In the recently released apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up,” Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers from Michigan State University who discover a giant comet hurtling toward Earth that will end humanity in approximately six and a half months.
The astronomers travel “to the White House to inform the administration of their findings, but they’re mocked for their, what is in the eyes of some, humble educational backgrounds.”
The Spartans are actually the heroes of writer-director Adam McKay’s story, the scientists whose data and research could save the Earth, if only they could get anyone to listen to them. McKay “says the joke isn’t on MSU.” He says, “It’s flattering to Michigan State.”
The new Netflix movie?“Don’t Look Up”?may be a fictional comedy but in real life Michigan State University’s researchers have been leading breakthrough research on asteroid deflection for years.
MSU and NASA work together through the?Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART—the world’s first planetary defense space mission designed to test asteroid deflection technology.
Q&A: Astronomy Professor AT MSU, Seth Jacobson
Is a 3-6 mile comet (5-10 km) a planet killer as portrayed in the film? “Absolutely.”?
Might we not know until just six months in advance? “Yes, especially if it’s?a comet. Comets have large elliptical trajectories that make them difficult to see for much of their orbits until they get close to the sun, and their surfaces heat up enough to start shedding material through sublimation to create their tails. But a collision with a comet will be a rare event.”?
Was the movie realistic in its portrayal?of the comet? “It’s pretty good. Hollywood exaggerated the large size and number of smaller comet pieces falling off the main mass to make secondary impacts. And the physics of an impact like this would be a lot more spectacular, the destruction faster and devastation more severe than they suggest. But I’m being picky.”
“All of the various plot lines are somewhat over-the-top, which makes for a good comedy, but the essence of greed and conflicts-of-interest that drive the ending of the movie are relatable. I see the movie as an allegory for how humanity is responding to the threat of climate change. One challenge in convincing some people about the threat of climate change is that its effects are slow and seemingly intangible, which is very different than an asteroid impact. So, the movie portrays a much more perceivable threat but leaves the political?and news media dynamics the same. It shows how farcical these dynamics really are.”