What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[todofwar]

Mine has to be whenever they say "it's not even on the periodic table". Unless it's some exotic form of matter it will be on the periodic table. I dont care if it's a super heavy element in an island of stability, just because we don't normally draw the g block doesn't mean it's not there.

[Atlas2342]

Cringeworthy orbital mechanics in movies

[insert_name]

When Newton s first law is violated in space

[cantab]

Real cars don't usually explode or catch fire in a crash. Therefore, firstly put your darn seatbelt on! Too many people think they'll get trapped in a burning car wearing it, but if you don't wear it the crash will just throw you through the windscreen and you'll smash into whatever. Secondly, if you see somebody in a crashed car, don't be in a rush to get them out, you could make their injuries worse.

 

Basically, this common movie science error literally gets people killed.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, todofwar said:

Mine has to be whenever they say "it's not even on the periodic table". Unless it's some exotic form of matter it will be on the periodic table. I dont care if it's a super heavy element in an island of stability, just because we don't normally draw the g block doesn't mean it's not there.

My biggest pet peeve in many, I have so many, biggest science pet peeve, hmmmm, lets see:
1. Current favorit,  Inertial forces that would otherwise be lethal.
2. My classic favorite, drive systems based in fantasy.
3. Throwing out scientific words that have to do nothing with what you are observing (like tacheon particles making invisible things visible)
4. Treating the distance between stars like they are down the street turn left and travel 3 blocks.
5. Treating the distance between sentient bearing planets as they are found on every other star.

 

 

[Mitchz95]

I try not to get hung up on unrealistic science in soft sci-fi. I can enjoy Star Wars and Star Trek and stuff like that with no problems. It's when a movie pretends that its unrealistic science is realistic, and makes no real attempt to justify it in-universe, that I get annoyed. Armageddon and Impact are probably the worse in that area, Impact especially.

One that always bugs me is when the differences between Terran and alien biochemistry are treated like they're no big deal. People land on an alien world, walk outside the ship without helmets or spacesuits, and proceed to eat native planets and animals with impunity. It's madness.

[kerbiloid]

1. A blaster which makes the enemy to vapourize and disappear.

The vapourized enemy is ~80 kg of gas (mostly the water steam).
So, in a small room the first successful shot would smash all of them, including the gunner, against walls.
In a large imperial hall they would deafen and fall unconscious.
Outdoors they would be thrown away in radial directions by a shockwave.

2. Fireball magic. It's scientifically absurd.

Obviously, they throw nothing except maybe a handful of overheated air
But such hot air cloud (it glaringly shines) would expand and burst right in the hands of the sorcerer.

If they throw nothing except the pure energy, why they need to heat the air volume around it, loosing the energy, instead of just make this energy appear right inside the target?

3. Zombies with inexhaustible batteries. Especially the fast ones.

Even if they periodically go down into a sleep mode, looks they need no energy source to operate. When they eat something (or somebody), looks like they do this by force of habit and boredom.
A running wheel with zombies would be an absolutely environment friendly perpetuum mobile.
The "Walking Dead" heroes just don't get: they got a jackpot. While in "Nation Z" live much smarter people

[RainDreamer]

Space ship with an exposed bridge, along with designs that have an "up" direction. Also, space battles in extremely close proximity with broadside firing.

[SargeRho]

Ships stopping when their engines shut off. Especially if it's done selectively. Stargate has instances of ships stopping when their engines go out, and instances of ships continuing to drift.

Edited April 12, 2016 by SargeRho

[Jovus]

Oh, hey, look, here's this unknown material we found from the alien artifact. Let's just send it back to the lab medbay and get an answer in thirty seconds.

[Nuke]

ships flying directly at planets really fast with the engines facing the space side and burning.

if you were doing a brachistochrone transfer, the engines would be pointing towards the dirt, like you see the dropships doing in mechwarrior/battletech (its amazing how a big stompy robot universe gets space travel right). if you were doing a hohmann transfer, you would be coming in at an oblique angle so you could do a classical reentry or aerocapture.

which brings me to another thing: why are the engines always burning? i spend a lot of time in ksp sitting on a trajectory doing nothing, engines are off and im warping time to make things go faster. i guess thats not as exciting. sure if it was ion propulsion you might run engines for longer, but then the angles are all wrong.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Nuke

[Nuke]

1 hour ago, RainDreamer said:

Space ship with an exposed bridge, along with designs that have an "up" direction. Also, space battles in extremely close proximity with broadside firing.

