Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[radonek]

Passangers? That one did not make any sense in a first place. The ship was so incredibly mind numbingly wastefull it made actual plot look kinda surrealistic. 

40 minutes ago, DDE said:

Everyone deserves a small particle cannon in their life.

I, for one, am glad that days of CRT displays are gone.

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

Another film I actually enjoyed. You just have to treat movies like these as "fantasy" rather than "sci-fi". Same genre as Lord of the Rings or TRON.

My favorite inaccuracy though was when the gravity turns off, what makes all the water leave the pool in the first place?

I would have enjoyed the sci-fi fantasy aspect if not for the horrible, horrible storyline.

Not that the story was poorly told. It was told very well. But the story was a story where the hero is clearly a psychopath.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Of course it does. It was screwing into the space aether like a drill (that's why it looks like a spiral).
When they pulled the plug from the outlet, the ship stopped screwing.

Once the electricity appeared, the space drill started rotating again.

LIKE

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

On the flip side, the "hanging on in space" scene is done well.

Big bubbles in zero-G always look nice.

There was some EVA action.

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

There was some EVA action.

EVA means spacesuit. Nobody swims in a pool in spacesuit.
So, zero-G bubbles are better indoors.

Edited February 7, 2018 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

EVA means spacesuit. Nobody swims in a pool in spacesuit.
So, zero-G bubbles are better indoors.

I meant that the "hanging on in space" scene was an EVA scene.

The zero-G bubble scene was not the "hanging on in space" scene.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

I would have enjoyed the sci-fi fantasy aspect if not for the horrible, horrible storyline.

Not that the story was poorly told. It was told very well. But the story was a story where the hero is clearly a psychopath.

That was kind of a positive factor for me, it made him a more-than-one dimensional character. He wasnt a psychopath until he was driven to it. I cant say I wouldnt have done the same thing after several years on my own in deep space. 

But my  main memory was hearing of lots of very bad reviews of the movie, but then actually quite enjoying it. Take all reviews, for anything, with a pinch of salt, that was my takeaway.

Edited February 7, 2018 by p1t1o

[DAL59]

If all the passengers are frozen, why is the ship so big?

The only reasonable starship  is the Dragonfly from Rocheworld.  

The coolest looking one is the Navoo

 

[kerbiloid]

Not really bad science, but strange technics.

Alien (1979).

When Ellen Louise (i.e. Ripley) tries to burst Nostromo using split-system climatic control we can see a suitcase with a special keyboard and four nice metal cylinders.

If have a look at the keyboard you can get an esoteric nature of Nostromo journey.

Googling for screenshots to show this here, found a nice webpage with detailed description of Nostromo interfaces.
https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/

Screens from that page:
 

Spoiler

 

So, now we can see that meditative David The Android from Prometheus and Covenant is OK, it's a part of this.
(Just he should study yoga instead of Proto-Indoeuropean and be the first sci-fi yogandroid).

[Treveli]

That key board may not seem so strange if you account for a century or more of changes in language and technical terms. Go back a hundred years or more and ask a scientist about cold fusion, matter/antimatter reactions, etc, and they may politely ask you to stop babbling and go away.

Also just the result of a prop guy thinking no one would take something that was on screen for such a short time seriously. 

 

[kerbiloid]

22 minutes ago, Treveli said:

That key board may not seem so strange if you account for a century or more of changes in language and technical terms. Go back a hundred years or more and ask a scientist about cold fusion, matter/antimatter reactions, etc, and they may politely ask you to stop babbling and go away.

Of course the Nostromo crew could be techpriests

Spoiler

but then why they never speak about Shakti, Padme, and so on, repairing the ship?

22 minutes ago, Treveli said:

Also just the result of a prop guy thinking no one would take something that was on screen for such a short time seriously.

The article describes Nostromo very pedantically _{in good sense of the word}, btw.

Edited February 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

@kerbiloid

Cool spot.

"Yoni" and "Lingha" can be considered similar to how we might use "male" and "famale" when describing things like connectors, it could be related to docking or something industrial like that.

[DDE]

52 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Padme

Oh noes, they predicted the Prequels and never told us...

Edited February 8, 2018 by DDE

[p1t1o]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

Oh noes, they predicted the Prequels and never told us...

