UK physicist shines on big screen

A physicist has had a key role in bringing a new $45m British-made science fiction film to the big screen.

Dr Brian Cox

Dr Brian Cox, who can usually be found investigating how the universe was formed at the Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, has been working with scriptwriter Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle on the film Sunshine.

Dr Cox has been acting as scientific advisor to Boyle and Garland to ensure the dramatic storyline retains some degree of plausibility and is more fact than fiction.

“The science is extremely sound in the film," explains Cox. “You can tell Alex Garland is a fan of science as well as a science fiction fan. There were a few edges we ironed out but basically it was the back story rather than the plot that my expertise was needed for.”

Dr Cox is a leading researcher on the LHC - a massive project involving 10,000 researchers and based at CERN, aiming to build detectors to pick up particles such as the as-yet-undetected Higgs boson.

Sunshine - on general release from April 5th - is set 50 years in the future and shows the sun dying and the earth in permanent winter. Part of Cox's role was to come up with a plausible explanation of why the sun is dying five billion years ahead of schedule in the film.

Previously a member of 90s pop act D:Ream, Dr Cox was studying for his PhD at The University of Manchester while still in the group. He eventually left the band to finish it and went on to become a Royal Society University Research Fellow based in the High Energy Physics group within The University's School of Physics and Astronomy.