The Sundarban
Published Feb 27, 2026, 7:00 PM EST
Dan Selcke is a pop tradition fanatic who writes and talks about movies, TV and books, the nerdier the better. He’s been engaged on files, opinions, editorials, interviews and podcasts for over 10 years. Dan has been published in The A.V. Club, Metro, Salon and in other locations. He’s interviewed actors and filmmakers from reveals luxuriate in Dune: Prophecy and The Rings of Energy.
When he is lumber out of issues to write, Dan operates a YouTube channel where he dives into more depth on all issues movies, TV, and pop tradition.
In 2011, NASA scientists met at the jet propulsion laboratory in California to enact one thing mandatory: title the most and least scientifically plausible movies ever made, with the goal of nudging Hollywood in the direction of doing the next job of depicting science. They determined that the most scientifically plausible movie ever made became once Gattaca, the 1997 movie a few future where gene editing had change into regular. As for the least plausible, the possibility became once easy: 2012.
Considerably confusingly, 2012 got here out in 2009; Sony if truth be told missed a branding opportunity there. It became once about, simply, how the world would finish in 2012 thanks to a cavalcade of disasters, each and every much less scientifically plausible than the closing.
The spectacular silliness of 2012
The true approach to procure everything about science execrable in a single movie
Sony gathered a dazzling impressive cast for this nonsensical box space of commercial success; 2012 grossed $757 million on a budget of $200 million. John Cusack plays a struggling writer, Amanda Peet is his ex-important other, Woody Harrenson is a fringe scientific conspiracy theorist, Danny Glover is the president, Chiwetel Ejiofor is the president’s advisor, and Thandiwe Newton is the president’s daughter. The lot of them are dealing with a large wave of natural disasters, all of which initiate when neutrinos originate heating the Earth’s core.
And factual away, we advance to the first mountainous implausibility of the movie. Neutrinos are subatomic particles with no electrical fee and practically no mass. The solar gives off quite a few them. Neutrinos rush through the Earth harmlessly, so the thought of them all straight away heating the planet’s core is mindless. In 2012, this is explained away by announcing that these explicit neutrinos are mutated, but that would no longer operate the thought any much less foolish.
Anyway, in the movie, the heating core outcomes in the Earth’s crust appealing instant, causing all manner of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic explosions. This bit likely had scientists choking on their popcorn out of indignation, as the Earth’s plates can transfer presumably a few centimeters in a yr, no longer hundreds of miles in a few days. And if one thing luxuriate in that had been to happen, the Earth’s crust would soften and the oceans would boil, making the Earth fully unlivable. In the movie, our characters factual should wait issues out till they wintry down.
Associated
The forgotten sci-fi exhibit that quietly predicted our world 14 years ago
A company-controlled surveillance mutter? Expertise so advisable it makes us complacent? Crazy discuss, I describe you.
And all of this became once per a misreading of the Mayan calendar. By one discovering out, the Mayan calendar ends in the yr 2012, which of us took as a signal that the world itself would advance to an finish in 2012. However in reality, the calendar factual showed one cycle ending in 2012, and another one starting.
So the movie is per a misunderstanding from the originate, and factual retains digging from there.
NASA took this one in my thought
The scientists undoubtedly got drained of of us panicked about 2012
Credit: Sony
The conspiracy theory that the world would finish in 2012 because the Mayan calendar said so gained quite a few traction in the 2010s, which became once undoubtedly why Sony determined to operate a movie out of it. However you procure the thought that NASA became once annoyed. Essentially based on CNET, they place up a distinct website factual around the time the movie got here out answering questions of us had about the looming apocalypse. The website itself would no longer seem to exist to any extent further, but we aloof know what the irritated scientists wrote on it.
“Impressive movie special effects aside, December 21, 2012, won’t be the end of the world as we know,” the web sing be taught. “It will, however, be another winter solstice…Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”
Despite the indisputable reality that the movie cooked up a position about mutant neutrinos destroying the Earth, some feared that the 2012 apocalypse would possibly well possibly per chance additionally advance to pass thanks to some form of planetary alignment match, one thing else this NASA became once instant to shoot down. NASA senior research scientist Don Yeomans got the closing note: “I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV, and the movies is not based on science.”
I will imagine these scientists getting so frustrated they place up this website so they would possibly well possibly per chance additionally worth it the next time somebody asks them the perfect approach to prepare for 2012.
NASA vs disaster movies
This became once no longer an true duration for scientific literacy in the movies
2012 became once directed by Roland Emmerich, who additionally directed disaster movies luxuriate in Independence Day and The Day After The next day. Having a explore at NASA’s list, you procure the thought that they had an especial hatred for the genre: they list the 2d and third most scientifically astonishing movies as The Core and Armageddon, each and every of that are in this vein.
I occupy most of us know now to no longer place a question to scientific rigor when going into these kinds of movies,
