Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

Why on Earth would you assume that? 

Besides the fact that thats not really how aircraft work, the spitfire was known for its excellent glide characteristics.

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-I.html

 

 

22 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

No... thats not how forces work.  

Exactly.

Point taken.

Probably wouldn't glide for as long as it does in the film though.

Edited June 7, 2018 by RealKerbal3x

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Point taken.

Probably wouldn't glide for as long as it does in the film though.

Exact data is hard to come by, the best I could find on google within a few mins was:

"As for the gliding scene at the end after it runs out of fuel, Veterans reported gliding their Spitfires 15 miles or more without fuel."

[wumpus]

On 6/6/2018 at 5:33 AM, lugge said:

Maybe the Terminator (and other androids in question) were quick&dirty products.

They evolved from 21th-century AIs which were used in cars or military drones and had cameras and radars/laserscanners, able to spot and identify traffics signs, other cars, enemey weddings bases and hideouts.

The Terminator body, without the controlling AI, was maybe used in areas were you needed ground troops but were too dangerous for human soldiers. Thus, the bodies were controlled like surrogates. An army operator could control the body with joystick from a save, nice office room. The operator would use monitors to get camera visions and status information.

Later, the machines just took the evolved military AI and combined it with the military machine-body, but they were in a hurry and could not afford to specify and create a nice and clean API, thus, they used what they had.

Now you have your military AI in a fighting machine body, but the AI controls the body like the former army operators did.

Hey, why should machines be better developers than humans? ;-)

Considering early Terminators (i.e. the one in "Terminator") ran 6502 code (I think Apple2 6502 code showed on the screen), the AI probably couldn't make the thing walk and required a human operator (perhaps it had a 6502 dedicated to walking, and so on).

[ARS]

Some supposedly "futuristic" and "cool" weapons that often appear in sci-fi, but depicted incorrectly or imposeible when observed with real life law of physics:

Lightning gun/anything named "tesla": In Real Life, for electric current to flow there must be a difference in electrical potential. There must be negative and positive termini for current to flow between. Not so in fiction. Quite often, it will be possible for some device or some person to simply fire a lightning bolt more or less straight forward toward another presumably electrically neutral object, with no sign of building up charge separation beforehand. It is rare to see lightning weapons or electricity-based Elemental Powers that have electricity behaving the way it does in Real Life. Electric weapons often appear to throw electricity around as if it's a massive object like a bullet, a shell, or an arrow, rather than a system of electrons moving in response to electric potential, and sometimes hitting multiple enemies simultaneously. When this is an actual gun, it can be regarded as a cooler version of the basic Ray Gun or flamethrower. No matter how outlandish the idea is, adding Nikola Tesla as (the inspiration for) the creator will immediately suspend any disbelief audience may have. Science shows like Mythbusters and others have explored the possibility. The general consensus is that it's possible in a couple of ways, but requires so many conditions/ complications that the idea of creating a practical one is virtually zero. There's a device in real life, which is not quite the same, but the closest thing we have for lightning gun: Electrolaser. The electrolaser design has the potential to scale right up. Making an ionised beam of air a significant length just by blasting away with a laser is possible, but currently impractical due to power requirements.

Fireballs or any type of energy balls: Fire, in spite of its fearsome appeal, is not known for being tangible or portable. Rolling it into a ball gives it the semblance of a physical structure, and lets you throw it, fire it, bounce it and dodge it at will. Fireballs have a tendency to move in an unusual fashion - possibly hovering or drifting at slow speeds, or by bouncing along the ground. Usually this is treated like a cooler version of flamethrower. What most writer didn't realize, though, it shouldn't be ball-shaped when fired in atmosphere, since due to atmospheric influence, air resistance and gravity, the ball of plasma/ fire should be teardrop shaped. It makes sense being ball shaped when fired in space. Flames on Earth come to a point because the oxygen they use heats up and rises as it burns. If you strike a match in a low-gravity environment where there's technically nowhere to "rise," you get a sphere of hot gases instead.

