Forget Ryan Gosling. Science was the real star of the show at a special advance screening of the new film Project Hail Mary for University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory staff and students.
In the film, which opens to general audiences March 20, Gosling plays a man who wakes up alone and with amnesia in a spaceship nearing a distant star. Armed only with his knowledge of science, he must learn who he is, why he is there and what is waiting for him outside the airlock.
The film’s message of using science to discover the universe around us resonates with scientists of all stripes, said Argonne computational biologist Nicholas Lee-Ping Chia at a panel of UChicago and Argonne researchers after the screening.
“I always say one of my favorite things about my job is every day I get to wake up and decide what question I want to answer for the first time,” Chia told the audience at AMC Roosevelt Collection 16 theater in Chicago. “It’s not done out of survival mode like it is in the movie, but this internal drive to pursue knowledge is powerful, and it’s really what makes the job fun.”
Lights, camera, science!
The panel after the show dove into a wide-ranging (and spoiler-free) discussion of the science behind the cinema.
UChicago astronomy and astrophysics Prof. Wendy Friedman said she had been excited about the movie since first reading the novel by author Andy Weir.
“I found the book incredibly creative,” she said. “I was impressed by the imagination that he brought to this combined with this very real scientific approach of curiosity, testing things. It was very familiar as a scientist. Something doesn’t work, okay, now think about another way to approach it, and eventually come up with a solution.”
Argonne postdoctoral researcher and UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) graduate Gregory Grant, PhD’24, said the film captured the sense of awe and wonder both from the book and that he experiences every day as a materials scientist.
“I definitely had the same sort of reaction, the reflex to wake up and then just go start figuring out the world around you. That resonates very strongly,” he said.
UChicago Geophysical Sciences Department Chair Prof. Fred Ciesla, who researches planets beyond our solar system, said he enjoyed how the film—while fantastical—was grounded in real-life science.
“I do science every day. I think about science all the time, and watching a movie or reading a book where they take too much liberty with the science is kind of a turn off for me,” Ciesla said.
Let’s all go to the lobby
The science actually started before the film did, with UChicago PME and Physical Sciences Department Ph.D. students filling the movie theater lobby with a slate of science displays organized through UChicago PME’s Science Communications Program.
UChicago PME Ph.D. student Thomas Marchese chose a science display close to his heart—a demonstration of how different materials glow under UV light. He saw a similar demonstration as a child and received a glowing bead bracelet as a souvenir. Both helped encourage him on his own path to science.
“I think I still have that bracelet somewhere,” he said, chuckling.
Chemistry Ph.D. student Sam Knight, meanwhile, demonstrated how scientists use spectroscopy to determine what materials are made of.
“The science that I have learned gives me a rich perspective on the world,” Knight said. “I get to understand why everyday, common items are the way they are, or why they change the way they do. I really like to share that.”
UChicago PME Ph.D. student Svetlana Altshuler demonstrated nitinol metals, thin wires of nickel titanium that can be bent into any shape, then spring back into their original form when placed in hot water.
As both a researcher and movie buff, Altshuler said film can “open the door to what is possible with science.”
“If you see it on the big screen, it’s something that can capture the wonder and awe that science has for me and I know has for a lot of other people,” she said.
—This article was originally published on the UChicago PME website.