Science Fiction movies are great for expanding the mind and showing us things we may never get to see in real life. Unfortunately though, they all seem to make the same fundamental errors regarding true science. This is a list of the top 10 errors in Science Fiction movies.
10. Simplicity
This is less a crime of commission than one of omission. Space is full of wonders we cannot even begin to understand, yet most science fiction films are based in a very simplistic environment and do not even begin to investigate the wonderful possibilities that science fiction offers us. We don’t see interplanetary tunnels, aliens on planets around pulsars, creatures living on dead suns, alien life forms that inhabit the edges of supermassive black holes, or so many of the other thought provoking scenarios. Let’s spice up our science fiction movies!
9. Simplistic Planets
This is particularly evident in the Star Wars movies. Whenever a planet is introduced in a science fiction film, it has one equal ecological system across the entire planet – for example, it might be entirely covered in snow – or entirely covered in sand. If people are living on these planets, they must be providing water and other important things needed for survival. This, in turn, would suggest that the planet ought to have a well developed complex ecosystem which varies from region to region – for example ice at the poles and arid land at the center (this is just an example of course).
8. Alien / Human Breeding
This is often seen in Star Trek – for example Spock – he was half human and half Vulcan. It is not even possible for human/ape crossbreeds to occur due to genetic differences, it is inconceivable that a human and an alien might be able to crossbreed. There are, of course, additional problems: how do you perform the cross breeding if the alien does not have sexual organs or the means to extract the necessary seeds of life?
7. Alien / Human communication
If aliens did exist, it would be extremely unlikely that we could communicate with them in a very short amount of time. In addition to the regular problems in translating an entirely unknown language, we would also have to consider a society that probably involves concepts we do not understand at all. Imagine an alien race trying to understand God if they have never had a notion of religion in their society. Of course, none of this matters if the aliens communicate with their minds or non-audible means – it would be impossible for us to communicate at all with a race that has no concept of sight and sound.
6. Instant Communications
Even if we did use light particles/waves to transmit radio data, the vast distances in space would make instant radio communication impossible. A rare exception to this flaw is in the movie Contact; as the camera draws away from the earth we hear the radio emanations getting progressively older until you finally reach silence. This trick is very effectively used to show just how massive space is.
5. Humanoid Aliens
This is endemic on the various Star Trek series, where creatures from entirely different sectors of the Universe look just like Humans except for the occasional bulging ridge on their foreheads, etc. Humans evolved on earth in order to meet a very specific criteria for survival – the presumption that this is true of all other planets is ridiculous.
4. Explosions in Space
Unfortunately virtually every science fiction movie makes this error – in fact, in the vacuum of outer space, there can be no flames (as flames need oxygen) and, of course, no boom. An exception to this is the film 2001, in which Bowman re-enters the Discovery by blowing out an airlock.
3. Superluminal Travel
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light, the energy required to propel it is immense – by the time you reach the speed of light, infinite energy is needed – this renders faster-than-light travel impossible for man.
2. Earth Gravity
It doesn’t matter what film you watch, almost all of them has earth like gravity no matter where it is set. This is ridiculous, of course, unless you are on a planet, which matches earth in every way with regards to our level of gravity. One film, which does not fall for this error, is, again, 2001. The clever devices used in the film to show us how humans would live in a non-gravity environment really make this one of the best films in its genre.
1. Sound in Space
Sound requires air to travel – without air (as we find in the vacuum of space) there is no sound. Many films completely ignore this and give us ear-piercing sound effects during battles. The greatest exception to this error is, yet again, the movie 2001 – all outer space activity takes place in silence – with the occasional addition of the Blue Danube.
This is all, of course, assuming that the laws of phisics are the same everywhere in the universe. I mean think about it! We only know what we can study from earth, every generation makes claims that seem to limit the everything as we know it but the truth is that in comparison to everything everywhere we can only study an amazingly small amount of the universe…1,000 years ago i’m sure they deemed it impossible that we would one day have massive, orbiting stations (satalites) all around the earth allowing for instant communication from anyone anywhere to anyone anywhere else.