Plasma gun/ rifle (why energy weapon needs rifling?)/ cannon and most plasma-based energy weapons: Plasma is one of the four states of matter, (technically, it's one of six known forms. The two usually omitted are Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermionic Condensate) a step up from gas where the electrons become so energized that they break free of their orbits. Naturally some people have thought of weaponizing it. Unfortunately, in real life, plasma's properties make it more than a bit impractical, even without atmosphere it spreads out and becomes useless more than a fraction of an inch from the source, making it useful as a cutting tool but not a (ranged) weapon unless you can practically project a magnetic bottle to contain the plasma until it hits the target...which is very advanced technology in its own right. Needless to say, practical ranged plasma weapons are an indication of a highly advanced civilization which makes them appear quite often in sci-fi. Those impracticalities may be why most fictional plasma weapons, almost always heavy guns or cannons, are at most, very powerful but extremely inefficient. There's some experimental plasma weapons in Real Life such as MARAUDER and Shiva Star. MARAUDER notably fires plasmoids at huge speeds (1000km/s or more) in contrast to typical fictional devices... any slower and the plasmoid would pop before it reached its target. It also wouldn't blast its target to pieces, instead fatally disrupting its electronics rendering it useless. Obviously no good on asteroids and other dumb projectiles. The prime reason plasma weapons were hitherto considered Impractical is the fact that plasma dissipates quickly when outside a magnetic containment field. Recent developments, however, have enabled a plasma projectile to generate its own field. While it still doesn't remain stable for long enough to travel any practical distance, this is an important proof of concept that holds significant promise for self-sustaining plasma reactions. Humans being humans, you can bet that the possibilities of weaponizing it will be duly investigated.

Ray guns/ blasters: Any gun that shoots light, rays, waves, or something similar. Initially popular during the appropriately named "Raygun Gothic" era of Science Fiction, but back then it was based on pure fiction, as shooting such things from weapons wasn't known to be possible. In short, the ray gun was falling out of favor for being unrealistic. Then the laser was discovered in the '60s. Suddenly the ray gun was brought back from the dead. But even now it's still treated as a cool, but impossible weapon, as lasers in fiction are often used in ways they can't really be. And while other ray guns do exist in Real Life (the US Army has been experimenting with microwave crowd dispersal wave generators, for example), they're still quite inefficient. The term "ray gun" became a cliché even by the 1940s, having strong associations with Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon etc., and from at least E. E. “Doc” Smith's Lensman novels, was increasingly replaced by the more bad-ass-sounding generic "blaster", Smith himself generally choosing to refer to the weapons by their maker just as we would refer to a Colt or Smith & Wesson. They are also popular in family-friendly shows. One odd aspect of ray guns in a lot of fiction, especially animation and comic books, is that despite being much niftier-looking than a stream of bullets, they're actually much less lethal/ harmful to be struck by than a regular bullet would be. It's extremely common for a character to get hit with an "energy beam" and fall down dramatically, but he will scarcely ever actually have a new hole burned through him, and a couple of scenes later we will see him pulling himself painfully to his feet again. The effect seems more comparable to getting punched really hard than to actually getting shot. This is sometimes justified by the ray gun having a "stun setting," or by the hero wearing body armor or having super powers. On "harder" sci-fi, where the gun does have lethal aspect, it's extremely common for any raygun/ laser/ blaster (in fact, almost any laser-based weapon, nit just limited to ranged weapon, but melee weapon as well even laser swords) wounds that causing body part being mutilated or pierced to automatically cauterized with no blood (possibly to prevent blood loss so that the character can survive longer to hear "I am your father")

Laser blade/ sword: The laser blade is a melee Energy Weapon, with a cutting edge made of Pure Energy, giving it absurd cutting power. It also allows the hero to clean cut their way across enemies a regular sword does not. Despite their cutting power, sword fights between two laser blade wielders are still possible thanks to the fact that they can't cut each other. Generally a type of cool (and impossible) weapon, they require a lot of "Willing Suspension of Disbelief", but are generally awesome enough to be worth it. Laser blades exist purely because of the rule of cool. In real life, making such fancy swords is impractical when laser beams decide war, but then again, laser blade duels are frickin' awesome, and that's enough justification to be showed on-screen. Another possible in-universe justification in that the duelists are somehow immune to bullets, whether thanks to shields, The Force or any other means, thus forcing the revival of old-school sword martial arts with laser blades. Note also that the word "laser" is frequently used for fictitious energy weapons of all types, even in settings where the beams are created by magic and don't share the real-world etymology of the word. Yes, despite having a perfectly fictional sounding, sci-fi/fantasy ring to it, the word "laser" is actually an acronym, standing for "Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Despite being a sword made of energy, it's surprisingly rare to see one that can shoot a Sword Beam. On his Sci-Fi Science television series, Dr. Michio Kaku explored the possibility of making a real-life lightsaber out of an extended plasma torch. Unfortunately, this required trillions of nanobatteries, theoretical superceramics, and enough electricity to power a small city. This may be viable in the long-term, but unlikely for the next few decades. Though that level of technology could easily make powerful guns which are more practical than swords anyways. The main practical application of this would be as an extremely effective chainsaw that could cut through virtually any material, though at extreme danger to the user, but it's not as if plasma cutters are exactly safe to begin with. As a side note, the "nanobatteries" would have an energy density of470 MJ/L. That's about 117 times the energy density of Jet fuel. Shoot the lightsaber. The resulting explosion would take out everything within a hundred feet. A thermal lance is a real-world device that some liken to a lightsaber. It essentially burns iron rods to create an intense stream of heat out one end, like a gigantic blow torch but much hotter. Granted they are much bigger than a lightsaber hilt and would require two hands to wield, but the stream to project has all the cutting power: they are normally used to cut through solid concrete and steel girders.

