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"  In late 2009, a writer, a producer, a director, and three scientists sat in a Los Angeles conference room. They were discussing Marvel&amp;#039;s Thor\u2014a film based on a comic book that was in turn inspired by the Norse god of thunder\u2014about an arrogant warrior who, at the start of the film, violates a truce by attacking the Frost Giants. As the film team described their vision of the fight, Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, knew the filmmakers had a problem. &amp;quot;They wanted the Frost Giants to fall off the edge of a disc-shaped planet,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;That makes no sense. Where does the gravity to pull them down come from? Enough people know how gravity works it would throw them out of the movie. You&amp;#039;d get a lot of giggles.&amp;quot; Carroll and the other scientists argued their point, even though, Carroll says, &amp;quot;it was clear some people thought we were being uptight killjoys.&amp;quot; But producer Kevin Feige sided with the scientists, and in the final cut, the Frost Giants&amp;#039; planet was spherical. That was just one way that Carroll, a clean-cut 45-year-old who has advised on films such as TRON: Legacy and the TV show Bones, helped the production. As punishment for breaking the truce, Thor is exiled to earth. When Feige complained that using the term wormhole for Thor&amp;#039;s passageway to our planet was &amp;quot;too &amp;#039;90s,&amp;quot; Carroll suggested the scientific name for the phenomenon, the Einstein-Rosen bridge. That explanation is given by Natalie Portman&amp;#039;s character, astrophysicist Jane Foster, whose motivations Carroll helped shape. Scientists have been helping Hollywood since the start of cinema. But as science-fiction movies account for more revenue\u2014in the &amp;#039;90s, an average of six a year were in the top 50 moneymakers; that number increased by nearly 50 percent in the first decade of the 2000s\u2014filmmakers are turning more frequently to experts for ideas. &amp;quot;The more you ground your film in the real thing, the better it plays,&amp;quot; says D.J. Gugenheim, VP of production at Inferno Entertainment. Scientists are willing to help Hollywood because they see a chance to expose a broader audience to science and humanize their profession. &amp;quot;People get images of what science is from movies,&amp;quot; Carroll says. &amp;quot;I want to help get that image right.&amp;quot; To improve the information flow between the science community and Hollywood, the National Academy of Sciences launched the Los Angeles\u2013based Science &amp;amp;amp; Entertainment Exchange in 2008. The organization connects film- makers with scientists in biology, chemistry, and other fields. In its first year the Exchange&amp;#039;s scientists consulted (for free) on 70 projects; by September 2011, on 350. Creators of TV shows such as Fringe and The Big Bang Theory, and films like Green Lantern and 2012&amp;#039;s Battleship, have all talked to scientists with the Exchange. But science and entertainment don&amp;#039;t always mix. &amp;quot;Story creators might think scientists are geeks, but there&amp;#039;s a sense of respect,&amp;quot; says Malcolm MacIver, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University and adviser on TRON: Legacy. &amp;quot;That respect is not always there in the other direction. Scientists feel that filmmakers dumb down everything to make a buck.&amp;quot; Despite holding scientists in high esteem, some filmmakers find them hard to work with. &amp;quot;Scientists say, &amp;#039;No, you can&amp;#039;t do that!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Carroll says. &amp;quot;And the moviemaker finds that unhelpful.&amp;quot; These days, audiences are savvier than ever. And thanks to the Internet, there&amp;#039;s little they haven&amp;#039;t seen\u2014so filmmakers look to what&amp;#039;s happening in cutting-edge research. &amp;quot;Scientists are more imaginative than we are in Hollywood,&amp;quot; says Jeffrey Silver, producer of Terminator Salvation and 300. &amp;quot;I used to say, that only happens in the movies, but now I say, that only happens in science.&amp;quot; The average moviegoer is also less willing to suspend disbelief. &amp;quot;If people see a movie and sense a disconnect between the logic of the movie and the science that governs the world of the film,&amp;quot; Gugenheim says, &amp;quot;you risk turning off the audience.