Bad Science: Favourite SF Movie Blunders

[Skywatcher]

Guess I should have scrolled down first. :smack:

[Terminus_Est]

@Lute Skywatcher

Actually, it’s a Unix variant.

I swear I’ve seen this link before.

[rjung]

@Rufus Xavier

“She made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”

Of course, we can pretend this means something that might be plausible in the Star Wars universe, but we all know in our hearts that this is a screw up.

I always interpreted this as Solo trying to sound impressive to the geezer and the farmboy, but Kenobi was giving him a “You really are a clueless noob” :dubious: look in response.

And while it’s not entirely a science blunder, Deep Impact really pissed me off for the sheer level of stupidity in the film. The rescue crew that’s supposed to blow up the asteroid demonstrates less planning than a pack of dead hyenas, but that’s okay, because the President of the United States is a brainless dolt[sup]*[/sup], just like every other character in the movie. By the final reel, I was rooting for the asteroid to wipe out the planet and let it start a-new.

[sup]*[/sup] Insert your own political joke here.

[rjung]

@Robot Arm

No joke, I went to see this movie with a major computer geek friend of mine, and when they showed the computer screen he said “that’s Unix.” Two seconds later, the girl says “I know this, it’s Unix.”

The interface doesn’t bug me half as much as the notion that a ten-year-old non-geek girl would be a UNIX guru. Nothing against geek girls, but the total lack of character development/background/exposition just turned her into a bad deus ex machina in a training bra.

[Sam_Lowry]

@CalMeacham

Watch 2001 Dave Bowman, recall, goes from his space pod to vacuum in getting back aboard the Discovery. Notice how his blood didn’t freeze or boil, and he didn’t even lose consciousness.
This whole issue of humans-in-a-vacuum has been as recurring theme in Arthur C. Clarke’s work. He has people go out into vacuum without pressure suits in The Other Side of the Sky and Earthlight long before 2001. When the movie came out, he prepared an article to defend his stand that people don’ty come apart in vacuum. It’s reprinted in his collection The view from Serendip, and cites NASA studiers on monkeys to support his view. Later on, Clarke mentioned the idea in The Fountains of Paradise. In that, his most recent use of it AFAIK, he mentions the breaking of blood vessels near the surface and the time limitations.
But blowing people up is more dramatic, and Pierre Boulle (he of “Planet of the Apes”) has someone blow up in Garden on the Moon. So did Martin Caidin (Author of “Marooned”, and the book that sparked “The Six Million Dollar Man”, and who, with his test pilot background, oughtta know better) in Four Came Back .

Thank you, that’s interesting. 2001 is one of those movies I have always meant to watch, and never have. I guess that is another reason to see it now.

[CandidGamera]

@D_Odds

Spatial Rift 47, it is funny watching you defend Star Trek. Just like it’s funny watching Candid Gamera defend time travel in Superman: The Movie.

Hey, I’m not defending. If you want to point out it’s ridiculous for Superman to be able to move past lightspeed, go right ahead… I’m just explaining that it wasn’t quite what Spatial made it out to be.

[Eve]

Making fun of Queen of Outer Space is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I love the fact that Zsa Zsa Gabor is the only girl on Venus with a Hungarian accent.

[bclouse]

@CandidGamera

The Earth didn’t start spinning backwards, thus causing time to reverse. Superman exceeded lightspeed, travelling back through time, and the viewer’s perspective travelled with him - so as Superman returned to the previous time, we went along, watching the Earth’s rotation appear to reverse itself as a consequence, not the cause, of the time travel.

WOW!

[bclouse]

@CandidGamera

The Earth didn’t start spinning backwards, thus causing time to reverse. Superman exceeded lightspeed, travelling back through time, and the viewer’s perspective travelled with him - so as Superman returned to the previous time, we went along, watching the Earth’s rotation appear to reverse itself as a consequence, not the cause, of the time travel.

[What I was gonna write before my computer shorted out:]

WOW! I never thought of it that way. Now, not only does it seem possible but, indeed, probable.

[Anne_Neville]

@Malacandra

Star Trek: Generations had an acme super sun-destroying missile. There were just so many things wrong with this

Around the time I saw that movie, I calculated how fast the missile had to be going, assuming the planet was about 8 light-minutes from its star (distance from Earth to Sun). It was several times the speed of light.

I was taking an astrophysics class, and the professor had us calculate how long it would take the sun to collapse if fusion was stopped, or if all the heat was magically absorbed from it.

Time for sun to collapse if fusion stops: ~10^7 years
Time for sun to collapse if all heat absorbed: ~30 minutes

About sound in space: the Bad Astronomer says that Star Trek originally had no sound in space, but the producers thought it seemed too weird without sound in space, so they had it put in. I have never seen another cite for this, though.

