Why does the museum look like a spaceship? What does Luke Skywalker have in common with a scientist? And could an N-1 Starfighter actually fly?

Come inside with us.

What’s really inside George Lucas’s new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art? We got a sneak peek—and it wasn’t quite what we expected.

UNOBTAINIUM hosts planetary scientist Dr. Amy Mainzer and writer/producer Adam Sigel head inside the spectacular new Los Angeles museum expecting plenty of Star Wars. And yes, there are spaceships, droids and enough Death Star vibes to keep two lifelong fans happy. But Star Wars represents only a small part of what Lucas is trying to do here.

The museum is really an exploration of narrative art: the images societies have used to tell stories. These are the stories that people need to come to understand who they are,  from ancient cave paintings and mythology to illustration, comics, movie posters and science fiction. That leads Amy and Adam straight to Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey and the Power of Myth—ideas that profoundly influenced George Lucas and the creation of Star Wars.

And then things get very UNOBTAINIUM.

Amy makes a surprising connection between the Hero’s Journey and the scientific process itself: leaving what we know, venturing into the unknown, facing uncertainty, gaining new knowledge and bringing it home.

Along the way, we explore the museum’s spaceship-like architecture, its unusual argument about “high” and “low” art, the science behind Star Wars technology—and an N-1 Starfighter that raises the inevitable question: how much energy would it actually take to make that thing fly?

Come with us for a sneak peek inside the Lucas Museum—and a journey through Star Wars, science, mythology and the stories human beings use to understand the universe and ourselves.

UNOBTAINIUM: Where great movies meet real science.

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What superhero would Neil deGrasse Tyson be? Where would he go if he could travel through time? And how much bad science will he forgive if a movie tells a great story? And how he grew up an athlete who lived in the geekosphere.

In this special bonus mini-episode of UNOBTAINIUM, planetary scientist Dr. Amy Mainzer and producer Adam Sigel revisit their conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson for a wide-ranging trip through science, science fiction and geek culture.

Neil reveals why he once imagined himself as “Protector of the Geeks,” explains why the Marvel Universe has a scientific edge over other superhero worlds, and shares his personal rule for giving filmmakers a “hall pass” when the physics isn't quite right.

Along the way, we get Neil’s takes on the scientifically impossible storm that launches The Martian, why we happily accept the flux capacitor in Back to the Future, whether real physics could make time travel possible, why he'd rather visit the future than the past, and which ideas might someday let us cross the enormous distances between the stars.

Plus: faster-than-light travel, cryosleep, alien civilizations, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Comic-Con, superheroes, atomic wedgies, and the Revenge of the Nerds.

If you enjoyed this conversation, check out our full episode with Neil deGrasse Tyson on STAR WARS, the Force, and the science behind a galaxy far, far away.

UNOBTAINIUM explores the real science behind the movies and television we love, with scientists, filmmakers and other extraordinary guests.

Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of science, movies, television and pop culture.

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Episode Description

Could humans really breathe liquid? Could we actually live hundreds of meters beneath the ocean—and what might be waiting for us in the unexplored deep?

 In this episode of UNOBTAINIUM, hosts Amy and Adam “dive” into the science behind James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi classic THE ABYSS with Dr. Tina Treude, UCLA professor and expert in marine geomicrobiology.

The biggest mystery of all is how much of the deep ocean have we actually explored. Scientists continue to encounter species they’ve never seen before, reminding us that some of the most alien environments we know of are right here on Earth. James Cameron imagined an alien world at the bottom of our own ocean. The remarkable thing is how alien the real one already is.

Hosts Dr. Amy Mainzer and Adam Sigel welcome guest Dr. Tina Treude, a UCLA professor of marine geomicrobiology. They analyze James Cameron's 1989 sci-fi film The Abyss, noting its accurate depiction of deep-sea pressure dynamics.

• Gas Solubility & The Bends: Under high pressure, gases like nitrogen dissolve faster into a diver's bloodstream. Rapid ascents cause dissolved nitrogen to form gas bubbles, causing decompression sickness ("the bends"), which can block nervous system connections and prove fatal.
• Decompression Protocols: To avoid decompression sickness, technical divers entering high-pressure environments must undergo controlled decompression in chambers—often lasting days or weeks—to allow nitrogen to slowly diffuse out of the body.

2. The Science of Liquid Breathing

The famous scene where a rat breathes oxygenated fluorocarbon fluid reflects real scientific experiments.

