Some recent films have offered differing perspectives on the possibility of alien encounters. Project Hail Mary (Lord and Miller, based on an Andy Weir novel)accepts from the beginning that this is possible, and there is hardly more than a quick gasp when the protagonist meets up with what appears to be (and is in the film) an intelligent and technologically advanced life form (named Rocky, because he looks like a rock!). In fact, the main point of the film (saving the Sun from getting eaten by some sort of invading material called “astrophage”) is a bit lost in the touching friendship that Grace (Ryan Gosling) and Rocky form. More about this in a moment. Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg) takes another perspective which at first is intriguing. The main premise assumes that our common memes regarding aliens (lanky, big-headed and big-eyed, roughly humanoid, gray) are real, and that the government has been hiding alien corpses (originally living aliens) for decades and also hiding alien technology.

As captivating as Project Hail Mary is, it does have some problems. For instance, the two friends learn each other’s languages very quickly, and Grace can set up something of a “universal translator” quickly. Realistically, this would take years, if there were any success at all. Keep in mind that there would be no reason to assume that a language from a civilization 10’s of light years away would have any connection to language on Earth, and similar for the meaning of hand gestures and such. Perhaps this did take more time than shown, and the time line was a bit of a short-hand.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is that this “astrophage” can conveniently be used as interstellar fuel, since when activated, it can release tremendous amounts of energy. The primary barrier to interstellar travel now is that our most efficient fuels can not release enough energy to get a rocket going much faster that about 11 km/sec (escape speed from the surface of the Earth). We can do a bit better with gravity assists, but that still doesn’t get us over 100 km/sec. The nearest stars are 10’s of trillions of kilometers from us. That means it would take many seconds (equivalent of many thousands of years) to get to the nearest star using chemical fuel and maybe some gravity assists. But, more efficient fuel, means that we can get to “Point B” (a nearby star) faster. The amount of fuel needed would likely be prohibitive, but it is conceptually possible. So PHM makes it possible by claiming astrophage can act like a super fuel. Perhaps this is a bit better explained in the book. But it seems like a bit too much of a leap.

Disclosure Day seems even more implausible for simpler reasons, such as captured protagonists seeming to be able to escape just by walking away just in back of a team of people looking for them! Lots of action scenes will surely deadly collisions that don’t hurt anybody, and so forth.

The best part of DD is when the “found footage” of actual aliens is disclosed (hence the title of the film), but it happens to late in the film to really lend it enough legitimacy.

Also (as mentioned similarly by Neil DeGrasse Tyson regarding similar alien stories in his new book Take Me to Your Leader), are we to believe that aliens would come from light years away at relativistic speeds, and the be befuddled by atmospheric flight at the Earth, get completely prevented from going any further, and have US agents overpowering them and forcing them to expose the nature of their technology?

If you are liking what you read here, you might be interested in my(Steve Bloom) 2016 book, The Physics and Astronomy of Science Fiction, published by McFarland, and available from your favorite online sellers as well as direct from McFarland (paperback or e-book)..