Cod "science" that ruins a sci fi film

[GodThingFormerly]

Well, the other planet had exactly the same distance from the sun as the Earth did, didn't it? So where does the Third Law come in?

"Suppose that the Earth is represented as a point of mass m revolving in a circular orbit of radius a around a center of force (the Sun) of mass M. Increase the usual Newtonian attraction of the Sun by the attraction of the hidden Anti-Earth and compute the change in length of the Earth year under the new central force. (How many seconds longer or shorter will the year be under the Anti-Earthian influence than the 'real' year is?)
The presence of the Anti-Earth would be seen as an increase in the constant GM, and that changed constant would then change the periods of the other planets when calculated from Kepler's Third Law. But those periods are observed to be in harmony with the period of Earth when it is calculated by Kepler's Third Law. Conclusion: no Anti-Earth." - The Sheer Joy of Celestial Mechanics by Nathaniel Grossman (Birkhäuser Boston, 1996).

TGT

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm sorry. I'd hate to have lost you.

No problem, try not to be so funny!

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm sorry. I'd hate to have lost you.

No problem, try not to be so funny!

That's unpossible for me.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Whether they Did Not Do The Research or they just didn't care, TV Tropes has articles on them all.

I especially recommend the "You Fail _____ Forever" sections, of which there are several.

However if you do decide to check out that website, make sure you have no other plans for the next few hours, at least!

 

[Neopeius]

In the mid-90s was born the scientifically stupid epic. Movies that avoided physics so scrupulously that it seemed their writers were afraid of being sued by reality for copyright infringement.

Independence Day
Armageddon
Deep Impact
The Core
Day After Tomorrow

These movies weren't just dumb. They were insipid.

Aside from the super-powerful steam vents on the comet, what's your beef with Deep Impact?

What happens if you disintegrate a comet traveling at 40 m/s just seconds from hitting the Earth?

Okay, I'll tell you--you cause *more* damage by allowing the mass of the comet to more efficiently turn into energy in the Earth's atmosphere. That mass doesn't disappear because you've dispersed it.

And the whole figuring out the trajectory from the comet from basically one sighting. Or keeping this comet a secret from thousands of amateur and professional photographers.

And I thought it really tacky that the discovering astronomer crashed with his letter containing the discovery addressed to Carolyn Shoemaker. Her husband died in a car accident.

Basically, the first half of the movie was ass, the next third was decent, and the last bits were ass.

 

[Deckerd]

^ The question is about whether is ruins them or not. Made up science doesn't really ruin Trek for instance because it doesn't purport to be realistic, it's fantasy sci-fi.

Red Planet was supposed to be more realistic, so it matters more that they don't make massive gaffes.

What gaffes are you speaking of? The only one I can think of was that the scrip and dialogue called for the "critters" to be nematodes, but the effects crew screwed that up and made them into little shrimps, and that someone mistyped the DNA sequence from GATC to GATP... But I can forgive both of those.

C'mon, his frog story was ludicrous.

I have no problem with Trek gobbledygook because there is no attempt to make it realistic, so it's fun. It doesn't irritate me the way it does some fans. The problem with Red Planet is that with a bit of effort the stupid mistakes would never have made it to the final cut.

 

[Pingfah]

^ The question is about whether is ruins them or not. Made up science doesn't really ruin Trek for instance because it doesn't purport to be realistic, it's fantasy sci-fi.

That's not true. When it first came along, ST was just about the first SFTV series that made any effort at all to ground itself in plausible science. Roddenberry consulted with all sorts of scientific think tanks and engineers and researchers, trying to make his future as believable as possible. When he made ST:TMP, he consulted with Isaac Asimov and brought in astronaut Rusty Schweickart as a consultant on the spacewalk scenes. In early TNG, he also tried for scientific credibility, and Sternbach and Okuda contributed science jargon that was generally pretty well-grounded in real science. DS9 generally did a fairly good job with the science and technical stuff too, except when it didn't. (For instance, the shrinking effect in "One Small Ship" was fanciful, but at least they recognized that it would be necessary to shrink the air molecules for the characters to breathe, so they treated a fanciful premise in a well-reasoned way.)

