Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[DDE]

7 hours ago, SnailsAttack said:

when people in sci-fi movies take their helmets off on other planets with absolutely zero knowledge of any of its atmospheric or biological properties.

that excrements could be composed of 98% nerve gas and space aids for all you stand-up guys know

@ARS I'm moderately glad to know that I wasn't the only one peeved by The Core

To reword the point by @MichaelPoole, they're genre-aware, and now that few if any sci-fi series depict subtle hostile lien environments. It's either "Mustafar" or "another Earth".

By the way, humans could breathe on Mustafar. *zing borrowed from Cinemasins*

[Racescort666]

7 hours ago, SnailsAttack said:

when people in sci-fi movies take their helmets off on other planets with absolutely zero knowledge of any of its atmospheric or biological properties.

that excrements could be composed of 98% nerve gas and space aids for all you stand-up guys know

@ARS I'm moderately glad to know that I wasn't the only one peeved by The Core

+1 point to Stargate SG-1 for realism I guess... Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought The Core was mega cringeworthy.

While we're at it, one more thing that always bothered me about The Martian: communication. Our current rovers are capable of communicating and relaying information through the orbiters so why in a hypothetical future with near constant observation of the martian surface does this same capability not exist? How do the Ares' crews communicate with Earth at night? I gave the killer storm a pass as a plot device (something had to strand Watney and it gave the story more of a "shipwreck" feel) and The Martian started out as Weir's fictional blog posts as a stranded astronaut. 

I was going to say something about Gravity and orbital mechanics but I don't remember. I would say that the grievances of the orbital mechanics by the people on this forum are justified. The people on this forum understand orbital mechanics better than most of the general public and know what it means to try and get from one orbiting vehicle to another. 

As for Interstellar, I put it in the same bin as Star Wars and Star Trek. Lots of ooh-ahh, some technobabble, with the slight difference of a really cool looking black hole.

Han shot first, George let go.

[DDE]

6 hours ago, PB666 said:

As of yet we have not discovered a single planet that has >10% oxygen in its atmosphere.

Pluto.

*double trollface*

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Racescort666 said:

While we're at it, one more thing that always bothered me about The Martian: communication. Our current rovers are capable of communicating and relaying information through the orbiters so why in a hypothetical future with near constant observation of the martian surface does this same capability not exist? How do the Ares' crews communicate with Earth at night?

And how does the rover communicate with the Martian base from beyond the horizon if not through a sat relay?

31 minutes ago, DDE said:

Pluto.

*double trollface*

Ganymede and Europa

*third trollface*
#notaplanet

[p1t1o]

13 hours ago, Nikolai said:

I meant to refer to the weight Bullock's exhausted hand was taking.  Of course, if you go back to the multiple exposure or the clip, you can see that she wasn't the center of rotation, either... which lessens the weight on her hand as well as the angular displacement she has to go through.  I tend to think Clooney was rotating much faster than that 5 deg/s, though, if you watch the stars in the background during the close-ups; I suspect that that's because the station was rotating some amount itself, possibly because it had some initial non-zero angular velocity after being abandoned (which seems likely; what are the odds that it was left at exactly zero?) and/or possibly because some angular velocity was imparted to it by Clooney's and Bullock's interactions with it.

But these seem like trifles.  From one point of view, attempts to punch holes in this scene seem like attempts to make petty complaints; from the other, attempts to defend this scene seem like attempts to imagine things that aren't there.  Since space is a place where motion can be deceptive and counterintuitive to senses honed with long experience on Earth, maybe I gave it more credit than it deserves.  Or maybe things that seem poorly-shot are a matter of subjective taste.  Or something.  I have to admit that this particular bit didn't break my mimesis, though; even seeing it in the theater, I thought they were rotating right away and that Clooney was in trouble.  I also tend to see switching back-and-forth between close-ups less as sequential and more as "Here are the expressions the other person was making while the camera was looking away", for whatever little that matters, and maybe that factored into the duration of the scene bothering me less.

