feel bad that he wasn't getting enough time in actual guitar instruction, but if he was interested in things, I'd show him. In the end, the science took as well, and when I spoke to his mom a while back, he was studying astrophysics in Florida. Sort of made me happy.

[@markshirley9353]

Regarding listening by ear .... In the novel (p.53): "She sat down before one of the consoles and plugged in the earphones. It was futile, she knew, a conceit, to think that she, listening on one or two channels, would detect a pattern when the vast computer system monitoring a billion channels had not. But it gave her a modest illusion of utility." We should cut the filmmakers some slack when Carl Sagan himself had her do this.

[@mdomans]

Signals guy here - that explanation actually fits, Sagan would work with people who did a lot of analog signal work. Most transmission tech we have today (serious data streams, not hobbyists) is practically not something a human being can even begin to decipher or even diff from background Doesn't change the fact that people love tech they can feel physically - I remember an old research institute lab where folks preferred their ethernet over BNC cause they use BNC more and you can hook it up to oscilloscope. I'd not be at all surprised someones listens to some channel, even for fun, sometimes those sounds are quite nice (sorting algos sound nice too).

[@TolgaPala]

Thank you. I would have upvoted your comment a hundred times if I could.

[@DerkleineTrojaner]

I'm NOT criticising Sagan as a Scientist nor as a Science Communicator. I do however criticise him a bit as a fiction writer. In this little quote you did i feel like i can hear him, like actually his real self talking instead of an undefined, all-knowing narrator. Because he's clearly trying to convey to the reader how utterly futile her illusion of an attempt was. And i feel like that's just Sagan talking and not, as i said, the narrator.

[@markshirley9353]

@@DerkleineTrojaner I hadn't thought of the passage that way (that it was Sagan's voice coming through and maybe anticipating criticism from his colleagues). That sounds right to me. But I also think his having her listen that way is a quirk that humanizes her and paints a clear picture in the reader's mind. There's a reason that most of the posters for the movie show Jodie Foster with headphones in front of the VLA . That communicates "listening for signals from space" faster than anything else could have. That's why I think Dr. Becky's criticism on this point is misplaced. In a work of fiction or art, writers decide all the time to have characters to things that are right dramatically even if technically wrong. And Bob Zemechis' repeated use of the image suggests he agreed.

[@gozer33]

Also, it works so well in the movie. Jodie Foster listening with open eyes, but seeing only with her imagination. Very iconic.

[@housellama]

Watching Dr. Becky get SO ANGRY at Drumlin is hilarious. Sagan made that character so incredibly hatable, and the movie took it even further.

[@mnomadvfx]

Ye, kinda funny when Tom Skerritt is usually so likeable in most of his other roles.

[@WingNuts2010]

A good actor is one that makes the audience love or hate them.

[@kVidStream]

That plot was based on a real event.

[@proosee]

We all felt that, we also were like "I didn't like him, but I didn't want him die!" - awesome writing.

[@iblard]

All the other things aside, Drumlim was truly the best candidate: according to the book was a genius and very in shape at almost 60 years old. Ellie was also in the terrorist attack and Drumlim saved her by pushing her losing his life.

[@fposmith]

My stepdad was one of the contractors on that Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. He would have been furious to see it in disrepair to the point of collapse. He was very proud of that job and bragged about it all the way up until his death.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think it's a sign that the United States is not pre-eminent in science, like Neil deGrasse Tyson warns about. The problem is that there's no place like the United States used to be, that has scientists and others going to in order to be cutting edge.

[@gabevee3]

Please don't forget this happened after that devastating hurricane went through.

[@jonblair5470]

@@gabevee3the very bad hurricane happed sept 2017. I was there, and then they transplanted a half a million citizens to Central Florida where I was working at the time. Whereas Arecibo collapsed in Dec of 2020.

[@gabevee3]

@@jonblair5470 I said after. There were also a couple of earthquakes that didn't help.

[@stephenbrown321]

Please nobody tell her about “Galaxy Quest” now that’s a really spot on film. I think.

[@tabularasa0606]

That one is brilliant, but I won't tell her. I also won't tell her that it has Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver.

[@SwirlingSoul]

@@tabularasa0606 By Grabthars hammer!

[@holyflowerpots1400]

The magic of beryllium spheres

[@johnpublicprofile6261]

LOL

[@waynedarronwalls6468]

Galaxy Quest?????? 😆 😂 😂 😂 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@StarkRG]

A lot of what was in the books that they changed resolves a lot of what you didn't like about the movie. The pod they sent held five or six people, each of which confirmed they'd been gone for 18 hours (or whatever it was), so the question was about whether the travelers had conspired to create this story in order to legitimize the expense. The 18-hours of static was mentioned near the end but it was never explicitly stated that the information would be released to the public. That said, there was resolution to the story in that Ellie discovered something that the alien had told her about that even they, with their advanced technology and many more years of research hadn't been able to figure out. She then accidentally figures out the answer that is implied will completely turn science and society as a whole on end (though I'm pretty sure the explanation in the book is ridiculous, but then, it would kinda have to be). Ellie _does_ listen to the radio signals (I think she rigs up her own contraption), but it's viewed as quirky by everyone else. It's mentioned that she _knows_ that the data analysis will find a signal better than she ever could, but it makes her feel connected to her father who taught her ham radio. Sagan actually did "participate" in an observation session at Arecibo and found it to be _extraordinarily_ boring, so he probably added that to make it seem more hands-on.

[@briankelly6561]

Another addition: in the book the aliens state they will "close down" their end of the portal so future attempts at contact will fail, making the experiment unrepeatable. The question is then about whether you believe Ellie (and the other travelers in the book) on if what they experienced was real. This is a refence back to the science vs religion theme of the movie and points out that science isn't always completely without faith.

[@AnimeCritical]

Can you please tell me what the problem was that the aliens could not figure out?

[@zemoxian]

@@AnimeCritical Tl;dr: we contacted a type III civilization that could use wormholes to travel. They were seeking clues to the whereabouts of the type V? civilization that created the wormholes. That civilization apparently left the universe to search the cosmos for the creators of our universe. I won’t even guesstimate their Kardishev number. I don’t remember the details but the transportation network that the galactic civilization used to make contact wasn’t made by them. It was made by an older and far more advanced civilization that had gone away. I think the expression was something like they had gone over the cosmic horizon or something like that. They were searching for clues found in a message described as some higher form of mathematics that humanity was nowhere near grasping. They described it as if she turned her search algorithms on pi and she found a message hidden in the noise of the digits. BTW, she did just that and in base 11 there was a very long string of 1s and 0s that was the product of two prime numbers in length. Arranging them into a rectangle formed an image of a circle and a line that was a little over three times its diameter. I think the creators of the wormhole transportation network solved those mathematical problems and went off to seek their origin. Which I suppose was an even more advanced form of life, presumably with the technology to manipulate the fabric of reality to the point that they can embed pictures in fundamental mathematical constants like pi. While that kinda implies they may have been the creators of our universe, it didn’t seem like they were actually God, just extremely godlike from our limited perspective. There’s a whole cosmos to explore beyond the limited confines of our tiny blip of a universe.

[@rodylermglez]

@@rebeuhsin6410 In the novel it is also explained that the aliens have highly advanced neuroimaging technology and use it to appear to contactees in the shape of someone similar to them in order to avoid triggering a seemingly completely universal xenophobic response (a thing Ellie didn't repair into until the last second when she started to dread about tentacles and whatnot). Therefore, each crew scientist meets an alien in the image of someone dear to them, alive or dead, and at an age when they had really nice memories of them. As a bonus, the aliens also find not only scientifically but aesthetically pleasing how some species psychés experience dreams and memories. It was also a need to connect with other sentient life in an unfathomable largely empty universe the thing that drove them to try and keep contact with as many civilizations as they could, establishing a multi-star array of radiotelescopes SETI program. They seem to value the psychological phenomenon of dreams in sentient species so much that they even "trade" in them.