 

Interesting, everyday is a school day:

 

The first word Om is a sacred syllable found in Indian religions. The word Mani means "jewel" or "bead",Padme is the "lotus flower" (the Buddhist sacred flower), and Hum represents the spirit of enlightenment.

Om mani padme hum - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_mani_padme_hum

Edited February 8, 2018 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

27 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

The first word Om is a sacred syllable found in Indian religions. The word Mani means "jewel" or "bead",Padme is the "lotus flower" (the Buddhist sacred flower), and Hum represents the spirit of enlightenment.

Yes, and Yoni and Lingham on Nostromo keyboard also make sense.
All these words are mentioned in the article, too.

But why noone in Nostromo ever mention the Eastern Philosophy?

P.S.
Aliens series  too, but not the movie itself.
In old pirate Russian translation in 1980s the M41A pulse rifle got a personal model name: M41A Pulsator. Since that it became a canonic Russian name for that Aliens weapon.
I like it very much though it's a typical misheard lyrics/translator's error.

Edited February 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

42 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

But why noone in Nostromo ever mention the Eastern Philosophy?

A great deal of western culture is derived from ancient Rome - in fact all cultures are amalgams of various things - but how often do you talk about it? It may not be that the culture of Nostromo's world is steeped in eastern philosophy, just that eastern culture influenced their general day-to-day environment, there's no reason to assume that todays powerblocs will be the same in several centuries, perhaps in the Alien universe, India is the most powerful country in the world.

For example, the question mark is derived from the Latin word "qvaestio" but we dont routinely chat about how Rome (or the ancient Greeks, or Christian/Muslim/Jewish faiths/histories etc.) have affected our culture.

(Dont be all "but we're talking about it now!", you could easily go a couple of days or even a whole space voyage without it coming up   )

On the other hand, maybe its nothing to do with that. Perhaps the Nostromo is just manufactured in/by India. Like a group of Americans that bought a Russian submarine, they wouldnt replace the buttons, they'd just learn what they meant.

Edited February 8, 2018 by p1t1o

[Tex_NL]

Has 'The Cloverfield Paradox' been mentioned yet?

First of all: Minor spoilers ahead! You have been warned!

For a SciFi thriller/horror it's pretty decent. But the science ... not so much.
Most of the story takes place on an earth orbiting space station. The station consists of a large upper ring, a spine supporting three radially mounted rings and at the bottom an array of most likely radiators.

 

The entire station rotates around it's axis presumably to generate artificial gravity. The three smaller rings counter rotate at nearly the same rpm. (They rotate inside their own mounts, they do not move in relation to the spine or upper ring.) Centrifugal and inertial forces would therefore fluctuate wildly inside those rings.
But the worst thing is: gravitational forces you actually witness inside the station is not radial as it should be but orientated along the stations axis as if the large ring was the top and the radiators the bottom.

And I won't even go into what they are actually trying to do on the station and what happens when they succeed. (Or would that be fail?) That's completely bonkers. But the story does explain a good deal of it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And the pinnacle of bad science in blockbuster movies: EVERYTHING from the Marvel/DC universe!

Edited February 8, 2018 by Tex_NL

[p1t1o]

Im not sure if its bad sci-fi, but I was wondering about something in The Expanse.

Spoilers, but very mild.

There is a sequence with a small asteroid mining tug.

It captures a rock (I dunno, about 20-50m across?) in a big net. Obviously they are going to tow it somewhere, and they do. But first, after having wrapped it in a net, they blow it up into fragments, within the net.

Then they commence towing.

 

What up with the blowing up? Seems unnecessary?

[Tex_NL]

1 minute ago, p1t1o said:

Im not sure if its bad sci-fi, but I was wondering about something in The Expanse.

Spoilers, but very mild.

There is a sequence with a small asteroid mining tug.

It captures a rock (I dunno, about 20-50m across?) in a big net. Obviously they are going to tow it somewhere, and they do. But first, after having wrapped it in a net, they blow it up into fragments, within the net.

Then they commence towing.

 

What up with the blowing up? Seems unnecessary?

Only reasonable assumption would be that shattering the asteroid first would make it more pliable so it fits better in the net.
Blowing it up won't change the mass although you would loose some small chunks that will slip through your net.

[p1t1o]

11 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Only reasonable assumption would be that shattering the asteroid first would make it more pliable so it fits better in the net.
Blowing it up won't change the mass although you would loose some small chunks that will slip through your net.