• Mechanism & Benefits: Breathing oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion prevents lung collapse at extreme depths because liquids are incompressible under pressure.
• The Physical Limitation: While fluorocarbons can deliver adequate oxygen to the lungs, human respiration with liquids is bottlenecked by fluid viscosity and CO2 removal. Moving dense fluid in and out of the lungs requires tremendous physical effort, making long-term human fluid breathing impractical due to CO2 retention.

3. High-Pressure Effects & Saturation Diving

• Nitrogen Narcosis: Diverging from decompression sickness, nitrogen narcosis occurs at depths typically below 40 meters (120 feet), where nitrogen exerts an intoxicating, narcotic effect on neural synapses.
• Ambient Pressure Habitats: The underwater station depicted in The Abyss operates at ambient sea pressure. Divers can enter and exit through an open moon pool without immediate pressure changes because the internal gas pressure matches the external water pressure.
• Submersibles & ROVs: Dr. Treude notes that while human industrial diving peaked around 300 to 500 meters, modern deep-sea research relies heavily on Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to mitigate safety risks.

4. Marine Biology & Deep-Sea Ecosystems

• Oxygen Limits in Deep Waters: Dissolved oxygen levels in seawater are roughly 40 times lower than in air. Marine life compensates with high-surface-area external gills and continuous water flow rather than internal lungs.
• Bioluminescence: Deep-ocean organisms generate light through enzymatic reactions or bacterial endosymbiosis for communication, hunting (e.g., anglerfish lures), and camouflage.
• Chemosynthesis & Extremophiles: Geothermal heat at hydrothermal vents can support unique microbial life, highlighting ecosystems that thrive entirely independent of surface sunlight.

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What does it take to build a robot that can explore another world—and maybe even help us find extraterrestrial life?

In this special bonus mini-episode of UNOBTAINIUM, roboticist Dr. Hiro Ono takes us from the surface of Mars to the hidden ocean of Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon.

Hiro, who joined us for our episode on BLADE RUNNER and the future of robotics, worked on the Mars Perseverance rover, helping develop autonomous vision systems that allow a robot millions of miles from Earth to understand its surroundings and navigate the Martian landscape. With signals between Earth and Mars taking minutes to arrive, a rover can't simply wait for a human to tell it what to do—it needs some ability to perceive, decide and act for itself. Then we travel much farther out.

Hiro explains the thinking behind EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), a snake-like robot designed to tackle one of the wildest challenges in planetary exploration: navigating the cracks in the icy crust of Enceladus, where scientists believe a vast liquid-water ocean lies beneath the surface. Could an adaptable robot someday follow those pathways beneath the ice—and search an alien ocean for signs of life? It’s a fascinating look at AI, machine vision, autonomous robots, Mars exploration, astrobiology, Enceladus and the engineering we may need to explore some of the most promising places for life beyond Earth.

And if you enjoy Hiro here, check out our full BLADE RUNNER episode, where we explore how close today's robots and artificial intelligence are getting to the science fiction imagined on screen.

Subscribe to UNOBTAINIUM for more conversations about the surprising science behind the movies and TV we love.

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Is the "Rage Virus" in 28 Days Later scientifically plausible? Amy and Adam sit down with Dr. Sima Yasmin—medical doctor, former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, author and disease detective! – to separate the real science of viruses and pandemics from one of cinema’s most frightening fictional outbreaks. What exactly is a virus—and is it even alive? Could scientists really use a virus to alter human behavior? Why are viruses used as vectors in cutting-edge gene therapies (like CAR-T cancer therapy)? They also discuss incubation periods, the math of R-naught, split-brain Klüver-Bucy syndrome, and how real is the "Rage Virus" in Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's classic 2002 film 28 Days Later.

Full Summary

Hosts Dr. Amy Mainzer (UCLA planetary scientist) and Adam Sigel (Hollywood writer/producer) welcome guest Dr. Sima Yasmin, a medical doctor and former CDC Epidemic Intelligence Officer.

• Are Viruses Alive? Dr. Yasmin explains that viruses are non-living packages of genetic material (DNA or RNA) enclosed in a protein capsid. They cannot replicate independently and must hijack host cellular machinery to reproduce.
• Viral DNA in Humans: Estimates suggest that 10% to 12% of the human genome is viral in origin. Over millions of years, ancestral viral infections integrated permanently into human DNA.

2. Viral Vectors: Science vs. Cinematic Tropes

In 28 Days Later, scientists at a Cambridge laboratory use an Ebola-based viral vector to alter primate behavior.

