The earth consists of an external surface and a core; between the surface and the core is a mantle; in all, there are some 2,000 miles from the surface to the core. Solar winds are emitted, with temperatures that fry everything in their path, but the earth is protected from solar winds by an electromagnetic field (EMF) around the globe. The EMF, in turn, exists because the energy source is a natural nuclear reactor at the earth’s core, which is the size of Mars, where uranium and other fuels have collected. If the core stops producing a magnetic field, the earth is doomed, and trace elements in recent volcanic eruptions show that the reactor is slowly running down, though the life expectancy of the planet may still be billions of years. So says J. Marvin Herndon in an essay in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published in early March 2003. The film The Core, released at the end of March, is based on a similar premise. Dr. Conrad Zimsky (played by Stanley Tucci) has been hired by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to develop a weapon that would cause massive earthquakes underneath an enemy country, Project Destiny, and there is a hint in the film that the project may have tested capabilities already. The movie begins in Boston, where an executive suddenly falls dead on arrival at a board meeting; indeed, two dozen or so persons die at the same time within a small area of the city. Soon, the DOD summons two experts to explain whether the event is a terrorist attack of some sort. The two experts are Professor Josh Keyes (played by Aaron Eckhart), a geophysicist, and Dr. Sergei Leveque (played by Tcheky Karyo), a weapons expert. Keyes immediately surmises that they all had pacemakers which were turned off due to an electromagnetic disturbance, so DOD loses interest. Trafalgar Square, London, soon is filled with a swarm of pigeons that fly into people and windows and then fly away, one of several similar incidents reported around the world. Next, a spacecraft under the command of Colonel Robert Iverson (played by Bruce Greenwood) is unable to follow instructions from Houston Space Center to land at Edwards Air Force Base; instead, Major Rebecca Childs (played by Hillary Swank) gets permission to land on the Los Angeles River. Meanwhile, Professor Keyes puts two graduate students to work to generate a computer model of the future of the earth, inputting unusual measurements of various kinds, convinced that something new is happening. When he presents the pessimistic conclusion that the earth is dying quickly to world famous theoretical scientist Dr. Zimsky, the latter scoffs at his findings until summoned by the DOD to account for increasingly strange occurrences, such as the shattering of Rome’s Coliseum and the collapse of the Golden Gate Bridge. Zimsky then calls upon Professor Keyes to present his theory at a briefing in Washington. Keyes argues that the earth’s core has stopped spinning, so the EMF is not holding back solar winds, and the planet will fry in a year. The next question, whether anything can be done to restart the spinning of the core, leads the scientists to the Salt Flats of Utah, where Dr. Ed Brazzleton (played by Delroy Lindo) has developed Virgil, a vehicle made from the fictional element Unobtanium that can penetrate the many hundreds of miles of the earth’s mantle to reach the core, where nuclear bombs can be detonated. (The alternative, Project Destiny, is still a secret but held in reserve as a last resort, though the danger is that the earth may simply break up into pieces if massive earthquakes emerge all over the planet.) Accordingly, DOD agrees to dispatch Virgil with a crew consisting of all the scientists thus far identified. DOD also hires a computer hacker, nicknamed Rat (played by C.J. Quailis), who can both access any database needed and can jam any information leaking out about the secret mission. Most of The Core then follows an exciting script that is a twenty-first century retake of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), which in retrospect appears to be prescientific. Indeed, the film is so filled with scientific knowledge that graduating high school seniors may be inspired to major in geophysics in college, and current college students might decide to change their majors after being impressed by all the scientific knowledge articulated as the crew encounters one problem after another in their quest. Indeed, science knows more about Mars than about the earth’s core, so there is much need to study the issues raised in The Core. Due to lack of knowledge, there is some sci-fi mixed with real science, but that will make classrooms even more exciting. Does the earth shuttle complete its mission and does the crew return to the earth’s surface? Is Project Destiny launched instead? The suspense is nailbiting, but there is no hint that The Core, directed by John Amiel, is a film noir, and that is enough of a clue about the heroism and the ending. MH