MovieChat Forums > The Core (2003) Discussion > What I learned from The Core

What I learned from The Core


1. Lightning is attracted to stone structures, not metal, and makes them explode.

2. Intense microwaves that melt steel will only give human skin a bad sunburn.

3. A radio that can transmit thruogh the entire Earth's mantle and crust won't be able to transmit to the next compartment of the ship.

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4. You can make your cellphone free to use by whistling a tone through gum-paper and pressing random keys.

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5. When the Government is about to activate a weapon that will destroy your ship and kill everyone in it and you come up with a plan to stop them and save the world, there's still time for a cigarette before you explain the plan to your crew-mates.

6. An acronym for Deep Earth Seismic Triggers INItiative is actually spelt DESTINY.

7. Helmets designed to withstand the pressure of the centre of the Earth can be pierced by a piece of crystal.

8. A guy dumb enough to use phrases as absurd as "the first one" when asked if he is a certain person, yes or no? and "there's nothing on the right of the equals sign" when no conclusion has been reached is the only person in the world capable of figuring out that the Earth's core has stopped spinning.

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9) High ranking government officials and scientists need visual aids such as a peach and a can of flaming air freshener to help them understand the concept of earth being scorched.

10) Ships constructed of Unobtainium have the unique ability to spawn additional compartments when one of the originals are ejected due to damage.

11) It is necessary to label your folders as top secret in your own file cabinet. This is probobly done with the hope that if someone breaks into your office to snoop at files, they will not look at that one.

12) While drawing straws to see who gets to sacrifice their life, the most important factor at this moment is who "get dibs on being the hero".


...There is no spoon! (The Matrix)

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[deleted]

9) High ranking government officials and scientists need visual aids such as a peach and a can of flaming air freshener to help them understand the concept of earth being scorched.


This might be the single funniest, most absurd moment in the whole movie. I giggle just thinking about it.

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[deleted]

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"4. You can make your cellphone free to use by whistling a tone through gum-paper and pressing random keys. "

Actually this has been done before by hackers. Something to do with cell phone signals and sound waves I'm not smart enough to explain but back in the late 90's and early 2000's people have been known to pull this off I remember reading this in a magazine. Today I really doubt that you can get away with something like that

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You might be thinking of the scam where you could use a Captain Crunch whistle which produced the same frequency the phone used to dial and thereby tricking it into producing a free call. I doubt anything like that would work for cell phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking#2600_hertz

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13. Bombs that send out a blast equally in all directions can somehow produce a turing effect on the Earth's core.

14. When a ship is heading vertically into the centre of the Earth, the crew can still walk between the compartments as though the ship were horizontal.

15. Months worth of damage caused by the Earth's core stopping spinning will be repaired in five seconds once the core starts to spin again.

16. People will not start to panic and create mass hysteria about the end of the world after over thirty unexplained deaths at the same instant, a swarm of berserker pidgeons attacking London, an unexplained shuttle crash-landing, the complete obliteration of Rome by an unimaginably powerful thunderstorm and the collapse of the Golden-Gate Bridge all in the space of three months.

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17. A simple kick can knock over a crystal that was heavy enough to stop a ltrasonic speeding ship

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18. The core of the Earth is somehow the size of Mars.

19. It's possible for a ship traveling at about 100 knots to circumnavigate the core in a matter of hours.

20. Although they have to travel through thousands of miles of rock to get to the core, it somehow makes sense to transport the whole ship and launching system to the north Pacific to save having to dig through an extra few miles.

21. A suit that's capable of protecting someone against thousands of degrees will still function for a time when subjected to twice its capacity.

22. If someone's working in a lab and zapping through lead with "souped-up microwaves," all lab workers are allowed to walk behind it.

23. A savvy hacker would bother to show his face in a cyber cafe when the more anonymous technique would be to simply find someone's unsecured wireless connection.

24. Although all measurements were guesstimates and things like the actual density of the outer core are unknown and they're still guessing how large the inner core is, they still think they have place the nukes with an accuracy of inches.

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25. When there is a natural disaster in the Earth, the answer is "NUKE IT!"

