The Science of Annihilation
Five scientists go into a mysterious, incandescent bubble that’s taking over the earth, but does any of this add up in the real world? Surprisingly yes, talking bears and all.
“Annihilation”, the latest movie from visionary director of Ex-Machina (also, star-making role for Alicia Vikander, our new Lara Croft), is stunning, insanely well-directed, and a mix of hard-science and astral otherness. This movie presents a LOT of big ideas, especially in the realm of genetic biology, light theory, evolution, and physics. That this movie also works as a dreamy meditation on living organisms and creation is truly remarkable.
I could easily dwell for hours on the story of these five women soldier-scientists (with great performances by the leads Natalie Portman, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thomson, Tuva Novotny, and the always-incredible Jennifer Jason Leigh) the stellar direction, or the cinematography (and my god is this movie beautiful). But, when it comes to the science of the “Annihilation” I found three things that I knew in my heart I had to deep dive into with all of you; the talking bear from hell, the crystal trees, and the prism.
The Talking Bear
Human mimicry is nothing new to anyone who has owned a parrot, or had annoying neighbors who owned one. But parrots are far from the only animals who have demonstrated ability to mimic humans, and they are definitely not the largest. A beluga whale, a seal, and even an Asian Elephant have all learned to copy human speech (don’t believe me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrMaLrkc5U&feature=youtu.be). It is also quite common for predators to use mimicry to lure their prey, a technique used in every genus an phylum of the animal kingdom from fireflies to wild cats.
Combine these two adaptive traits together into a bear-anteater hybrid the size of a Subaru Forrester and you have that beast above, the most terrifying monster I have seen in years. After catching and killing, it learns to copy the death screams of its victims in order lure more of their kind to get eaten as well. This plays to horrifying effect to produce one of the creepiest scenes in recent memory.
For a monster like this to exist, however, would require a long timeline of hunting humans in order to adapt these physical traits. After all, it would need to hunt and kill enough people for those that could imitate to have this trait passed along more successfully in the gene pool. Which is very possible, as we have had many animals that wanted to eat us during our millions of years of evolution, though proto-humans were very good at wiping out their predators. And, while a predator like this could’ve hunted our ancestors at one point, nobody has ever found any evidence of it. Due to plot points that you will need to find out for yourself, however, this is not an issue for our hell-bear.
The Crystal Trees
The sets, landscapes, and general look of Annihilation is flat-out stunning. Director Garland obviously spent an inordinate amount of time to handcraft the look and feel of this film. I also guarantee it required a small army of 3d designers and artists to pull off as well as they did. “Seamless, gorgeous CGI” was a key component of Ex-Machina, as well, so it seems perhaps this is just one of this director’s core strengths.
And, in this sea of beautiful and other-worldly scenery, when Natalie Portman sees the crystal trees, they stand above all else as pure ephemeral eye-candy. But, could anything like this ever exist in the real world? How would a living crystal even work?
Scientists at New York University wanted to find out, and so they created a crystal that separate and merge in a way just like living cells, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6122/936. Though theories abound describing how life could form with a crystalline structure (unlike that of carbon which makes up life on planet earth), it wasn’t until these scientists actually made these crystal “cells” that we knew for sure.
However, we have found no evidence of this actually happening here on earth, any organisms that were like these crystal trees would most likely need to be made in the laboratory.
The Prism
*** MINOR SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD ***
The team of scientists quickly realize that the bubble they walk into, called “The Shimmer”, acts like a prism except that it bounces and refracts many types of matter, wavelengths, and particles; not just light. DNA is especially sensitive, and can be mixed and matched between totally different species through the air. But, could this ever actually happen?
We see in the opening that the source of the shimmer is from space, and so it raises the possibility that this is just a field particle that we don’t know about, brought from some far-off section of the universe. This is supported by the Shimmer’s exponential growth, meaning that as it eats up more land, it grows faster. If this were an alien particle that cause this refraction, it’s field diameter would grow as it converted earthly particles into its own.
*** END SPOILERS ***
I admit, “Alien particle” is a bit weak. While I loved the idea of a dna-bending 3d particle field, one would need to make some pretty wild theories to make this one work.
From a scientific perspective, Annihilation holds up quite well, especially for a film with such crazy creatures, crazy visuals, and 2001-inspired scifi-horror feeling that I found mesmerizing. I definitely recommend it on a big screen with a top-notch sound system, and ideally no bears.
