Well, there is nothing more fun about Eid than three things: meeting friends and family, watching a fun movie, and seeing the same play every year at home with the family.
For this reason, we decided in the science section of "
Meydan
" to nominate a group of wonderful science fiction films with one simple condition, which is that these films have real roots in the various disciplines of scientific research, even if they are just possibilities.
Another Earth 2011
Could that happen?
That there be another land that is completely similar to ours, containing the same people, the same roads, cities and countries, but you are better off there?
You passed your exams and entered the college you love, and you are now working in one of the big companies that you have always been looking forward to with chuckles in your eyes.
Well, in the wonderful movie "Another Earth" you will meet a similar case, Rhoda Williams decides to volunteer to be the first to visit that other land, but the beauty of this movie is not so much related to the idea of another earth as to another important question we ask ourselves every day Almost: Who am I?
What got me here?
Is this what I've wanted for myself all my life?
According to the many-worlds hypothesis in the world of physics, this is possible. This hypothesis has received support among many physicists, but we cannot yet confirm this because it is very difficult, or perhaps impossible, to test the existence of other worlds.
Ad Astra 2019
Well, it is indeed possible, but it is certain that, like Brad Pitt in the wonderful movie "Ad Astra", we will be able to roam on the moon and perhaps between the planets as if we were traveling to another country, contemplate the great leaps made by companies such as Blue Origins or SpaceX and just look at 20 years into the future and you'll see where we can go.
But the Brad Pitt movie does not ask this question, but rather delves into the depths of our selves asking: In this very wide universe, with all that technology, what about our simple existential questions about ourselves?
Do we become smaller in relation to this universe, the more we feel fear, boredom, and the need to give up?
Can the grandeur of this universe reveal to us how weak we are that we will ask again: Who are we and why are we here?
This is a movie in space, not about it!
Seeking a Friend for the end of the World 2012
What if the world will end tomorrow because a huge comet will hit the Earth?
We couldn't stop it in any way, we sent a number of spaceflights to blow it up but there's no hope, tomorrow the collision will happen.
Although the Earth - as we speak - is completely safe, but we do not yet have sufficiently accurate tools to monitor the small asteroids that pass through the Earth before they pass it, which puts us in potential danger, it is a very small possibility, but it exists, in this movie this is achieved possibility.
But this film in fact does not discuss the comet incident as much as it is concerned with one thing, which is the extent to which we need enough calm to deal with an atmosphere like the one we are going through now (the new Corona pandemic).
You are already trying to make every effort to do so, but it seems that nothing works, tension creeps into you through a door, then you close it, and dozens of doors open in return, but what if the idea is not to close any of them?
What if the problem is that you just don't accept what's going on as something too big to control?
As primal bleak as that idea may sound, at some point you will realize that the sooner we accept it, the happier we will be!
Children of Men 2006
For some reason, humans have lost their fertility, everything is going to an end, less than a hundred years old and everyone will die, but suddenly that girl appears with a baby in her womb, how will people deal with this huge event?
In fact, our fertility - we humans - is declining, no one knows exactly why, some researchers think it's environmental changes, and others think it's the contemporary social system that puts pressure on our body's biology, in a New Zealand study released in 2017, a team of scientists believe that this It is why we are on the path to extinction.
But how do we deal with that idea?
How can we live knowing, not only that we will die someday, but that our species will become extinct?
Coherence 2013
How would you react if you suddenly discovered that you live in a world governed only by chance?
Meaning that no matter how much you plan, and no matter how much you try to predict the future through those plans, you know that you will not succeed!
In other words, more interesting: what if we did the Schrödinger cat's thought experiment, but instead of the cat we put a group of 8 people, and instead of the box we put someone's house?
This movie tries to combine ideas from the quantum world and mathematics of probability in a very exciting way, despite its fantasy and its departure from the scientific meaning of those ideas, and in a way that is not boring at all, on the contrary, it is a thriller and horror movie of the first degree!
The Butterfly Effect 2004
The idea of the butterfly effect is simple, based on the fundamental principles of complexity theory, which says that very slight initial effects - like a butterfly's wing flapping in Germany - can magnify with time to become the size of a huge hurricane in China. This sensitivity to initial conditions appears strongly in weather science equations, for example. For example, a change of a very small number, located on the side of an equation 5 steps from the decimal point, can be the difference between calm spring weather and thunderstorms.
In this wonderful movie, the same thing happens but instead of the butterfly, or the sixth digit of the decimal point, we will put the behavior of Mr. Evan, who travels to the past to change something very little, but when he comes back to the present everything is turned upside down, so what is the solution then How do we get our lives back into all this chaos?
Contact 1997
It's the first contact. For decades, we've been wondering about other rational beings in the universe, we've been wondering about our place in the universe, who we are and who brought us here?
And here they want to talk to us, but who do we send to talk to them?
How will people deal with their presence?
Will the benefit prevail, or will we accept the existence of other beings other than us in the universe, albeit with difficulty?
Then let's ask the important questions first, what about how we feel about ourselves, about our convictions about our beliefs?
This movie is based on a wonderful book by the famous American scientist "Carl Sagan", so it is not just a movie about aliens, it is a movie about faith and love!
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004
What if we decided to repeat the experiment again, would it have worked?
Suppose you entered into a love relationship, years have passed since that relationship and its features were chaotic, a lot of love, a lot of warm feelings, a lot of difference and pain, a strange combination that can only be judged by its experience.
Now we will erase your memory and the memory of the other party in the relationship, and then you meet again by chance. Was this new time to succeed, or is it settled because each of us has a nature that cannot be changed, but why not?
Are our selves solid, inanimate things, or can they be changed?
But the strangest question that the film asked indirectly, was about memory, to what extent can our memory affect our future?
Some scholars believe it controls just about everything, others see its effect as mediocre.
Minority Report 2002
Do you know that is really possible?
In fact, the term “predictive policing” already exists, and some big data scientists believe that we will one day be able to predict the occurrence of crime before it occurs, relying on the massive capabilities of artificial intelligence to analyze citizens’ data that reveals what they cannot realize. In this film, we use girls with super mental abilities who can predict the future with graphic accuracy, but Officer John Anderson discovers while immersed in his work that he will commit a crime in the near future.
But wouldn't that change the future?
In fact, films that talk about traveling to the future, or even getting to know it without traveling, present a strange paradox, because knowing the future - if it is possible - becomes part of the past, and therefore that - in and of itself - is considered a change in this past, which means that The future will also change, but the irony is that you went to him and saw him there!
DISTRICT 9 2009
They're aliens again, but this time we're better than them.
Although they are rational beings, we treat them as second-class, inferior.
The film is wonderful, not only at the level of directing or acting, but what draws attention mainly to him is the ingenious way in which he manages to describe one of our strangest natures as human beings, which is the process of dehumanization, the state in which we transform our political enemies - on For example - to anything other than humans, which opens the door for us to commit the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity, and killing is usually the least heinous!