26. When a person falls into a flow of magma, their body (which is less dense than molten rock) will sink into it.

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my my...it is funny what crazy things can happen in the unrealistic world of movies...LOL but you guys did come up w/ some good stuff!

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27. A known hacker is allowed to roam freely on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.

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28. How to get FREE Long Distance calls on your cell phone:

1. Get a gum wrapper and place it over your phone.

2. Whistle into the Gum Wrapper.

3. Mash the keypad.

4. Voila! You know have free long distance.

When the Defecation hits the Oscillation.

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Up until the mid-90's you could do that with just about any landline...some famous hacker discovered that if done at the right tone or frequency you could fool the system into thinking it was a computer signal. Don't think it'd ever work on a cellphone past or present.

"Listen, do you smell something?"
Ray Stanz-Ghostbusters

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FYI

by
ChairmanMauzer
» Thu Apr 11 2013 16:08:51 Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since September 2012

You might be thinking of the scam where you could use a Captain Crunch whistle which produced the same frequency the phone used to dial and thereby tricking it into producing a free call. I doubt anything like that would work for cell phones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking#2600_hertz

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27. That a suit that can withstand approx 4500 degrees will not protect the hands of the wearer from a nuclear reactor that's only approx 2500 degrees.

28. That when faced with a computer that won't allow you to eject a compartment that isn't damaged, the only solution is to sacrifice the builder to hit the manual override instead of having the builder send a false failure signal to the computer.

29. That is is possible to come up with a batch of pseudo-scientific horsepucky that is worse than Day After Tomorrow.

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[deleted]

27. "Best guess. That's all science is."

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27. A solid object positioned between a trumpet and a microphone will change the frequency of the note picked up by the microphone.

In reality, the frequency never changes, regardless of the medium. Only the velocity and wavelength change.


28. A ship shaped like a subway train, oriented vertically, will allow people to walk down the length of the ship as if gravity was sideways.

In reality, gravity points downwards.


29. "Fluid dynamics 101" teaches you how non-directional explosives triggered in the correct sequence can induce a torque on a spherical body.

In reality, a nuclear weapon cannot induce a torque.

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You're an idiot. Frequency changes as wavelength changes. They mentioned using a gyroscopic cockpit. Read up on wave interference.

In reality, you're a dumbass.

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27. When Serg dies, Josh freaks out. However, after a couple of hours, there are no hard feelings and everyone is friends.

28. Gen. Purcell (the 4-star) has executive authority and happens to be everywhere. Where's the president, VP, National Security Advisor, etc?

29. Rat just so happens to be with the General when he hears the dolphins at the end. The military is really open toward civilians coming aboard carriers during missions. Especially hackers with records without an established military security clearance.

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Rat was part of the whole project so he did have clearance......

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imdb-2920 wrote:

18. The core of the Earth is somehow the size of Mars.


The Earth's core is made up of two parts: The inner, solid core is 2600 km diamter. It is covered by a 2200 km thick outer, liquid core. We have a total core diameter of 7000 km. The equatorial diameter of Mars is 6794 km.

Source: Roger A. Freeman, William J. Kaufmann III, Universe 7th edition

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I am gonna add all of this to wikipedia

someone told me to get a life, but i dont know where to download one..HEY! can I download yours?!

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LoL, cracked me up, I need to download a life too.

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look at the diagram. the core is bigger than mars. nice work on being a genius.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_core

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14. When a ship is heading vertically into the centre of the Earth, the crew can still walk between the compartments as though the ship were horizontal.


Just to be geeky, at the start of the film we see one of the cast playing with a scale model of the craft and it shows that the cockpit or flight deck is free to rotate on all axis....

that doesn't however explain how they can walk into another compartment as you said, as they would have to climb through the roof to go aft and so on..

yeah ok, maybe my point was flawed too, its not like the movie is lacking a few

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All i can say is, this movie is extremely far-fetched and any human soul who watches it can agree, but for some reason, everytime i watch it, i'm always entertained. It has good actors in it, who know the movie they're making is completely unbelievable, but they sell it well, as does the director and his style. Jon Amiel hasn't done much since, but he did okay on this one. Where have the actors in this movie gone since it was made?

