Neil deGrasse Tyson is well-known to most, but for those that do not know, he is an astrophysicist and like no others in his profession, he has achieved quite a celebrity type of status. Since he is an astrophysicist and big science geek, of course he had to rush out and see the new science and space related film, Gravity, featuring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.
Tyson attacked the film for its scientific inaccuracies and seems to have spent much of his evening tweeting all of the things that he noticed that were wrong with the film. However, he did tweet a last tweet, assuring his followers that he did enjoy the film overall. Tyson knows that his followers are big science buffs and while he enjoyed the film, he was clearly just poking fun and having fun with his fans for much of this rant.
The film #Gravity should be renamed "Zero Gravity"
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
He vigorously maintains a twitter and Facebook page for all of his fans and fellow science geeks. In addition to his main page on Facebook, he also maintains an alternate page called Tysonism, which is categorized as a church/religious organization on the website. Tyson has also appeared on numerous television talk shows including Realtime With Bill Maher, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report, to name a few. In addition to being an astrphysicist, he is also the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Musuem of Natural History in New York.
The film #Gravity depicts a scenario of catastrophic satellite destruction that can actually happen.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Tyson picks at several scientific inaccuracies in the film, despite his enjoyment of the film. As The National Post mentions, This begins with the basic fact that Bullock’s hair does not flow freely the way that it should in zero gravity, even though the rest of her body did. He also prefaced much of the tweets with the phrase “mysteries of Gravity” and continued to talk about things that would have worked differently in real life, and even suggested alternate titles based on what actually happened in the film. He also mentioned the irony of how most Americans seem to love to watch films like Gravity, but do not seem to care about what is actually going on with real astronauts in space.
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock's hair, in otherwise convincing zero-G scenes, did not float freely on her head.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock, a medical Doctor, is servicing the Hubble Space Telescope.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Mysteries of #Gravity: When Clooney releases Bullock's tether, he drifts away. In zero-G a single tug brings them together.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
Many others also flocked to theaters in order to see the space epic over the weekend and the film even set a record at the box office over the weekend, racking up $55.6 million, in the biggest debut ever for a release in October. It was predicted to be a big hit, but the science thriller directed by Alfonso Cuaron is certainly working over fans and critics after a very successful first weekend.
Mysteries of #Gravity: Why we enjoy a SciFi film set in make-believe space more than we enjoy actual people set in real space
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 6, 2013
My Tweets hardly ever convey opinion. Mostly perspectives on the world. But if you must know, I enjoyed #Gravity very much.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 7, 2013
Image via Youtube