Review: Sunshine

Sunshine

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Alex Garland
Starring Cillian Murphy Chris Evans Rose Byrne Michelle Yeoh Cliff Curtis Troy Garity Hiroyuki Sanada Benedict Wong Chipo Chung Mark Strong

Set 50 years in the future the sun has stopped main sequence fusion. A group of astronauts and scientists man the ship Icarus 2 that carries all the mineable fissionable material left on Earth (assembled into a fusion device with the mass of Long Island) with the mission to push this mass to the outer reaches of the sun and release it. The hope being that the huge bomb will explode deep enough in the sun to restart fusion.

The weirdness starts when as Icarus 2 passes Mercury, a distress beacon is heard that belongs to the first ship built, Icarus 1. Going to investigate they find the first crew dead and the ship sabotaged.

Thing really start to get weird as all sorts of systems start failing and crew members dying.

The ending is a melding of Aliens and maybe 2001 or maybe The Fountain or better yet, Disney's Black Hole and I can think of several remade films that have a strong resemblance to this movie. Does that mean it's derivative? No, at least not any more than any science fiction film of today is.

Overall the acting is strong and believable and generally speaking not stereotypical. The science might be weak, but that is nit picking. Icarus 2 could be Discovery 1 (look it up HA!) or the Nostromo. It really looks like they just took parts and pieces and again this is just mild grumbling because the movie is good.
Do you really get the atmosphere that MOON instilled? No, not really. Though in the end we still have brutal self doubt and questioning of purpose, in Sunshine you just don't seem to relate to the characters as much as say Moon. Maybe it's the difference between an ensemble cast and just one person.

This is a definite watch though, don't get me wrong. The movie may miss the mark in a few cases, but it does grab you with the scope of the mission and tension building towards the end. A good solid 8.

American Solar Reactor Heads to Switzerland for Testing

Everyone may someday carry a pocketful of sunshine if the efforts of visiting researchers at a Swiss laboratory bear fruit.

While concentrated solar storage is still in its infancy and the storage systems yet mammoth, like all good technology it will trickle down into a myriad of applications from residential and eveen personal light and heat providers to doubtless some weapons platform too crispily frightful to contemplate.

A research team from Valparaiso University’s College of Engineering in Indiana will take a solar reactor they’ve designed and built from scratch to Switzerland next month to begin a series of tests at one of the world’ premier solar energy research institutes. Valparaiso is a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research.

Dr. Robert Palumbo, Jenny professor of emerging technology and one of the world’s leading solar energy researchers, and three of his undergraduate students will spend four and a half weeks at the Paul Scherrer Institute as Valparaiso’s solar energy research program enters its third year. The program was launched in August 2006 with a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the industrial feasibility of high temperature solar electrolysis – a process that has the potential to make large-scale storage and transportation of the sun’s energy practical.

“We started with nothing other than theory to design our solar reactor, so it’s exciting to reach the point where we can begin testing,” said Dr. Palumbo, who formerly served as head of the Paul Scherrer Institute’s High Temperature Solar Technology Laboratory. “Our emphasis this summer will be validating that the reactor can perform under our desired operating conditions.”

During tests, sunlight will be collected, focused and directed into Valparaiso’s reactor – a cylindrical device about three-feet long where the electrolytic process will take place. Inside the reactor, a crucible containing the chemicals involved in the electrolytic process will be heated to between 1,700 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point electrolysis will begin and separate zinc oxide into oxygen and metallic zinc.

“It will take more than one month to complete our testing of the electrolysis process and determine whether we can indeed replace electricity with solar energy on an industrial scale,” Dr. Palumbo. “This summer is the initial step in testing that will continue over the next two summers.”

After the team returns to Valparaiso in August, Dr. Palumbo and his students will take the data they’ve collected and begin making improvements to the reactor.

“I expect our testing will show us a number of improvements we can make, so that next summer we’ll have a reactor that we’re really happy with,” he said. “Then, we can concentrate more on the science of solar electrolysis.” Read full article
Image courtesy Solar Technology Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institute, Zurich.