• Real-World Viral Vectors: Humans have used viruses as delivery mechanisms since 1972. In modern medicine (such as CAR-T cancer therapy), harmless viruses (like Adeno-Associated Viruses or AAVs) are modified to carry therapeutic genes into human cells to train the immune system against cancer.
• Movie vs. Reality: In real life, medical researchers use non-pathogenic viruses as vectors rather than lethal filoviruses like Ebola. Furthermore, while Ebola in movies is depicted as causing external bleeding from every orifice, real-world Ebola primarily kills through extreme dehydration and electrolyte disruption.

3. Incubation Periods and R-Naught

• 10-Second Incubation: The film features a hyper-fast incubation period of 10 to 20 seconds. Dr. Yasmin notes this is scientifically unrealistic. Even rabies—the closest real-world equivalent to a "rage" virus—has an incubation period ranging from 3 to 8 weeks (or up to years), depending on how close the bite site is to the central nervous system.
• The Math of R-naught: The basic reproduction number (R-naught) represents the average number of secondary infections caused by one infected individual in a susceptible population. While measles has an R-naught of 12–18 due to airborne transmission, the fictional Rage Virus would have an extraordinarily high R-naught because infected hosts actively seek out others to attack.

4. Neuroscience, the Amygdala, and Human Empathy

• The Amygdala & Klüver-Bucy Syndrome: The scientists in the movie attempt to suppress rage by targeting the brain. Historically, removing the amygdala in primates rendered them docile and fearless. This study would lead to the understanding of Klüver-Bucy syndrome,  
• Societal Reflections: The hosts note that the film uses a viral outbreak as a lens to explore deeper human flaws. While societal collapse is triggered by a laboratory experiment, the ultimate threats to the survivors stem from human violence, power dynamics, and a lack of empathy. Ultimately, the narrative shows that human connection and community remain the primary forces for survival.

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Episode Description

What begins as a discussion of climate change expands into a deep dive into the science as well as the misinformation, political inertia, corruption and the psychology behind why societies struggle to respond to existential threats—even when the evidence is clear.

McKay discusses the real-world inspiration for the film, Leonardo DiCaprio's performance, and why science and storytelling must work together if humanity hopes to solve its greatest challenges.

Full Summary

The Holocene Epoch & The Greenhouse Effect

Host Dr. Amy Mainzer (UCLA astrophysicist) and director Adam McKay open with a discussion on the fundamental stability of Earth's climate over the past 12,000 years (the Holocene epoch). This stable climate enabled the rise of organized human agriculture.

• The Physics of Greenhouse Gases: Amy emphasizes that climate change physics is rooted in standard quantum mechanics. Molecules of greenhouse gases like CO2 absorb specific infrared light wavelengths emitted by the Earth, increasing molecular motion which manifests as trapped thermal energy.
• Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI): McKay highlights the extreme rate of trapped energy entering the biosphere—equivalent to the energy of roughly 12 Hiroshima bombs per second—moving the global climate past normal seasonal variations at an unprecedented pace.

Science vs. Political Inaction & Media Gaslighting

McKay shares his experiences speaking with scientists, politicians, and media professionals. Despite unequivocal empirical data, political structures and profit-driven media ecosystems frequently downplay or miscommunicate existential threats.

• Scientific Communication Dilemma: Scientists often struggle to convey urgent warnings without being labeled as alarmist or shut out of public discourse.
• Evolutionary Blindspots: Humans are evolutionarily hardwired to react to immediate, visible threats (e.g., an approaching predator) rather than invisible or complex systemic crises (e.g., viruses, greenhouse gas accumulation, or distant space objects).

Behind the Scenes: The Leonardo DiCaprio "Network" Speech

The hosts discuss the key scene where Dr. Randall Mindy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) breaks down on live television.

• Tension Between Data and Incentives: DiCaprio advocated for a dramatic, classic "network speech" to capture a scientist's raw emotion when empirical data clashes with corporate greed, political complacency, and media circus tactics.
• Loyalty to Science: The narrative underscores that while individual scientists have human flaws, the scientific process itself relies on peer review and observed reality, standing firm against corporate gaslighting.

Oligarchs, Geoengineering, and the "Nugget of Hope"

• Interference in Deflection Missions: In Don't Look Up, humanity's initial, viable plan to divert the comet using space shuttles is subverted by a billionaire tech mogul seeking to mine the object for valuable minerals, which mirrors real world influence by powerful billionaires on the public.
• The Power of Science: Despite the film's apocalyptic climax, Amy and McKay identify a core message of persistence: scientific solutions exist to mitigate existential threats, provided public interest and rigorous peer review take precedence over short-term financial interests.

