The Core

Question: When Rome is been destroyed by that superstorm, just after the Colosseum explodes which building is the one that is destroyed by the lightning bolts? (The one with the statue of a knight)

Answer: I believe you are referring to the Vittorio Emanuele Monument. Victor Emmanuel II was the first monarch of Italy in the mid to late 1800's. The monument has also been nicknamed the "typewriter" and the "wedding cake".

Question: Why in this film should NASA and the military handle the operation? It is neither related to space nor related to war. Some institute related to geo sciences should handle it.

Answer: To put it simply: NASA's got all the technology and the people trained to use it, and the military is involved in every government project, not just acts of war. Also, the military has a vast and efficient logistics system making it possible to bring the major pieces of equipment together in the short amount of time available.

Phixius

Answer: They could just hire a bunch of oil rig drillers instead if you want. All they have to do is drill after all.

Question: Why does General Purcell want Virgil to fail? It seems all he's trying to do is stop them from achieving their goal. He knows full well DESTINI stopped the core in the first place and is determined to fire it again with Virgil down there, knowing they will die. Why would he want Earth to die?

Brad

Chosen answer: The General does not want Virgil to fail. The main reason he wants to fire DESTINI is because they have just found out that the core is actually a lot thinner than they originally thought, which means, as Zimsky stated, the amount of explosives they brought in Virgil would not be enought for their original idea of one blast. Also stated by Zimsky, what happened with the core and DESTINI was just like a heart and an electric shock. If an electric shock can stop a heart and also restart a heart, then DESTINI has a chance of restarting what it stopped.

Question: When Beck tries to dodge the huge diamonds, the ship gets a breach. Wouldn't that cause the outside material to spray into the ship's interior, given the intense temperature and pressure?

Answer: The inner-earth ship known as VIRGIL is comprised of multiple double-hull detachable sections. The outer hull can be breached, while the inner hull can maintain structural integrity just long enough to jettison the damaged compartment. When VIRGIL encounters the giant diamond field, the very last section (the weapons control compartment) suffers a hull breach, and it immediately begins automatic detachment. Dr. Serge Leveque, the nuclear weapons expert, sacrifices himself by saving vital weapons deployment information from that compartment just before it detaches and is destroyed.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: The scientists decided to launch their ship into the Marianas Trench. What is the advantage of launching there?

Answer: The Marianas Trench is the deepest point on the Earth, so there would be less solid rock and molten material to bore through, making it a shorter, faster route to the core.

raywest

Question: The heroes manage to get the core spinning again by detonating 5 200 megaton nuclear bombs. In real life, wouldn't it take hundreds of 200 nuclear bombs to get the core spinning again?

Answer: No number of nuclear weapons would have an effect on the movement of the Earth's core. The bombs in the movie are just there as part of the plot. The Core is a hysterically unscientific movie. It's still great fun though.

Question: If the core stopped spinning, where would all the kinetic energy that keeps it spinning go? Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Answer: For one thing, the rotation of the core is almost identical to (if not a bit faster than) the rotation of the rest of the planet; so the core coming to a stop relative to the rest of the planet is physically impossible. Over billions of more years, the Earth's core and mantle may eventually cool off and solidify (as has happened on Mars), but the core will still be rotating at the same velocity as the rest of the planet. By that time, of course, Earth will have also lost its Moon, so there will be no tidal forces between the Earth and Moon, which means the planet will be seismically dead, but the Earth will still be rotating on its axis. For the time being, though, it would literally take a miracle, an act of divine intervention, to overcome the physics of planetary rotation. If the core could somehow be stopped relative to the rest of the planet (which is physically impossible), then the core's energy would quite quickly be dissipated into the Earth's mantle, which would become an unimaginable inferno (much more so than it already is), propagating seismic and super-volcano activity all over the globe by a factor of, say, 10,000 times normal activity. The Earth's crust would be effectively ripped to shreds by super-earthquakes and eruptions within a matter of hours, perhaps even causing the entire globe to disintegrate into space. As mentioned, though, it would require something on the order of a true miracle to precipitate this chain of events.

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: The same place it goes normally: dissipated into the Earth.

LorgSkyegon

Continuity mistake: On the ship, Dr. Zimsky reveals that project DESTINI is an acronym and that the last letter is "I" and not "Y." (INI standing for INItiative). When Rat is at his computer, he goes to the website for Project Destiny, with a "Y" and not an "I." This same thing happens when the Project Destiny subtitle flashes across the screen.

More mistakes in The Core

Dr. Josh Keyes: So what's this about then?
FBI Agent: We don't know. You have higher security clearance than us.
Dr. Josh Keyes: I have security clearance?
FBI Agent: Yes sir, we're just here to take you to your jet.
Dr. Josh Keyes: I have a jet?!

More quotes from The Core

Trivia: If you look closely with time-frame advance during the pigeon scene you will see a fish "flying" into a window instead of a pigeon. (00:08:35)

More trivia for The Core

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