3. Superluminal Travel
What is it if Einstein miscalculated something? It must be a faster travel than light, cuz the universe is huge.
That doesn't make any sense…Einstein's theories have been tested to be true and I am sure he checked the math before he turned in his paper. Either way, you must know that it took him several years to get anyone to think he wasn't crazy. To go from crazy to one of the smartest humans who ever lived, I think your math is right.
I too have wondered if Einstein was wrong, and that speed faster than light is possible.
Admitted there have been many snafoos in sci-fi over the years. In Star-Trek they tried to explain the interbreeding in one episode where a master race created the Klingons, Vulcans, Humans and Romulans from the same seed. Not to say that interbreeding would be possible, but hey suspend belief so they can make it more like a soap opera (BLECH!). For space travel there are two problems with how it would work. You could try and push yourself close to the speed of light which you would never have enough energy to actually reach the speed of light because the reactive mass needed would in all cases be equivalent to the weight of your craft(Some real flying by the seat of your pants) and this is of course negating any type of friction, because space is not actually all space. The other option usually mentioned is to create a fold in space/time, which the only known way to create such an effect is thru gravity, which is basically just the other half of trying to accelerate to light speed, except you are just pulling yourself through space, in fact this is partly how they accelrate crafts now, they slingshot them around planets. So the only way you might be able to go faster than the speed of light is to hit a black hole, the most massive pulling force in the universe, and manage to be going almost as fast as the speed of light, and then hit it at just the right angle so that you attain that slingshot effect, because then you wouldn’t be breaking any of einstein’s laws. You are at that point using the pulling power of the black hole and not a pushing power of which cannot be generated enough of a thrust. So a combination of pulling and pushing could get you to the speed of light, or as close as one could get and who knows what would happen when one actually attains the speed of light. Also for all the formula freaks out there, the universe is not infinite, and since it is not inifinite, one does not need an infinite mass nor inifinite energy to attain light speed. Infinity looks good in a formula, but so does zero, but neither actually exsists in the real world. :b
I would say that the universe is infinite, however, that is not possible to determine. We can see things that are almost 14 billion light years away which corresponds to the determined age of the universe. If there is anything past that, we will not know until its light reaches us. Some believe that space can be infinite in the sense that a sphere is infinite, not so much as its area is infinite, but that you could travel in a straight line and never get to the end. While this is not very likely, it is not ruled out either. Also, going over the speed of light by hitting a black hole doesn't work, drive your car at 5 mph and turn on your headlights and measure the light's speed, the light isn't going c+5, its still going c (and will be bluer). Even if that was possible, you would have to cross the event horizon to reach that speed and would thus be trapped
just because a ship seems to get from one point in space, to another point in space, at a seemingly faster-than-light speed doesnt mean it actually travelled FTL.
Aww, just makes me love 2001 a little bit more!
Regarding the FTL travel issue:
Actually, it’s only locally that reaching the speed of light would require infinite energy.
If, for instance, the Alcubierre Warp Drive could be made to work, FTL is indeed possible, since the travelling ship is in static locally, but manipulating spacetime itself to make the travel.
Hence, the Warp Drive obeys Einsteins theories.
(Perhaps the communications means could be made to travel the same way, through artificial wormholes or something similar? Who knows, what is possible if we’re actually living in an 11-dimensional universe as M-theory suggests?)
Oh, by the way…if there’s life elsewhere in the Universe (which I find highly unlikely to be false considering it’s huge size), there’s probably quite a few planets with conditions approaching those of earth.
If, in turn, that’s true – then I find it very likely, that the species living there are not much different from those on earth.
If the Universe came from the Big Bang, it’s made up of the same material everywhere after all, and I see no reason why humanoid species throughout the Universe would be so unlikely as you claim.
He he, there’s one more, which has little in common with the rest, but still an interesting question in there, I think:
In Star Wars III, Obi-Wan is attacked by buzz droids in the opening scene.
Well, maybe his Force abilities don’t work in the upper layers of Coruscant’s atmosphere (huh?), or it would have been a lot easier to use the Force to get rid of the droids.
