Original Review is from aintitcool.com, I'll be posting only a part of the review here, and have the link to the whole review at the end of the article:
THE SCIENCE OF AVATAR
Historically, movie directors have had their asses kicked by
astronomers as far as taking us to exotic worlds. For the most part,
movie planets look like an extreme form of Earth -- they almost always
have an oxygen atmosphere at an Earthlike pressure and gravity. Movie
planets don’t even come close to matching the diversity of worlds in
our solar system: the surface of Io is a mottled, sulfurous
orange-yellow, constantly being repaved by volcanoes shooting hundreds
of miles into the sky. Titan has a thick smog atmosphere that blots
out the sun and rains hydrocarbons. Mars has planet-wide dust storms
and a 17-mile-high volcano that nearly reaches above the atmosphere.
Venus has a crushing, choking sulfur dioxide atmosphere with a
pressure 92 times that of earth, and a temperature that can melt lead.
Enceladus shoots ice geysers into space. And the real Pandora orbits
within the rings of Saturn. These are only a few of the hundreds of
planets, minor planets, and moons in our solar system: we’ve
discovered hundreds elsewhere in the galaxy, some of which seem even
crazier: super-Earths, nearly boiling puffed-up Jupiters, and objects
that may be free-floating rogue planets without a star.
So I can’t think of a better use for 3d and a few hundred million
dollars of effects than filmmakers starting to raise the bar to
finally approach the awesome reality of nature. Due to the limits of
budgets, finances, and creativity, I can’t think of another film that
has attempted something near the scale of what Cameron has done here.
I’ll address the different aspects of the science in sections.
Read the whole review [
here].
That was an interesting read. It is always nice to have your science fiction backed up by science fact. And you must admit after reading that review we are a bit more knowledgeable.
That review atleast moved us away from that Dances with the Wolves in Space description.
[Geeks rule the earth! next stop Pandora!]
-access out. Godspeed and Mabuhay!