Unfortunately, producers other than Roddenberry generally didn't care as much about credibility, so we get much more fanciful science in the third season of TOS, the animated series, the Harve Bennett movies, late TNG, the TNG movies, VGR, and ENT. So it's grossly inconsistent. But even the more fanciful stuff has at least some grounding thanks to the efforts of Roddenberry to lay a plausible foundation. It's totally untrue to say that ST has always been meant as fantasy.

You're missing the point of what I was saying as well as the thread then.

The point is it gets away with it when it is not realistic because people don't expect it to be. It's a show about wormhole aliens and interstellar wars and fantastic alien races, not about going to Mars to find a scientific solution to save the planet

 

[Rii]

The idea of humans as batteries in The Matrix was pretty dumb. It didn't ruin the film, but it took me out of it for a while. You know you have to feed people to keep them alive, right?

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

The idea of humans as batteries in The Matrix was pretty dumb. It didn't ruin the film, but it took me out of it for a while. You know you have to feed people to keep them alive, right?

See, what Morpheus said was the machines used humans along with a type of fusion, to power the machine world.

My analysis was that 99.9999% of the machines' power comes from fusion reactors and the electricity generated by human batteries is used to power street lights.

In fact, it seems odd that there wasn't a reveal as to a real reason the humans are kept around. But that would've required something more substantial from the sequels.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Maybe they used Humans to convert chemical energy into electrical energy, or something?

 

[Data Holmes]

^ The question is about whether is ruins them or not. Made up science doesn't really ruin Trek for instance because it doesn't purport to be realistic, it's fantasy sci-fi.

Red Planet was supposed to be more realistic, so it matters more that they don't make massive gaffes.

What gaffes are you speaking of? The only one I can think of was that the scrip and dialogue called for the "critters" to be nematodes, but the effects crew screwed that up and made them into little shrimps, and that someone mistyped the DNA sequence from GATC to GATP... But I can forgive both of those.

C'mon, his frog story was ludicrous.

I have no problem with Trek gobbledygook because there is no attempt to make it realistic, so it's fun. It doesn't irritate me the way it does some fans. The problem with Red Planet is that with a bit of effort the stupid mistakes would never have made it to the final cut.

Not that far off of reality: Fish, Frogs and the water we drink...

The Ecotoxicology research has recently expanded to include amphibians. Dr Daniel Pickford, who is particularly interested in the potential for endocrine disruption in this vulnerable wildlife group, has investigated the effects of xenoestrogens on female reproductive and endocrine function, and larval development and sexual differentiation in laboratory studies, and includes a fully GLP-compliant study required for EU chemical risk assessment. In a new project, he is studying whether air and surface water pollution associated with airports has an impact on local frog and toad populations by affecting the quality of spawn. Aircraft engines emit carbon dioxide, water vapour, particulates (mainly comprising sulphates and soot), hydrocarbons, oxides of sulphur and oxides of nitrogen. While climatechanging effects of jet aircraft in flight are obviously a global concern, the local environmental impact of thousands of jets idling, taxiing, taking off and landing, in addition to pollution from land transportation servicing airports, also needs to be considered.

The common frog breeds extensively in garden ponds in urban, suburban and rural areas. Consequently the number of garden breeding populations around airports may well exceed the number of populations breeding in other natural or man-made water bodies. This project is comparing the fertility and hatching success of frog and toad spawn between areas close to airports and their flight paths with reference sites further away from aviation activity.

 

[Christopher]

You're missing the point of what I was saying as well as the thread then.

The point is it gets away with it when it is not realistic because people don't expect it to be.