&amp;quot; Viewers take their complaints to the Inter- net, where they spread faster than a zombie virus. &amp;quot;Advisers help you construct the movie with rules that keep you in the realm of what is theoretically plausible,&amp;quot; Gugenheim says. That&amp;#039;s what makes films feel real\u2014and prevents bad word-of- mouth that could cripple box office. Scientists are more concerned that inaccuracies will harm scientific literacy. In The Day After Tomorrow, a man-made ice age occurred in just a week. It would actually take at least a decade for the real thing to set in. And when scientists in K-19: The Widowmaker worried that a nuclear reactor would explode, it spread a dangerous notion: Damaged reactors don&amp;#039;t explode, they melt. Most scientists are willing to advise not only because it allows them to be gate- keepers of their disciplines, but because they want to be portrayed accurately on-screen. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s rare that you have a relatable character,&amp;quot; says Sheril Kirshenbaum, a research associate at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. That&amp;#039;s why James Cameron created Avatar&amp;#039;s xenobotanist, Grace. &amp;quot;Scientists are usually shown as geeks or losers or evil,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I wanted to celebrate the mind and the passion of a scientist.&amp;quot; Working in Hollywood can be an educational experience for novice advisers, as Carroll discovered during his first consulting gig, on Ron Howard&amp;#039;s Angels &amp;amp;amp; Demons. In the film, Professor Robert Langdon tries to find antimatter stolen from CERN&amp;#039;s Large Hadron Collider. It&amp;#039;s a fact that when antimatter and matter come into contact, they annihilate each other in a violent explosion. What, Howard wondered, would it look like if that explosion occurred in the sky? Carroll suggested a series of rapid booms caused by air rushing into the vacuum created by the explosion. But then the 2007 Writers Guild strike derailed both the production and his consultations. &amp;quot;They were over budget and behind schedule, and we didn&amp;#039;t talk anymore,&amp;quot; Carroll says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s Hollywood. I was pleasantly surprised by the intellectual curiosity of those involved, but disillusioned that you can&amp;#039;t always do it right.&amp;quot; Angels &amp;amp;amp; Demons eventually hit theaters in 2009. (Carroll&amp;#039;s contribution, he says, looked &amp;quot;more or less&amp;quot; as he advised.) Often filmmakers ignore a scientist&amp;#039;s advice. When paleontologist Robert T. Bakker worked on Jurassic Park, he found the dinosaur artists to be &amp;quot;better animal morphologists than most tenured professors.&amp;quot; But when he sent the film team diagrams of the T. rex&amp;#039;s banana-shaped crowns, &amp;quot;the powers that be didn&amp;#039;t like the real tooth shape,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;The CGI rex and the robot had their fangs sharpened.&amp;quot; Filmmakers defend their creative license; their first responsibility, they say, is to entertain. For 2012, director Roland Emmerich wanted an impossible global flood. &amp;quot;There isn&amp;#039;t enough water on earth for that,&amp;quot; he admits, &amp;quot;so you have to figure out something.&amp;quot; Emmerich asked a geologist to work from the 1950s theory of earth-crust displacement. &amp;quot;He said, &amp;#039;This could never happen.&amp;#039; And we said, &amp;#039;Well, if it did happen, how would it work?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Silver often talks to advisers, but even he says that &amp;quot;if [a story] doesn&amp;#039;t break a fundamental law of physics, then it doesn&amp;#039;t matter how far you stretch it.&amp;quot; Ultimately, advisers understand they&amp;#039;re not creating award-winning research. &amp;quot;You have to accept that the goal is to tell a story first,&amp;quot; says Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist at NASA&amp;#039;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Science &amp;amp;amp; Entertainment Exchange director Marty Perreault agrees: &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not the science police.&amp;quot; They also realize that these films could get young viewers interested in science. &amp;quot;I can write a book where I explain real physics and reach several thousand people,&amp;quot; Carroll says, &amp;quot;or I can help create Natalie Portman&amp;#039;s character in a movie that will reach 10 million people. And some will be young girls who see that Natalie Portman&amp;#039;s playing a scientist.&amp;quot; Now that Carroll&amp;#039;s done with Thor, he&amp;#039;s moved on to Doctor Strange, about a surgeon who becomes earth&amp;#039;s Sorcerer Supreme. Carroll&amp;#039;s job is to apply limits to Strange&amp;#039;s powers. &amp;quot;You need constraints to provide tension,&amp;quot; he says. A world where anything can happen makes for a very boring movie. It&amp;#039;s when science imposes boundaries on what a superhero can do that the real drama begins.    10 Most (And Least) Accurate Sci-Fi Movies &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt;    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a11747/scientific-advisors-to-the-stars/>