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Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame


peadar1987

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1 minute ago, wumpus said:

Isn't that a "accept the Bible as an accurate record and attempt to provide a mechanism to make it work" book

It cherrypicked though literally hundreds of texts from around the world.  What the author forgot was that the texts were written centuries apart and the events described were unrelated.  Plus, apparently the entire ocean turned into a 50 mile tall wave.  

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10 hours ago, wumpus said:

I think that there's a reason that anything that tries to use that argument now tends to veer off into assuming things like a flat Earth...

If the Youtube of late naughts is to go by, the more popular Young Earth Creationists are not flatties, and even try to coopt modern astrophysics when it suits them.

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On 1/5/2019 at 1:28 AM, Gargamel said:

There are working designs for a pistol from a 3d printer. not just hypothetical.  They can only be fired a fwe times before repairs need to be made, but combining those with ceramics would make for a long lasting gun that would not be detected by a metal detector.  But, as you said, an X ray machine should pick up the shape.   

Yes but it was specified as an glock. The glock got some attention from the sensation press then introduced as an plastic pistol. Obviously only the body is plastic, the barrel and all other parts who take pressure. 
And yes you can 3d print pistols, number of bullets it can take are a bit irrelevant if you were to use it in combat as they are single shot and pretty slow to reload. 

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12 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Oh jeez if you want to see Katee Sackhoff

That was the whole reason I picked it up, wanted to see a BSG alum show her stuff.   I don't think I even got to see her on screen before I bailed. 

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes but it was specified as an glock. The glock got some attention from the sensation press then introduced as an plastic pistol.

Never trust mass media:

7c4.jpg

 

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11 hours ago, DDE said:

@Gargamel, the M-16 killed me. Would a journo even know that name, though, since everyone talks of AR-15s even when the weapon involved isn’t even remotely related?

What I love is that none of the glocks are glocks, but a glock is listed as an ak-47. 

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On 1/30/2018 at 7:58 PM, NSEP said:

It seems like alot of Sci-Fi sacrifice 99% of the realism to make the story good. Real spaceflight is pretty boring, all of the action in real spaceflight is only like 5-20 minutes in total while the other 6 months is just working, sleeping and staring outside a window. So you would have to sacrifice most of the realism to make it less boring. Heck, The Martian's whole story wouldn't have been possible without the sacrifice of realism, if they didn't make the dust storm 100x more powerful than it should be it would've been some Astronauts sitting inside the habitat for 3 months waiting for the dust cloud to fade away. Realism ruins fun.

If someone ever makes a realistic movie/book about spaceflight that is enjoyable to watch/read, that person deserves millions of dollars, a wonderfull husband/wife, amazing children and a beautiful house.

What about the 2016 Mars TV Series, but I guess that doesn't count.

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If someone can fish out the following reference, I promise you it’s a treat. I’ve encountered it in the 2019 Korolev readings, in Russian, but apparently unchanged over six years.

Kurkin I.I., Merkov A. Competing evolution of engines, power installations and mobile starting complexes under scenarios of atmospheric and space prospects // 63rd International Astronautical Congress. Naples, Italy, 2012.

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1 hour ago, DDE said:

Kurkin I.I., Merkov A. Competing evolution of engines, power installations and mobile starting complexes under scenarios of atmospheric and space prospects // 63rd International Astronautical Congress. Naples, Italy, 2012.

You probably already found out that It is listed in the IAF program for the 2012 congress as a lecture:

http://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2012/

Maybe it wasn't published in written form ?

Edit: found an abstract: http://iafastro.directory/iac/paper/id/12805/summary/

Maybe you can find out more via the institute where the guy works (MAI) ... ?

Are you sure it belongs in this thread ?

Probably, yes :-)

Edited by Green Baron
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1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Are you sure it belongs in this thread ?

Probably, yes :-)

Oh, absolutely. I’ve been skimming over the 400-page minutae for the Korolev Readings, and I’ve encountered something absolutely on-topic for this thread - and I was hoping they did the English translation for me.

