There’s a great piece on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log today about a visit by Doug Liman and Hayden Christensen, director and star of the new sf movie “Jumper,” to MIT to meet with some physicists to discuss the movie.  With teleportation at the core of the film, Liman was waiting to be “shredded,” but found the visit “incredibly inspiring, because the physicists explained how they use movies to make physics more appealing and more magical.”  MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, who organized the event, found it much more fun and enlightening than he’d expected:

Tegmark said the best thing about science-fiction movies, even movies where the science is especially fictional, is that they spark more interest in science fact.

“As a scientist, often the hardest thing is not finding the right answer, but finding the right question - and science fiction is great for generating the right questions,” Tegmark told me. “It’s like when you’re watching a movie and you say, ‘It’s obvious that that’s impossible.’ Then you realize, it’s not so obvious why it’s impossible. You start asking very basic questions about the nature of space and time.”

That’s how Einstein started along the path that eventually led to E=mc2 and more.

He also admitted to being a little surprised by the number of “groupies” scattered among the MIT students, noting that “the affair had a party atmosphere, with some students sporting Darth Vader masks and lightsabers.”  Sounds more like a con.