Don’t Look Up An American black comedy film written and directed by Adam McKay, and the work includes a large cast, led by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, as a global star. They go on a global journey to warn humanity of the danger of an asteroid approaching that will destroy the planet.
The film caused a sensation, and the film – which began showing in theaters on the tenth of last December – carried many influential scientific issues that threaten the survival of humanity.
A report published on the famous American magazine “Time” advises you to watch it if you want a loud, good and poignant laugh as you contemplate the events of the end of the world, such as the annihilation of civilization, the extinction of all species, and the death of the entire terrestrial biomass.
the story of the movie
The film’s introduction is equal parts vast, plausible, and downright terrifying, as a 9-kilometre-wide comet was discovered by doctoral student Kate Dipasky (Jennifer Lawrence), while conducting routine telescopic surveys in search of a supernova.
But the good times stop when its supervisor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) analyzes track numbers and determines that Comet Dipascay – the same size as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago – will hit Earth in 6 months and 14 days.
They report the news to corrupt President Orlean (Meryl Streep), his spoiled son and chief of staff, but they don’t care. After the White House refuses to intervene, astronomers move their case to a morning TV show, but they can’t get their message across through the hosts’ constant talk, and the audience responds in parts An equal amount of denial, conspiracy-mongering, and memes declaring Dibaski a lunatic, while the head of a tech company cares, entices the president that there’s money to be made from prospecting for precious metals in the comet.
But for the planet and all life on it, time flies by and there are fateful decisions to be made; Decisions that absurd and distracted humanity cannot seem to handle.
A hit from space is gunshot death, while climate change is slow global poisoning, the end result is the same (Getty Images)How do scientists actually monitor space threats?
Don’t Look Up is widely seen as a tale of climate change, with the same delay, debate, and politicization of a simple life-or-death issue preventing the world from taking appropriate action.
According to a report by “Time” magazine, a strike from space is a gunshot death, while climate change is a slow global poisoning, but the result in the end is the same.
Key solutions to climate change are now well known, including the shift from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources, and others increasingly caused by global warming. It is a long-term planetary treatment rather than a quick one.
On the other hand, NASA already has a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” (PDCO), whose job is to survey the skies to discover and classify potentially threatened space rocks long before they reach Earth, and assist the government in responding to these threats.
In the case of comets, there may only be plenty of time to muster a defense. Depending on the size of the comet, the six months the world has to act in Don’t Look Up isn’t far from reality.
“Once that is done, it will give us decades of warning and we will then have time to use whatever technology is available,” says Lindley Johnson, a NASA planetary defense officer, who audited an initial draft of the film’s script.
“You’re calculating the numbers from a sort of actuarial point of view…and 140 meters was the threshold that could do a lot of damage,” says Amy Mainzer, a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona and an advisor on the film.
What to do with an asteroid or comet of sufficient size on the verge of heading toward our planet is a completely different matter (Getty Images)How do we actually protect the earth from a body rushing towards it?
Since 1998, when Congress began appropriating funds for the search for near-Earth objects, what to do with an asteroid or comet of sufficient size about to head toward our planet is a completely different matter, giving Earth not years or decades to prepare, but months.
Destroying it with explosives – even nuclear ones – is not off the list of options if time is short. But that would cause other problems, because the giant rocks wouldn’t evaporate, but would turn into a lot of smaller rocks.
“It’s hard to predict where all these pieces are going, and it’s hard to make sure you’ve broken them into small enough pieces that Earth’s atmosphere can handle,” Johnson says.
Asteroids, which give us more time to act, can be dealt with not by destroying, but by deflecting, by slowing or changing their course enough to fly away from Earth.
On November 24, 2021, NASA launched the DART spacecraft to test asteroid redirection, which will attempt to demonstrate that the concept works.
Key solutions to climate change are well known to be shifting from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources (Getty Images)NASA’s “suicide” spacecraft is supposed to hit the smallest asteroid in this system at an estimated speed of 6.6 kilometers per second, slightly changing its movement in space.
While this asteroid does not pose a threat to Earth, the DART mission will demonstrate that this is a viable technique for deflecting an asteroid that could pose a threat to Earth in the future.
NASA also plans to launch another spacecraft to scan the skies near our planet for anything suspicious in space in 2026.
Like the issue of climate change, bombing planets in a crowded, noisy solar system is a problem we can mitigate and even solve, provided we decide to take the necessary steps, and in real life, off the Hollywood screen, we can choose scientifically differently.
