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Let’s get this out of the way immediately, so there’s no confusion: The movie Gravity (which opens today) is incredible. It was intense, it was tense, it was thrilling. Go see it. In fact—and I can’t believe I’m writing this—go see it immediately, and if you can, watch it in 3-D. I loved it.

But that love is not without its (minor) reservations. While I can wholeheartedly recommend it—I spent much of it literally on the edge of my seat—there were some things that, as a world-class nitpicky übernerd, I must point out. But I’ll note up front that nothing I whinge about below will detract from the experience of the movie itself. Seriously. It sets the bar for what movies can look like now. Go see it.

What follows below are spoilers, so fairly warned be thee, says I. Let me add that this is not your standard movie review; if you want thematic dissection and all that, then go read my colleague Dana Steven’s piece on Slate. With me, you get science analysis.

Plot Boiler

The plot of the movie can be summed up pretty briefly. Sandra Bullock and George Clooney portray astronauts orbiting the Earth on a routine extravehicular activity mission when a call comes from NASA: A Russian missile has destroyed a satellite, and the debris is headed their way at several kilometers per second. Before they can return to their Shuttle Orbiter, the shrapnel flies past, destroying the spacecraft and killing the crew. Clooney and Bullock make their way to the International Space Station, which is also damaged. Clooney is out of fuel in his Manned Maneuvering Unit and sacrifices himself to save Bullock. She uses a Russian Soyuz berthed to the ISS to get to the Chinese space station, where she finds a re-entry rocket capable of getting her back to Earth. But will she make it?

I won’t spoil the very end for you, because it was very well done. I’ll note that this is pretty much it for the plot—it’s thin, but you probably won’t notice.

That’s because the graphics really are all that. I mean, seriously: The special effects are superb. I generally shy away from movies that are all effects and no plot, but the immersive directing coupled with flawless effects—especially with the 3-D—was so compelling that I honestly felt the simple plot was not a concern as the movie unfolded. The drama and urgency were so riveting that I was essentially living in the moment, just experiencing the movie.

Dork Star

Still. There were some distractions in the form of scientific missteps. I’ll go over a few below, but I want to make myself very clear: My days of nitpicking a movie’s errors to death just because I can are behind me. The story lives or dies on the story, not whatever shortcuts it may need to take to move that story along, as long as those shortcuts don’t leap out and bite you on the nose. The plot of Gravity, unfortunately, does rely on some pivotal science boo-boos, but I understand sacrifices have to be made sometimes for the sake of the movie itself—without them, there’s no movie at all. And I’m far more willing to be forgiving when it’s clear a huge effort was made to get as much right as possible, which is obviously what director Alfonso Cuarón did (an interview at Collect Space confirms all this). The attention to some details was staggering.

So, let me push my glasses up my nose, hike up my flood pants, and blow my nose stentoriously. Let’s get to the glavin.

Orbital Mechanical Breakdown

The overall villain in the movie is not a human and not even the eponymous gravity. Not directly, at least: The true antagonist is orbital mechanics. It comes into play when the satellite debris first swarms past the astronauts and rears its Newtonian head again and again throughout the movie when the astronauts make their way to the ISS and then push on to the Chinese space station Tiangong.

The thing is, well … this won’t work. The problem is that most folks think of space as just having no gravity, so you can jet off to wherever you need to go by aiming yourself at your target and pushing off, like someone sliding on ice. But it doesn’t work that way.

The reason is that there is gravity in orbit! The Earth’s. And objects orbiting the Earth are moving at high velocity, many kilometers per second, to stay in orbit. If you want to get from Point A to Point B you can’t just be at the right place at the right time; you need to match velocities as well. If the two objects are in different orbits, that gets a lot harder. Orbital velocity depends on altitude, so objects at different heights move at vastly different speeds, adding up to many hundreds if not thousands of kilometers per hour. The orbits can be tilted with respect to one another, making it hard to match direction. The shapes of the orbits can be different, too, again complicating a rendezvous.

And in fact, Hubble and the ISS have very different orbits; Hubble orbits the Earth roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) higher up than the station. A rough calculation shows it orbits about 110 meters per second slower, then—250 miles per hour. Clooney would have a pretty hard time putting the pedal to the metal to get up to that kind of speed in his Manned Maneuvering Unit. (The “jet pack” he has in the movie—I’ll note the MMU is a real device but has nowhere near that kind of oomph; it can only accelerate one person to about 25 meters per second, and remember Clooney was dragging Bullock along for the ride as well.)