"Wave Motion Tuning fork" gun: A specific kind of Energy Weapon consisting of two or more prongs separated by an empty space. The blast from this type of weapon is generated within the space or fired through it, often heralded by crackling streams of energy zipping between the prongs or condensing energy ball as the weapon charges. The thing is, how the energy being charged does not simply disperse into the air is never really touched upon, although, one can expect an explanation about it. Suffice to say, the audience shouldn't even feel compelled to question this logic, because it looks really freaking awesome, to the point where things like reality just aren't very important anymore. Some times a regular, less powerful weapon may be able to open up into one of these for a truly staggering blast. The closest that we can get in real life is Free Electron Laser. The Free Electron Laser is a piece of awesome technology, complete with being especially good at being tuned for various emitted frequencies of radiation. The FEL forces a stream of electrons at relativistic speeds to pass through an optical cavity (the "fork") containing alternating magnetic fields (the "wave motion" component), and depending on the strength of the alternative magnetic field (the "tunable" component), the resulting synchrotron radiation produces photons at controllable power levels and frequencies. The technology is quite versatile and has has applications in scientific research and medicine, but also as a powerful directed energy weapon for military applications.

Beam-o-War: Not exactly a weapon, but a very common scene in superheroes, fantasy and science fiction. One opponent sends out a beam of destructive energy intent on frying their opponent, and said opponent does the same. These two beams slam against each other in the middle, and begin "pushing" back and forth, essentially becoming an energy arm-wrestle. Either one consumes the other and goes on to greet the enemy, one opponent collapses from the effort involved, or else they both explode.When more than two opponents are involved, they usually join their beam attack with their respective ally (or give them more energy) so that the "intersection" gets closer to the opponent. They almost never think about sneaking behind their defenseless foe and beaming them (or backstabbing them). This has little justification in real-life science. Lasers, for example, will simply pass through each other unimpeded, although their point of intersection may experience any constructive or destructive interference between the two beams depending on the characteristics (wavelength and phase) of the lasers involved. Of course, energy beams in fantasy and sci-fi are up for grabs in terms of how they react to one another, but even then there's the improbability of the beams being fired nearly simultaneously at perfect enough angles to result in a head-on collision with similar enough initial force to force equilibrium without planning such things beforehand. It does work for matter projectiles, but those are rarely used. 

Edited June 7, 2018 by ARS

[Kevin Kyle]

Thankfully I dont get all caught up in the whole its not science thing and just enjoy the movies for what they are. entertainment. Otherwise, it would be impossible to actually enjoy the movie.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Kevin Kyle

[kerbiloid]

Alien crabs are less common, but still nasty.

Spoiler

(Though bioweapons are not so popular/)

Edited June 7, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

54 minutes ago, ARS said:

There must be negative and positive termini for current to flow between. Not so in fiction.

Well, sometimes it's very subtle.

(Usefulness out of question though.)

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

<snikt>

Dont forget spacebowandarrows and spacecrossbows and the very rare spacebolas.

Spoiler

alternatively: laserbowandarrow, lasercrossbow, laserbolas.

 

[kerbiloid]

Somebody is just ought to mention an old DOS/Windows dilogy Crusader: No Regret and Crusader: No Remorse,
It's undoubtedly a sci-fi, and so many nice and well-animated ideas are there...

http://crusader.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/crusader-no-remorse-no-regret/

[DAL59]

4 hours ago, ARS said:

lasma gun/ rifle (why energy weapon needs rifling?)/ cannon and most plasma-based energy weapons:

These annoy me the most, because they are worse than normal non-plasma guns.  They are(in fiction) easy to dodge, still require reloading, and don't do any more damage.  