(What did break my mimesis was the station-hopping.  But then, I guess, you'd have a much less engaging story, or at least a much less lengthy one.  "One day, debris hit the Shuttle in the middle of a servicing mission.  Every crew member died.  The End."  Ninety minutes between debris encounters also seemed pretty bogus.)

(P.S. Apparently, the mass of a dry MMU was 136 kg, if that helps with figuring out the force on Bullock's hand; we'd have to add that to the mass of the EMU and Clooney.  So 350 kg total?   )

Now Im confused about whose hand is whose. Honestly its starting to go into more detail than I can comfortably extract without watching the scene over and over. I wish I could post the two screenshots I took to show why Im so convinced, but imgur is garbage apparently and I dont want another account with another nameless faceless storage website. But I gave the timestamps for the youtube clip I took them from so theres that. Two pictures with the same background and Clooney hanging there like they are filming them dangling from a ceiling.

If it is not bad science, then its bad cinema, there's definitely something severely off about the scene, I'll take either one. 

 

[Green Baron]

Interstellar (pretends to be scientifically enhanced or so):

- a ship falling away from another one while both are under zero acceleration. And of course the whole thing "hybernation". But needed for the story to work ...

- a chemical reaction in a higher vertebrate's body (called love) as a cause for effects between different galaxies ? Even midichlorians are restricted to a galaxy far far away ... :-)

Nevertheless i liked the movie as a scifi movie.

Europa Report:

I wouldn't let those derks go hiking alone on the mountain here. They would kill themselves one after the other, falling in crevasses, slipping on loose rocks, an so on. A movie i could hardly watch to the end, because after 10 minutes it was clear how this would go out.

Iron Sky:

Cool crap. The giant eccentric, smartphone controlling a ship, slight reference to politics, greatcoats, stereotypical characters ... it's a cultural highlight

The Marsian:

We know the weaknesses, i would add nutrition and survivability/loss of strength as well as direction controlling during uncontrolled propulsion by loss of pressure to the inconsistencies (the ship as well as mark would probably just do the deflating balloon), but still a nice movie.

 

I haven't watched the other ones mentioned here (except of course Star Trek and Wars) ...

[ARS]

On a side of a note, in gravity, according to a calculation, if the debris circling earth at 90 minutes interval, that would put it roughly at escape velocity, which means at that speed, the debris would accelerate away from earth into deep space, escaping earth sphere of influence

[kerbiloid]

50 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

a chemical reaction in a higher vertebrate's body (called love) as a cause for effects between different galaxies ?

This is Love, and it really does. What's wrong with it?

There was no way for Cooper Sr. to communicate with Cooper Jr. and tell her where should she go to receive the information he sends.
But he knew Cooper Jr. enough well and had a strong hope that she loves him and suffers from nostalgy for her childhood and their home, and someday she will visit the house.
This was obviously the only place on the Earth where he could expect her appearance. So, he set the trap in their home, and his prediction was right.

You would definitely read/study Yudkovsky's fanfic . Predictable habits, significance of reputation, and so on.

When a police waits for somebody at his/her lover's home, aren't they betting their hopes on Love?
Or when somebody takes hostages, doesn't he hope on somebody's Love, too?

58 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Now Im confused about whose hand is whose. Honestly its starting to go into more detail than I can comfortably extract without watching the scene over and over. I wish I could post the two screenshots I took to show why Im so convinced, but imgur is garbage apparently and I dont want another account with another nameless faceless storage website. But I gave the timestamps for the youtube clip I took them from so theres that. Two pictures with the same background and Clooney hanging there like they are filming them dangling from a ceiling.

Somebody should reproduce their tango in KSP with KAS.

15 minutes ago, ARS said:

On a side of a note, in gravity, according to a calculation, if the debris circling earth at 90 minutes interval, that would put it roughly at escape velocity, which means at that speed, the debris would accelerate away from earth into deep space, escaping earth sphere of influence

Or just the authors of Interstellar think that orbital stations stay motionless.