Also, the two objects have orbits tipped at wildly different angles (Hubble is 28.5 degrees, while ISS is at 51.6 degrees). Think of it this way: Two cars can be going at the same speed, but if they are at an angle to each other, jumping from one to another is hard, especially if one’s heading east while the other is heading northeast (and you have to jump off an overpass at the same time). At a relative speed of 250 mph, that’s suicide.

Same for Tiangong: The orbital height of the Chinese station is about the same as that of ISS, but the orbits are inclined by about 10 degrees. Matching orbits using just the soft landing rockets on the Soyuz (again, a real thing!) wouldn’t work.

But to be clear, without these plot points, we’d have no movie. It’s fun to think about afterward, but during the movie I’m OK with it.

Let It Go, Man

Another significant plot point happens when Clooney and Bullock reach ISS. Still attached by a tether, they have a hard time finding a grip on the station to stop themselves. Eventually, Bullock’s leg gets tangled in the parachute shroud line from the Soyuz escape capsule. Its hold is tenuous, and she struggles to hold on to Clooney as he is pulled away from her. As her leg starts to slip, Clooney unclips his tether and falls away to his doom, saving her in the process.

Except, well, not so much. The thing is, they very clearly show that when Bullock’s leg got tangled up in the shroud line, both her and Clooney’s velocity relative to the space station was zero. They had stopped.

On Earth, if one person is hanging by a rope and holding on to a second person, yeah, gravity is pulling them both down, the upper person bearing the weight of the lower one. If the upper person lets go, the other falls away. But in orbit, they’re in free-fall. Gravity wasn’t pulling Clooney away from Bullock; there were essentially no forces on him at all, so he had no weight for Bullock to bear! All she had to do was give the tether a gentle tug and Clooney would’ve been safely pulled toward her. Literally an ounce of force applied for a few seconds would’ve been enough. They could’ve both then used the shroud lines to pull themselves to the station.

This is a case where our “common sense” doesn’t work, because we live immersed in gravity, pulled toward the center of the Earth, supported by the ground. In space, things are different. During that scene, knowing what I know, all I could do was scream in my head “CLOONEY DOESN’T HAVE TO DIE!” but it was to no avail. My publicly admitted man-crush on Clooney plus my not-so-inner physics nerd made that scene hard to watch.

Ad Absurdum

Of course, there were lots of other things, most too trivial to spend time on.

• We see the bodies of the dead shuttle crew, frozen, when in reality that would take hours to happen. (Think about it: How long does it take a steak to even get frost on it when you put it in the freezer?)
• When Bullock’s decelerating in Earth’s atmosphere, her helmet is still floating in the capsule, when there would’ve been a healthy force pinning it to the back wall.
• Her antics using the fire extinguisher to match velocities with Tiangong were probably impossible; holding it too far from her center of mass meant it would’ve sent her rapidly tumbling every time she used it—plus she had to face away from the station, making it impossible to see her target while she was thrusting. (On the other hand, her not bracing herself to put out the fire and subsequently flying around was a great touch.)
• The cascade effect of orbital debris slamming into other satellites and making more debris is correct, but the debris will stay on roughly the same orbit it started on. That means the satellites making the debris would have to have orbits that intersect that of Hubble and ISS, and that sort of thing is specifically avoided in real life, for this very reason.
• Speaking of which, I’m not sure shrapnel hitting the robot arm would cause it to go flying and spinning off. The impact is very high speed, and I’m not sure much momentum would transfer from the debris to the arm. Hypervelocity impacts are difficult to predict, though, and I could be wrong here.

But again, this is all really nitpicky. And the movie got so much right. The sets were spot-on: the cramped Soyuz; the long, narrow ISS corridors; the appearance of essentially all the space hardware. I’ll note it was important to the plot that the Chinese Shenzhou re-entry vehicle was similar in design to the Soyuz, and in real life it is. When she hit the button to separate the crew module from the forward and rear modules, I practically cheered. That was accurate, and very cool.

And the scenery, well, wow. And how about this: I noticed pretty quickly that the stars were portrayed accurately! I saw the Pleiades float by, next to the horns of Taurus, and a glimpse of Orion. Other constellations came into view as well. Happily, this means Neil Tyson won’t have to confront Cuarón.