[mikegarrison]

All mad scientists should have a death ray.

www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040510

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, Kevin Kyle said:

Thankfully I dont get all caught up in the whole its not science thing and just enjoy the movies for what they are. entertainment. Otherwise, it would be impossible to actually the movie.

Yes, I was more annoyed by the tactic in SW 1 (4) than the science, its an fantasy movie after all. 
Star trek get an lot of flack for trying to keep an hard sci-fi image while being as fantasy as Star wars, 

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, DAL59 said:

These annoy me the most, because they are worse than normal non-plasma guns.  They are(in fiction) easy to dodge, still require reloading, and don't do any more damage.  

The rifle name is easy to explain, rifle== long gun, as in an weapon with an shoulder stock and an decent length barrel, now if it was an rail gun or laser with the same size it might well be called rifle. You want the shoulder stock for increased accuracy even if no recoil, most relevant if the gun has to be long anyway. 

And yes plasma weapons exist as in shaped charges, they are however very short range and plasma weapons would stay that with all known physic. 

 

[Kevin Kyle]

Had to edit my post. Apparently I cant type and think at the same time.

[lugge]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Star trek get an lot of flack for trying to keep an hard sci-fi image while being as fantasy as Star wars,  

As someone postet above, I wouldn't say Trek is fantasy. It' Fictional Science (of course it's no hard scifi).

The plot of StarTrek often relies on putting the protagonists in interesting situations which they have to solve and which often raises moral and ethical questions. I would call that "What if....?"-stories. Thats exactly what the great SciFi writers in the 50's and 60's did.

When your crew is trapped in a stable time loop, the point of the plot is not to describe how the loop works from a science point-of-view (because that's impossible), it's the behaviour of the crew. How do they act, what do they do with their knowledge of previous iterations?
Do they behave as thei wouldn't in normal circumstances because they know their actions have no impact (they can just kiss the girl)?

When your crew is confronted with some strange behaviour of your local off-world wacky tribe, the plot is about how to solve the conflict while respecting their culture. This often leads to "downer endings" because the crew has to realize they cannot apply their human moral concepts to them (which is like we should treat other cultures on Earth).

When your Transporter Device has a malfunction and you end up with a clone of your crew member, the plot is not about how the transporter works. It's about how to should treat the clone. Which human being is the "real" one? What does this mean to the crew relationship? Which one get's the girl?

Thats exactly the questions early science fiction writers adressed.
The tech is just the the vehicle which drives the plot.

Oh, of course I'm not talking about Voyager.
Voyager is just technobabble. ;-)

Edited June 8, 2018 by lugge

[p1t1o]

18 hours ago, ARS said:

Plasma gun/ rifle (why energy weapon needs rifling?)

Well "Plasma musket" would sound weird

I have an issue with anything "plasma". Plasma is just a hot gas. "Hot gas gun" doesnt sound like a great weapon does it.

A "plasma torpedo" would be substantially less powerful than a nuke. A "Plasma gun" would have terrible penetration characteristics. A "Plasma grenade" would be ooh, several tens of percent more powerful than a conventional one and potentially less powerful than a thermobaric or incendiary grenade.

And Im being really generous in my imagination too, imagining targets exposed to sustained (0s< <1s) temperatures in excess of 1000K and not just an instantaneous release of some compressed ball of hot gas.

[ARS]

25 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

I have an issue with anything "plasma". Plasma is just a hot gas. "Hot gas gun" doesnt sound like a great weapon does it.

Exactly. On the other hand "blaster" almost never "blast" the target (it's almost always laser gun), despite the name (literally) means "the one who blast" (it does sounds more badass than ray gun, though)

[p1t1o]

15 minutes ago, ARS said:

Exactly. On the other hand "blaster" almost never "blast" the target (it's almost always laser gun), despite the name (literally) means "the one who blast" (it does sounds more badass than ray gun, though)

I think I remember my old history teacher at school telling us that the original meaning of "to blast" something was to send it to hell, along with a joke about how that means the archaic insult "Blast you!" is technically more insulting than the modern "xxxx off!" (where "xxxx" is that 4 letter word we cant type here) because we'd all rather do that latter than the former.

So a "blaster" sends the victim to hell, which is quite badass I guess

 

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Plasma is just a hot gas.

It's an ionized hot gas, which can interact with electromagnetic fields.

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

A "Plasma gun" would have terrible penetration characteristics.

A portion of matter accelerated to relativistic speed. It becomes plasma due to heat and strong electromagnetic field.
So, it can carry much more energy than a solid penetrator.

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

A "plasma torpedo" would be substantially less powerful than a nuke.