I have a bad feeling. Don't they think the Earth is flat, and ISS, Tiangong, and Hubble are hanging above close to each other?
Upd. Probably even better. They think the Earth is hollow, and all three are near the center of that hollow. That's why they know about orbits, but put the stations together.

Edited February 2, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

19 hours ago, Racescort666 said:

Our current rovers are capable of communicating and relaying information through the orbiters so why in a hypothetical future with near constant observation of the martian surface does this same capability not exist?

I think this was simply bypassed by having the comms destruction linked directly with the character being lost. If anything, after the fiddling of the relic lander's software, the stranded was able to communicate "freely" - so more or less relay.

After all, an antenna is just a wire mesh. You need the transmitter. (I think both kind of went damaged ?)

 

________

Super off-topic :

[Moderator comment: if you KNOW it's "super off-topic," please don't post it.]

Will try in the future.

Edited February 3, 2018 by YNM

[YNM]

 

On 02/02/2018 at 7:47 AM, MichaelPoole said:

What's with the ridiculous hate for Interstellar? I'd put it in one of the best movies ever made.

Guess this comes from misattribution for it being a good sci-fi. It's an unusual (in film industry I guess) father-daughter romance, but talking about the engineering will just scream BS and under/overthinking.

I still like it for the astrophysics (to a point) and the father-daughter relation, but that's it.

Edited February 3, 2018 by YNM
Removed tree stump.

[MaxwellsDemon]

13 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

That nobody bothered in any of those cases (and yes, I'm blaming the people who didn't bother to decide to not make The Core) is sad, to me.

Or, perhaps, that in some cases it may have been accurate to begin with but some director or other with a weak grasp of physics messed it up for the sake of 'excitement.'   I 100% agree with you (except for the fact I avoided seeing "The Core," and, based on your comments, I made a good decision to do so).

A movie that is clearly fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc.) doesn't raise my ire.  The ones that are billed as 'realistic' have an obligation to adhere to that standard.

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

Stargate: SG-1 has some pretty unrealistic spaceships.

I love when a spaceship has enough rooms inside to fill the entire volume of the vessel

[justidutch]

The transformation of a normal regular next-door-neighbor sort of human being into a superhero by means of being subjected to 'radiation'; this is something that has always irked me.  Spiderman is the most obvious example, but there are others...

[kerbiloid]

If Superman were flying with a fist over head, he would burn his fist.
Also his drag profile would be asymmetric. He would better either raise both fists, or put them both down.

WonderWoman and CaptAmerica are aware of this and always use heatshields.

But maybe Superman generates a plasma cloud around the fist working as heatshield?
I don't know, so I can't certainly claim if this is a bad science or not.

Though I don't understand why Batman needs a batmobile when he could just use a jetpack every time.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I love when a spaceship has enough rooms inside to fill the entire volume of the vessel

When I look at the Enterprise it always looked to flat to have many decks, like maybe if everyone was a pygmy. When you see the corridors you know there is a plenum above the ceiling with stuff up there. On a submarine a tall man as to duck going between sections.

56 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Though I don't understand why Batman needs a batmobile when he could just use a jetpack every time.

That was the coolest part, the barricade that would drop and the bat-cave with a turntable for the bat mobile. You take away his props and all he is a guy wearing leotards with an unusually close and intimate relationship with robin.

[monstah]

On 01/02/2018 at 3:15 PM, Nikolai said:

For me, it's the feel.  They got the feel of space right -- it's not like being submerged in water or like anything we're familiar with.  It's alien.  And that alien nature is what will kill you if you don't watch out

So they did! I watched it on one of the biggest screens in town (tho, sadly, not IMAX), sitting close to it, and it was a gorgeous experience

[MaxwellsDemon]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

If Superman were flying with a fist over head, he would burn his fist.
Also his drag profile would be asymmetric. He would better either raise both fists, or put them both down.

WonderWoman and CaptAmerica are aware of this and always use heatshields.

