What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[sevenperforce]

15 hours ago, Mitchz95 said:

Yeah, that's the one. One of the meteors is a fragment of a brown dwarf (which the writers apparently mixed up with a neutron star) that gets lodged in the moon, and they have to "magnetize" the moon's core to eject it into the sun before the brown dwarf's gravity causes Earth and the moon to collide. They accomplish this using an Apollo lander and a bunch of other hardware they apparently designed and built in eighteen days. Yeah, it's bad.

WAT

**reads wiki**

WAAAT

That is...wronger than not even not even wrong. I don't...can't even.

A CHUNK OF BROWN DWARF HEAVIER THAN EARTH IS IN THE MOON. AND THE MOON CONTINUES TO ORBIT EARTH. BUT IT MAKES OBJECTS LEVITATE AT RANDOM.

wat

"The Impact mini-series received little comment from the scientific community due to its lack of realism, incorrect use of terminology, and basic misunderstanding of the law of gravity."

13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

15 hours ago, cubinator said:

Huh? What science? I only hear technobabble.

Yeah. That's called "science."

That sound you hear is neurons committing suicide.

[NFUN]

On 4/27/2016 at 10:52 PM, FungusForge said:

-Hacking. (Worst example: an episode of NCIS where their computer was hacked through the power cable.)

To be fair, I think they didn't hack through the cable. The computer was supposed to be in a shielded container to prevent the program from accessing the network, but the cable wasn't adequately shielded so it escaped through the hole.

[sevenperforce]

I'm endlessly frustrated by depictions of the moon that show the curve while you're standing on it. Or show it only a few 1000 km from Earth.

[relin]

On 4/27/2016 at 7:52 PM, FungusForge said:

-Hacking. (Worst example: an episode of NCIS where their computer was hacked through the power cable.)

I'd argue the worst example (fairly certain it's the same show, too!) is when two people, attempting to defend against an active attack, use the same keyboard to enter commands. As in, one of the two people has their right hand exclusively on a 10-key.

In my office, we warmly refer to that as "double hacking".

[insert_name]

speaking of computers it also really bugs me when they treat what is inside of them like another dimension that you can go into and out of (ie tron)

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, insert_name said:

speaking of computers it also really bugs me when they treat what is inside of them like another dimension that you can go into and out of (ie tron)

It's getting pretty close to that, actually. I see your point though. You can't actually go "inside" a computer and have it be another dimension. The information inside computers looks like this:

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, insert_name said:

speaking of computers it also really bugs me when they treat what is inside of them like another dimension that you can go into and out of (ie tron)

Keeanu Reeves beats a face of computer virus as Johnny Mnemonic, then he beats a face of computer antivirus as Neo.

Opponents alter, methods stay the same.

Edited May 4, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Sanic]

On May 2, 2016 at 9:52 AM, RocketSquid said:

What about them?

Rotate stuff with CGI = free excuse for gravity. Personally I find that gravity in a movie that takes place in space defeats the whole purpose... But that's my opinion  

Plus they usually come with a higher-than-average dose of scientific inaccuracies.

[RocketSquid]

4 hours ago, Sanic said:

Rotate stuff with CGI = free excuse for gravity. Personally I find that gravity in a movie that takes place in space defeats the whole purpose... But that's my opinion  

Plus they usually come with a higher-than-average dose of scientific inaccuracies.

Well, you typically want gravity in real life, since it turns out that zero-g slowly turns your skeleton into a flimsy little frame of twigs. On the other hand, many of the centrifuges they show are too small and moving to slowly to actually provide gravity.

[RocketSquid]

4 hours ago, Sanic said:

Rotate stuff with CGI = free excuse for gravity. Personally I find that gravity in a movie that takes place in space defeats the whole purpose... But that's my opinion  

Plus they usually come with a higher-than-average dose of scientific inaccuracies.

Well, you typically want gravity in real life, since it turns out that zero-g slowly turns your skeleton into a flimsy little frame of twigs. On the other hand, many of the centrifuges they show are too small and moving to slowly to actually provide gravity.

[todofwar]

1 hour ago, RocketSquid said:

Well, you typically want gravity in real life, since it turns out that zero-g slowly turns your skeleton into a flimsy little frame of twigs. On the other hand, many of the centrifuges they show are too small and moving to slowly to actually provide gravity.

While we're on the subject, in the Martian movie there is a seen where they are floating in the 0g part of the Hermes, and then reach the center of the rotating part and just magically start accelerating down one of the shafts towards the parts of the ship that had gravity. Pretty sure that's not how centrifuges are meant to work. Also, the Hermes in general seemed a bit too big, I doubt NASA would provide such a nice lounge and gym, maybe as an inflatable but the Hermes didn't look inflatable. 

[Mitchz95]

Something that always cracks me up about The Martian is that Robert Zubrin specifically designed Mars Direct for the purpose of avoiding the complexity of ion engines and massive nuclear-electric spaceships. The Ares missions completely missed the point of the mission architecture.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

On 5/5/2016 at 6:36 PM, todofwar said:

While we're on the subject, in the Martian movie there is a seen where they are floating in the 0g part of the Hermes, and then reach the center of the rotating part and just magically start accelerating down one of the shafts towards the parts of the ship that had gravity. Pretty sure that's not how centrifuges are meant to work. Also, the Hermes in general seemed a bit too big, I doubt NASA would provide such a nice lounge and gym, maybe as an inflatable but the Hermes didn't look inflatable. 

