What ‘Project Hail Mary’ gets right –– and wrong –– about astrophysics
https://news.northeastern.edu/2026/03/19/project-hail-mary-accuracy-astrophysics/
What ‘Project Hail Mary’ gets right –– and wrong –– about astrophysics
https://news.northeastern.edu/2026/03/19/project-hail-mary-accuracy-astrophysics/
17 Comments
Is it just me or Nerdy Ryan Gosling manages to be even hotter than his usual self? 🤤🔥🔥🔥
“Galaxy spanning”.
Tau Ceti is 10 LY away. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years away.
No galaxies were spanned in this story.
EDIT: ACROSS, not away. Stupid mobile.
Why are people downvoting this? The point isn’t to rip apart the movie, it’s just fun nerdy space stuff to talk about. Of course it’s gonna get some stuff wrong, though is obviously overall pretty well researched for a pop sci-fi movie.
I loved it. Very faithful to the book, and exactly what I wanted to watch.
I never understood how the Eridians knew about stars if they couldn’t see or knew about radiation.
Is this a movie critique sub now?
Is it just me or are the two main criticisms mentioned in this article addressed in at least the book (Haven’t seen the movie yet). The astrophage are explained to be exceptionally good at storing energy through a mass-energy conversion process and the coma was explained using a hidden coma resistant gene in humans and primates. Obviously these were still fabricated for the plot but they are not that much less believable than Rocky’s existence IMO
I’m sick of this stance. If you can’t suspend disbelief, then don’t go to the movies.
Oh no! A book and movie that has an alien in it gets some astrophysics wrong! Heaven forfend!
Go watch behind the scenes with Adam Savage getting a tour of the set. The practical work holy shift awesome!
Least believable port of this story is that Ryan Gosling has no friends
Was it the living rock that can speak english?
It’s a movie… Why does it need to be “wrong?”
Unrelated but I fucking hate how the trailer spoils the entire book. I didn’t know what I was reading so the beginning felt like a horror story until, well, it obviously diverged. Rocky is in like the first 5 seconds of a trailer…
it’s a movie about a bug that’s eating our sun and a high school teacher chosen and kidnapped in order to save the world. If you think any of this is going to be right, i have questions for you.
What astrophysicists get wrong about how movies work.
bro u trying to break down sci fi? That was a heart ass warming book. Remember when rocky made a little school of little rock things. Makes perfect sense to me.