Oscar Nominees Put Science in the Spotlight

The Oscar buzz is at a high hum for Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, and this year, some of that buzz is helping to make scientific subjects ranging from World War II cryptography to wormholes and the "Theory of Everything" anything but ho-hum.

The nominees include:

When you add in less serious fare, such as "Guardians of the Galaxy" (two Oscar nods) and "Big Hero 6" (which is up for the animated-feature award), that equals enough science fiction and science fact to merit an Academy Awards category of its own.

Does it matter that the historical truth in the sci-biopics, and the scientific principles behind "Interstellar," get a little stretched during the Hollywoodification process? Not necessarily, says Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute who has consulted on movies ranging from "Contact" to the Keanu Reeves remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

"If you had told me 20 years ago that computer scientists and cosmologists would be the heroes of a Hollywood film, I would have felt like someone had tasered me. I wouldn't have believed it," he told NBC News. "Filmmakers aren't trying to teach anybody computer science or cosmology, nor would they be very good at that. They're just trying to portray the fact that science is actually interesting and important, and what could be better than that?"

If the scientific angle is plausible, and the story grabs the viewer, the fact that a movie motivates some folks to dive into down-to-earth science is a valuable bonus.

"Many scientists go into the field of science, particularly in astronomy ... because they saw some movie when they were a kid," Shostak said last November when "Interstellar" came out. "Movies have a big effect on young people in terms of shaping their interest."

With that in mind, here are some pointers to the science underlying the tales of Turing, Hawking and the wormhole trekkers of "Interstellar":

"The Imitation Game" focuses on the British effort to crack the secret codes that were used by the Germans to communicate via radio codes that were created with the help of a typewriter-like device known as the Enigma machine. Turing masterminded the creation of a primitive computer to run through all the possible permutations, but it turns out that even math whizzes and their machines needed a little help from the human factor.

During a Google Hangout about Hollywood science, Columbia neuroscientist Sean Escola said the same situation holds true for today's code-breakers, who rely on phishing and other real-life stratagems as well as brute-force computing.

Original post:
Oscar Nominees Put Science in the Spotlight