[@chapmanvernon999]

@@AnimeCritical I seem to recall is was to do with pi. They thought there was a secret programmed into it. Ellie on her return set her contraption to find a pattern in pi... The book ends with her contraption triggering an alarm to indicate it found something

[@DrKevGuitar]

I know I’m two years late with this but the novel is even better than the film. In the novel they sent 5 people, who all came back with 18 hours of blank video. I felt the novel really captures the life of a research scientist, a female scientist, having to deal with politics, funding, personalities, and misogyny, and of course her own feelings and emotions. That’s why I think Ellie Arroway is such a wonderful character and hero in the book, she’s so very believable.

[@BenjiSun]

yes yes yes. for anyone who loved the movie, or have criticisms of the movie, please read the book. it's more of an international cooperation as there's 5 seats(that don't ridiculously shake away), S.R. Hadden plays a much bigger role and the world there is more fleshed out. the romance subplot is far less obvious and Drumlin is far less of a d-bag, his biggest fault is his forcing of employees to watch slide projections of his scuba diving exploits. lol, it's actually a little endearing if we get pass how annoying of a boss he is, but he's not much of an antagonist in the novel. Ellie's own dogma is. (without mentioning any important spoilers, but certain mentioned criticisms are far better resolved and explained in the book)

[@SaryonMichaelWhite]

I agree. The book has things that the movie doesn't. So glad I read it.

[@dannygjk]

The book has incredibly interesting concepts which are not in the movie.

[@susanne5803]

The book offers much more complexity and it stretches over much more time - which a contact most likely would do, too.

[@NirielWinx]

Contact is what got me into astrophysics. I had finished high school, I started prep-school (a weird French thing) during which Contact came out. So I became a research engineer (another French thing) in microwave electronics, then worked in radioastronomy, in particular the Herschel Space Telescope. Half astro, half instru, but still.

[@selena490]

Best response ever: “I was mad at him but I didn’t want him to die” 😂

[@JeffDunhamsPeanut]

yeah, that killed me :D

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

agreed. part of the reason he "won" wasn't really due to him being "better" but him being a DUDE and kind of being a politican; he knew what people WANTED TO HEAR and she just said the truth. the same pattern happened later when she was being grilled by her erstwhile preacher-boyfriend. THAT was what most annoyed and disappointed her. That kind of disappointment just happened again with the SCOTUS, two days ago, didn't it. We also apparently chose another guy like that, in Trump. So far he has not had his "accident" but there is still time.

[@DanielRichards644]

@@tracyavent-costanza346 it wasn't because he was a dude you pro black genocide racist, it was because he played the political game and said what he knew people wanted to hear. Also it's sad to see that you think states getting back the power they rightfully had before it was stolen from them by the federal government over reach is a bad thing, GUESS WHAT BABY KILLER, THERE ARE STILL PLENTY OF STATES THAT WILL LET YOU MURDER YOUR BABY YOU W H O R E. AND STOP BLAMING TRUMP FOR EVERYTHING, IT'S BEEN A YEAR AND HALF OD THE BIDEN REGIME DESTROYING THIS COUNTRIES SOUL, NOT TRUMP YOU BIGOT.

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

And at the hands of the Christian whacko bucktoothed bomber, no less.

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

@@cosmicraysshotsintothelight yep I'd say the bucktoothed bomber was symbolic of an abiding hatred for science on the part of those who are desperate for woo woo and simple answers to complicated questions.

[@flippha]

when I learned to do passive radar at the military we transformed the radar signal to acoustic so we could identify it faster by recognising the "melody" of a radar device. I think stuff like this might be the inspiration to her listening to the signal.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Or maybe the sonar operator in _The Hunt for Red October?_

[@JaniceLHz]

According to responses under Dr. Becky's pinned comment, VLA operators _did_ used to listen to the signals. (Since Dr Becky is practicing a different specialty over 40 years after Sagan first came up with the plot, I am not surprised there might be nuances outside her experience.)

[@GusMcGuire]

22:45 - "Is that Olivander?" At this point I suddenly felt very old because - to me - my frame of reference for John Hurt has always been: "Is that the guy who had the Alien burst out of his chest?" 😂😂😂

[@redphillips3924]

"Is that the guy who befriended Billy Hayes in that Turkish hellhole prison?"

[@susanne5803]

"Elephant man" ... I'm really old!😄

[@matthiasklein9608]

I used to do some amateur radio astronomy and I confess I always listened. It was often the fastest way to discern artificial from natural signals.

[@vdozsa77]

Fun fact: in Elite: Dangerous you can distinguish various objects (gas giants, planetoids, etc) by the frequency of their radio signals converted to audio while scanning a solar system.

[@Geeksmithing]

She seemed quite adamant that was impossible

[@One.Zero.One101]

Did you find any aliens?

[@matthiasklein9608]

@@One.Zero.One101 Of course not. “Artificial signals” refers to signals originating from earth or satellites.

[@regolith1350]

The signal discovery sequence is one of my all time favorite sequences in any film. I still get chills every time I watch it. Beginning with Ellie on the hood of her car at dusk as the whooom whooom arrives, her racing back, the signal going dead & re-starting, discovering the pulses are primes, discovering the video & audio. That entire sequence from Jodie Foster’s “holy shit” to James Woods’ “get me the White House” is pure perfection.

[@asdabir]

Completely agree. My heart was racing the whole time. Going in with having zero background/spoilers on the plot made it all the more exciting for me.

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

@regolith I love your screen name. I dig.

[@nixon2tube]

You can add to that the previous scene where the preacher is on Larry King Live discussing that people have given up hope and have nothing to live for just as the alien signal is arriving...

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

@@nixon2tube if people have irrational expectations of life in general or their own existence in particular, it isn't my problem that they "give up hope". Rather it could be seen as accountable to whomever had told them what to expect. LATER we could talk about whatever "motive" the latter might have had, for making up an elaborate ideology for "followers" to follow.

[@tjarena]

All that being said, this movie does have the best line of any movie ever made: "The first rule of government spending...why build one when you can build two at twice the cost?" Haha

[@LuisManuelLealDias]

my fave as well!

[@emgee44]

I remember that one and its good, but the line about "If there's no one else out there, it'll be an awful waste of space" is the one I like.

[@57thorns]

The main reason is: If you need one, ask for three, get granted two and get one at twice the cost.

[@orangewarm1]

Any movie ever made? No.

[@orangewarm1]

This doesnt only apply in government spending.

[@mrb2349]

01:06 So lovely that you are subconsciously fixing your hair the same way young Ellie and old Ellie did. Shows that you are immersed.

[@SharpAssKnittingNeedles]

Contact the movie was one of my faves as a child. Then I found the book at a thrift store and read it so much that it fell apart. I know I'm not the only one saying this, but the book gets everything right that the movie couldn't due to brevity. Love the film, but cannot possibly recommend enough the novel! Life-changing stuff.

[@Jabber-ig3iw]

This film has the greatest opening of any film ever, the pullback from earth to deep space is just a thing of beauty.

[@gerberjason6947]

And then into Ellie's eye! There is some fascinating camerawork, like when she goes to get the pills captured in the mirror.

[@sandal_thong8631]

It's a good idea, but visuals don't quite match the audio for light-hours in the solar system to 25 light-years from say Earth to Vega and back for 50+ years from 1930s to 1997.

[@CallowayVisuals]

“I was mad at him but I didn’t want him to die” LMAO! This is one of my favorite movies and I knew that was coming. I’m at work and I literally laughed out loud!

[@CallowayVisuals]

Also you have to give this movie a bit of a break. It’s from the 90’s during the height of Star Trek, Star Wars and such and they used a lot of the same plot points.

[@DudeSilad]

I cheered when that happened I'll be honest.

[@joshuaroyal3579]

Dr. Becky reacting to what is essentially US politics with people taking credit for someone else's work, is everything I needed. 🥰

[@Historian212]

Actually more the competitive nature of academia and the sciences, which isn’t limited to the US.

[@rosenyne]

What? It wasn't a commentary on politics at all. In the book and movie it's a blatant commentary on rampant sexism in the scientific community. Things have improved since the movie was made but we still have a long way to go. I'm actually baffled that Dr Becky didn't make that connection. Many of the most famous female scientists had work stolen from them by their male peers or weren't taken seriously until long after they died.

[@jlaufangyt]

At the very end when she does the McConaughey "alright alright alright...". I just about fell out of my chair laughing!

