MULTIZ321
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BLUEWATER BY SPINNAKER HHI
ROYAL HOLIDAY CLUB RHC (POINTS)
The Secret of "The Martian" Success? Scientific Peer Review - by Victoria Jaggard/ Science/ SmithsonianMag.com
"Andy Weir's tale of a stranded astronaut got its start as a blog, complete with reader comments that helped shape the plot
When Matt Damon signed on to play astronaut Mark Watney in the upcoming film The Martian, he probably didn't know he would be portraying the planetary science version of Schrödinger's cat.
That fictitious feline, the poster child for quantum mechanics, was born as a thought experiment—a way for physicist Erwin Schrödinger to help people visualize the strange quantum property of superpositions. Similarly, Watney is a thought experiment dreamed up by author Andy Weir, who wanted to explore the possibilities of sending humans to a punishing planet.
"I was sitting around thinking about how to do a human mission to Mars, not for a story but just for the heck of it," says Weir. "I started thinking about how I would do it and all the things that could go wrong, and I realized it would make a great story. So I made up a protagonist and subjected him to all of it."
The novel The Martian became a New York Times bestseller, and Twentieth Century Fox quickly optioned the movie rights, pulling together a cast list that reads like a call sheet for Hollywood’s “A List”. In the run-up to the film's October 2 release, NASA has been shamelessly plugging the movie as a tie-in with its efforts to mount a real crewed Mars mission..."
Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney, the titular "Martian" who gets left for dead on the red planet. (courtesy Twentieth Century Fox)
Richard
"Andy Weir's tale of a stranded astronaut got its start as a blog, complete with reader comments that helped shape the plot
When Matt Damon signed on to play astronaut Mark Watney in the upcoming film The Martian, he probably didn't know he would be portraying the planetary science version of Schrödinger's cat.
That fictitious feline, the poster child for quantum mechanics, was born as a thought experiment—a way for physicist Erwin Schrödinger to help people visualize the strange quantum property of superpositions. Similarly, Watney is a thought experiment dreamed up by author Andy Weir, who wanted to explore the possibilities of sending humans to a punishing planet.
"I was sitting around thinking about how to do a human mission to Mars, not for a story but just for the heck of it," says Weir. "I started thinking about how I would do it and all the things that could go wrong, and I realized it would make a great story. So I made up a protagonist and subjected him to all of it."
The novel The Martian became a New York Times bestseller, and Twentieth Century Fox quickly optioned the movie rights, pulling together a cast list that reads like a call sheet for Hollywood’s “A List”. In the run-up to the film's October 2 release, NASA has been shamelessly plugging the movie as a tie-in with its efforts to mount a real crewed Mars mission..."
Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney, the titular "Martian" who gets left for dead on the red planet. (courtesy Twentieth Century Fox)
Richard
