Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[DDE]

32 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

For my taste, there is too much militarism and "blood and honour" and "they shall not die in vain" involved.

I can agree with STD (they seem to be tryhards for the ‘dark and gritty’ style of nu-BFG) and JJ-Trek, but TLJ? Where one charecter is directly rebuked for trading a bunch of subcapital craft, while the other has his chance at sacrifice and potentially saving the Resistance (and have a meaningful charecter arc) stolen from him?

We didn’t watch the same movie.

[Green Baron]

7 minutes ago, DDE said:

We didn’t watch the same movie.

We did. It is just futile like resistance to argue over taste ;-)

[razark]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

I think MIRVs are well underway since very early (like Titan or something ?). They'd have known when digital color video comes in.

The film wasn't about the MIRVs, it was about a possible new decoy for use against a possible new detection system.

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I didn't see the whole series, just s01e01.

It's only 4 episodes long, you're almost done!  It's worth the finish. 

[kerbiloid]

Those magnificent barges of Jabba Hutt.
They are perfect, they are that what I always wanted.

Spoiler

But they are named Sail Barge and I just don't know if this is a bad science or not.

Edited February 20, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

1 hour ago, razark said:

The film wasn't about the MIRVs, it was about a possible new decoy for use against a possible new detection system.

But the MIRV part isn't new by that time. Haven't entirely seen it.

Edited February 20, 2018 by YNM

[razark]

11 minutes ago, YNM said:

But the MIRV part isn't new by that time. Haven't entirely seen it.

No, the MIRV part isn't new.  But MIRVs are not the point of the video.

@45 seconds:
"This presentation shows a possible penetration aid, or penaid system, which uses replication and pyrotechnics to defeat postulated optical ICBM defenses."

 

[YNM]

8 minutes ago, razark said:

"This presentation shows a possible penetration aid, or penaid system, which uses replication and pyrotechnics to defeat postulated optical ICBM defenses."

In that case there's nothing wrong from the video. It's just too "sloppy" with some of the graphics.

[Bill Phil]

Ironically, I think Gundam (at least the early Universal Century timeline) deserves some praise. It gets a lot wrong, but it does very well regardless. The ships have handles that people grab onto to move around within the vessel while in free fall, the artificial gravity is from rotation, the deck alignment on some of the ships is technically justified since the ships also function on/above Earth (they do have magical rocket engines though...), and even then some more space aligned characters point out how impractical it is for a spaceship. Even the combat being within visual range is justified in-story, as in real life it would never happen. It's got fictional science, but at least they tried to make something with a decent scientific background.

Of course, the giant robots aren't really excusable.

[Shpaget]

On 2/18/2018 at 8:51 PM, DDE said:

Partly that - but partly because individual MIRVs have no or at most attitude thrusters (usually they're just spin-stabilized); so the bus performs a number of lateral burns as it disperses each payload.

 

The cheery voice, poor animation (from today's perspective), the military theme etc... All I could think is "Would you like to know more?".

On 2/19/2018 at 11:46 AM, MinimalMinmus said:

Lucy: "We only use 10% of our brain, and at 100% we become god or something like that."

Me: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

I was trying to repress that memory.

I actually went to cinema and gave money for that thing. I should have thrown it out the window and experience better satisfaction/cost ratio.

[MinimalMinmus]

1 minute ago, Shpaget said:

I was trying to repress that memory.

I actually went to cinema and gave money for that thing. I should have thrown it out the window and experience better satisfaction/cost ratio.

Me and my father (who's a physics teacher) were actually bursting in laughter due to how bad this film was. A complete waste of leptons and photons.

[YNM]

On 19/02/2018 at 5:46 PM, MinimalMinmus said:

Lucy: "We only use 10% of our brain, and at 100% we become god or something like that."

Me: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

What film is that ? Obviously now we know it's not true (thanks fMRI !), was it set in the "past" of sorts ?

On 20/02/2018 at 8:14 PM, kerbiloid said:

Those magnificent barges of Jabba Hutt.
They are perfect, they are that what I always wanted.

Invisible camel ?

[DDE]

3 minutes ago, YNM said:

What film is that ? Obviously now we know it's not true (thanks fMRI !), was it set in the "past" of sorts ?

No, the protagonist ODs on some sort of nootropic booster and becomes a goddess.

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, YNM said:

Invisible camel ?

No, a horizontally-oriented hovercraft of more or less such shape and side, open deck, pseudo-3d (altitude is fixed but manageable).

3 minutes ago, DDE said:

No, the protagonist ODs on some sort of nootropic booster and becomes a goddess.

And as they notice, when Lucy is in the operating room, the X-Ray photo on the wall depicts the patient's skull, while the surgeon is operating his chest.

[MinimalMinmus]

19 minutes ago, YNM said:

What film is that ? Obviously now we know it's not true (thanks fMRI !), was it set in the "past" of sorts ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film)

As much as I'd have liked it to be an old film... you read the "2014" right.