Anyway, key highlights of the stream of consciousness:

  • “Defence from threats is not only local but global. Countering these threats (which!? - ed.) requires a multimodal complex for rapid and long-range delivery of various systems, and their physical protection.”
  • It namedrops the Keldysh nuclear-electric space tuv
  • Some sort of an “heat memory” aerospace vehicle capable of executing tactical missions in space
  • This aerospace vehicle absolutely must be launched from an ekranoplan using a methalox booster
  • Another bulletpoint refers to a 1980 MAI design for a nuclear ekranoplan. Since it’s also using a helium-xenon primary reactor coolant, a connection with the Keldysh tug becomes apparent.
  • The last bulletpoint jumps to... gas pipelines (what about them?)

The “results of research” are, apparently, an acoustic leak detector that can be used with the aforementioned reactor or be strapped to a drone to patrol pipelines (OK...) and a “bimetallic electron(ic) cell”, some sort of an elementary particle repository that is implied to rival fission power in storage density.

I shall investigate these nuts further; RIP weekend.

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https://www.netflix.com/ch-en/title/80134721

Earth is polluted and you need a respirator to breath... there still appears to be vegetation... clearly Earth must be abandonded, and muther fracking IO of all places!!!!!!  is where they are evacuating to...

what, Io? To volcanic moon with a max surface temperature of 130 K (about -150 C), and sits right in the middle of Jupiters intense radiation belts?

There aren't many worse choices (the surface of Venus springs to mind).

Couldn't they at least go with Mars/Europa/Titan, or are those too played out?

Io?

Io?!

IO?!?!?

Nope, I won't watch that one

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28 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

https://www.netflix.com/ch-en/title/80134721

Earth is polluted and you need a respirator to breath... there still appears to be vegetation... clearly Earth must be abandonded, and muther fracking IO of all places!!!!!!  is where they are evacuating to...

what, Io? To volcanic moon with a max surface temperature of 130 K (about -150 C), and sits right in the middle of Jupiters intense radiation belts?

There aren't many worse choices (the surface of Venus springs to mind).

Couldn't they at least go with Mars/Europa/Titan, or are those too played out?

Io?

Io?!

IO?!?!?

Nope, I won't watch that one

Ahem...

 

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The frequent use of "Depleted Deuterium" in a lot of sci-fi weapons (as a cooler-sounding version of depleted uranium ammo) is particularly bad science in itself due to the fact that you can't even get depleted Deuterium, because it's a stable isotope

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1 hour ago, ARS said:

The frequent use of "Depleted Deuterium" in a lot of sci-fi weapons

Lol wut?

Come on, the technical term would be depleted dihydrogen monoxide projector - because a detritiated water cannon just doesn’t sound as terrifying... unril you consider the pricetag.

Edited by DDE
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2 minutes ago, DDE said:

Lol wut?

Come on, the technical term would be depleted dihydrogen monoxide projector - because a detritiated water cannon just doesn’t sound as terrifying... unril you consider the pricetag.

dihydrogen monoxide is basically H2O (water), but despite scientific-sounding-name, it still isn't cool enough for sci-fi weapon ammo

Oh, another example about bad science, from Iron Man 2:

1. Tony's arc reactor is slowly killing him through "palladium poisoning". Ignoring the question of how the palladium fuel is seeping out of his arc reactor in the first place (implying a containment breach), palladium isn't really all that harmful to humans. (Except on excessive quantities)

2. Nick Fury tells Tony Stark that Tony's been injected with "Lithium Dioxide" in order to remove the effects of palladium poisoning. This implies that lithium has at least four electrons to give up, while it actually only has three. And taking two of them requires more than just some oxygen. Apparently the movie confuses the type of chemical bonds in a molecule. The wrong part is the name - it should be: lithium superoxide. And it indeed does exist (at very low temperatures, but still...). Then there's the fact that injecting someone with as powerful an oxidising agent as superoxide would, in real life, have some pretty spectacularly nasty and possibly fatal effects.

3. During Justin Hammer's overly boasting description of the Ex-Wife bunker buster missile, he only gives one notable piece of technical information about it. He describes the missile as containing a "cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine RDX burst". Two different terms for the same explosive substance back-to-back (cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine IS the RDX)

4. Let's not started on him jury-rigging a freakin' Hadron Collider in his garage to "create a new element"

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Spoiler

That's easy.

The storekeeper was stealing and selling the deuterium and diluting the rest with regular hydrogen.

When the commission had checked the deuterium cystern, they've found just 76% of deuterium instead of 96%.

Has been written off as "depleted deuterium with the warranty period expired.".

 

Edited by kerbiloid
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