A Space Odyssey Seems Unscientific to Some, Many Physi- Cists Today View the Theory As Important
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COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS theories of Einstein and de Broglie and turned them into a fully fledged interpreta- tion capable of shaking up the status quo. David Bohm argued that particles in quan- tum systems existed whether observed or not, and that they have predictable positions and motions deter- “Becker reminds mined by pilot us that we need waves. John Bell humility as then showed we investigate that Einstein’s the myriad concerns about interpretations locality and that explain the incompleteness same data.” in the Copen- hagen interpretation were valid. It was he who refuted von Neumann’s proof by revealing that it ruled out only a narrow class of hidden-variables theories. The scientific community greeted Bohm’s ideas coolly. A former mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, said: “if we can- not disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him”. And, as Becker shows, Bohm’s leftist views led to an appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and subsequent ostracization. Bohm’s contemporary, physicist Hugh Everett, delivered another challenge to the Copenhagen interpretation. In 1957, Everett set out to resolve the ‘measurement problem’ in quantum theory — the con- tradiction between the probabilistic nature of particles at the quantum level and their ‘collapse’, when measured, into one state at A Pan Am shuttle prepares to dock at the international Space Station V in this classic scene from the film. the macroscopic level. Everett’s many-worlds interpretation posited no collapse. Instead, probabilities bifurcate at the moment of measurement IN RETROSPECT into parallel universes — such as one in which Schrödinger’s cat is alive and another in which it’s dead. Although an infinite number of untestable universes 2001: A Space Odyssey seems unscientific to some, many physi- cists today view the theory as important. Fifty years on, the masterful science-fiction film looks The book has a few minor short comings. Becker gives too much space to recent more prophetic than ever, reflects Piers Bizony. applications building on Bell’s research, and too little to new developments in the philosophy of science. Yet he, like cosmolo- n 1968, film-maker Stanley Kubrick 2001: A Space Festival audience: gist Sean Carroll in his 2016 The Big Picture and his screenwriting colleague, Odyssey “A f t e r 2001, science (R. P. Crease Nature 533, 34; 2016), does science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, DIRECTOR: STANLEY fiction is dead.” make an explicit case for the importance of Ipresented 2001: A Space Odyssey. Half a KUBRICK; CO-WRITER: The narrative was ARTHUR C. CLARKE philosophy. That’s a key call, with influen- century later, this unprecedentedly detailed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: ambitious, to say tial scientists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson speculation about our place in the cosmos 1968. the least. Prehistoric dismissing the discipline as a waste of time. and our evolving relationship with apemen have a mind- What Is Real? is an argument for technology is regarded as one of the great altering encounter with an alien black keeping an open mind. Becker reminds landmarks in cinema. monolith. Four million years later, a giant us that we need humility as we investigate The influence of 2001 on the design spacecraft is sent to Jupiter on a mysteri- the myriad interpretations and narratives of subsequent space-film hardware and ous mission. On board are two astronauts, that explain the same data. ■ special effects has been pervasive. How- three hibernating scientists and a seemingly ever, in terms of artistic and philosophical sentient computer, HAL 9000. Hovering Ramin Skibba is an astrophysicist turned bravura, it has been a harder act to follow. above Jupiter, another monolith waits. science writer based in San Diego, California. In 2007, director Ridley Scott (of Blade Monoliths aside, 2001 was prescient e-mail: [email protected] Runner and Alien fame) told a Venice Film in almost all its detailed predictions of 584 | NATURE | VOL 555 | 29 MARCH©20 201818 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT companions on board the Jupiter-bound Kubrick gave us the most persuasive space spaceship. As our machines smarten up, station in all of science fiction, a gigantic we will dumb down, Kubrick suggested. twin-wheeled “Orbiter Hilton”. It was The crass human discourse often found on complete with coffee-vending machines, today’s algorithmically clever social-media garish designer chairs in the lounges, phone platforms seems to bear out his pessimism. booths accepting credit cards, and pano- Certainly, in the film, the surviving ramic windows offering spectacular views astronaut’s final conflict with HAL pre- of the Earth (something so familiar to the