The science of Tron: Legacy

To make movies more realistic, Hollywood is gradually learning to work with scientists.

Sean Carroll is a very well-respected theoretical physicist who advised on the fantastic-looking Tron: Legacy. He told us how he got involved, and how scientists look at cats on the internet, just like everyone else.

How did you get involved with Tron?

There’s something here in Hollywood called the Science and Entertainment Exchange, which basically gets scientists and Hollywood to talk to each other. With the screenwriters and director of the film, we all sat in a room and batted around ideas about how to make things realistic. Obviously it’s a fantasy movie, and that’s okay, but you also don’t want to be needlessly wrong.

Your blog said you were excited to be involved because the light cycles are cool. Could you see yourself on one?

That would be fantastic. I don’t think I’m special there – everyone’s favourite part of the Tron movies is the light cycles. 

In the film, a person is transported into a computer programme. What discussions did you have about that?

In the original movie, you were zapped by a laser beam and appeared in the virtual reality space, but we wanted to make it a bit more realistic. How could you transfer the information that is contained in a person into information that is contained in a computer? We talked about basic ideas, like the conservation of mass. Where do all these atoms go? And they actually did take this advice into account when they were designing the equipment for the movie.

Could we ever make a digital person?

Well, I don’t think it would be possible to truly copy a person’s body into a virtual reality space. There’s just so much information in our bodies, you’d really have to take a person apart atom by atom, and you’d be long dead before you finished that process. So it’s not against the laws of physics, I just don’t think the technology will ever be that good. Something that you might try to do, is copy a person’s mind into a computer. I think this is possible, but technologically it’s so far beyond what we are capable of right now.

Could computer games in the future be so realistic that we can’t tell the difference between a game and reality?

One of the other things we talked about was artificial intelligence and how far that has come. In the movie, there’s this idea of the ISOs, these artificial intelligence beings that came to life spontaneously. I don’t think things are going to come to life spontaneously, but I do think we’re going to get much better at mimicking true consciousness on computers. And I would not be surprised if it became so good that it was indistinguishable from the real thing.

And could computers become self-aware?

I suspect that computers aren’t going to become aware by themselves. But once they did, then there are a lot of heavy issues that you get confronted with. Do they then have rights? Should they be protected? Should they get the vote?

A comment on one of your blog posts suggest that we’re all living in a computer simulation, and that whenever we make a new scientific discovery, the programmer just makes up new areas for us to explore.

I think it’s very unlikely. There is a philosopher in the UK, named Nick Bostrom, who has pushed this idea. He thinks it’s not only possible, but likely, that we are living in a computer simulation. I think there’s a much simpler explanation for everything around us than to imagine it’s all in the hands of some giant computer.

Do you think in the past that science in movies has been really badly done?

Well, sometimes it’s been badly done and sometimes it’s been well done. But it needs to be about making a better movie, not just correcting people’s homework. I think that one of the reasons the Exchange has been a success is because it has convinced Hollywood that science can actually be useful, not just annoying.

Do you think entertainment should always come before realism?

Whatever the purpose of the movie is, you need to respect that. A Hollywood movie is not a documentary; it’s not there to teach you science. It’s not about getting the science right because you want to teach the audience science, it’s about using ideas from science, because that will make your movie better.

I noticed on your Twitter page you linked to the video of a cat playing with dolphins.

Life is short and I don’t spend all my time doing equations. So a certain number of minutes in my day are spent just goofing around on the internet! [Click here to watch it for yourself. It's amazing!]

 

Tron: Legacy is out now on 3D and 2D Blu-ray and DVD. Check out the cool trailer below!

 

Get the Flash Player to see this video!

Comments (0)

---

There are no comments at the moment.

You may add a comment about this video by logging in to your account.