Hey! Natalie Portman makes a great physicist! Are you saying young, beautiful women aren't believable physicists? Because that is what it sounds like you're saying.
"Natalie Portman...as the World's Least Likely Astrophysicist." Actually, Portman graduated from Harvard College and has co-authored two published scientific papers. These are things you and your editor will never accomplish, Mr. Jason "Seattle's Least Liked Writer" Baxter. Your editor may have done a slipshod job missing this, but luckily for them "Seattle's Least Liked Editor" has to go to either Mike Seely of the Seattle Weekly, or Ryan Blethen.
Natalie Portman as an astrophysicist makes just as much sense as the likewise academically accomplished James Franco as a bioengineer in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Regardless of their offscreen diplomas, they're still improbably pretty performers who sound ridiculous when spouting poorly-scripted scientific mumbo-jumbo.
I found Natalie Portman's character pretty convincing, actually. She was a bit flightly in her personal life, but she was fiercely and obsessively into her research, and was willing to do stupid things to rescue her data. I definitely know scientists like that.
Yes, I am trolling a bit.