[@ccchhhrrriiisss100]

As an undergraduate student, I applied for an internship with NASA (at Langley Research Center). On my application, I cited the film OCTOBER SKY (based upon the book "Rocket Boys" by Homer Hickam) as a motivator for working at NASA. Not only did I get an internship (actually two internships and a co-op position as a post-grad), I eventually was able to meet Homer Hickam. He was delighted that I had received my initial internship because of his book and film. Oddly enough, the highlights of my experiences at NASA Langley Research Center was with the scientists and engineers working on amazing research. My perceptions of NASA changed almost instantly when I realized that the agency is made up of brilliant people from a wide array of academic disciplines. I made an effort to attend every lecture series that was given on the base. As an ever-curious person, I was like working in paradise.

[@ipissed]

Whenever someone opens a statement with "as a ___ bla bla bla", fill in the blank, you know they are going to be some pretentious tool.

[@ccchhhrrriiisss100]

@@ipissed - Uh...okay? Easy there. Relax. Breathe. I simply shared a personal anecdote. I wasn't trying to act like some angry prima donna who prances about KZbin calling someone a "pretentious tool." You're entitled to your opinions though -- no matter how wrong they might be.

[@alcor7104]

@@ccchhhrrriiisss100 Eh, haters'll always hate. Gives 'em a chance to vent from the pain of seeing how other's successes enhance their own failed attempts at being someone relevant.

[@hubertfarnsworth6824]

@@ipissed You seem hurt. Take a break from the internet.

[@kylereese4822]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eYCtpnlto56afaM James Doohan Discusses How He Helped A Suicidal Star Trek Fan... just watch..... when Sci Fi tackles the real world and no book can teach...

[@AlanWinterboy]

Maybe you weren't living in the US in the 90's, when Contact came out. That was during the second wave of religio-political anti-science, and I thank Carl for making that tension (and then the loving discussion about it between protagonists) a centerpiece of this movie.

[@rangerslayer2260]

I was born late 90s, 1997 and we seriously had a point in human history we basiclly went back to the whole Religion vs Science shit again?

[@imdiyu]

I have read many of Carl's books. And what I find remarkable about them is he is able to capture a lot of the cultural aspects of society throught the history of science, how science has impacted society and vice versa. He really persuades you to think using different thinking patterns.

[@cc1210]

90s? It’s still happening today

[@rangerslayer2260]

@@cc1210 It's called Anti-vaxxers, flat earth believers and anything that undermines science that does my head in

[@lorisewsstuff1607]

This is an ongoing problem. I live in the "Bible Belt" in a tiny town of about 300 people. Nearly everyone hates science and believes it's the work of the devil. I get called an atheist all the time. When I say I'm not I'm told I'm an instrument of Satan trying to lead good Christians astray by lying about my beliefs. Needless to say I don't go to church here. There really are people nutty enough to believe science is evil.

[@KhordLizardMage]

I went with my wife to a prerelease of the film a few days before the official release of the film. It was an emotional experience and there was a huge ovation at the end. Great movie.

[@BradGryphonn]

Oh, my, Dr Becky! This is one of my all-time favourite movies. I get emotional when I hear that music, and when Jodie's character hears the signal? I get overwhelmed with emotion every time.

[@joannecunliffe8067]

I love astronomy, cosmology, particle physics and any deep science. I remember my Grandad showing me how wonderful the sky was through some binoculars (at the tender age of 6). I asked for books on astronomy and a telescope for my 7th birthday! I chose a different career path (computers, IT and Linux development) but I've never lost that feeling of wonder looking at the night sky. Contact is one of my favourite films. I always sob my heart out at the end of this film (with Ellie) when she meets the 'aliens' as her departed Dad. It just reminds me of my dear departed Grandad. Such a wonderful film (* wipes eyes *).

[@Mrbfgray]

This is first glimpse for ME. I actually thought it was older, seems such a cultural icon.

[@TMS2224]

Try The Expanse! It’s got largely realistic physics and takes place in a hypothetical near-future where we’ve just colonized the solar system. They even show space ship acceleration correctly!

[@rozminhall]

The expanse is way too underrated!

[@model7374]

My current favorite sci-fi show. Excellent

[@andrewjolly319]

I really enjoy the Expanse. Really looking forward to season 6.

[@boriskortiak320]

But the sounds!!!

[@rozminhall]

@@andrewjolly319 They gonna stop at 5, budget issues I guess

[@Juan-qn3yl]

Puertorrican chemist here: can't watch Arecibo's footage without shedding a tear 😕

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

i kind of gathered at at a certain point of non-maintenance, the design itself became dangerous to not only try to repair, but dangerous to be anywhere AROUND since parts could violently fail at any time. And true to form, they did.

[@joshmcgill1268]

It breaks my heart as a Canadian line cook, bud

[@iUdopeme]

Nature always wins

[@benedixtify]

😢

[@charliela1844]

Why dont they repair it?

[@EdisonCPP2]

I laughed out loud when you covered your mouth and said, "I was mad at him, but I didn't want him to die!!" Watching him take credit after hindering Arroway was a painful part of the movie for me too.

[@sandal_thong8631]

In the book, Ellie is of mixed feelings with her first thought, "I get to go! They have to send me!"

[@AltairZielite]

I haven't seen many movies based on books that I have actually read, but this is the one I think is best adapted. It seems movies rarely do the books justice, but these guys went top-notch and brought Carl's work to life, a very evocative tale.

[@davidstephens8543]

This was BUTCHERED! They missed the whole point of the book!

[@user-ct4xz5on8h]

@@davidstephens8543 It wasn't. If the movie makers had followed every word the final result would so long and what worse might be soo boring to watch. The movie and the book are two separate pieces of art sharing the common ideas, but each has own accents. I watched the movie when I was a kid, I was totally enthralled. Decade later I read the book and It had become my number one. I reread it 10 times and rewatched the movie 10 times and the thrill is still there.

[@davidstephens8543]

@@user-ct4xz5on8h Nope, the whole point of the book was that Ellie was searching for something bigger than herself and the science she was relying on for her view of the world. In the book, there are a couple of pages at the very end where Sagan addressed that with the calculation of Pi. It could have been done in two minutes in the movie.

[@launchsquid]

"Of course they picked...Drumlin or Gremlin..." I absolutely lost it at that line, 100% comedy gold.

[@protocol6]

The book was much better. Jodie did a great job but they made major changes.

[@dewiz9596]

@Arbane's Sword : do you not think refuting astrology is a worthwhile pursuit?

[@tylerperkins3829]

Agreed, but they're both among my all-time favorite films and novels. Fantastic performances, especially Jodie Foster and Mathew McConaughey. So few movies deal fairly with the deep questions of science and religion. The book ended with an idea about pi that blew my mind! Perhaps it was thought to be too mathematical for the movie, so sadly, it was omitted.

[@caw25sha]

I'm not surprised the film is a lot different from the book. Give me a book any time!

[@rahul_sreedharan]

Its different in the book,

[@tabularasa0606]

The movie was made 12 years after he wrote the book. A lot changed in those 12 years.

[@joelrivardguitar]

The faith vs science things was one of the themes of the story. Matthew M was the faith guy and Ellie was very science minded and at the end it sort of turned around because she was having faith in her personal experience when others disbelieved her. In the novel I think they ended up finding evidence in pi of some sort of design? It's an awesome book and movie!

[@ZlothZloth]

Yeah, the aliens gave her a tip to check pi in base 11. Also in the book, they set up a fancy program that watch for patterns in otherwise random data. So, she set up one program to calculate digits of pi, fed the numbers to the pattern-watcher, and let it run for quite a long time. At the very end of the book, it found a pattern. THAT was a really stunning idea. Mathematical constants like pi are.... sheesh, we don't have good words to describe it. They are independent of physical reality. You could throw away the entire universe and make a new one with completely different laws of physics, and pi would still be the same. A message in pi wouldn't be from the creator of the universe, it would be from the creator of the rules that universe creation has to follow. Actually, even that doesn't make sense because 'creation' means making something that wasn't there before, which means time is ticking, which means you are already in a universe. Yeah, definitely an entity way into the "unimaginable" category.

[@user-ir1cu7ye1z]

@@ZlothZloth Actually pi contains every possible message, every book, every speech, every conversation. You do, however, have to know where to start reading with which encoding.