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Episode Description

How do long-period comets (like Comet NEOWISE) actually move, how NASA’s real-life Planetary Defense Coordination Office operates, and whether kinetic impactors (like the DART mission) or nuclear explosives could divert a planet-killing object? They also dive into why the film serves as a sharp allegory for climate change, pandemic responses, corporate greed, and the politicization of science.

Full Summary

Amy Mainzer (UCLA astrophysicist and science advisor on Don't Look Up) and Adam Sigel (Hollywood writer/producer) welcome writer/director Adam McKay to discuss balancing scientific accuracy with storytelling, and why making Don't Look Up required close collaboration between filmmakers and scientists. In reality, detecting and diverting a long-period comet would take roughly five years (and likely longer) to save humanity from the impact. This is the time needed for design reviews, international management, and spacecraft development. However, cinematic pacing demanded a condensed, high-stakes timeline.

Asteroids, Comets and NASA's Planetary Defense

• Orbital Mechanics: To fit the film's timeline realistically, Dr. Mainzer modeled the fictional threat after long-period comets coming from the outer solar system (similar to Comet NEOWISE, discovered in 2020). These objects approach the Sun rapidly on their first appearance, limiting advance warning.
• NASA’s Real Planetary Defense: The film’s "Oglethorpe" character reflects NASA’s actual Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which coordinates with international space agencies and emergency response networks (like FEMA) to track potential threats and plan mitigation strategies.
• Kinetic Impactors (The DART Mission): Kinetic redirection—knocking an object off-course by crashing a spacecraft into it. NASA successfully demonstrated this with the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, altering an asteroid’s orbital speed. However, kinetic impactors require years of lead time to successfully nudge an object away from Earth.

Fictional Solutions vs. Geoengineering Risks

In Don't Look Up, the government abandons kinetic deflection to attempt a dangerous mining operation using "micro-targeted quantum fission explosives" and autonomous drones.

• Nuclear Explosions & Shotgun Blasts: Attempting to blow up a comet near Earth risks turning a single large impactor into a cluster of radioactive fragments.
• Parallels to Geoengineering: This reckless high-tech fix mirrors real-world geoengineering proposals (like solar radiation management via atmospheric particle injection to alter planetary albedo). Such unproven, large-scale intervention carries immense systemic risk and unpredictable consequences as the film bares out.

Allegory, Corruption, and Human Behavior

• Politicization & Incentives: The conversation addresses how scientific consensus gets derailed by political interests, corporate lobbying, and social media manipulation. McKay highlights how careerism and financial incentives blind political and media classes to existential threats.
• Hyperbolic Discounting: The economic concept of humanity's tendency to prioritize immediate, short-term rewards while ignoring long-term risks.
• The Role of Art: They conclude that while science delivers inconvenient truths, art and satire provide the necessary emotional outlets for society to process existential dread and translate fear into systemic action.

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Episode Description

In this episode of The Unobtainium Podcast, Amy shows her true Trekkie colors as she and Adam unpack the science and themes of the beloved TOS cast film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Together, they explore the ethical dilemmas of genetic engineering, eugenics, and CRISPR, along with the real-world science behind planet and star formation and the possibilities of terraforming dead planets. They also discuss why Khan Noonien Singh remains one of the franchise's best villains.

Whether you're a lifelong Trekkie, a casual science fiction fan, or simply curious about the real science behind classic movies, this episode separates science fact from science fiction while celebrating one of the most beloved films in the Star Trek Universe.

Full Summary

Hosts Amy Mainzer (UCLA astrophysicist) and Adam Sigel (Hollywood writer/producer) discuss Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and why it remains the definitive TOS cast Star Trek movie. Released in 1982, the film marked a major cinematic evolution for the franchise, transitioning from 1960s TV camp to a high-stakes, narrative-driven space opera tackling mature themes like aging, mortality, and transformation.

Genetic Engineering & Khan’s Origins

·   Eugenics and CRISPR: The villain Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalbán) is a genetically engineered "superman" from 20th-century Earth. Designed to be ten times stronger and smarter than average humans, Khan and his followers eventually became dictators during the Eugenics Wars.

·   Ethical Dilemmas: The hosts connect Khan’s backstory to modern genetic tools like CRISPR and selective breeding. The narrative raises the ethical question: Does superior physical or mental capacity give individuals the moral authority to rule over others?