I can't leave you without mentioning this, too: Ed Harris was the voice of Mission Control. Talk about a nice touch: He played Flight Director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13. When I saw his name in the credits, my heart grew three sizes.

Dénouement

Obviously, there’s a lot to love and a lot to gnaw over in this movie. But the bottom line is clear: Go see this flick. The science errors won’t bug you, and if they do, you need to pull your head out of your assumptions of what a movie should be. As a demonstration of craftsmanship, and as a viewing experience, Gravity is astonishing. I loved it, and I’ll be going to see it again.

A final note: If this massive verbiage spewing wasn’t enough for you, lots of other people have reviewed the movie as well. I won’t vouch for how accurate their reviews are, but you may enjoy reading them.

• Dana Stevens at Slate
• Dennis Overbye at the New York Times
• Mark Hughes at Forbes
• David Edlesteon at Vulture
• Jonathan O'Callaghan at Space Answers interviews my friend Kevin Grazier, who was the science adviser for the movie. I talked to Kevin as well and basically confirmed what I said here: Some plot points were key to the movie, so the science was deemed secondary as long as it wasn’t too in your face.
• Robert Pearlman has an excellent review and interview with Alfonso Cuarón at Collect Space

On Aug. 1, 2008, 11 climbers perished on K2, the deadliest day in the mountain's history.

At 28,251 feet, K2 is the second-highest mountain in the world. It's roughly 800 feet shorter than the world's tallest peak, Mount Everest, but has the reputation of being far more dangerous.

The tragic event on K2 became a major news story in the summer of 2008, although the details of what happened on that day — and why so many people lost their lives — are still murky.

Director Nick Ryan attempts to piece together the story in a documentary called the "The Summit," which premiered at Sundance earlier this year.

The movie relies on interviews from survivors and uses footage from the actual climb as well as reenactments filmed in the Alps.

Here's a shortened version of the story, told using screenshots from the trailer, but we recommend seeing the full documentary. It goes on general release in select cities in the United States on Oct. 4.

Located on the western edge of the Himalayas, K2 is found at the center of the Karakoram Mountain range in northern Pakistan.

K2 is slightly shorter than Everest, but more dangerous to mountaineers because it is more difficult to climb and has notoriously bad weather since it is farther north.

Of the roughly 300 climbers who have reached the top of K2, more than one-quarter of them died on the way down.

Zac Vawter's bionic leg lets him walk up stairs with ease. That's because it senses his brain's instructions and moves accordingly, something that no other prosthetic leg can do.

The leg is the first of its kind to respond accurately to its user's thoughts, according to a report published Sept. 26 in the New England Journal Of Medicine.

Vawter, now 32, was in a motorcycle accident in 2009. Doctors had to amputate his leg just above the knee.

He had heard about mind-controlled prosthetics, which had previously only been used with robotic arms. Legs are more problematic, because when they fail you are more likely to get badly injured, for instance, by falling down the stairs. 

He asked about these new technologies and eventually became the "test-pilot" for a bionic leg created by Todd Kuiken's team at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The project was partially funded by an $8 million grant from the U.S. Army. 

The bionic leg uses electrodes and a microprocessor to read Vawter’s intentions via muscle contractions in his thigh. 

Normally, the brain sends electrical signals through the spinal cord to instruct muscles to move. For a leg amputee, those signals still occur, but there is no longer anywhere for that signal to go. Because of this the nerves near the amputation site tend to die off, leaving a dead circuit.

To avoid this, during the amputation, doctors rewired Vawter's nerves so they could control muscle contractions in his thigh. This kept the nerves alive. 

Within a few months of the surgery, Vawter's nerves began carrying electrical impulses to the muscles of his thigh. When Vawter thought about curling his toes or moving his leg, his thigh muscle contracted in distinct ways.

Vawter spent hours with his rewired thigh hooked up to electrodes, while the team recorded the electrical signals produced when he thought about making certain movements with his leg. The team then used pattern recognition software to digitize and catalog the movements.

The bionic leg was programmed to understand the signals and respond with the appropriate movement or action. 

"When the patient thinks about pushing his toes into the ground, called plantar flexing or lifting, and pointing his foot up, called dorsal flexing — essentially moving his ankle — instead of causing muscle that is below his knee to contract, those nerve signals have been redirected and his hamstring contracts," Levi Hargrove, the lead researcher on the team, told Medscape.