[@ZlothZloth]

@@user-ir1cu7ye1z True. You'll eventually bump into a pattern that acts as a key for some interesting ideas that follow immediately afterward - but it's going to be a LONG way in. If you find such a thing just a couple of billion digits in, something else is going on.

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

You can totally listen to space-telescope radio waves, using ampitude modulation to turn the signal into audio, and yes, I am sure people used to do that on occasion before modern computers took over.

[@pscar1]

Thank you. I can't believe she doesn't seem to know that.

[@OfficialRedDirtNurse]

Why does she say that this is light? I thought it was radio waves or radiation. I don't get it.

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

@@OfficialRedDirtNurse"light" "radio-waves" and "(electromagnetic) radiation" are the same thing, just the waves have a different size. Meter-size for radio, .00001 cm for visible light.

[@user-ir1cu7ye1z]

Any 'signal' has to be modulated in some way in order to carry information - AM, FM, phase shift, digital pulses at some data rate. A signal intended for detection by anyone listening will likely have an obvious modulation, which might well manifest as repetitive sequences of sound if extracted from the carrier wave.

[@KingofCannabis]

"No one ever did it, mate" had me f***ing dying. Your reaction to the entire movie is perfect. I can't wait to finish paying off my debt and fixing my credit so I can return to school and become an Astrophysicist. Anywho keep the fabulous content coming, fr though I cannot think of any channel for which I click on new uploads quicker. ~stay healthy and safe, from Colorado!

[@Fortune090]

See you there man! Working on the same path and hoping to get into Boulder's program..

[@Lethgar_Smith]

Dont wait for the money. It will become an excuse that holds you back. Just start doing it. Whatever it takes you have to move forward without that thing you believe you need. Find a class somewhere and sign up. Even if it doesn't appear to move you towards your goal just be mindful and purposeful everyday in your intent and the path will open before you. YOU MUST TAKE ACTION!! Sorry, but your comment made me feel something. Perhaps I should take my own advice... bye!

[@katherineg9396]

Good luck to you, go for your dream. There is a lot of truth in what Lethgar Smith says, even if it seems counter intuitive.

[@katherineg9396]

@@Lethgar_Smith this is what the Stoics would say

[@katherineg9396]

Whats the frequency Kenneth?

[@akale2620]

Dr Becky - real scientist : confused about reverse time dilation. Normal sci-fi fans: seems legit

[@dbscarlett13]

Now hear me out... Wormhole time travel.

[@marksusskind1260]

she moved at a tangent to our local spacetime, but the projection into our local spacetime was only locally momentary

[@Matortheeternal]

earth is a gravity well, so if you were in a space with less gravity time would move faster for you, might be a thought on the way to an explanation

[@smorrow]

@@Matortheeternal Plus there's a bit where they show her outside of THE/A WHOLE GALAXY

[@mikeclark4040]

Just now discovered your channel. This is one of my all time favorite movies, not for the science per se, but because of the way they draw a very clear line in the sand between Science and Religion in the beginning of the movie, and by the end that line is blurred as Jodi Fosters character finds herself asking the people in charge to have faith in her experience.

[@sandal_thong8631]

In the book the vessel was found to be subjected to unusual stresses and radiation that wasn't present in Japan.

[@johnnielson4341]

5:46 Yes, the VLA has a smaller collecting area but it has a much, much larger collecting diameter which means the resolution will be an order of magnitude greater.

[@garenson]

"The Expanse" is the the best crrent SiFi series.

[@TheDirge69]

Hi can you supply an imdb.com link?

[@mina86]

You mean Fantasy series, right?

[@burstofsanity]

@@mina86 What exactly does Sci-fi mean to you? I honestly can't think of a harder sci-fi series that involves spaceships.

[@guest_informant]

Tried three seasons and gave up. Thought it was awful.

[@ThanatoselNyx]

@@guest_informant that is okay, not every show is for everyone. At least you gave it a good go.

[@richsouthall1937]

Contact is hands-down one of the best Sci-Fi movies ever. It's grounded in great science (from Carl Sagan novel) and wonderfully adds elements of fantasy; love, drama and transcendence. Yes, it's not perfect science and much of the technical elements can be debunked; but you would be missing the whole point of the movie. The premise of the movie is: WHAT IF we met aliens; what would they look and act like and how would that change humanity? That is the entire point of the movie. It's wonderful to ponder these philosophical and existential concepts.

[@snakerbot]

I remember hearing someone say once that every story about aliens is actually a story about people. I feel like Contact exemplifies that more than any other movie.

[@KeithCooper-Albuquerque]

@@snakerbot I agree.

[@thephuntastics2920]

Smoke some DMT or take some high dose of ketamine and find out what the movie actually is about. Contact is a 100% authentic depiction of the psychedelic flash from start to finish.

[@benhur4154]

I think more than being about how it would change us, it's about how various factions of society would react to the news: media=goes ballistic, government=THREAT!, zealots=NOOOOO!, and of course the power grabs (e.g. Drumlin). It's summed up nicely by Haddon's line about people positioning themselves for the game of the century.

[@norbertocriado7718]

And Sagan's idea of aliens using a friendly front end to communicate with humans, is the ideal solution for aliens to adopt !! Usually SciFy stories fails to catch an acceptable view/aspect of aliens. The religion vs science ( faith vs evidence ) is a key dilema for society. May be Carl was pioneering the revelations about extraterrestrial human relationship and truth !!

[@deep.space.12]

You can listen to waves of any kind as long as they can be mapped to the audio range. And radio antennae aren't CMOS. It's really a continuous signal being received.

[@deep.space.12]

PS Actual experience listening to laser doppler vibrometer output with my headphones. Figured that the response I was measuring was in audible range and the device's output voltage matched the typical 3.5mm headphones, I soldered a simple amp from Analog Devices to another photodiode circuit and quite literally plugged my headphones in whenever I did my experiments. That was over 10 years ago. No amount of Blackman-Harris can give you this feeling of intimacy with your experiment.

[@Geeksmithing]

But she is an "expert"! Yeah that CMOS example was particularly eyebrow raising...

[@tomwaller6893]

I am so glad you enjoyed it. At age 73, I watched man land on the moon in 1969, and that inspired me to become a Class A Radio Amateur (GM4 HIG) so that was a nice touch in the early part of the film and here I am on the edge of my seat watching Space X in 2022. And of course the James Web Telescope images. Life, a gift that never stops giving. Wonderful. Thank you.

[@judiemeierfranz4329]

Did you follow the "year in space"? That was awesome. Talk about taking twin studies to a new level...

[@PsychoMuffinSDM]

"The comment section is going to tear that comment pretty hard" That's my cue: The Expanse is pretty awesome, and although it doesn't have much astrophysics, it does have a lot of orbital physics. I'm sure you would love to watch that series, as I feel there are VERY few errors, and only a couple MacGuffins for the sake of story.

[@cathalodiubhain5739]

For me The Expanse is the best sci fi to come to TV be it TV show or movie..

[@acereporter73]

I too recommend *The Expanse* . It does play some aspects a touch fast and loose for the sake of entertaining the audience but it is very grounded.

[@daz090979]

I did the cursory check before citing the expanse and missed yours! Sorry! I tried honest I did! So now I’m “that guy” who was too lazy to do a thorough check! Damnit!

[@cathalodiubhain5739]

@@daz090979 ha we all have to be that guy sometime..

[@PsychoMuffinSDM]

@Trevor Rogert Sasa ke, Pampa?!

[@TheHallPartnership]

The book has a brilliant ending, which I will not spoil. I read it when I was young and it had more of an impact that virtually any other sci fi I read before or since.

[@eikopalma3072]

I need to read that book...

[@secularmonk5176]

Spoiler .... . . . I read that book at about 17, and that ending (assuming you're talking about the last paragraphs) was the first time I was struck by the simulation hypothesis

[@CagriAkpak]

@@secularmonk5176 Spoiler again.... It can be about the simulation hypothesis. However, the overall message in the book was about a creator. Since pi (or other constants) is so deliberate, it heavily implies a being created the universe. It can be a simulation or a real universe. Either way in the book, they basically found the mathematical proof of a creator. PI slowly creating a circle at the end was a real nice touch.

