Contact’s opening scene
Now, this is how you open a
movie. It also gives you a preview of the focus of radio
signals in the story. I love hearing the different radio
signals, especially the jumbled sounds at the beginning of the pan
away from Earth. I’m guessing we didn’t know that we were
pretty much broadcasting ourselves into outer space until the
beginning of space travel.
It is also stunning seeing the
scene pull away from Earth to the outer reaches of the cosmos.
It reveals how little we are in the galactic scheme of things.
There
is a great post about how far human radio broadcasts have reached
in outer space. It even shows the position.
Basically, our first broadcasts have reached somewhere around 100
light years now. Our race will probably be gone by the time some
other alien race picks up the signals, but it is interesting to think
someone or something will hear them. What
will they think when they start getting more and more transmissions?
Now,
there is hope that something is detecting them because they have pass
through other systems. From Zidbits.com,
((This
means that at 110 light-years away from earth — the edge of a radio
‘sphere’ which contains many star systems — our very first
radio broadcasts are beginning to arrive. At 74 light-years away,
television signals are being introduced. Star systems at a distance
of 50 light-years are now entering the ‘Twilight Zone’.
))
I know that Contact has it the
other way around, but this opening scene is just great.
-Spice Girls “Wanna be my lover”: Did you hear that one?
-“Obviously, a major malfunction.”: Listen carefully. That line is from the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster. It happened right after the explosion. I was in grade school when that happened. I am showing my age.
-“These broken wings will never fly again”
-Dallas theme song
-Sometimes you feel like a nut
-There is a nice touch with signal being chopped up when it runs through the asteroid field.
-Nixon is not a crook…
-MLK
-The other nice touch is the degraded signal as it pulls further and further away until nothing. Listen for the Morse code signal just as the sound drops out.
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