They've been working on the prosthetic and the software that goes with it for a long time, but now, it is nearly flawless — it responds correctly 98% of the time.

It has been so successful that Vawter climbed to the top of the 103-story Willis Tower in Chicago last year, according to The Chicago Tribune. Because the bionic leg is still in development, Vawter does not get to use it every day.

Even when he does wear it, the bionic leg is not yet an equivalent replacement for his real leg. Before his accident Vawter could dunk a basketball. The prosthetic isn't good enough to let him do that yet. 

"It’s in between the leg I wear every day and prior to amputation," Vawter told Bloomberg News. "It’s a dramatic improvement over my current prosthetic, but there is still a long way to go." 

And the team is still going — they are making it lighter and quieter, and improving battery life. Right now, the leg is good for 5,000 steps or about 2.5 miles. The army wants it to be able to perform twice that.

The technology could be on the market in three to five years, according to Hargrove. But it only works with people who have had their nerves attached to muscles in their thighs.

See the prosthetic in action:

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The Wall Street Journal had a staggering report recently that showed just how many crazy people America keeps in its jails instead of mental hospitals aimed at helping them get better.

America's three biggest jail systems — New York City, Los Angeles, and Cook County in Illinois — have 11,000 inmates being treated for mental illness. By comparison, The WSJ reported, the three largest state-run mental hospitals in the U.S. have only 4,000 beds.

This is a huge problem because prisons don't have the best reputation for helping the mentally ill get better. It is not a new problem, however.

Minneapolis-based photographer Jenn Ackerman got permission to photograph the Kentucky State Reformatory's psychiatric unit in 2008, after reading an article about the mentally ill in prison. It was not easy for Ackerman to get this kind of access, and the photos she took are absolutely haunting. We are running them with her permission.

Ackerman toured the prison's Correctional Psychiatric Treatment Unit, where inmates often must be restrained for their own protection.

Courtesy of Jenn Ackerman

The facility is staffed by licensed mental health professionals, but corrections officers like this one comfort inmates, too.

Courtesy of Jenn Ackerman

The psych unit started out with just 13 beds in 1998 but grew to 150 beds by 2008. This inmate on suicide watch curls up without a blanket.

Courtesy of Jenn Ackerman

The redesigned $100 note is scheduled for release on October 8th. Due to the enhanced security features "it only takes a few seconds to check the new $100 note and know it's real," according to Newmoney.gov, a website affiliated with the Federal Reserve Board,Treasury Department and U.S. Secret Service.

Check out a decade's worth of research and development that went into America's newest bank note.:

Blue 3-D Security Ribbon: The blue ribbon to the right of Benjamin Franklin is woven instead of printed on the paper. Tilt the note back and forth and the blue ribbon shows "Liberty like bells" transforming into "100s," When you tilt the note back and forth, the bells and "100s" will move side to side. Tilt the bill side to side, and the images move up and down. 

Raised Printing: Stroke Benjamin Franklin’s left shoulder and it will feel rough to the touch due to an enhanced intaglio printing process. 

Serial Numbers: Each note has a unique combination of 11 numbers and letters that appears on the front of the bill twice. These specific and original serial numbers aid law enforcement in identifying counterfeit notes.

Bell Hiding in an Inkwell: Inside the copper-colored inkwell is a bell that changes from copper to greenish hue when tilted.

Portrait Watermark: Hold the note to light and look for a faint image of Benjamin Franklin in the blank space to the right of the portrait. The image is visible from either side of the note. 

Security Thread: If you hold the note up to light you will see an embedded thread of the letters 'USA' and the number '100' running vertically on the note. Under ultraviolet light the thread glows a pinkish hue.

Look for the Gold: There is a large gold numeral '100' on the back of the note. This addition is designed to help individuals with visual impairments to read the denomination.

And some other features, not tied specifically to security:

New Color: The background color is a pale blue but don't rely on this feature to check the note's authenticity. Instead, scroll down to check out how the serial numbers aid against counterfeiting.

American Symbols of Freedom: U.S. symbols of freedom addition includes phrases from the Declaration of Independence and the quill used by the Founding Fathers to sign the document.