First things that came to my mind too, and theres less dangerous ways of shedding a little mass. 

In fact it seems unwise to be conducting demolitions near your fragile spacecraft in deep space at all, but that might actually be more accurate (cowboy operation, cutting corners, amateur hour etc.)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Tex_NL said:

Has 'The Cloverfield Paradox' been mentioned yet?

Oh, yes. And its windows are placed radially. So the crew should fall onto wall...
... and every time another wall, as the rotating rings rotate with the rotating station.

Why did the rings not attached with explosive bolts?
Why should they decouple them manually?
(And why not just switch off the damaged ring engine?)

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

something in The Expanse.

Also in s01e01 or s01e02 the main hero eats matches solving them in coffee.
Later we never see this. Rapidly cured from addiction? Or hides them better? Maybe in asteroid belt matches become untasty?

In s01e01 a worker gets lost his hand arm hand with arm.
They immediately replace it with a prosthesis but he wants a better one. Just a mover, not a manager. Also a safety guidelines violator.
An episode later they show the pathetic unhappy beltaloda suffering from whatever it's possible to suffer.
What's the real state of medical assistance in that universe?

Edited February 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

13 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Also in s01e01 or s01e02 the main hero eats matches solving them in coffee.

Oh I thought this was a nutrient thing, like combating a diet low in phosphorous. Makes sense with a closed, station-sized ecosystem.

 

No date yet for season 3

 

 

 

[Racescort666]

Does it make me a terrible person for rooting for the humans in the movie Avatar? Also, there were some neat things about Passengers but the super-creep factor wrecked the whole movie for me. Bad science wise, you can still swim in zero-g since you push on the water; if the ship is constantly accelerating, why aren't they always falling toward the drive section?; when they arrive at the destination planet, the ship is firing it's engines the wrong way.

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also in s01e01 or s01e02 [of the Expanse] the main hero eats matches solving them in coffee.
Later we never see this. Rapidly cured from addiction? Or hides them better? Maybe in asteroid belt matches become untasty?

In s01e01 a worker gets lost his hand arm hand with arm.
They immediately replace it with a prosthesis but he wants a better one. Just a mover, not a manager. Also a safety guidelines violator.
An episode later they show the pathetic unhappy beltaloda suffering from whatever it's possible to suffer.
What's the real state of medical assistance in that universe?

I don't recall the specific coffee thing, but I do remember from reading the books that Holden (who grew up on Earth relatively wealthy) is a connoisseur of coffee. And at the start, they don't have real coffee, only some kind of substitute. They had some tricks they could use to try to make it taste more like real coffee.

When they take over the Martian frigate, Holden is amazed and delighted to find that they have real coffee in the kitchen pantry. No more need to try to chemically fake it.

In terms of medicine, cancer is effectively cured. Due to the massive dose of ionizing radiation that Holden took during the time he and Miller were escaping Eros, he has to take anti-cancer medication every day of his life to kill the cancer cells that his body is continually creating. But it's not clear he could have survived except for the fact that they had access to a Martian Navy sickbay. (Mars has the highest level of technology of any of the human societies.)

 

[StrandedonEarth]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Screens from that page:

You didn't notice the button for fly agaric? That's a hallucinogenic toadstool!

[YNM]

15 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Screens from that page:
 

Spoiler

 

Interesting... There's also "Druze" and on one there's "abhort" (which I thougt was "abort"). "Rohrim" might be yet more reference, and I bet the japanese-ish characters down left isn't a pure random pick.

Someone's making good references for themselves.

Edited February 9, 2018 by YNM

[EnderKid2]

On 1/31/2018 at 10:38 AM, p1t1o said:

Ooh I've got another one:

Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space" series and universe (which, BTW, are excellent sci-fi, this issue aside - nobody's perfect) has various sci-fi techs in it.

The machine I am referring to is an aircraft. It works by having the underside of its wings completely covered in intense heating elements, in operation hot enough to be dazzlingly bright.

So it has a wing, with a very hot skin on the underside. Which somehow produces lift. Enough lift to fly the thing about like a Harrier jump-jet.

I get that hot air rises, but this cannot possibly be an engine, right?

Heating the air would make it expand. they could have been going for a pulsed thermal or thermal jet proulsoin system, (Like the LV-N)