Prometheus

If you have yet to see Prometheus and don't want any spoilers, then maybe read this another time.

There were aspects of the movie that I greatly enjoyed. I liked the overall composition of it and the atmosphere. I enjoy the whole Alien franchise (except for the dreadful Alien vs. Predator movies), and it's nice how Prometheus ties some things together. I really liked the start of the movie, when David was on his own. Other people have drawn parallels to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I can see the connection. I appreciated the little HAL-9000 tribute. The computer sounded so much like HAL, and it was cute when he called David by his name.

So what's the problem? The science and the characters! There was so much stupid, I don't know where to begin. I'll start with the trip itself. So they think the creators are on this moon and want to fly up and meet them. It's in some distant solar system that may or may not be in our galaxy (!), and everyone has to be in stasis for 2 years, the duration of the trip. When they get there, they seem surprised that the place isn't bustling with civilisation. Okay, forgetting the unrealistic space travel scenario there, isn't it standard practice to send some probes first? Like what we do now? It takes only two years to get to this place. It's not at all unreasonable to send a little probe, have it take some pictures and beam them back, drop some of those flying probe scanners in, or even make a return trip. That's sort of the sensible thing to do. Weyland can wait at home in stasis if he wants to make the trip himself.

This is a bad planet.

I guess I can give them the benefit of the doubt. They discovered the location of an alien planet and a big company is paying for the trip! I suppose I would also be pretty excited and impatient, but it would be stupid to get carried away and go in blind like that. The behaviour when they got there, however, is inexcusable.

These people are supposed to be scientists (and some "muscle"). As soon as they land, they go all Leeeerooooy Jeeenkins on the place, against the suggestion of the captain (one of the more sensible characters). They just run in and start touching stuff, opening doors, etc. Their way of exploring the place was something you would do in a computer game, not really a methodical, scientific approach. Certainly not something I would expect from an archeologist. In the end, the whole exploration turned into a big mess of their own doing. Fools!

The whole exogenesis idea as described in the movie is silly. I think they could have been slightly more realistic and said that humans and engineers have a common ancestor of sorts rather than having exactly the same DNA.

I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going...

The motivations of the engineers is unclear to me (and to everyone else, it seems). They "create" humans and then wish to destroy them. There are some things about the engineers that I'm trying to piece together. In the opening scene, one of the engineers drinks the black goo. Why? Suicide? Or deliberate poisoning of the surroundings and spreading of the bio-agent by throwing himself into the waterfall? I'm not sure.

I have another big question about the engineers. Did they really want to destroy humans again? Everything we know about their intentions comes from David, who clearly has his own agenda. He read the glyphs and learned the language. He is the one who talks to the revived engineer before he goes on his rampage. For all we know, he could have threatened him in some way, and carefully engineered the situation such that the others would die (except Shaw, who he seems to like). All we know about the engineers is what David tells us.

I still enjoyed the movie overall, I just wish it wasn't so stupid.

Transit of Venus

Unlike most of the rest of the country, we had a rather clear day today and were able to observe the transit of Venus. Furthermore, the transit occurred during the reasonable hours of 10:15 am to 4:30 pm. Very convenient!

The guys in the lab down the hall set up a little projector system with an ancient looking telescope, some polystyrene to block the light, and some paper taped to a board to project the image on, like so:

Venus was clearly visible in the projected image as a little dot slowly traveling across the sun:

 

We also had some neat filters that let you look at the sun directly through them. I tried to take a photo with my phone, but the image was saturated around the sun, so no good. Silly me, leaving my proper camera with adjustable exposure time at home!

Next time it will happen will be in 2117. None of us are likely to be alive then, unless life expectancy goes up drastically or we get robot bodies.

Forging Ahead

I've been writing up my PhD thesis. That's right, I'm in that boat now. With any luck, I'll have it done at the end of this month. A lot of people hate the write-up phase of their PhD, but I've been really enjoying it. Part of it is that it's been a long time coming, and I'm happy to have reached that stage. The other is that I actually enjoy writing to some degree. I hated writing essays in high school, but I really like science writing. None of this arguing your point of view on something; if you have a point to make, show it with data!

So what next for me? For a few months at least, I'm sticking around in the lab trying to get some nice data and publish papers. I could potentially stick around for another two years, but I've been living in this town for seven years now and feel like a change! On the other hand, there are some reasons to stay a little longer too.

So what sort of jobs can a person with a physics PhD get anyway? Let's see...

• Academia. Do a post-doc or two, try to find a position as a lecturer and run your own lab. Hard to get there, and the job itself is much more than 9-5 and the pay is low relative to industry. However, it is a very rewarding career, since you get to work on whatever you want, provided you get funding for it, and you get to stay in the nice bubble of academia. You are a scientist. I would consider this option.
• The big bad finance industry. There is something called a "quantitative analyst". You need to have a physics, math or similar PhD to get the job, and good programming skills (Matlab counts). It's ideal for theorists who have spent their PhDs running simulations, but rumour is that you don't need to be a programming expert and that the sort of things they are doing are not really difficult for physicists, so maybe even an experimentalist like me could do it. Entry level salary: approximately $200,000 HOLY CRAP WHAT! But they take your soul, you see...
• Working for a journal. You often need some experience as a researcher (post-doc or even more) to get to be something like an editor. Could be interesting.
• A wide variety of industry jobs. I am told these exist and that they like people with physics PhDs. Apparently we are better at thinking outside the box than engineers, who are good at making things cheaper and more efficient and within specified parameters. You could be making washing machines or rockets. Who knows! I don't want to make washing machines, but I could potentially be interested in the right project, such as rockets.
• An astronaut! Did you know that you need a PhD (physics being a desirable subject) to be one? Going into space is basically my ultimate dream. However, to get into the training program in the US, you need to be a citizen there. Oops. In fact, most national space programs require you to be a citizen of the respective country. I have citizenship of two countries, neither of which has a space program to speak of. One of them might get into the EU in a decade or so. Then I'm in, but otherwise, it looks bleak. Oh, you can also be an "astronaut" if you are very rich and can pay the Russians to get you up. Perhaps the finance industry is a way to get in on that route.
• Civilian space industry. Companies like SpaceX. I would be keen on something like that. SpaceX takes their employees on zero G flights for company outings. That sounds great, and they hire all kinds of people and don't seem to be restricted by the same things as government organisations. I would strongly consider this. New Zealand has a private space company, but I haven't heard much about them.
• A wide variety of jobs that don't require PhDs. There are many of those. Teaching, medical physics (working with radiation therapy equipment and such), patent offices, power companies, insurance (risk analysis), consulting, government ministries, and more. There are a lot of those kinds of things out there, and I don't really find them captivating.
• Something completely different. Start a company? Become a reclusive genius? Evil mastermind? Costumed vigilante? Hitwoman or assassin (I do martial arts, I could be Beatrix from Kill Bill)? Spy? Freeloader? I could learn to use the ways of the force and be a Jedi, like my father.

I could totally do this.

 A lot to think about. Life changing decisions to be made soon!