[@danilooliveira6580]

@@CagriAkpak you can't assume Pi is deliberate though, its just the ratio between the circunference and diameter of a circle. if anything it only tell us its the constant that defines the "flatness" of the universe. but we can't say any of those constants were deliberate, they could very well be random, but in a infinite multiverse there is a infinite number of universes where the constants are the exact number needed for life to exist. so we don't know, we don't have the means to know right now.

[@CagriAkpak]

@@danilooliveira6580 I was talking about the book, not the real world.

[@lulucolby8882]

That look you gave when the dude took credit for everything was so spot on sister. Lol. I was looking back.🙂

[@RedParsley]

One of my favourite films of all time. I've also got and read the book which has some major differences from the film (or vice versa, as I guess it would've been) but it does answer some of the questions you might have, such as why they didn't send someone else in the machine (it can only be used once).

[@JJ-nu8qi]

I prefer the book ending but the movie isn't bad.

[@AlanCanon2222]

Dr Becky: "The public, no offense...." The Public: "None taken, Dr Becky."

[@flatearthjackal9201]

Google Nikon p900 zoom on stars

[@Einyen]

Dr. Becky: "...I missed out on a lot of the classics." Me: "What do you mean classics? Contact (1997) was just a few years ago, like 10-12 years at the most." Foto shows Dr. Becky as a tiny tiny girl. Me: "Oh I'm so old".

[@AlanCanon2222]

@@Einyen Yeah, I noticed that too. :)

[@John.0z]

@@Einyen Me too. I did not have that reaction about the cell phones, so I just now realised that it would now be an incredible problem.

[@jamiegagnon6390]

@@Einyen Yep, I keep stumbling across stuff from my childhood being referred to as antique. Very disconcerting.

[@watchtheskies]

Absolutely love this film, when she says "They should have sent a poet" chokes me up every time

[@jeffjames3111]

Wasn't that originally a quote from an Apollo ... astronaught Fred I think.

[@lukedukey]

One of my fav moments at the theater. Ever. Packed house, Midnight showing ...You could hear a pin drop and everyone getting choked up. I'll never forget it

[@supreetsahu1964]

Yusaku maezawa will

[@22esprince]

Literally one of the stupidest movies ever made. Pumped full of antireligious bigotry and wonky science, long and drawn out and no you wouldn't want to send a poet, you would want to send a scientist. Poets are generally useless.

[@jopabr24]

Funny, I tend to find the same thing true of people who state opinions as if they're objective facts.

[@michaelturner1565]

Thanks for all the wonderful content. As a science enthusiast (?) your videos are always interesting and informative. I love your books as well. Aside from that, Contact is a wonderful movie for exactly the reasons you described, in my opinion. Wonder is an amazing catalyst. And not for nothin’, Carl Sagan is the person, out of all people ever, I’d love to spend a day with. He’s my hero. And yes, the “For Carl” at the end absolutely wrecked me. Thanks so much for sharing all of this amazing science and making it accessible for people like me.

[@philiprolenick4475]

I've always considered this film to be a meditation on the relationship between science and faith - more specifically between what we can explain and what we believe. While they are initially seen as being in tension, the scientist ends up as a believer in something she can't explain. There's also a rhetorical loading of the dice in the repeated formulation that "If it's just us, it's a pretty big waste of space" - an argument that assumes the existence of someone to have a purpose for creating the universe the way it is.

[@jonathanlindsey463]

Ellie was based on astrophysicist Jill Tarter... when ellies dad told her “if we are alone in the universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space”... that sentence has stuck with me ever since he said it to her

[@jameskuyper]

On the flip side, the Universe has no obligation to not waste space.

[@entropymaster2012]

This is an impressive truth. If we are alone in this enormous universe, then it is very probable that we are here just by chance. Why would a superior being create only one planet with intelligent life in such an enormous space? What for?

[@jonathanlindsey463]

@@entropymaster2012 i dont knock or hate on religion other than the blood baths.. i just cannot believe we are the only intelligent life in this vast universe with trillions of worlds

[@tracyavent-costanza346]

@@jameskuyper maybe not, but if there is a "Creator", IT could be accused of wasting space. Unless of course there is a good bit more going on than we know about.

[@jameskuyper]

@@tracyavent-costanza346 Only if the Creator is under an obligation to avoid wasting space. How do you derive such an obligation?

[@ianwilliams1529]

2001 A Space Odyssey...Arthur C Clarke was a proper nuts and bolts sci-fi author

[@compdave7630]

or 2010.

[@charlesmills8712]

Yes! But she doesn't like open endings. So she should immediately watch its sequel "2010: The Year We Make Contact." In the 1960's when the first came out, the ending was a mind warping enigma (less so if you read the book) which was fun. But younger generations want a more defined ending which 2010 provides. The danger is that to the young, 2001's pace is glacial. I was a young teen in 1968 - I love them both. She should watch "Forbidden Planet" (1956) and "Destination Moon" (1950). She should also read Robert L. Forward, especially the first part of "Dragon's Egg." We should not forget "Marooned" (1969),"The Right Stuff" (1983), "Space Cowboys" (2000). Let us not forget "Apollo 13" (1995). The actors filmed in the 'vomit comet' spending more time weightless than astronauts in training. For pure campy fun, watch "Space Camp" (1986) and "The Reluctant Astronaut" (1967).

[@compdave7630]

2001 is about space travel and an unknown object. Not really astrophysics properties or effects. 2010 at least speaks to some astrophysics or scientific principles she can talk about.

[@charlesmills8712]

@@compdave7630 With respect, as I recall, David Bowman's last transmission as he approached that object and was being red shifted was "My God... It's full of stars." There were three of those objects and infinite patience. The 2001 story is subtle. When the ape-man throws the bone (read weapon) into the air and the shot shifts to a satellite it is a nuclear weapons platform (read weapon). Millions of years and nothing has changed except the scale and sophistication. It is the same for the ape-men howling at each other and Dr. Floyd and the Russians. We never see what is behind it, but there is a vast plan. You are correct that that is not astrophysics. It is so iconic that recently some artists made similar objects and placed them to be found. The practical effects to make the movie are superb. But all of that said, I'd love to see her react even if there isn't much about the evolution of stars etc. I've recently noticed that in the famous "Blue Danube" scene it appears that the shuttle is chasing down the space station from a higher orbit which should be wrong. kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2TSeaCMnduchZo kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6itgmiLp6amf7s

[@charlesmills8712]

@@mojojojo1529 I liked both. But they are very different. There were some lines in 2010 give me chills. Such as "It is important that you believe me... Look behind you." Also, I can't find it but I recall it "You look at THAT and then you tell me what practical is."

[@BradGryphonn]

In the late 90s/early 200s, SETI was using Aricebo if memory serves correctly. I was one of the many donating my idle computer time to help the search. It is a travesty that Aricebo was allowed to decay into self-destruction.

[@TheGotoGeek]

The VLA isn’t as sensitive Arecibo (RIP), but it has a much larger (synthetic) aperture, giving it vastly higher resolution. The VLA also can point in many more directions than Arecibo. For a directed search it’s a much better instrument. And it’s very photogenic.

[@user-ir1cu7ye1z]

I'm glad to see that someone beat me to the above comment. Well done!

[@Midwinter2]

"Arrival" absolutely has closure! It's a really well-structured story!

[@Cbricklyne]

With a massive Bootstrap paradox. That's what's unresolved about it. You can't ever resolve a bootstrap paradox. And that's the reason why most people who hate it (like Dr.Becky) hate it.

[@Samson16436]

Love that movie

[@edwarddore7617]

I like Arrival, it does have closure in it's own way, but I still don't buy that learning an alien language will let you experience time differently, still a good film though

[@katiedonovanAlt]

It had, like, zero closure: at the end of the movie, the aliens are still here f!!cking shit up; the scientists haven’t a shred of proof, they’re still out of work...hell, the principles don’t ever consumate their relationship! The only thing that DID get resolved was the fate of the truck they drove out to the array!

[@toribiogubert7729]

@@edwarddore7617 it is an extrapolation on how language works. There are studies on how different ppl think different because of the languages they talk. Of course in the film it is taken to the extreme of sensing time the way she did, but it is a very good film and it has closure. It may not have scientific closure, but Arrival seems to me much more of a personal story told in the helm of High Science Fiction. TLDR: Dont watch Arrival as a Hard Scifi Movie.

