Bad Science: Titanic
Source: CBS Local
Titanic is certainly one of the most beloved films of the 1990s, and while director James Cameron is known for being a high-paying stickler for details, one definitely escaped him while making Titanic – much to the chagrin of physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It seems that Cameron’s star-crossed lovers Jack and Rose were floating on driftwood under the wrong sky. Given the longitude, latitude and the time of day that the Titanic sank in 1912, the stars were so glaringly misaligned (and mirrored from the center!) that Tyson felt compelled to let Cameron know, writing a letter outlining how the acclaimed director’s post-production star field was “Not only wrong, but lazy.”
As his response, Cameron says: “And with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that, and I should have put the right star field in. So I said ‘All right, send me the right stars for that exact time and I’ll put it in the movie.'” And with that, we get to imagine Neil deGrasse Tyson sitting in on his couch, watching Titanic in 3D with a historically correct view of the sky, munching on a giant tub of popcorn.
Hear Neil talk about it below, and how there may or may not have been a nod to the flub in the first episode of Cosmos:
