An astrophysicist reacts to Carl Sagan's Contact

Comments · 7.3K

• DR

  @DrBecky · 5 years ago · pinned

  So I said it would have to be summer for them to observe Vega from Australia forgetting what I’d <b>just</b> said about being able to do radio observations during the day 😂 I guess once an optical astronomer, always an optical astronomer 😂

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• HO

  @housellama · 3 years ago

  Watching Dr. Becky get SO ANGRY at Drumlin is hilarious. Sagan made that character so incredibly hatable, and the movie took it even further.

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• ST

  @stephenbrown321 · 5 years ago

  Please nobody tell her about “Galaxy Quest” now that’s a really spot on film. I think.

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• MA

  @markshirley9353 · 5 years ago

  Regarding listening by ear .... &nbsp;In the novel (p.53): &quot;She sat down before one of the consoles and plugged in the earphones. &nbsp;It was futile, she knew, a conceit, to think that she, listening on one or two channels, would detect a pattern when the vast computer system monitoring a billion channels had not. &nbsp;But it gave her a modest illusion of utility.&quot; &nbsp;We should cut the filmmakers some slack when Carl Sagan himself had her do this.

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• DR

  @DrKevGuitar · 2 years ago (edited)

  I know I’m two years late with this but the novel is even better than the film. In the novel they sent 5 people, who all came back with 18 hours of blank video. I felt the novel really captures the life of a research scientist, a female scientist, having to deal with politics, funding, personalities, and misogyny, and of course her own feelings and emotions. That’s why I think Ellie Arroway is such a wonderful character and hero in the book, she’s so very believable.

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• SK

  @skyshadow5 · 5 years ago

  The scene where the dad tells the little girl what she pointed at, and Dr. Becky&apos;s reaction, is what happened 2 nights ago with my 9 yr old daughter. I live on the south coast of England and we were looking south at about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfRGIhrWWFI&amp;t=1170">19:30</a> and she asked what the bright star was (Rigel) and the coloured one further up (Betelgeuse). After listening to the reaction I was so pleased with myself for knowing these and being able to answer my daughters&apos; questions.

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• SE

  @selena490 · 5 years ago

  Best response ever: “I was mad at him but I didn’t want him to die” 😂

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• LY

  @LynnWinx · 2 years ago

  Contact is what got me into astrophysics. I had finished high school, I started prep-school (a weird French thing) during which Contact came out. So I became a research engineer (another French thing) in microwave electronics, then worked in radioastronomy, in particular the Herschel Space Telescope. Half astro, half instru, but still.

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• AL

  @AlanCanon2222 · 5 years ago

  Dr Becky: &quot;The public, no offense....&quot;<br>The Public: &quot;None taken, Dr Becky.&quot;

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• FL

  @flippha · 5 years ago

  when I learned to do passive radar at the military we transformed the radar signal to acoustic so we could identify it faster by recognising the &quot;melody&quot; of a radar device. I think stuff like this might be the inspiration to her listening to the signal.

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• JU

  @Juan-qn3yl · 4 years ago

  Puertorrican chemist here: can&apos;t watch Arecibo&apos;s footage without shedding a tear 😕

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• MR

  @mrb2349 · 2 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfRGIhrWWFI&amp;t=66">01:06</a> So lovely that you are subconsciously fixing your hair the same way young Ellie and old Ellie did. Shows that you are immersed.

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