Aaron Eckhart - Harvey Dent/Two Face in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight
Hilary Swank - Won 2 Academy Award nominations since then
Tcheky Karyo - Chose not to have a great acting career, still a good actor
Stanley Tucci - 5 notches behind Tom Hanks in the acting category all his life
Delroy Lindo - Hasn't done much lately, still an admirable veteran actor
Bruce Greenwood - Almost the same character in every movie, but is likable.
Richard Jenkins - Been on Six Feet Under, and in a lot of good comedies.
DJ Qualls and Alfre Woodard are the only two who have not gone on to have a very good acting career. Alfre Woodard is a veteran, too, but she hasn't done much. Qualls was in Road Trip, Hustle & Flow, this movie, and Delta Farce, all of which he was annoying.

"Imagination is the Figment"

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I agree with you spidysense97-1, I watched on telly the other day for the first time and I kept saying to my wife as she walked past, "this film is stupid", everytime she would reply "So why are you watching it then?" my response? "I want to know what happens!!!".... Makes no sense, but your post seemed to sum it up for me, I was entertained and thats what I like out of a film.

"We have 650 planes!"
"Yes, and they have 2,500"
"Well they wont all come over at once"

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My pleasure helping. The only thing that bugged me about this movie the 1st few times i watched it, was thinking how they could get any kind of ship to withstand the intense heat from the core of the Earth, and after watching it a couple days ago, i never noticed Delroy Lindo(Brazz) saying that the exterior of the ship would convert the intense heat into energy for the ship's power source. Still a little far fetched, but i'm glad i caught that.

"Imagination is the Figment"

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Sorry, but thought the acting was also bad. I blame the director for coaxing such bad performances out of such normally good actors.

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OT, I know, but I totally agree with you. I got sucked into watching this again (It's on about once every 6 weeks on a movie channel) and I can't help loving this film, despite the fact the acting is scenery chewing, the characters are not really likable, the science is screwy (One of us needs to go outside!), and it's all a pile of tosh. I still like it. What's wrong with me?

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30. That the logical explanation to every movie plot-hole that could ever be created is that a new metal known simply as "Unobtainium" can do anything, ever.

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Favorite quote: "Feel free to throw up. I know I did."

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30. That the earth actually has a layer of empty space above the crystals.

31. That physics is wrong, because gravity does not change as you get closer to something.

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32. A puny bird can smash hardened, or any kind of, glass.

33. Your hull can convert heat to electrical energy merely by sticking a wire to the surface.

34. Whales can descend to 13 kms below the surface.

35. If your pace-maker fails, you drop dead on the spot.

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31. That physics is wrong, because gravity does not change as you get closer to something.


Let me see the farther you get from the planet earth the less gravity you have (ie on the moon). So it would make since the closer you get the more gravity you have

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31. That physics is wrong, because gravity does not change as you get closer to something.

Actually, getting closer to the earth's core reduces gravitional pull, as can be proven using Gauss' divergence theorem. So, essentially, when you are at the very core gravity will be zero.

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Just to elaborate on this correct statement, once you are inside the earth the maths says that you can ignore all the mass at a greater distance from the centre of the earth than you ... effectively you calculate the gravitational pull as if you were at the surface of a sphere with a radius equal to your distance from the centre.

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> 30. That the earth actually has a layer of empty space above the crystals.

Just as impossible I admit ... but it was actually explained as a geode. Geodes can exist at small sizes due to their ability to dissipate forces along their skins, similar to the way eggs are very strong in one direction, but one of that size is not possible, especially with diamonds "the size of Cape Cod" floating around ...

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36. If an astronaut is "just not ready" to make a manual emergency landing of a shuttle, then they absolutely shouldn't do so even if the only other alternative is to let the shuttle crash and kill everyone aboard.

37. HTTP error 404 is actually an "Access Denied" error, not "File not Found" as many of us believe.

38. The general of one of the most complex organisations in the world does not understand the difference being going into space and ging into the centre of the earth.

39. The government stores all the information about its top secret military projects on a web page on the internet, which can be found by typing the name of a project into a search engine.

40. A space shuttle very nearly crash landing on a busy LA Freeway will not cause any kind of traffic disruption.

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41. That the race scene in "Grease" would have been a lot better if one of the cars was a space shuttle.