The Hermes seems to be specially designed to be awesome and physically possible and motivate people to like space.

[PB666]

I was just remembering the Wrath of Khan, and Kirks crippled ship with a whole bunch of killed crew and the engineering core flooded with tachyon particles? But, some how the manage to break orbit on impulse and cross into a nebula and suddenly his ship is invisible. Some how I don't think that a moon sized planet is going to have a nebula boundary within less than the distance between the Earth and moon, maybe the boundary is the width of the opposing heliopause.

[kerbiloid]

On 05.05.2016 at 1:36 AM, todofwar said:

Also, the Hermes in general seemed a bit too big, I doubt NASA would provide such a nice lounge and gym

Probably after NASA had built a huge hollow wheel to make the gravity, they were pitting wits against a problem: how to use all this large empty space?

The cheapest ways they have found: gym, lounge, winter-garden and disco-bar with karaoke, because they consist mostly of air.

[Hary R]

I was watching fast and furious 6 the other night, and yes it far from being a scientifically accurate movie but one thing bugs me (more than anything else), at the very end the final chase on the runway, an Antonov 225 landed, pick up the villain while still moving,and tooke off. The chase lasted 15 minute or so long. Tell me, how long was that runway???.

Come on, chasing a plane at near takeoff speed for more than 15 minutes. How long do you think a runway is in real life Hollywood.

Well, someone looked into it and gives 28,75 miles long or 45 Km for metric people.

Funny thing is, they were at the end of the runway when the chase ended.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Hary R
a little typo needs to be corrected

[lugge]

It may be correct from a scientific view, but if you are an engineer it really hurts you:

In Stargate (and I guess in other shows too) they can connect their laptops and tablets to every piece of alien hardware and communicate with this hardware.

So, what do you do when you are locked up inside some alien spaceship?
Yes, connect your laptop to some random cable running through ypur prison cell. This will give you full control of the whole spaceship.

This may, theoretically, be possible. However, as I'm working in the car industry it really annoys me when I see that you can connect each kind of hardware, regardless of the communication protocol, the transport layer, hell, even if its some piece of unknown alien stuff.

But as Stargate has a good piece of self-mockery, I'm totally fine with it :-)

Stuff like in Ant-Man or F&F don't hurt me.
This movies are intended to be entertaining, not scientific correct.
But yeah, sometimes you just have to facepalm :-)

Edited May 9, 2016 by lugge

[Kertech]

antman's conservation of mass rule is broken so many times in the movie that I wonder why they bothered mentioning it!

[PB666]

3 hours ago, lugge said:

It may be correct from a scientific view, but if you are an engineer it really hurts you:

In Stargate (and I guess in other shows too) they can connect their laptops and tablets to every piece of alien hardware and communicate with this hardware.

So, what do you do when you are locked up inside some alien spaceship?
Yes, connect your laptop to some random cable running through ypur prison cell. This will give you full control of the whole spaceship.

This may, theoretically, be possible. However, as I'm working in the car industry it really annoys me when I see that you can connect each kind of hardware, regardless of the communication protocol, the transport layer, hell, even if its some piece of unknown alien stuff.

But as Stargate has a good piece of self-mockery, I'm totally fine with it :-)

Stuff like in Ant-Man or F&F don't hurt me.
This movies are intended to be entertaining, not scientific correct.
But yeah, sometimes you just have to facepalm :-)

RS-232 is the universal standard, ROFL,  at least it used to be, there are still machines being made with RS-232 but computers that actually communicate with then, well maybe we can talk to the folks at Raspberry Pi.

Ironically RS-232 was used from 1960 to present (althuogh the present is dubious cause the input or the output is generally not the device you want it to be).

[HebaruSan]

On 4/30/2016 at 11:42 AM, cubinator said:

The sun used to rise in the west in Minecraft, but I believe they changed that so it goes the right way now.

North, actually, but all you saw in-game was that the sun rose over there and set over there, so it was still natural to call the direction of the sunrise "east" before it was changed.

[MeticulousMitch]

May have been mentioned already but sound delay is almost never depicted properly, even in serious movies. You'll always hear an explosion immediately no matter how far away it is viewed from. Even worse is when a shockwave is depicted racing towards the camera and the explosion sound has already been heard!

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

North, actually, but all you saw in-game was that the sun rose over there and set over there, so it was still natural to call the direction of the sunrise "east" before it was changed.

Oh, yeah. It's been a long time since I've played Minecraft.

[luizopiloto]

Every time I see small teddy bears beating up an armoured AT-ST and highly armed and trained soldiers using only spears and slingshots... >____<"
or sound in space vacuum... unless the sound we hear are radio waves detected by a receiver on our side...

Edited May 9, 2016 by luizopiloto

[Jeb1969]

The movie San Andreas with Dwayne Johnson everything about that movie seemed scientifically inaccurate especially the tsunami. It felt like the directors flunked out of any sensible Geology, and or Seismology class. 

[Shpaget]

Internal inconsistencies are what bothers me the most.

Antman, I'm looking at you.