If Frodo could spot this apocalypse comet at high school astronomy club while most of his attention was focused on putting the moves on his crush, how did no one else see this thing? There are plenty of professional and amateur astronomers out there that should have blown the secret.
shareYou're looking for logic from Hollywood, King?
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.
Many comets, asteroids and similar objects are discovered by amateur astronomers every year. The sky is vast and even professional astronomers can't scan all of it. Most of them are pursuing their own research and would be concentrating on small areas of the sky. It is completely realistic that Leo (the characters name is Leo. And the actor's name is Elijah. I wish people would use one or the other when talking about this film and not Elijah's role in another, albeit more famous, film) could discover the comet.
shareDiscover maybe, but keep secret? There's roughly a year between the discovery and the announcement. If Frodo can spot this comet from light polluted, east coast skies with a cheap scope then it's going to be noticed by many others in the next 12 months.
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Maybe, maybe not. Those sorts of things are funny.
And again, its Leo or Elijah. THERE IS NO FRODO IN THIS MOVIE!!!
There is no "those sorts of things are funny" about this. A kid notices a fuzzy blemish within a degree of two named stars using a 4 or 5 inch newt in a Bortle 5 or 6 sky a year before the rest of the astronomy community does? Not a chance. Even if he had a really great 5 inch reflector he'd be limited to around 13th magnitude in the darkest of skies. I can see something that bright with my 12 inch, mid-range Dob in downtown New York City. There's no way that would go a year without being spotted.
shareI don’t even see how Frodo would have discovered it, being in high school. I could have seen if Frodo would have been a college student.
shareSince there's no Frodo this movie it is obvious that you are an unreliable witness. So don't worry about what you saw or didn't see: -nobody believes you anyway-
shareFrodo was a high school student that discovered the asteroid, which really doesn’t make sense unless Frodo’s parents were very rich and they were able to get Frodo access to the best telescopes.
shareBTW, I was just reading some more about the movie. One site points out that the comet is close to Mizar and Alcor. These are very popular stars for amateurs to turn their scopes to. There is no way it wouldn't be spotted but tons of astronomy buffs in that year's time. Not to mention that it would only be about 4-6 degrees from M101. This is a very popular target among astrophotography buffs. This would stick out like a sore thumb.
sharethat discovery doesn't matter to the main story. it only matters to the frodo's side story. if it was later discovered by someone else, people would know sooner but rest of the story will pan out in same fashion.
shareThey would have had a lot more time to prepare. I'd like to think if we knew of a comet coming in the spring of 2021 that the powers that be would do their best to move people from the coast. While it's no guarantee that the comet would it water, the effects of an impact in an ocean would be very devastating and it's the most likely outcome. Aside from that it would give people a lot of time to prep for the devastation. Frodo would have probably be given the same options and a similar outcome but a lot of his problems in the end lay in people having to scramble to try to preserve themselves. It's an interesting mental exercise, at least, to consider what might be done if we knew a comet impact was highly likely a year from now.
sharei think movie made it clear that the mission had good chance of success and in case the two missions failed, there was no saving life on earth except for the few. so getting away from cost wouldn't really save them if the missions failed. maybe government could have told the rest of the citizens that they were on their own. in that case people may have worked together to build their own shelters. government could give them instructions if not financial support.
shareThe mission mostly succeeded.There was no absolute success and failure in this case. So, what we had was millions died but a massive failure would have caused the death of billions. In this case what the movie made clear was that a bit of optimistic preparation would have saved millions.
More importantly than building shelters would have been people getting out of harm's way. Not to say that there are a ton of scenarios where building shelters wouldn't have helped but in this case just moving people away from the coast would have been a great advantage.
That's why they call it space. Because there is a lot of it.
shareI'm afraid if you look at this movie too closely, like other movies during its time, you will be disappointed. Stretch your disbelief as far as it can reach and just roll with 90's movies. It wsas such a fun time, but if you want logic or reason this is not the place to find it!
shareKeep in mind Frodo had NO idea that the comet he spotted would put the Earth in peril. It was The Toad that calculated that the comet that Frodo sent him the memo about was on a trajectory to Earth. Then as fate would have it The Toad fell victim to the truck driver’s scalding hot McDonald’s coffee. Thus the delay in detecting the danger. Other casual astronomers of course probably spotted it but did not have the equipment to project its’ path nor (I figure) would have even thought to.
shareI guess you could argue that even today (2020) astronomy is one of the few sciences where the amateur can still make a discovery. Probably more so 20+ years ago before everyone started networking, automating and training AIs to look for oddities.
Also - Hollywood Movie.