i can excuse this in star trek but not star wars. in trek the weaponry is so dang powerful you get hit anywhere and you are screwed (twok, 6, generations, etc). they rely entirely on their shields for protection. it still doesnt make any sence because they use a holographic viewer instead of windows and could totally just bsg it. in starwars there are windows and i presume that is for visibility for tactical planning, but one stray xwing can crash your ship into a death star.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Nuke

[p1t1o]

Air-to-air combat:

Missiles chasing a plane at a distance of tens of metres for what seems like entire minutes as the plane snakes and dodges tryng to "lose" it - AA missiles generally travel faster than most bullets for a good portion of their flight. Missiles are also considerably more maneuverable than aircraft. If you are close enough to see it, the engagement will be over either way in probably less than a second.

Do NOT even get me started on that tv/movie trope where a pilot deliberately flies into the path of a missile that is targeting *another* aircraft (usually containing the US president).

Related - various missiles trailing smoke for their entire flight. This one is more forgivable, but still bugs me. Most solid fuel rocket projectiles burn all of their propellant within a very short time at launch, from milliseconds to seconds, giving them a large initial speed and a long "coast" to target - RPGs are good examples of this in movies, they generally use all of their propellant before even leaving the tube (this help to maintain the condition of the operators face). There are various exceptions sure, (ramjet propulsions, sustainer motors) but these are pretty rare.

Honourable mention - "I'm gonna hit the brakes, he'll fly right by." No he won't (because he's probably a mile away or more) and now you are a much easier target. When you are driving and the car in front uses his brakes, even hard, do you ever find yourself "driving right by"? This also applies to the "loop-the-loop and get right behind him" trope (like if you are driving and the car in front takes a right turn, are you ever like "Huh? Where'd he go?")

 

 

Martial arts:

You can take multiple heavy blows to the head with zero ill effects. (seriously, like *every* movie)

Punching someone in the throat is hilarious and not at all potentially lethal.

Do a move with a spin, you will not be vulnerable and you will hit harder.

A bullet to the chest will drop an assailant instantly.

Being shot in a limb is like, totally fine, tie a cloth round it and get going son!

The metal parts of cars are all entirely bulletproof. (Reality: even a modest handgun bullet will go straight through both sides. Obviously there are monolithic parts that will stop a bullet, eg: wheels, engine block)

Handgun bullets go through people, spraying blood and debris everywhere.

 

[Not very sciencey but while we are on the subject: female action-oriented characters tottering about on 6 inch stilettos everywhere, including whilst chasing suspects across rooftops.]

Edited April 12, 2016 by p1t1o

[benzman]

Futuristic computers that, when they display text on a screen, make a noise like an old teletype machine.  e.g. the first 'Alien' movie.

 

 

 

[cantab]

Another one that has reported real-world impact: Unrealistic depictions of forensics. See, every CSI show ever. It's actually giving real juries unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence. Quite likely criminals have been let free, and innocent people jailed, because of unrealistic films and TV.

[KSK]

6 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

I try not to get hung up on unrealistic science in soft sci-fi. I can enjoy Star Wars and Star Trek and stuff like that with no problems. It's when a movie pretends that its unrealistic science is realistic, and makes no real attempt to justify it in-universe, that I get annoyed. Armageddon and Impact are probably the worse in that area, Impact especially.

This. 'Movie science' is almost invariably an oxymoron. For the most part I try and roll with it and enjoy the occasional bit they get right rather than stressing about the majority they get wrong. Frankly, life's too short to nitpick at that level. However, if the movie is supposed to be a realistic depiction of something (hello, Gravity) then I do get more irked by the mistakes even if I can understand why they're in there.

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

2. Fireball magic. It's scientifically absurd.

Well yes. Yes it is.

 

[ModZero]

Charlie Stross recently wrote several blog posts on science fiction and fantasy shibboleths and cliches (latest here), and while those aren't exactly the same as annoyances, each of those bug at least some people. 

I'll say, my opinion on how aliens look completely reversed some time ago: DNA is a close to optimal solution, and even the chirality of proteins can apparently be traced way back to stellar processes. and oxygen is really super useful, and nitrogen is a pretty good filler gas. So I'd expect aliens to have quite a bit of biochemical similarity to us – and even some physiological similarity (need to grab things, structural solidity, similar – on one of the recent Stross blogs there was a long comment thread about spines and birth canals). 