But maybe Superman generates a plasma cloud around the fist working as heatshield?
I don't know, so I can't certainly claim if this is a bad science or not.

Though I don't understand why Batman needs a batmobile when he could just use a jetpack every time.

Look up Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" sometime.   

[DDE]

7 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Or, perhaps, that in some cases it may have been accurate to begin with but some director or other with a weak grasp of physics messed it up for the sake of 'excitement.' 

Case in point: somebody literate did create the initial outline for Armageddon.

[MaxwellsDemon]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Case in point: somebody literate did create the initial outline for Armageddon.

And that person probably tore all their hair out when they saw that it appeared to be raining on the asteroid.   

[Vanamonde]

A whole heck of a lot of political stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with science fiction flaws has been removed from this thread. 

Please stick to the point. 

Also, please don't substitute other characters into a word to get it past the forum's language filter. It's there for a reason. 

[cubinator]

In The Space Between Us, there was a lot of pretty accurate visual stuff. I noticed one guy carrying a pretty hefty looking box just by the corners on Mars, even through he was way in the background. They even grabbed a hatch design directly from the ISS, exit signs and all. The place they chose for the Mars base is an actual place on Mars, and a great spot for a science base. (It's right in the middle of the supposed flood plains.) So I give it props for that. But there's a lot of really important stuff that they flat out ignored. For instance, Earth-Mars video chat? Are you kidding me? Tulsa's laptop was probably worth ten billion dollars and she didn't know it. The artists also clearly had not been briefed on how orbits work, as it was all "straight up and straight down" and at unrealistically high altitudes.

[kerbiloid]

Whole Dune series consists of bad science from top to bottom.
It's easier to list what isn't a bad science in it.
Of course, it's more a space opera than a true sci-fi, but the author was trying to get into numbers. Fail.

P.S.
And what annoyed me a lot in these books: they have kinda laser guns and kinda force field domes.
If hit a dome with laser gun, it bursts between the dome and the shooter, killing the latter.
But a human can easily pass through the dome, so they use pathetic knives or so.

Why not drop a big laser gun on a chute, let it land inside a dome and then switch it on.
I would presume, then the explosion would crash everything inside the dome.

Edited February 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

On 2 February 2018 at 12:18 PM, ARS said:

On a side of a note, in gravity, according to a calculation, if the debris circling earth at 90 minutes interval, that would put it roughly at escape velocity, which means at that speed, the debris would accelerate away from earth into deep space, escaping earth sphere of influence

There's something not quite right with that calculation then, given that the ISS has a 92 minute orbital period.

 

[ARS]

3 hours ago, KSK said:

There's something not quite right with that calculation then, given that the ISS has a 92 minute orbital period.

 

Isn't it weird if the debris has the orbital trajectory to intersect all of them (Shuttle, Hubble, ISS), has roughly the same orbit trajectory but moves much faster than all of them? (I'm just assuming what the film said since they said the debris has an orbital period of 90 minutes, but considering what happened in the movie, it looks like the debris' orbital period is much more faster. This assumes the 2 main objects (ISS and Hubble) orbit is intersecting with debris' orbit, but even then it's an extremely low probability that those 2 objects (with each having different orbital trajectory being intersected by 1 orbit all at once while that orbit moves much faster than all of those 2 objects to cause enough damage to destroy it)

imagine like this: 2 satellites on low kerbin orbit. They are on the same orbital trajectory and orbital plane. Seen from above kerbin, Satellite A is on 12 o'clock position, while satellite B is on 6 o'clock position. Now, satellite A moves much faster than B, so eventually, their collision is inevitable, yet satellite A has same orbital path and trajectory like B. This is pretty much implausible

Edited February 4, 2018 by ARS

[mrfox]

On 2/2/2018 at 8:56 AM, SnailsAttack said:

when people in sci-fi movies take their helmets off on other planets with absolutely zero knowledge of any of its atmospheric or biological properties.

that excrements could be composed of 98% nerve gas and space aids for all you stand-up guys know