And that's exactly what saddens me -- that misunderstanding, even by its own latter-day producers, of what Star Trek was meant to be. In its original intent, it was supposed to be realistic. Roddenberry's goal was to cast off the stereotype of SFTV as mindless fantasy for children and to make an SF show that was just as adult and believable and grounded as any cop show or medical drama or Western. It was the first SFTV show that tried to be plausible, and it deserves acclaim for that, and it's sad that later producers have dragged down its credibility so much that audiences today perceive it in the dismissive manner you describe. And it's unfair that the efforts of those Trek creators who have striven for credibility -- Roddenberry, Jefferies, Probert, Sternbach, Okuda, etc. -- go unappreciated because of the stereotype that it's just fanciful nonsense.

Here's Andrew Probert defending ST from that very "expectation":

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/the-indomitable-andy-probert/

 

[WillsBabe]

My husband is a chemist. Imagine what the last 20 years have been like watching sf films and tv with him... I've lost count of how many times he's started conversations with, "Have you any idea....?" and then gone on to point out the scientific inconsistencies of what we're watching. And I'm not talking big things, either. He's just as likely to point out the scientific inaccurancies in the smallest things. The other day he was commenting on something unlikley happening in the blood sampling techniques of NCIS. I just ignore him: I don't care if the science is wrong or not!

 

[Misfit Toy]

We say "junk science" in the states.

I guess that's the same thing.

I say "Neroon science", so yeah. Same thing.

 

[Neopeius]

I just ignore him: I don't care if the science is wrong or not!

Is there anything in movies that would bother you?

 

[WillsBabe]

I just ignore him: I don't care if the science is wrong or not!

Is there anything in movies that would bother you?

Other stuff that's factually inaccurate would bother me - for example, if it's something that I'm interested in, or something that I know something about. I dislike American film's perception of British culture - the British are often portrayed as uptight, humourless idiots for instance. Those kinds of things. Sometimes violence, partiularly against women also bothers me. And films that are historically inaccurate sometimes irritate me.

 

[Deckerd]

I find it impossible to believe that frogs survived the extinction event that wiped out dinosaurs only to be entirely killed off by people. There are frogs in Australia that survive for 10 years in suspended animation until a decent rainfall soaks the soil.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I, at first, thought it said "God Science".

I will say Star Wars. These guys fly these little ships to planets like they were driving to the local McDonalds.

 

[Dr_Daystrom]

Star Wars

Great movie

Bad Science

- Light Sabers

- X & Y-Wing fighters moving like fighter jets in space

- Death Star weapon starting out as multiple beams then combining into one beam and redirecting

- Workers on platform with no railing exposed to primary weapon beam

- R2D2 rolling on sand

- Obi-Wan pulling one lever to disable Death Star tractor beam

- One shot from an X-Wing fighter down a vent hole blowing up an entire moon sized space station

- Small spacecraft traveling between planets (as per Lookingglassman)

 

[Christopher]

I find it impossible to believe that frogs survived the extinction event that wiped out dinosaurs only to be entirely killed off by people. There are frogs in Australia that survive for 10 years in suspended animation until a decent rainfall soaks the soil.

Not all extinction events are equal. First off, surviving the K-T extinction event doesn't mean frogs are miraculously good survivors, just that they're small. Smaller creatures always do better in mass extinctions (on land, anyway), because they need less food to survive and because they can reproduce faster and therefore evolve and adapt faster. That's why one group of dinosaurs, the birds, survived -- because they were small enough.

However, even small species can and do go extinct if the conditions change in such a way that makes them unable to survive in their specific environments. There's no guaranteed defense against extinction. Even the legendary indestructibility of the cockroach is a myth; they can't survive in cold climates without the heat of human cities to sustain them.


As for Star Wars, that's a case where what Pingfah said about Star Trek can and should apply. Lucas never claimed that SW was science fiction; it's explicitly meant to be space fantasy a la Flash Gordon or John Carter of Mars. He even came right out and told us it was a fairy tale with "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." It's not bad science because it's not trying to be scientific. It's a sword-and-sorcery epic dressed up with futuristic trappings, but it's all basically magic.