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haha! i like that one ecreedy52

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*More than likely major Spoilers*
Answers/rebutals to various points
3. By the time the comm cuts out, we don't hear Deep Earth hearing the severed communications, as far as I recall. The energy/radiation screwed it over at that depth.
4. Real or not, I liked that bit.
5. That was annoying yet funny.
8. Attempting to be funny if I recall, not dumb.
11. That is quite funny actually, more than likely done for our benifit, especially since it was key locked anyhow.
14. Good point, didn't register.
15. The damage on the planet wasn't; the damage above, you may have a point.
16. There probably was hysteria, but most was canceled off the web, and people still needed to live with no answer as to what's happening; also I believe Rome and SF where within the time of 'Virgil's decent, aka a week, three months after the birds and the pacemakers.
17. Well, if the crystal stopped the ship because it refracted the laser, and the impellers had nothing to draw it forward, it might stop.
18. Radius of Mars = 3397 km [2111 mi]
Radius of inner and outer core = 3480 km [2162 mi]
Read it and weep
20. The crust is only 30 km [19 mi] thick at most places, thinner at the Marianas Trench, and the Crust and the inner core are the only solid parts of Earth, The mantle and outer crust are molten.
21. A few thousands of degrees, and the suit may withstand but not protect, or melt, but not as fast as you suspect it should.
23. He wanted to pad his ego, so what?
24. Hey, if you are going to do it, do it right. The first plan didn't matter where the bomb was placed because it was singular; coordinating the more complex coordinated blasts of 5 nukes to generate the desired result with the least needed amount of error seems sensible to me.
25. I agree with Dr. Keyes, hopefully the irony gods will smile on us, or something like that. Also, I like how casually he was sitting on a cart transporting 10,000 mega tons of nuclear explosives.
26. Was the suit less dense though, and or, was there and undertow?
27. Can protect, but not render unvulnerable? I don't know.
28. I pretty sure that Braz would have sent a signal if it was possible; Rat was on the surface and not connected, he was the uber hacker.
29. It's Sci-Fi. You actually think that we have Transporters and Lightsabers and Stargates, or is it because it's on the Earth and not given to us by aliens that most of this stuff equals instant lame factor.
30. See 29.
30a. Not a layer, it was a geode, sort of an ovid, but they were going to fast to go around it anyhow.
31. I pondered that also, 'Plot-device Mr. Frodo, Plot-device'.
32. How about lots of tiny birds.
33. It can if it is heat to energy transfering Unobtainium.
34. Did the whales go all the way to the trench?
39. The govermwent's computers with a local area network are still connected to the web, and therefore hacker suseptible. He hit the FBI if you will recall. Ever watch Wargames? Same thing.

I was bored.

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"27. Can protect, but not render unvulnerable? I don't know."

I'm wearing a silicone oven mitt that is designed to protect my hands from getting burned when I pull out the pan of tater-tots that have been cooking at 450 degrees. Why would I fear getting burned when I pull out my coffee cake that's only been baking at 300 degrees if I use the same mitt?

"28. I pretty sure that Braz would have sent a signal if it was possible; Rat was on the surface and not connected, he was the uber hacker."

What does Rat have to do with anything? Braz was the designer of the systems meaning he likely designed the Operating System or at least the protocals that the programmers used. All you'd have to do is make the system think the pressure was hitting the threshold point of ejection and done deal.

"29. It's Sci-Fi. You actually think that we have Transporters and Lightsabers and Stargates, or is it because it's on the Earth and not given to us by aliens that most of this stuff equals instant lame factor."

Stargates use theories currently under discussion about the folding of space and/or hyperspace. Lightsabers while aren't plausable, don't scream "broken laws of physics" at the top of their lungs. Transporters have been done! Admittedly only for single, sub-atomic particles of matter, but we have done it sucessfully.

What the bother for me is.
1. Lets base our plan on how to start the core by modeling on a 2 dimensional circle instead of a three dimensional sphere.
2. Ever took a bucket of water and turned the handle when you were carrying it? Didn't the water keep spinning? It's called friction between the walls of the bucket and the water. Well it's the same way for the Earth. The layers have friction between them. As long as the Earth is still spinning, so to will the core. I tend to think people would have noticed the Earth not spinning.
3. Unfiltered sunlight melting a frigging bridge when the unfiltered light of the sun didn't hurt the Lunar Module or the astronauts on the moon.

