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Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame


peadar1987

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  • 4 weeks later...
3 hours ago, peewee69 said:

I know it's not sci-fi, but I have just watched an episode of The Last Man on Earth where a crew capsule re-enters nose first! Such a basic flaw, how did nobody on the production team not know?

Pointy end forward!  Laces Out Dan!

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8 hours ago, peewee69 said:

I know it's not sci-fi, but I have just watched an episode of The Last Man on Earth where a crew capsule re-enters nose first! Such a basic flaw, how did nobody on the production team not know?

Iirc, there was an episode where a spacecraft breaks through the seaship and thus survives.

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4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

The what?    I haven’t seen the show, so I’m honestly asking. 

Iirc, in this series (The Last Man on The Earth), the spaceman deorbits in a station module, falls down, hits a sea ship roof, breaks through several decks (thus braking) and happily splashs/lands.

The astronaut was hanging alone in the orbital station when the mankind on the Earth disappeared, got partially mad, started talking to lab worms, etc.

Later he joins the main party and stays as expendable character for several episodes.

Edited by kerbiloid
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On 2/4/2022 at 12:54 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

 it made a lot of sense as explained in the novels: fast enough to pass dangerously close to a black hole cluster without getting sucked in, thereby shortening the length of the trip. But the movie just made pure fantasy of it, as usual.

Except that makes no sense, for reasons KSP should have taught you.

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14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Iirc, in this series (The Last Man on The Earth), the spaceman deorbits in a station module, falls down, hits a sea ship roof, breaks through several decks (thus braking) and happily splashs/lands.

The astronaut was hanging alone in the orbital station when the mankind on the Earth disappeared, got partially mad, started talking to lab worms, etc.

Later he joins the main party and stays as expendable character for several episodes.

The chance of hitting an ship by accident is idiotically low, now it it was an reentry module it might be designed to target the ship but then it should also have an way to slow down. 

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9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

The chance of hitting an ship by accident is idiotically low

In the random world you are living in.

Not in a predeterminated world existing in subjective microcosm.

Could Red Riding Hood not meet the Wolf crossing the forest just because there are many trees around?
No, because her path was constrained to the trail from location "Mom's Home" to the location "Grandmom's Home".

So, the spacecraft just had no chances to miss the sea ship, because otherwise it would break the movie plot.

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

it was an reentry module it might be designed to target the ship but then it should also have an way to slow down. 

I can't recall in details why did he not use the chute (and if it was onboard at all), but instead he had the craft hull obviously stronger than the ship decks.

(As strong as Salyut-7 had in the Salyut-7 movie, when they were hitting it with a sledgehammer).

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All of your comments are true about all the other absurdity from last man on earth, but despite it all it was the nose first reentry that I found just too stupid not to mention. How could the entire team of X number of people never have seen a capsule reentry? Surely someone at some point could have said "errr, guys, I think capsules enter bottom first". Any maths whizzes out there wanna calculate the odds of putting, say for example, 10 people in a room together and NONE of them are aware of such a basic fact? Surely you'd have better odds of winning the lotto?!

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So I have a question I don't feel I am capable of finding the answer for myself-

If bubble universes are a thing, and they can be accessed via wormholes, would the entity attempting to travel to another universe be "locked" in their choice of destination (only capable of travelling to the same point in time as they are in their universe) or could they go "anywhere" (any time)?

This scenario assumes that bubble universes are identical to ours for storytelling purposes.

It is looking like the next stage of the MCU is going to be based around an "interdimensional" (interuniversal) war. The creator of the interuniversal travel technology claims the moment he "broke through" to the other side, he was greeted by himself doing the same thing, but he eventually encountered evil versions of himself, thus starting an enormous war.

But shouldn't there have been nothing stopping the evil versions of himself from just going back in time and eliminating all other versions of himself? (is what I think based on my current (limited) understanding of such things)

Edited by SunlitZelkova
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4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If bubble universes are a thing, and they can be accessed via wormholes, would the entity attempting to travel to another universe be "locked" in their choice of destination (only capable of travelling to the same point in time as they are in their universe) or could they go "anywhere" (any time)?

This scenario assumes that bubble universes are identical to ours for storytelling purposes.

Simple answer: just pick something not too extreme and stick to it.  Make it a reliable floor for the story.

So many things get might complicated when you try to consider them realistically.  It helps to have a few test cases that show when things get really small, things aren't like they are at the scales we're used to.

Consider the K meson, AKA the Kaon, more specifically the neutral Kaon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaon#CP_violation_in_neutral_meson_oscillations

The neutral Kaon can't be its own anti-particle, but the two particles are then very close to one another.  They effectively show not as themselves but as their renormalizations, sort of the "sum" and "difference".

Otherwise, when things are small and close together, they do weird things in a particular way.

To me, that gives things like Time Travel a fundamental problem.  It ain't what happens when things change, it's what happens when you throw Time Travel into the mix of fundamental particles.  It adds in another renormalization as the effect of Time Travel on those particles.  We live in the world that the final state of those particles are after all that.

Wormholes are a difficult construct, with a lot of weird things needed to make them exist and remain stable.  They are alone a problem.  Throw in separate universes and things get complex.  No simple way for them to exist.

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/25/2022 at 3:16 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

The lid of a sarcophagus is several hundred pounds of solid gold. I don’t think one person should be able to slide it off, at least not without using a lever….

I remember the bars of plutonium in Expendables 2 bouncing up as they fall onto the floor, complete with a distinctly plastic clang.

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11 hours ago, DDE said:

I remember the bars of plutonium in Expendables 2 bouncing up as they fall onto the floor, complete with a distinctly plastic clang.

Same with chain mail in Elder scroll 4 Oblivion, you kicked it and it was like an football not an pile of knitted iron. 
Early physic was weird, same is true in real life but just some seconds after the big bank. 

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1 hour ago, FleshJeb said:

A scene where they actually do gold mass correctly:

 

 

Video is blocked for people who is not borg or other reason. 
Please give an link so people can get secondary sources, as in high sea. 
 

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