[ARS]

13 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Ironically, I think Gundam (at least the early Universal Century timeline) deserves some praise. It gets a lot wrong, but it does very well regardless. The ships have handles that people grab onto to move around within the vessel while in free fall, the artificial gravity is from rotation, the deck alignment on some of the ships is technically justified since the ships also function on/above Earth (they do have magical rocket engines though...), and even then some more space aligned characters point out how impractical it is for a spaceship. Even the combat being within visual range is justified in-story, as in real life it would never happen. It's got fictional science, but at least they tried to make something with a decent scientific background.

Of course, the giant robots aren't really excusable.

Spaceship is indeed impractical in gundam universe (they rarely survive a single beam gun before going kaboom, unless it's prototype/ capital ship), but they are justified for being the carrier for gundams where they act like aircraft carrier in space (their firepower is from craft/ gundams they carry, but cannot fight direct confrontation)

The reason for giant robot is a bit vague, but some source material claims that it allows the usage of more powerful weapons with acceptable mobility (gundam assault rifle is basically full auto tank cannon, which, if mounted on conventional weapon platform like tanks, aircraft, etc., would literally tear it apart from immense recoil. Placing it on gundams allowed it to be braced properly like how humans handle the guns and gundams can also adjust the bracing stance to compensate with terrain/ environment), still ignoring square cube rule though (except in space, but that problem belongs to orbital mechanic)

[YNM]

53 minutes ago, DDE said:

No, the protagonist ODs on some sort of nootropic booster and becomes a goddess.

 

36 minutes ago, MinimalMinmus said:

As much as I'd have liked it to be an old film... you read the "2014" right.

Ah. Full of scruff indeed.

Just a fictional science.

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, ARS said:

The reason for giant robot is a bit vague, but some source material claims that it allows the usage of more powerful weapons with acceptable mobility (gundam assault rifle is basically full auto tank cannon, which, if mounted on conventional weapon platform like tanks, aircraft, etc., would literally tear it apart from immense recoil. Placing it on gundams allowed it to be braced properly like how humans handle the guns and gundams can also adjust the bracing stance to compensate with terrain/ environment), still ignoring square cube rule though (except in space, but that problem belongs to orbital mechanic)

Come on, it's obvious that the reason for the giant death robot is just that giant death robots are awesome.

[ARS]

26 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Come on, it's obvious that the reason for the giant death robot is just that giant death robots are awesome.

It's all about the rule of cool first and scientific explanation made up second

[kerbiloid]

Giant anthropomorphic robots are very useful together with giant combat crafts with giant anthropomorphic seats inside.

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Come on, it's obvious that the reason for the giant death robot is just that giant death robots are awesome.

This, lots of tank and artillery guns are automatic. Main issue for rate of fire on heavy guns is barrel overheating but you could actively cool them. 
However if you carry an tank main gun I expect others to use them to, tanks don't have that many m^2 strong armor, the turret front and sides and sides are weaker, rear tend to be pretty soft. 
They weight +50 tons. 
Now to protect an robot similar you need to cover all of it in tank grade armor. 
Just armor against 25 mm or other belt feed weapons will be hard. 

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

This, lots of tank and artillery guns are automatic. Main issue for rate of fire on heavy guns is barrel overheating but you could actively cool them. 
However if you carry an tank main gun I expect others to use them to, tanks don't have that many m^2 strong armor, the turret front and sides and sides are weaker, rear tend to be pretty soft. 
They weight +50 tons. 
Now to protect an robot similar you need to cover all of it in tank grade armor. 
Just armor against 25 mm or other belt feed weapons will be hard. 

Well, the armor is basically useless in the anime series (if not in real life...), the armor only exists to protect it from small arms fire. What's funny is that they have shields (not sci-fi deflector shields, literal shields) to protect against more powerful weapons, but the only protection against the most powerful weapons is to not get hit. 

Edited February 24, 2018 by Bill Phil

[Piatzin]

So this week I read the Divergent series (By Veronica Roth)

And, well......How many of you actually had to stare at the 'science' of the third book for several minutes before you realized it made practically zero sense?

By the way, it's not just the science that's messed up. I don't recommend the series as a whole

Edited February 24, 2018 by Earthlinger

[DDE]

18 minutes ago, Earthlinger said:

So this week I read the Divergent series (By Veronica Roth)

To paraphrase Evgeny "Bad Comedian" Bazhenov, the story consists entirely of the main characters making a mockery of every internal rule of their own universe. Start with the non-binding nature of the assignment test.

It would be ridiculous for it to pay any reverence to science.

Also, grab some bleeprin to ease the pain.

 

Edited February 24, 2018 by DDE

[insert_name]

In hunger games, they shot down a bomber with a bow and explosive arrow.