The "Genesis Device" vs. Real Astrophysics

The conversation then turns to the film's legendary Genesis Device, examining whether terraforming could ever become reality. In the film, Project Genesis offers a technology capable of reorganizing subatomic matter that can instantly turn a dead moon into a living planet.

·   The "Proto-Matter" Fallacy: Amy notes that the movie's underlying concept of "proto-matter" matrix reorganization is entirely fictional.

·   Real Solar System Formation: In reality, planets do form from nebulae (clouds of gas and dust). Over millions of years, gravity pulls the cloud inward while rotational forces flatten it into a protoplanetary disk, eventually forming stars and planets. The Genesis Device essentially accelerates a process taking millions of years down to a few minutes.

·   Terraforming Reality: Real-world terraforming remains in its infancy. Current space exploration focuses on in-situ resource utilization (e.g., harvesting water ice on the Moon or Mars) rather than atmosphere-altering planetary engineering.

Key Themes Beyond the Science

·   Creation vs. Destruction: The core narrative warning of Project Genesis is its potential as a weapon. If deployed where life already exists, it would destroy existing structures to create its new matrix. This serves as a metaphor for dual-use technologies like AI or nuclear energy.

·   Emotions vs. Pure Logic: Throughout the film, the emotional bonds between Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy emphasize that human intuition and empathy often overcome pure cold logic—a central theme that defines the heart of Star Trek.

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Could your mind really be split in two? Can a chip in your brain divide your work life from your personal life?

Hosts astrophysicist and UCLA Professor Dr. Amy Mainzer and writer/producer Adam Sigel welcome back Stanford neuroscientist, author and creator of Inner Cosmos, David Eagleman, who also serves as a science consultant for Severance Season 3. Adam references the Hollywood development term "science-faction" to describe the show—a blend of fiction rooted heavily in real-world scientific possibilities. The core premise of the show explores the ultimate, extreme form of satirical work-life balance: surgically separating an individual's memories between their corporate life ("innies") and personal life ("outies").

How the Brain Processes Memory

To understand how a "severance chip" might function, Dr. Eagleman breaks down the fundamental mechanics of the human brain:

The Electrochemical System: The roughly 86 billion neurons in the brain fire electrical signals down axons, releasing chemicals to interact with neighboring cells.

Associative Neural Networks: Unlike computers, human memory functions as an interconnected web. Hearing a single word instantly triggers a vast, non-linear network of related memories, experiences, and references.

The Coalition of Memories: Debunking the "Grandmother Cell" (the idea that a single neuron holds a specific memory), memories are actually distributed across vast coalitions of millions of interconnected neurons working in unison.

The Mechanics of a "Severance Chip"

Dr. Eagleman, who consulted on the science for Severance Season 3, proposes a real-world hypothesis for how the fictional procedure could work. Rather than physically cutting parts of the brain, the chip would act as an electrical coding switch:

An implanted chip applies a distinct electrical code to the employee's active thoughts at work. The neurons marked with this specific "work code" only connect with a other work-tagged neurons, stopping their neural pathways from interacting. The show's elevator completely flushes active electrical patterns in the brain's short-term memory.

Split-Brains and Multiple Identities

The conversation shifts to historical precedents and the psychological toll of memory separation: Split-Brain Surgery (1960s treatment for severe epilepsy) is the severing the corpus callosum, the neural superhighway linking the brain's hemispheres which creates two separate consciousnesses in one body (sometimes causing Alien Hand Syndrome, where hands physically work against each other). Distributed Memory (The Ngram) says memories are not stored in a single, hard-drive-like location but are distributed holographically across the brain, providing evolutionary redundancy. Long-term memory is divided into separate, distinct networks and amnesia cases (such as Ansel Bourne or Jodie Roberts) demonstrate that someone can lose their autobiographical memory while keeping procedural skills.

Philosophical Implications: Who Are We?

Ultimately, Severance serves as a profound philosophical sandbox. Because human identity is entirely shaped by the sum of our accumulated memories, creating isolated memory pools effectively creates two distinct, living people inside one body. This separation poses a tragic human dilemma, exemplified by the main character, Mark, who uses the procedure to escape the heavy burden of grief over his deceased wife. While it successfully blocks his suffering for eight hours a day, it forces audiences to grapple with a haunting question: If you could wipe away your deepest suffering at the cost of your memories and your true identity, would you?

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