LUCY: Imaging of future

As a rocket scientist and mathematician, my friends and university students continuously ask me about my thoughts on the science in today's blockbuster movies.



They question if certain concepts are accurate, and if particular scenarios can actually happen. Normally, I have a short one or two sentence answer, which immediately quenches their curiosity. However, recently I watched the Universal Pictures movieLucy, written and directed by Luc Besson, starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman. When asked about my opinion on the science in this movie, I have more than just one or two sentences to share this time.



First off, the movie left me visually spell-bound. The actors and actresses where superb, and I applaud my fellow French producers for prioritizing a scientific concept in the middle of an American action film. However as a scientist, I must stop and state that over 60% of the science in Lucy was either misleading or inaccurate. From the hospital intestinal surgery scenes to the kinesiology-brain responses during fights, a number of scientific consequences were mistakenly overlooked. As a TED speaker on the topic of reprogramming the brain to overcome fear, I will clarify and correct just three of these science misinterpretations surrounding the brain, math, and after-life concepts as suggested in the film.




Without giving away the entire storyline,



Lucy is a motion picture about a smart, thrill-seeking college student who finds herself in a horrific drug and human trafficking situation where her brain is permanently altered by a laboratory drug ingested during her captivity.



Due to the drug's volatile biological restructuring nature, she begins using more than 10% of her brain and has less than 48 hours to live. She finds the one neuroscientist and professor (played by Morgan Freeman) who can capture her superhuman brain phenomenon for the world. However, time is limited because villains jeopardize her life in the process.



The movie Lucy must give current day mathematicians and physicists more credit.



"1+1" doesn't always equal two. Every mathematician and scientist knows this fact. However in the movie, the main character attempts to imply that mathematicians are limited by this concept and their math is only as useful as its own measurement system. This statement is absolutely 100% false. In reality, mathematicians and physicist are the ones who have proved higher dimensions exist, namely in two branches of mathematics, Topology and Chaos Theory. But humanity has yet to understand its practical results.



Take for example the branch of math called Topology. This study centers itself on explaining spaces that can and cannot be measured, like Space in other galaxies. The study shows that not all things in existence can be measured. Further, another branch of mathematics called Chaos Theory explains both higher and lower infinitesimal sub-dimensions. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Chaos Theory helped reveal "super-highways" in Space for traveling to Mars faster. Scientists also use it to explain the instantaneous decision-making moments where "all hell can break loose" - like why a tornado hits one home and not another; why brush fires travel in one direction and not another; even why someone's brain subconsciously chooses a certain mate over another.



According to Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, time is subjective. In the same way that a large ball placed on an elasticated cloth stretches the fabric and causes it to sag, so do planets and stars warp space-time. Chaos Theory and Topology are used to understand systems that seem pattern-less. We are seeing that the brain and the universe are mirroring each other through Chaos Theory. Shockingly similar to the human brain, our Solar System is identically composed of 10% luminous matter, and 90% of an unknown substance called dark matter with unknown functions -- where time and space are appearing not always predictable. In short, mathematics is an every-changing human language depicting changing patterns in the universe. And the findings are extrapolated to higher dimensions (called non-metric spaces) where 1+1 doesn't equal 2. And frankly, this sum is sometimes never defined.