My pet peeve now is universal to all fiction: poorly though out or ignored socioeconomic consequences of the setting. And, from a certain heavily praised book/tv series, spinning up loose clumps of rock to simulate gravity ;-)

10 minutes ago, benzman said:

Futuristic computers that, when they display text on a screen, make a noise like an old teletype machine.  e.g. the first 'Alien' movie.

That's just because those will become obligatory once I take over the world. 

[Creature]

Most of mine have already been mentioned, but here's a few:

1. Nebulas and asteroid fields. "Oh no, they're flying into the nebula!" Yes, it sure is awful. They will now encounter at least two more molecules every 1000 kilometers than they would outside the nebula.

2. How science is depicted in general. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/683:_Science_Montage

[peadar1987]

10 minutes ago, ModZero said:

 

My pet peeve now is universal to all fiction: poorly though out or ignored socioeconomic consequences of the setting. And, from a certain heavily praised book/tv series, spinning up loose clumps of rock to simulate gravity ;-)

 

I happily ignored that part. The Expanse is usually pretty plausible and consistent in-setting, and the spinning-up of Ceres and Eros isn't plot-critical.

[todofwar]

My other big one is DNA. It's not actually a twisting ladder, the space filling model looks nothing like that. And it's a molecule, it's not going to look all bumpy and gritty. This was especially frustrating in Cosmos, made me stop trusting everything that show said. 

[RainDreamer]

2 minutes ago, todofwar said:

This was especially frustrating in Cosmos, made me stop trusting everything that show said. 

It is a popular science show for general public, so it is always a good idea to consider all information presented are not fully covered, due to various factors like time limit, simplification to appeal to the mass, or simply lack of knowledge from producers, and so on. However they are good for presenting basic ideas, and encourage the ones who are genuinely interested in the topics on the show to do more research on their own.

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, ModZero said:

DNA is a close to optimal solution, and even the chirality of proteins can apparently be traced way back to stellar processes. and oxygen is really super useful, and nitrogen is a pretty good filler gas. So I'd expect aliens to have quite a bit of biochemical similarity to us – and even some physiological similarity (need to grab things, structural solidity, similar – on one of the recent Stross blogs there was a long comment thread about spines and birth canals). 

Ooh, that goes strongly against my grain, seems very anthropomorphic, any source data? Specifically on the DNA-as-close-to-optimal and protein chirality? Sounds interesting.

 

And since I'm on DNA:

10 minutes ago, todofwar said:

My other big one is DNA. It's not actually a twisting ladder, the space filling model looks nothing like that.

No? What does it look like? Literally every model I have seen looks like a twisty ladder:

[Bill Phil]

3 hours ago, SargeRho said:

Ships stopping when their engines shut off. Especially if it's done selectively. Stargate has instances of ships stopping when their engines go out, and instances of ships continuing to drift.

I think that's less important than the inertial compensators which defy physics.

[Hary R]

- For whatever reason, spaceship are the greatest VTOL ever created (you see that everywhere) some don't even need lift engine (Xwing i'm looking a you)

- Why do your phone ( tablet , computer whatever) make strange noise when you use the touchscreen?

- Even at Starwars level this one bugs me, why your space fighter when flying on a planet fly slower than a moderne jet plane?

- Why do you use you computer's keybord that much? and why do you never use you mouse?

- How in the world your search engine gives you the exact answer to your search on first try

- How do you make a 52*52 pixel picture as clear as a 4k image?

- why do alien have humane like body (to put it clear why do female alien have boobs?)

- going strait up to space (thanks to KSP, i can't stand that anymore)

- When in micro gravity, thing go just fly around for no apparent reason.

- (weird me but), thunder and lightning rarely occur at the same time.

- why do a planet only have one kind of biome (dune is the only exception in my eyes)

 

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, SargeRho said:

Ships stopping when their engines shut off. Especially if it's done selectively. Stargate has instances of ships stopping when their engines go out, and instances of ships continuing to drift

I can forgive that if and only if the engines depicted are "warp" engines or otherwise actuate FTL travel, as it is conceivable that something like an Alcubierre drive would need constant power to be engaged and would grind to a halt if the engines stopped.

My biggest pet peeve is possibly in depictions of the Earth-moon system. The moon is not in low earth orbit. Also it is quite large. Somehow everyone seems to mix that up. 

Another offender, of course, is when technobabble is used that COULD mean something but doesn't. How hard is it to find a nerd and figure out that watts are a unit of power, not energy (or, worse, force or torque)?