[BrainGlutton]

@Spatial Rift 47

That said, there are viable errors in some of the ways Star Trek does some things, like the way the starships bank and swoop. Yes, we all know that this is an error, but let’s just chalk it up to the helmsmen having a little fun, hmm?

As for the ships all happening to be in the same plane, that’s bullshit. Obviously the ships, once they get within a certain distance, are going to adjust to put themselves in the same plane as the other ship. Same orientation? How do we know that’s actually the case? Maybe we’ve been looking at the Klingon Birds of Prey upside-down all these years.

The one area where Star Trek does annoy me is all those two dimensional shockwaves. I mean, space has THREE zarqing directions, not two.

What bothers me most about Star Trek is those drives that can move a spaceship around without expelling any reaction mass.

[Darwin_s_Finch]

@rjung

The interface doesn’t bug me half as much as the notion that a ten-year-old non-geek girl would be a UNIX guru. Nothing against geek girls, but the total lack of character development/background/exposition just turned her into a bad deus ex machina in a training bra.

To be fair, she did have a line earlier about being a “hacker” (shortly after being sneezed on by the Brachiosaurus, and just as Grant was finding hatched Velociraptor eggs).

Of course, Jurassic Park was laden with science blunders, from the near-opening scenes of grad students lightly brushing away sand from dinosaur bones (instead of chiseling them out of bedrock), to those same grad students laughing when Grant mentioned that birds descended from dinos, continuing with the idea that T. rex’s vision was based on movement (pulled completely out of Grant’s ass in the context of the movie, explained lamely within book), and, of course, topped off with the whole concept of cloning dinosaurs being completely unworkable in any present-day setting to begin with.

[Kamino_Neko]

@rjung

And while it’s not entirely a science blunder, Deep Impact really pissed me off for the sheer level of stupidity in the film. The rescue crew that’s supposed to blow up the asteroid demonstrates less planning than a pack of dead hyenas, but that’s okay, because the President of the United States is a brainless dolt

Do you mean Armageddon? I don’t remember Deep Impact as clearly, but I don’t remember the plot being that completely identical.

[BrainGlutton]

@Darwin's Finch

Of course, Jurassic Park was laden with science blunders, from the near-opening scenes of grad students lightly brushing away sand from dinosaur bones (instead of chiseling them out of bedrock), to those same grad students laughing when Grant mentioned that birds descended from dinos, continuing with the idea that T. rex’s vision was based on movement (pulled completely out of Grant’s ass in the context of the movie, explained lamely within book), and, of course, topped off with the whole concept of cloning dinosaurs being completely unworkable in any present-day setting to begin with.

At a panel discussion on dinosaurs at an SF convention, a paleontologist explained that the biggest scientific flaw in Jurassic Park is its core premise: The proteins in blood are very hard to digest; therefore bloodsucking insects have special digestive juices that break them down immediately on consumption; therefore it would be impossible to extract a DNA sample of the blood-donor organism from a bloodsucking insect, whether it drew the blood one minute ago or 60 million years ago.

[Scissorjack]

I forgot Timecop, where the villains travel back in time to hijack a consignment of Civil War gold: it’s later determined that said gold is about 200 years older than it ought to be through, wait for it, carbon dating.

On the subject of astronomy, the first Tomb Raider movie has a classic: not only do the makers have no apparent idea of what a planetary conjunction actually is, when viewed through an optical telescope in someone’s bedroom, all the planets are clearly visible in a neat little cosmic line dance. Including Pluto.

[Mr.Blue_Sky]

@CalMeacham

Actually, I like the idea of shooting down massive ships that completely overshadow entire cities. the logical consequence is a huge pile of rubble – crushed city plus cashed spaeship – where your city ought to be. But somehow they never show that.

When the Area 51 ship was shot down, you’d think the impact of a ship that big would shake the ground a bit, too, considering it crashed a few hundred yards away.

[Merijeek]

@Marley23

In Independence Day, the ships were so damned huge that gravity should have flattened everything underneath them. That would’ve reduced the drama a little bit…

Umm…can you explain why?

-Joe

[Miller]

@Merijeek

Umm…can you explain why?

-Joe

Which part do you need explained? The gravity part, or the reduced drama part?

[Merijeek]

@Miller

Which part do you need explained? The gravity part, or the reduced drama part?

The part where a giant flying saucer that flies through some (presumably near-magical) anti-gravity would crush a city by flying above it.

-Joe

[E-Sabbath]

@JohnT

I’ve always wondered what the reaction to the “I know this, it’s Unix” line would’ve been had it come from a 10 year old boy with plastic frame glasses. Something tells me it would’ve been ignored and not brought up as “ONE OF THE WORST SCIENCE MOMENTS OF ALL TIME!!!11!!1”

It is a very, very, very, very obscure 3D window manager written by Sun. The chance of a 10 year old girl or boy ever having seen this are about one in eleventy.