I can suspend disbelief for warp drives, blasters, lightsabers, transporters and the like, but this movie had problems with the fact that they re-wrote half the laws of physics badly. I mean at least Star Trek never changed the existing laws of physics...just added a few new ones and guessed correctly at others.

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Insofar as the "empty space" everyone is referring to, maybe I'm wrong, but I remember them saying something about gigantic geodes. You know, the rocks that when you break them open, are hollow and lined with crystals?

If that wasn't said, then I guess I just logically infered it. I was under the impression that they just "happened" to run into one.

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Great thread, I'm happy I spotted most of the implausabilities but you guys have come up with a few that I never thought about.

There are some things you are prepared to buy into because they are movie conventions - for example the sounds you hear in the vaccuum of space are not plausible, but of course it's not plausible that we are there floating in space to perceive them. They are added merely to emphasise the action, like incidental music, or those "Bam" captions on Batman.

There are other things you can buy into because they are, while not necessarily plausible, make a kind of sense within the premise of the movie. So we accept time travel, FTL, transporter technology etc in Star Wars, Trek etc. Here we can possibly buy into the Destiny project, unobtanium, the lasers, the core stopping its spinning. If we can't imagine such things might be theoretically possible without overanalysing them, there's no point watching the movie.

However, beyond those, to simply ride roughshod over the simplest laws of physics that any schmuck can pick up on, and you lose all credibility. That's where The Core falls down. For me it was the moment those guys opened the outer hatch to the Geode (a concept not entirely implausible, but very implausibly realised) and were not instantly melted/crushed/sucked through the hole.

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Rebuttal to point 20: The Marianas Trench is a destructive plate boundary, or for the American terminology, a "subduction zone". As such the crust of the earth is pushed down beneath the secondary layer creating the trench we see today. But the crust is far too thick to be instantaneously vapourised at any specific depth, and as such extends surprisingly deep into the mantle. As such, the original complaint - that the Marianas Trench is actually thicker - is correct.

To be a complete geek (as I undoubtedly am, but hey, go me), a better place to go would be the Arctic Ocean, as the location of the seabed, while not being as deep as the Marianas Trench, is actually closer to the Earth's Core due to the "bulge" effect of the earth around its equatorial region.

To be even more honest, though, you're digging through a fair few thousand miles of rock/mantle/random stuff not included on the navigation guidance system, and we've already seen that cutting through solid rock is no problem at all for the machine. So... why bother relocating the thing in the first place?

If the scientists in this movie were indicative of those in real life, trust me, we'd all be dead by now. ;-)

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Can you not see the real reason for selecting the Mariana Trench? They did that so, while at the movie theatre, while the girl and guy are on their date, the girl can stupidly ask, "Why did they go to the Mariana Trench?" The guy instinctively recalls 8th grade geography and leans over and whispers, "It's the lowest point on the planet." His quick thinking thereby landing giving his hand free reign on her opposite shoulder.

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42. College professors learn all of their freshman student's names.

43. There is a tectonic plate boundary near Hawaii.

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> 43. There is a tectonic plate boundary near Hawaii.

There is a tectonic plate boundary near Hawaii. There is a "hot-spot" ie. a thin part of the crust. Magma wells up here and creates the Hawaian islands. Over time, as the plates spread, the islands are carried away from the hot-spot, hence the chain of islands.

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A hot spot is not the same as a tectonic plate boundary! The whole point of hot spots (if they do indeed exist, there is some controversy among geophysicists on what the exact nature of a hot spot is) is that it's in the middle of the plate.

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ah well, i guess i shouldn't listen to oceanography students! i originally thought that hawaii was *not* on a tectonic plate boundary, but was convinced by a mate of mine that it is. just checked a map, won't fall for that one again.

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You can be a two time Oscar winner (Hilary Swank) and still make bad choices in movie parts.

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[deleted]

Thanks for the heaping scoop of junk science, I had a good laugh.




I am Jack's IMDB post.

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