Oppenheimer: Nuclear-Weapons Expert Reveals How Effective Sunscreen Would Have Been in Trinity Test
'Oppenheimer' scientists probably didn't need to put that sunscreen on.
oppAccording to physicist Greg Spriggs, some of Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan's commitment to authenticity may have been a little bit much -- although it's hard to say whether it's Nolan, or just the historical figures involved in the movie's story, who didn't know exactly how the explosion was going to go. During the Trinity test scene in Oppenheimer, scientists are depicted as having worn sunscreen to protect their faces from the blast of heat they anticipated from the nuclear explosion. According to Spriggs, that probably didn't happen...mostly because it wouldn't have helped very much.
The critique came as part of a look at numerous movies, from Oppenheimer and Armageddon to The Avengers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which featured nuclear detonations as a key part of their stories. Insider asked Spriggs to evaluate each movie's accuracy on a scale of 1-10, and break down why the science of the film didn't jive with real-world events.
"They were all laying down thinking that the shock wave might get to them and if they were laying down that it wouldn't be a direct hit," Spriggs said. "You don't want to have a big surface area if the shock wave is coming over. You want to be kind of laying flat. There have been situations where we've had tests where the yield was a little bit higher than what people thought or the wind blew the bomb a little bit closer to the observers, that people have actually gotten a little bit of a sunburn. I don't think the sunscreen would've helped very much. It's basically a heat flux that hits you. I guess it would've helped a little bit, but not much."
You can see the full video below.
As you can see if you watch the whole thing, Oppenheimer scores seven out of ten, which might seem harsh considering all the talk about authenticity, but which definitely isn't bad compared to movies like Avengers and Armageddon scoring just one point.
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.
The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer. Oscar® winner Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment's Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan.
Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX® 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX® black and white analogue photography.
Oppenheimer is in theaters now.