figures a critical problem with today’s film’s spacefarers that they ignore it). artificial-intelligence (AI) systems. How Space planners of the 1960s assumed do we optimize them to deliver good out- that artificial gravity would be essential. In comes? HAL thinks that the mission to the event, the International Space Station Jupiter is more important than the safety was designed for science experiments that of the spaceship’s crew. Why did no one depend on cancelling out gravity’s influ- program that idea out of him? Now, we ence, not replicating it. Now the wheel face similar questions about the automated has turned full circle, as we recognize the editorship of our searches and news feeds, debilitating effects of long-term weight- and the increasing presence of AI inside lessness on the human body. Aerospace semi-autonomous weapons. engineers are starting to think about how We also face the startling fact that we could make revolving habitats for future 1960s assumptions about the progress of deep-space missions, or orbiting hotels for AI were optimistic (computing pioneer private adventurers. Marvin Minsky served as a consultant for As for such doughty explorers, 2001). No machine available today can recent triumphs of Elon Musk’s SpaceX match HAL’s performance. Just look at rocket company validate Kubrick’s use the YouTube spoofs of “digital personal of Pan Am as his space-shuttle carrier of assistants” reimagined as HAL: Kubrick’s choice. Although Pan Am no longer exists, red-eyed genius outsmarts them all. the corporate conquest of the cosmos is Where the film made technical errors, under way, just as 2001 predicted. For it did so in ways that were flawed rather today’s orbital entrepreneurs, the film is not than merely wrong. Kubrick’s machinery just a beautiful piece of science fiction. It is a is a matter for nerdish analysis instead of technical manifesto — an inspirational call the ridicule usually reserved for outdated to arms, around which a real commercial fantasies. Rocket experts happily argue space industry is being founded. about the film’s docking arrangements Of course, 2001 also suggests some kind and control-panel layouts; but none of the of non-terrestrial influence over human twenty-first-century technology. For machinery is out of bounds in terms of progress. After unsatisfactory experiments instance, in August 2011, the Samsung what we could actually achieve. trying to depict aliens, Kubrick chose only electronics group began a defence against And Kubrick and Clarke confidently to hint at their presence, allowing those a claim of patent infringement by Apple. predicted space projects that still lie many black slabs to stand in for — well, for what, Who invented the tablet computer? years, or decades ahead, 17 years after exactly? Apple claimed unique status for its iPad; the film’s eponymous dateline. Famously, Today, we know that planetary systems Samsung presented a frame from 2001. orbiting other suns are the rule rather than Samsung noted that the design claimed the exception, and that prebiotic molecules by Apple had many features in common suffuse the vast, interstellar clouds of dust with that of the tablet shown in the film and gas from which new stars and planets clip — most notably, a rectangular shape are born. Have any of these molecules with a display screen, narrow borders, a sparked into life on other worlds, perhaps flat front and a thin form. In an era when giving rise to intelligent entities? If so, computers still needed large rooms to might some of them be more advanced accommodate them, Kubrick’s special- than we are? effects team rigged hidden projectors to Should we watch out for superior enliven devices that looked as though you “aliens” closer to home, and guard against could hold them in one hand. Only the need AI systems one day supplanting us in the to trim the film’s running length prevented evolutionary story yet to unfold? Or does ingenious mock-ups of touch-sensitive the absence of anything like HAL, even BOTH PICTURES: WMGM/STANLEY KUBRICK PRODUCTIONS/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK KUBRICK WMGM/STANLEY PICTURES: BOTH gaming screens and electronic newspapers after 50 years, suggest that there is, after from making the final cut. all, something fundamental about intelli- Indeed, 2001 got much right about the gence that is impossible to replicate inside twenty-first century, including the psycho- a machine? Until we know the answers to logical costs of our reliance on technology. such profound questions, 2001: A Space Kubrick’s astronauts look listless inside Odyssey cannot stale. ■ vehicles perfectly capable of function- ing without them. Dialogue in the film is Piers Bizony is a science journalist, space deliberately banal. HAL gets all the best historian and author. lines, even as he kills off most of his human A shuttle flight attendant walks in zero gravity. e-mail: [email protected] ©2018 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature.