{"id":195292,"date":"2016-11-02T12:27:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T16:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=195292"},"modified":"2022-04-25T21:01:12","modified_gmt":"2022-04-26T01:01:12","slug":"doctor-strange-science-195292","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/doctor-strange-science-195292\/","title":{"rendered":"Astrophysicist meets Marvel movie as <em>Doctor Strange<\/em> science consultant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As you would expect, Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy, has a pretty good handle on the laws of physics in this universe. But what happens when the universe under discussion is fictional? And the beings who populate that universe have super powers?<\/p>\n<p>The makers of the latest Marvel blockbuster, <em>Doctor Strange<\/em>, wanted the fantasy film to have scientific substance. For help, they turned to Frank, who was a science consultant on the film.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-container\" style=\"padding-bottom: 16%; margin: 20px 0;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/290974553&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Who is Doctor Strange?<\/strong><br \/>\nStephen Strange is a brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon who loses the use of his hands, at least to conduct surgery, because of a car accident. He looks for some way to heal his hands, and goes through all kinds of surgeries. He ends up in Tibet as a last resort, in front of the Ancient One, a mystical master. She opens him up to the fact that there\u2019s more to life, and to the world, than his reductionist way of looking at things. He becomes her disciple and trains to become a sorcerer, an occult mystical master fighting against the forces of evil.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If Strange becomes a sorcerer, why do the filmmakers need a science consultant? Aren\u2019t magic and science incompatible? <\/strong><br \/>\nThe interesting thing about the Marvel movies is that they\u2019ve built a consistent and coherent universe with laws of physics.<\/p>\n<p>They are, of course, not our laws of physics. But they\u2019re built off of our laws of physics. So when you\u2019ve got this science-y universe and a character who\u2019s all about sorcery and magic, how do you bring that character\u00a0into the universe\u2014Marvel\u2019s cinematic science of the universe\u2014in a way that\u2019s coherent, but that doesn\u2019t damage the character? How do you account for Strange\u2019s powers? Where do they come from? \u00a0I was brought in to help answer those questions.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_158302\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-158302\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-158302\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/adam-frank.jpg\" alt=\"Adam Frank\" width=\"400\" height=\"419\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-158302\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adam Frank. (University photo \/ Brandon Vick)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>What solution did you propose?<\/strong><br \/>\nMy take on this was to look at consciousness, rather than to try to explain his powers using neuroscience. In philosophy there is the mind-body problem: what is the relationship between the neurons that are in your brain and the experience of consciousness itself?<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a reductionist view that says anything, whatever your feelings, love or joy, they\u2019re really just neurons, and those neurons are just atoms, so everything can be reduced to the lowest level of structure. But we don\u2019t really have a science of consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m a lapsed reductionist. I went into science because I was a reductionist, and as time has gone on, I think there\u2019s more that needs to be accounted for. The philosopher David Chalmers wrote a very influential paper in the 1990s called \u201cOn the Hard Problem of Consciousness.\u201d His perspective was that the vividness of internal experience\u2014the fact that you\u2019re present, that there is a present for you in the world\u2014can\u2019t be explained just by atoms. You may need to explain it by some new thing, something else in the universe to explain it. And I thought that opened up possibilities for the narrative. Now, suddenly, Strange is tapping into this \u201csomething else\u201d that is what consciousness is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you regret any of the compromises the movie makes with science\u2014or, at least, our universe\u2019s science?<\/strong><br \/>\nThe one place in the movie where I winced a bit was then they used the word \u201csoul.\u201d The Ancient One pushes Strange\u2019s soul out of his body, and there\u2019s a moment of astral projection. I don\u2019t really believe in souls. The awesome part for me is I get to tell people about, in Chalmers\u2019s words, \u201cthe hard problem of consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My job as a science communicator is to get people to think about how science works. But philosophy is just as important to me in getting people to think about this fundamental question, what is the nature of<br \/>\nconsciousness? How does consciousness express itself in the material world? What does that tell us about the material world and the world of consciousness? When I do that, I can go home and be happy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"su-row highlight\">\n<div class=\"su-column su-column-size-1-4\">\n<div class=\"su-column-inner su-u-clearfix su-u-trim\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-518712 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2018-06-04_Adam_Frank_063-3-2-165.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of Adam Frank\" width=\"165\" height=\"165\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"su-column su-column-size-3-4\">\n<div class=\"su-column-inner su-u-clearfix su-u-trim\">\n<h4><strong>Astrophysicist Adam Frank<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>A self-described \u201cevangelist of science,\u201d Frank regularly writes<em>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0speaks\u00a0about subjects like intelligent life forms in the universe, high-energy-density physics, space exploration and missions, climate change, and more.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/news\/adam-frank\/\">Explore full profile \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The makers of the latest Marvel blockbuster, <em>Doctor Strange,<\/em> wanted the fantasy film to have scientific substance. For help, they turned to astrophysicist Adam Frank, who was a science consultant on the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":195922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[16792,29502,16072],"class_list":["post-195292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-adam-frank","tag-featured-post-side","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Astrophysicist meets Marvel movie as Doctor Strange science consultant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/doctor-strange-science-195292\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Astrophysicist meets Marvel movie as Doctor Strange science consultant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The makers of the latest Marvel blockbuster, Doctor Strange, wanted the fantasy film to have scientific substance. 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