[@frankb3347]

I'd suggest reviewing the Stargate episode "A Matter of Time". It's the most science based episode in the series.

[@andrewmurray1550]

Is that the one where they can't close the stargate due to the planet it's open to is being sucked into a black hole (and the gravitational effects are being felt on Earth/SG-C) Depicting the SG teams "frozen in time" due to the time dilation?

[@frankb3347]

@@andrewmurray1550 It sure is!

[@captainicy1883]

Yes to Stargate! And that episode is fantastic. One of my favorites.

[@razvann6907]

@@frankb3347 if that episode had any basis in science the team on the other planet would have returned to Earth through the gate and would have complained about "this weird solar eclipse" that started an hour ago and it doesn't seem to end. If a star turns into a black hole it doesn't magically increase it's gravitational effects on the system it is in and the event horizon of the new black hole will be inside the surface radius of the old star.

[@frankb3347]

@@razvann6907 Yeah for the sake of the story line it doesn't completely add up. As a concession they even have Carter note that what they're observing doesn't entirely fit our understanding of physics. I just remember as a kid being awed by the phenomenal power of a black hole.

[@Tinman_56]

As an audiologist, "listening" to a radio wave (RF) is possible when it's a modulated wave and not just a carrier wave. In the case of Contact, Ellie was tuned into a modulated carrier wave with intelligible information. At times, it "pulsed" (PCM), a form of modulation. ❤😊

[@rulerwatchman]

I love astrophysics and I was an extra in the movie! In the courtroom scene near the latter part of the movie. We sang "happy birthday" to Jodie Foster, laughed when the power went out during James Woods speech. I like the book and the movie as two separate entities. I always quote her dad's line from the film whenever any asks me if there's life on other planets.

[@jsullivan05]

"Such an overdone trope", well doc, this waaas one of THE originals to do it, it's why it's so heavy handed lol.

[@williamswenson5315]

She's so young...

[@atlasfeynman1039]

If you're referring to the use of wormholes in science fiction, it was used far before Contact.

[@hedgehog1965uk]

@@atlasfeynman1039 No, they were talking about the "Science Vs Religion" trope.

[@rodylermglez]

@@atlasfeynman1039 Far more interesting is that this is one of the really very few works that uses wormholes not only for space travel but also time travel. When I was younger I was also confused as to why and how 18 hours were compressed into milliseconds of earth time. And yes, back then I got time dilation, I understood that. The trick turns out to be that wormholes connect two space-time points in the universe; not only two locations but two points in the where and when. I guess, as long as you don't try to mess up with causality somehow, you can get a stable bridge.

[@atlasfeynman1039]

@@rodylermglez because space-time is a continuum

[@potorrero]

The fact that it recorded static isn't what interests me. What interests me is that it recorded approximately 18 hours of it.

[@edwarddore7617]

I thought it was 17 hours, at least in the movie, but yes that part is great.

[@Dudu-iq7ww]

Becky, your channel is incredible and the videos you make are absurdly enlightening! Thank you for everything! I found the part about "listening" to the signals very interesting. Even though it's not something typically done in the scientific process, "listening" to a change in the signal is something that many of us, including myself, enjoy doing. When I was a kid, I had a cheap shortwave radio and I liked listening to the signal variations in AM or SSB. It's kind of science-y, really, but hearing the static noise varying with the changes in the ionosphere was fascinating (and a bit crazy, though lol). This part reminded me, for example, of when the scientists at LIGO and VIRGO published the conversion of gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes into sound. I spent hours listening to that, even though it was a simple "whistle", but hearing that process was extremely satisfying. Your video is incredible! Keep giving us this wonderful knowledge that you always share with us!

[@mrzoinky5999]

I git into astrophysics (non professionally ) when my first grade teacher gave me a book on the solar system and universe in 1967 for perfect attendance at school - it is fun now to look back at the author's projections and speculations of that time, and the information available to them at that time.

[@stephenkormanyos766]

Dr. Sagan was interviewed about the “listening radio astronomer” and said he based the character and the practice of “listening” to the signals on a real life radio astronomer who did, in fact, “listen” to the processed signals being received. So apparently someone did it. Steve K.

[@bmcquillan]

It seems to me that in addition to all of the broadband detection equipment hooked up to the Radio Telescope, also listening for a single, somehow modulated, signal in the raw data might be useful. Human hearing is a tremendously capable pattern detector.

[@gorrister2977]

It's actually something he describes in his book more than once. It's not something they made up for the movie. And Sagan was an astrophysicist after all. I'm also repelled by your quick " never ever done that".

[@ganweidi1382]

Perhaps to please Carl Sagan, the director should had suggested tat in the movie, the team had already written/developed an algorithm that could somehow modulate real-time deepspace radiowave signal into audible audio signals to be played by speakers so those observers could "listened" to it all day long while multi-tasking. Then when there is an anomaly they could had picked it up by ears and rush into work immediately during the narrow window.

[@Guido_XL]

Indeed, it would have been all too blatantly stupid for script-writers to pretend that radio-waves could be heard without any decoding. Of course radio-waves are electromagnetic waves, propagating at the speed of light. We all know that. But just like terrestrial radio-waves have to be decoded by either amplitude or frequency demodulation, so could radio-waves from outer space be decoded as well. The movie does not disclose such information, as it would demand too much science and technology knowledge from the general public, but a movie like Contact would not attempt to pretend that a radio-astronomer would act against laws of physics and get away with it. The story wants us to contemplate the idea of getting in contact with aliens, it does not need to distract attention from that focal point by casually throwing in easily detectable errors that unnecessarily harm our credibility in the story altogether. So, of course the movie script depicts radio-astronomy more or less according to scientific and technological reality, as far as the daily business of radio-astronomy is concerned. Demodulation of radio-waves ought to be a part of that. Listening to demodulated radio-waves is not that far off. We can also listen to the sound of bats, when their chirps are being demodulated first. The speed of the waves is not the decisive property here. It's about frequencies and their modulation. Signal processing can go through great lengths to change the perception of whatever information might be transmitted.

[@Guido_XL]

@@bmcquillan You said: "listening for a single, somehow modulated, signal in the raw data might be useful." Radio-waves propagate at the speed of light. They also have the property of frequency, and wavelength, being the ratio of propagation speed (the phase speed) and frequency. But, as long as there is no modulation (either natural or artificial) of that wave, there is no signal to detect. We call it a signal if we can interpret a message from it, one way or another. The analog terrestrial radio-broadcast waves apply radio-waves in the hundreds of kiloherz [kHz] to hundreds of mega-herz [MHz] range. But, if those waves would just propagate towards our antennas and would not contain any information, they would just be received as unmodulated sine-waves, if they would carry the property of a single frequency. Once that wave however is being modulated, we cannot identify a single frequency anymore, unless the modulation is purely amplitude-driven. Hearing hundreds of kHz or even MHz is out of the question anyway. Radio-communication is about modulation and demodulation of a carrier-wave. We do not hear the carrier-wave, we hear the demodulated information from that carrier after the signal has been processed. If I remember "Contact" correctly (but it is quite some time ago that I saw the movie), we see how the scientists and technicians decode the message from outer space. They apply frequency demodulation and detect subcarriers. This is FM (frequency modulation) in action. The aliens transmitted bursts of messages in which frequency-modulated information had been packed. They practically broadcasted a TV-recording in bursts. What Jodie Foster's character heard while listening to the signals was the large-scale chirp-envelope of those bursts. It is perfectly possible to hear those chirp envelopes in their low frequency range. She did not hear the modulated frequencies themselves (i.e., the carrier-waves), she heard the envelopes of the modulated carrier-bursts. There is nothing strange nor unscientific about that.

[@marekkoodziejak1513]

Interstellar is my pick for your "An astrophysicist reacts..."

[@Red1Green2Blue3]

Kipp Thorne worked on both this and Interstellar

[@ftumschk]

Seconded - I'd be really interested to hear what Becky thinks about how it deals (visually and conceptually) with black holes.

[@bonkonthetronk1810]

One of my favourite movies of all time! Great visuals, soundtrack and acting!