Federal Reserve Bank Indicator: The Federal Reserve System is represented by a universal seal that is to the left of Benjamin Franklin's portrait. A letter and number identifies the issuing Federal Reserve Bank — there are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks and 24 branches located in major U. S. cities.

Printing Locator: The new $100 notes are printed in either Washington, D.C., or Fort Worth, Texas. If the bill is printed in Fort Worth, it will have a small 'F.W.' in the top left corner on the front of the note. 

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This morning Francois Englert and Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for predicting a subatomic particle, known as the Higgs boson, that helps explain how particles acquire mass.  

Englert is from Belgium and Higgs is British, adding to each country's overall total. 

As you can see from this chart detailing the total number of Nobel prize laureates awarded from 1901 to 2012, the U.S. has twice as many Nobel laureates as the next country (U.K.).

SEE ALSO: The 5 Most Important Physics Discoveries Of The Past 25 Years

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An highly addictive and destructive drug concocted using lighter fluid, paint thinner, matchboxes, and codeine tablets has made its way from Russia to America — and it now appears to be spreading.

Known as krokodil ("crocodile" in Russian), the drug can turn skin greenish and scaly by destroying tissue and blood vessels. It originated in Russian in 2003 as an inexpensive substitute for heroin.

Last month doctors in Arizona treated patients who said they had taken the drug, and this week a doctor in Illinois says that he has treated at least three patients who reported use of the drug and presented its symptoms.

“It is a horrific way to get sick. The smell of rotten flesh permeates the room," Dr. Abhin Singla, director of Addition Services at Presence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Ill., told The Times Weekly. "Intensive treatment and skin grafts are required, but they often are not enough to save limbs or lives.”

Krokodil's psychoactive agent, desomorphine, was first synthesized in the U.S. in 1932 as a less nauseous and less addictive substitute for morphine. But desomorphine is actually eight to 10 times as potent as morphine and may be more addictive because its effects are more rapid.

Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post notes that about 10 years ago, Russians discovered how to synthesize desomorphine at home using codeine, paint thinner, lighter fluid, hydorcloric acid, and red phosphorous (which can be gleaned from the sides of matchboxes).

The resulting drug, which is usually taken intravenously, is devastating to the body. (The pictures are horrifying.)

“When you use the krokodil . . . really what you’re doing is injecting red phosphorus and solvents into your body,” Matt Zuckerman, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told the Post.

In 2011 Vice produced a documentary called "Krokodil Tears," which show heroin addicts turning to krokodil by using ingredients available at ordinary pharmacies.

Habitual users in Russia often die within 2 years of starting the drug.

SEE ALSO: The 'First Global Snapshot' Of The Drug War Used Government Data To Prove That It's An Abysmal Failure

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It's been just over a year since Nikon announced the D600. The company's compact full-frame camera delivered a ton of power for $2,100, and it's still a top option for photographers looking for a new DSLR. Still, for one reason or another, Nikon's figured it's time to refresh its high-end body, with the nearly identical D610. There's still a 24.3-megapixel FX sensor, an EXPEED 3 processor, a 25,600 top ISO, dual SD card slot, 39-point autofocus and a 921k-dot 3.2-inch LCD. The improvements, while relatively minor for most users, may be fairly significant for certain professionals. The most appealing addition is a quiet continuous mode. After activating it by selecting Qc on the mode sub dial, you'll be able to shoot at up to 3 fps with limited mechanical noise. Additionally, the traditional continuous mode has been boosted from 5.5 fps to 6. There are minor white balance improvements with the D610, too, enabling improved skin tone reproduction when shooting in artificial light.

We spent a few minutes with the D610 body, but Nikon reps didn't permit us to power on the unit. Unfortunately that means we were unable to evaluate the new quiet continuous mode -- pros that plan to shoot with this setting regularly, be it at a wedding or on a movie set, should definitely test Qc out in a store before ordering this slightly tweaked model. The housing and control placement is identical here, with the exception of the Qc offering on the sub mode dial. You also have an identical set of ports available -- there's still no built-in WiFi, so if you have a $60 WU-1b wireless adapter hanging around, you'll be able to use it to get connected here, too. The Nikon D610 will be available later this month for $2,000 (body only), $2,600 with a 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 lens, $3,050 with a 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens or $3,250 with the 24-85, a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6, WU-1b, a bag and a 32GB SD card.%Gallery-slideshow100108%

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