Getting the science right

[00:00.11] Sci-fi movies tend to capture children's imaginations and have long been part of students' excited chats in the schoolyard.

[00:08.88] But now a scientific journal has urged at least one sci-fi movie to be shown in class by science teachers.

[00:18.15] Scientific papers published in the American Journal of Physics (AJP) and in Classical and Quantum Gravity have seen merit in the way the movie Interstellar portrays wormholes.

[00:30.42] Dr David Jackson from AJP said publishing this paper "was a no-brainer".

[00:36.44] He added: "The physics has been very carefully reviewed by experts and found to be accurate.

[00:43.70] The publication will encourage physics teachers to show the film in their classes to get across ideas about general relativity".

[00:52.22] In fact, one of the executive producers of Interstellar was Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

[01:02.99] For him, films such as Interstellar, Contact and 2001: A Space Odyssey can inspire young people.

[01:11.26] Blockbusters are improving when it comes to portraying scientific theories.

[01:15.77] An initiative by the US National Academy of Sciences has been putting proper scientists in touch with movie people to achieve a better result - which is vital in the internet age.

[01:27.80] Interstellar's director Christopher Nolan says: "Consumers have a lot more immediate access to information.

[01:34.56] If you go and see a film about a particular subject, particularly a true-life story, you can go home and look it up on Wikipedia and see if the basic things portrayed in the film are true or not.

[01:47.34] The same is true of science in the films".

[01:51.10] Professional scientists may no longer cringe in their seats when they watch sci-fi movies.

[01:56.36] Today, getting the science wrong is no longer an option.