[@burstofsanity]

The rage I feel towards that movie... Flames...flames on the side of my face.

[@sighfly2928]

@@burstofsanity why? For me it’s in the top 5 best sci-if films of all time. Nolan is a genius

[@markcohen7991]

Following Carl Sagan and Michio Kaku has taught me alot. You make it easier to understand. Live long and prosper 🖖

[@warrenpowers108]

You left out all the emotional bits 😂😭 "Just the math, ma'am." 😂❤️

[@sbatou87]

"That thing cost a quarter of a trillion dollars!" *F-35 JSF laughs at price*

[@Carcinogenic2]

Like almost everything the military spends to pose as master of a corner of a pixel.

[@jamescox5297]

Wonderful presentation. Thank you for your insights that I have missed from my few viewings of the movie.

[@dlobom]

Sad but true. 1 trillion dollars would fix a lot of problems, or put us on mars by next Tuesday. Instead we got a jet no one wants. This is what Eisenhower was talking about

[@ALucas73]

$1.7trillion divided by 2,500 planes is $680m per plane. Coincidentally I read approximately 680 have been built so far. The new Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier has a unit cost of $13.3billion so far, times 10 ships, plus $37.5billion program costs, so only $170.5billion total... if it all works, to replace the current carrier fleet over the next few years. Cheap compared but they go with the planes so add it to the total cost. And theres those littoral trimaran ships and the drone fighter planes. This is adding up. :) There's a reason we dont have any fighter jets in our air force here in New Zealand, we couldn't afford one F35 or more than one F22. Our air force is about transporting cargo to disaster areas, taking our army around the world, ocean search missions in Orions and Hercules', and flying the Prime Minister places in their 757's. I think they are about to replace the Hercs and/or Orions.

[@sbatou87]

@@ALucas73 Yes, I know the cost per plane. The project itself is over a trillion, but the JSF is, to put it lightly, faulty.

[@anhreg]

I love the movie sooooooo much. When I saw your review video in the youtube recommendation and clicked to see, I was like soooo nervous that you’d find tons of things that don’t make sense, just like in your other review videos. When I finished watching this I thought “well that’s still good” 😅 btw, I thought you would have comment (but you didn’t) on the last scene when she said “… is a waste of space” I love it.

[@laughingoutloud5742]

Dr. Becky's face when the first machine gets destroyed is hilarious

[@PhillipChalabi]

Your outrage over Drummer taking credit was perfect! He got his :D

[@darkreigncometh]

Glad to see I am not the only one who lost it when he pulled that stunt.

[@johnkrappweis7367]

Oh good Lord. It’s Drum-LIN not Drummer.

[@PhillipChalabi]

@@johnkrappweis7367 Oh no I got mixed up between characters in two different fictional sci-fi stories. You must be real fun at parties 😄

[@grumpyoldstudios]

SETI was a "joke" back when the book was written.

[@shaneg9081]

It still is in a sense, the general public just aren't thinking about it anymore

[@jdlives8992]

I posted my personal experience on mufon and never heard from them.

[@astralwerks4]

@@shaneg9081 but it is taken seriously by science now, which is all that matters

[@danieljakubik3428]

As a lifelong science enthusiast and logical analytical mathematical minded person, Contact is a very good movie. It doesn't always get all the science right, but it definitely invokes a sense of awe, wonder and is highly affecting.

[@sandal_thong8631]

It also gives the public an alternative of benevolent alien contact different from _Close Encounters of the Third Kind,_ and _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial._ When four airplanes were hijacked on 9/11/2001, the press looked back to a story by Tom Clancy where a pilot from a nation that was just at war with the U.S., took it upon himself to fly his airliner into the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.

[@thomasbunner734]

I can easily spend a whole night photographing and watching the heavens. Meteor showers, planets. galaxies, and nebulae, and the list goes on. One of my favorite books and movies; Contact is the embodiment of Carl Sagan's passion and love for the Universe, and aliens. It rubs off on us all, and is quite addicting. Glad I found Becky's site, where this passion flows freely!

[@timholland1764]

My favorite moment was when you saw Drumlin taking credit. Your jaw was on the floor

[@AdrianColley]

In real life he would have died of his wounds before reaching the podium. Never try to steal credit for a major scientific discovery.

[@JamieOrlando]

15:07 That look = daggers!

[@_Woo]

1:10 Just the most adorable mirror moment.

[@bretsheeley4034]

I actually giggled when I saw her do that.

[@thingsiplay]

She really sees herself in the role. So cute.

[@Mister_MSTie]

“No one EVER did it, mate.” I LOL’d.

[@paradoxical_taco]

10:41 The signal is actually prime numbers, between 2 and 101 if I’m remembering correctly, so there’s little doubt it’s an actual alien signal. Otherwise you’d be right about it taking years for data analysis. But that wouldn’t work in a movie, so Carl wrote in that it’s unambiguously an alien signal, because no natural phenomenon would by happenstance produce that result. I’m an historian and am used to movies having to take some liberties to keep a film (entertainment not as pure documentary) interesting, to simplify complex issue(s) and to keep a film to a reasonable length of time. Sometimes, film makers go too far in this respect. I think Carl did an excellent job in both the book and film (he was working with the people making the film, but died before it was completed and reached the theater.) I find this reaction video frustrating because it seems like you missed or forgot a lot of what happened in this movie.

[@sandal_thong8631]

As they said somewhere in the book, it's coming through pretty strong, so once alerted to it, pretty much anyone could turn a receiving dish to Vega and get the signal. I can imagine someone alerting tabloid journalism, and it just mushrooms. Not just there, but at any radio telescope in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.

[@timmykk1]

How about a review of my all-time fave on space travel: Wallace and Gromit in "A Grand Day Out"!

[@I_Don_t_want_a_handle]

It'll never happen cos then she'd have to admit that the Moon is really made of cheese. Dr Becky'd get drummed out of Oxford for letting that secret out. Hell, she'd get Men in Black'd ...

[@proprotornut5389]

@@I_Don_t_want_a_handle 🤣🤣🤣

[@jnetteshepherd6146]

ha ha, I showed this Wallice and Gromit film bit to my middle schoolers when we were studying friction, and then asked them why it wasn't so.

[@annihilatorg]

This movie has my single favorite quote that I use constantly. "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

Were there two Apollo programs, or two Shuttle programs? First, last, and only rule in storytelling: keep in mind IT'S ALL FICTIONAL RE-PRESENTATION OF REALITY..

[@harrybarrow6222]

@@RideAcrossTheRiver There were 17 Apollo spacecraft, and 6 Shuttles.

[@harrybarrow6222]

The USSR had a similar space program.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

@@harrybarrow6222 Bogus logic. Are you saying airlines should operate one flight using one aircraft? There was ONE Apollo program, and ONE Shuttle program.

[@RideAcrossTheRiver]

@@harrybarrow6222 Don't you mean it had 300 Soyuz programs, one entire distinct separate Soyuz program for each flight and spacecraft?

[@CreepToBeast]

“If not, it’s an awfully big waste of space.” You almost wrecked one of my favorite sci-fi films when you talked about listening to radio waves 😂🤣😂. So glad to see you enjoyed it after all.

[@Spinelli__]

The scene with the other being looking like her dad was such a beautiful, touching moment on so many different levels. Disappointed you didn't include any of that scene at all but thank you for the interesting reaction nonetheless.

[@pauloalvesdesouza7911]

Please do make "Astrophysicist Reacts" a series! Lots of good movies with with room for good comments and roasting.

[@spacextom]

Scientist doing amazing scientific content. KZbin - react to stuff 😍😍😂😂😂😂

[@chefsanders9151]

Dr Sagan took extraordinary pains to make the book as scientifically accurate as possible.

[@57thorns]

The book that is. So of course Hollywood takes detours.

[@deg6788]

It's my hero... Our hero... Sure miss his insights. Watch his docu from the 80s.... You will be amazed

[@danielman4057]

Sagan was a master wordsmith... Read both cosmos and contact within weeks... Burned through both of them rip dr sagan

[@stormculture]

Sure, but the book would have required a whole other movie to cover what happened after the earthlings used the machine. I mean, I'd love to see such a remake, but I get why Hollywood trimmed the story down (and landed on a fairly interesting overall theme that was missed by the book).