Can mean anything what a writer wishes. For example, generate a star-hot plasma cloud, or a throwing a plasma cloud as projectile.

1 hour ago, ARS said:

On the other hand "blaster" almost never "blast" the target (it's almost always laser gun)

In many movies it throws portions of a glowing plasma-looking substance.

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

So a "blaster" sends the victim to hell, which is quite badass I guess

Now I see that Capt. Mandrake is (blasting) rude, compared to Gen. Ripper in Dr.Strangelove.
He has Bxxxx-bombed out all over the military base.

Edited June 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Atlas2342]

21 hours ago, ARS said:

Plasma is one of the four states of matter, (technically, it's one of six known forms. The two usually omitted are Bose-Einstein Condensate and Fermionic Condensate)

Only six? Aren't there more?

[wumpus]

22 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Dont forget spacebowandarrows and spacecrossbows and the very rare spacebolas.

  Reveal hidden contents

alternatively: laserbowandarrow, lasercrossbow, laserbolas.

 

Occasionally used in Science fiction both hard (Forever War) and of literary importance (Dune).  I think (it was a long time ago) that the last battle the main characters in Forever War basically fought as phalanxes or similar tech level (I can't remember why *both* were out of tech).  Dune simply assumed a technomagical "forceshield" that stopped bullets and that firing lasers was a bad idea (and to go with the thread it isn't clear that a slow moving plasma would make a shield user's day go very bad indeed.  We don't know if the aggregate speed of the plasma would go through the shield or if each atom (which should be moving very fast) would be stopped individually.  I suspect it would go through).

Don't assume that once a various tech is "dead" it is gone forever.  Phalanxes were revived for medieval warfare as pike squares and lasted into the introduction muskets.  Slings are presumably useful for launching grenades (I'd assume early grenades needed to be sufficiently bulky that this was a good idea, and probably used a sling staff), but probably only used by rare special forces as I'd imagine even a relative few soldiers blowing themselves up would cost more in morale than any advantage the sling could bring.

[p1t1o]

19 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Occasionally used in Science fiction both hard (Forever War) and of literary importance (Dune).  I think (it was a long time ago) that the last battle the main characters in Forever War basically fought as phalanxes or similar tech level (I can't remember why *both* were out of tech).  Dune simply assumed a technomagical "forceshield" that stopped bullets and that firing lasers was a bad idea (and to go with the thread it isn't clear that a slow moving plasma would make a shield user's day go very bad indeed.  We don't know if the aggregate speed of the plasma would go through the shield or if each atom (which should be moving very fast) would be stopped individually.  I suspect it would go through).

Don't assume that once a various tech is "dead" it is gone forever.  Phalanxes were revived for medieval warfare as pike squares and lasted into the introduction muskets.  Slings are presumably useful for launching grenades (I'd assume early grenades needed to be sufficiently bulky that this was a good idea, and probably used a sling staff), but probably only used by rare special forces as I'd imagine even a relative few soldiers blowing themselves up would cost more in morale than any advantage the sling could bring.

Not quite what I meant, I mean weapons which resemble bows or crossbows, and even have parts which resemble bowstrings or limbs which flex, but which fire energy/plasma/laser bolts.

 

 

On a similar note, something which really bothered me - in the Van Helsing movie starring Hugh Jackman, he has a repeating crossbow that works by having a pressurised gas canister re-cock the bow.

Using gas to re-cock the bow instead of just using the gas to directly launch the bolts is a huge waste.

Edited June 8, 2018 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

They also use sci-fi logs and stones!

Spoiler

 

Edited June 8, 2018 by kerbiloid

[DAL59]

6 hours ago, Atlas2342 said:

Only six? Aren't there more?

Yes, colloids, photonic matter, superfluids, supersolids, Rydberg, dropleton, degenerate matter, and string-net liquid.

[mikegarrison]

11 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Well "Plasma musket" would sound weird

I have an issue with anything "plasma". Plasma is just a hot gas. "Hot gas gun" doesnt sound like a great weapon does it.

A "plasma torpedo" would be substantially less powerful than a nuke. A "Plasma gun" would have terrible penetration characteristics. A "Plasma grenade" would be ooh, several tens of percent more powerful than a conventional one and potentially less powerful than a thermobaric or incendiary grenade.

And Im being really generous in my imagination too, imagining targets exposed to sustained (0s< <1s) temperatures in excess of 1000K and not just an instantaneous release of some compressed ball of hot gas.

Plasma is hot gas, yes, but it's hot charged gas. So a plasma weapon is a particle beam weapon, right?