[@chefsanders9151]

@@deg6788 Not only do I own the Cosmos series on disk, I grew up watching the show on VHS over and over.... AND I actually got to take a class in college based on the book :D

[@DoctorVell]

This was one of my favourite Jody Foster films. Plus I was a Carl Sagan nerd growing up. I have COSMOS in book form and DVD.

[@sandal_thong8631]

_Contact, Cosmos_ and _The Demon-Haunted World_ are the three must-reads (or watch in the case of _Cosmos)_ though he got a Pulitzer for _The Dragon's of Eden_ on evolution of human intelligence, I think.

[@sepiae]

And if you enjoyed the film, imagine how much you'd enjoy the book - which is one of those cases where I really think they should make a limited series of it. The book is very different with some key-issues, and much more accurate in - basically everything (no surprise, given the author). But I like how you (addressing the good Dr.) got so involved with the story that you sometimes reacted as an audience, not a science reviewer 🙂 Btw., for the novel Carl Sagan first considered using a black hole as transportation means. He was talked out of it in favour of a wormhole - by none other than Kip Thorne.

[@OronOfMontreal]

Sagan's novel was better than the movie, surprisingly because his family details and travails for Ellie are much more affecting than in the movie. I was crying at the end of the book, it is that powerful. From the movie, you can have no idea what I am writing about.

[@Shozb0t]

I was especially disappointed that they left out the bit about the message hidden in pi.

[@caiowendel]

Now I will have to read the book again. It's been more than 20 years...

[@pushpendrarishi6407]

@@Shozb0t Exactly! reading that in the book made my hairs stand on end

[@rastersoft]

@@Shozb0t Funny enough, I think that that part is the weakest in the book: being infinite, it is inevitable that "everything" appear inside pi (and no, the part that says that it appears "so much at the beginning to be probable"... no, definitely NO). I prefer the point of the movie, with the noise recording.

[@enriquebarajas6758]

A series maybe

[@sleekoduck]

It's amazing that you dedicated your life to astronomy without parental encouragement toward the field. I never realized how lucky I was to learn these things from my family at a very early age. I recently inherited my mom's telescope. You remind me a lot of her when she was young, Dr Becky.

[@Puremindgames]

As your standard plebian I always thought the dishes where listening for radio waves in sound form, like some planet yelling 'Anyone out there' so her listening never struck me as odd or wrong, you learn something new everyday.

[@edudasoares]

the director of the movie explained that the earphones were a dramatic license they took for cinematic purposes, rather than she just reading screens

[@brianlhughes]

I liked the scene where the compass was floating and she climbed out of the wobbling chair that finally broke free.

[@trespire]

Dr. Sagan was a legend, his untimely passing is dearly missed.

[@drzarkov39]

Dr. Sagan is dearly missed, not his untimely passing.

[@islandpalm148]

Sagan's passing is deeply untimely.

[@thatfuzzypotato1877]

I have a similar story to yours from childhood. I remember my dad always taking me outside to stargaze and pointing out different things. There was one night Saturn was supposed to be extremely bright and much higher off the horizon than normal (for where I lived) and he literally woke me up in the middle of the night to excitdedly take me outside to go look at it. Then he got me my first telescope and I remember another time Saturn was high enough above the horizon to look at it. This little blurry gray thing but just enough prevision to make out the rings. To see some stripes on jupiter. Learning how to find Andromeda and seeing that blurry blotch in the sky best seen from my periphery. How to identify all the planets. Sparked a lifelong utter fascination with astronomy and physics.

[@mmille10]

It seemed like the movie wanted the audience to think that Arroway no longer had access to Arecibo once Drumlin cancelled her funding. Whether that's true to life or not, it seems like that's why she was "selling" the idea of using the VLA, as an alternative that was available for privately funded research.

[@Astrolavista]

S.R. Hadden's first rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price!....loved this film and the book back in the day.

[@aidanjt]

Isn't that just the general government rule of spending? Or maybe it would be more accurate to say 'why build one when you can have one for twice the price'

[@emotown1]

Yeah, I never quite got that aphorism of Hadden's when I watched this film. Doesn't make any sense when you think about it. If it was 'when you can have two at Less Than twice the price' ... well that would have made some sort of logical sense. I wouldn't be surprised if the editors didn't catch the bum line, probably a mistake generated by the screenwriters, but superficially it sounds good so they left it in.

[@secularmonk5176]

@@emotown1 This is cynical humor directed at the military-industrial complex ... corporations lobby Congress to commit to massive projects that the corporations then get paid to enact ... and because of economies of scale, the more of something you build, the greater the profit margin

[@rauminen4167]

@@aidanjt *You can have half and not working for twice the price

[@emotown1]

@@secularmonk5176 Ok, now that makes sense. Snouts in the trough, so to speak.

[@krashd]

The way I see the time discrepancy is that she was teleported somewhere, spent 18 hours there, and then was teleported back to the moment she left.

[@localroger]

Also the aliens who contacted us didn't build the wormhole system, don't know how it was built, and don't know exactly how it works even though they use it.

[@aliensoup2420]

@@localroger How could they send detailed schematics of the construction if they don't know how it is built?

[@LEDewey_MD]

Also, many physicists have talked about how wormholes can be time machines as well as tunnels connecting spacetime.

[@johnmeredith3368]

I agree with you (Rob Fraser) I made the same teleporting association as you. I thought that most people would come to that conclusion, in fact, I thought it was the conclusion that was anticipated by the film maker.

[@brentlehman2264]

@@aliensoup2420 They know how to access the network, and that's what the Machine is for, but they don't know how to build a network.

[@rexdenemo5235]

Hi Doc, In Pre-production, the makers of the film decided to change one of the messages of the film. The most notable was the machine itself. In Sagan's novel, the machine was more like the machine in the TV Series Sliders, a dodecahedron-like machine that spun more like a ride at a State Fair inside a huge assemblage of if hanger-like buildings, than a spheroid dropped through an artificial "worm whole" on ramp to an intra- galactic network of wormhole passages triggered by programed conveyances, like her capsule. Whew. The visuals tell the story better than I do. The reason? People expected to see something "big and huge out there on Cape Canaveral!" And that's why the machine got changed. People were not quite ready for the Science. I hope we get an Asteroid moving module built long before we need it for Apophis. V/r., Robin

[@spaceman9599]

Love how Jodie Foster's pronunciation is even like Carl Sagan's in the presentation - that little Cosmos hesitation on '... The KEY ...' - she's even dressed similarly. I didn't notice that the first time I saw it.

[@LearnToRefine]

Dr. Becky discovers that Matthew Mcconaughey is my age (51), and a wave of shock and horror washes over her as if she has just witnessed an ancient mummified corpse come to life. Fifty One !?!!??

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Hey, when she showed the picture "me in 1997" my instant reaction was "Oh, jeez, she's roughly the same age as my kid..."

[@adfaklsdjf]

I interpreted it as having a major "how does he look so young" component

[@chrisbaker2903]

@@AnonymousFreakYT She's much younger than some of my grandchildren. I have a 3 year old Great Granddaughter.

[@seanspartan2023]

18:44 I wouldn't think that time dilation caused the difference between the time she experienced vs. what the cameras observed on Earth. It'd be more plausible that the entrance point of the wormhole was used as a reference and the aliens adjusted the return wormhole to deposit her at almost the exact spacetime coordinates as when she left. So time dilation did occur, but that's not why observers on Earth saw what they saw.

[@saraselvig]

Exactly!

[@no1guy825]

the kid gets it! now if everyone else could. the idea of advanced aliens in this case is much like Interstellar, that at a certain level there is life that has a higher command of Time as a dimension of the universe, and that while it can't be changed or manipulated, it can be navigated

[@KingBawb-wg3jo]

Good point, well made.

[@tanha8178]

Nice. The way I silly though about it: she's was as sleep, the locals spent roughly 17 hours to study her and prepare the welcome party.

[@stevenbennett3805]

Funniest part of the movie is Foster's character laying on her car listening with headphones as if she was waiting for the local AM radio DJ to play her request. Evidently there were no real scientists advising on the film.

[@lreid1457]

Watching Dr. Who on a rainy day is all you need