Curious, isn’t it? But of course, we wouldn’t have seen Anakins flying skills then
Aliens does exist and we have to deal with that…hope they are much more primitive than us or they are good,because otherwise we are all dead
:)…
Valon:
well…in order to come and kill us, they’d have to be quite a lot more advanced than us, right? :-p
…and they don’t have a reason to do it…not yet, anyway
I normally love this site, but looking back at some of the lists I missed, this was a letdown, like some people have already stated. You’re critiquing sci fi movies on not being realistic. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of sci fi? And what happened to using imagination? A lot of things in movies defy what we assume to be true.
Well, let’s break down some of these “misconceptions.”
#10: I think Douglas Adams said it best: “The universe is big, really big. You won’t believe how mind-bogglingly big it is.” This must mean that despite how we want to make the universe complex, it must stand to reason that we’ll see, even at random, similar planets. We might find several “Mars-like” planets, or “Venus-like.”
#9: While it is true the human race evolved on Earth, and not Mars, who’s to say Mars didn’t/doesn’t have life? This is true with the millions of galaxies out there. It doesn’t have to be a massively complex ecosystem to generate/accommodate human-like life. The Earth itself deviates on its orbit, just the average is 93 million miles.
#8: While I can agree on a lack of *****ual organs being a problem, if there are organs, and the body chemistry is similar (Vulcans are not the best of examples), it is possible to create a mixed-race. Vulcans to humans, even Romulans to humans, are like comparing blacks to asians, or a dwarf to a 9′ tall person.
#7: In human society, we’ve had hundreds of variating languages, each with different origins. The last hundred or so years have been monumental in creating translations between such, and making even more obscure ones easier to understand.
#6: While true, instant communication is not exactly probable, higher frequencies have achieved many a milestone in near-instant communication. I think Red Planet gave a good idea on such, which it took 20-40 minutes for transmission.
#5: Again, the planet comes into play. We still don’t know if we’ll find something looking like us, or looking like a Vogon. Variations in living conditions can make a bad time for evolution.
#4: I’d agree with what has been said. Anything flammable will burn, and cause a violent flame, but would be very short-lived. The best movie for flame-less explosions was Battle Beyond the Stars.
#3: This was explain in Popular Science on how we could go FTL. While not well explained in Star Trek, Warp Speed is literally warping space, via a field surrounding the ship, to allow for FTL. Fold Space is another idea. Both are well-documented, and while not possible now (due to high-energy needs), it is feasible later.
#2: I’d agree with you, but a lot of Sci-Fi I’ve seen is beginning to deviate from the “artificial gravity.”
#1: Sound needs just vibration to travel, not air. An exploding ship would send millions of vibrating particles at you. It would, however, be like deep water explosions, with muffled sound. The new Battlestar Galactica has the best in in-space fighting for the sound.
#9 Fun fact: It is possible, though very unlikely, that we are all Martians. Rocks from Mars land on earth all the time and some earth biology can survive freezing temperatures and near vacuum. Of course that would be very hard to prove.
#8 It's not mixed race, its not even mixed species, its mixed biology. Consider chimps, 99% identical dna to humans, you can't make a hybrid human-chimp. Now imagine a life form that developed in an entirely different region of the universe, it is very unlikely that any dna would match (assuming genes are passed on with anything similar to dna).
#6 I am pretty sure it takes around 40 minutes for a transmission to Mars
#1 Sound needs a medium to travel in, the idea of the sound being heard in the debris field is okay, but the debris would already have to be there from a previous explosion for you to hear anything. You can't hear an explosion through the debris of that explosion.
About number seven; you must be kidding.
First off, we are barely able to communicate complex ideas to each other.
Secondly, there are many examples of basic communication between species here on earth. (e.g. I grab a lobster out of a tank and it tries to pinch me with it’s claws. The lobster understands that something bad is happening, I understand that the lobster wants to hurt me to stop my horrid plan.)
The overwhelming amount of life on this planet cannot communicate with us because it is microbial. We can assume that we will not be able to communicate with an even larger amount of life we may encounter off-planet as well, but stories about such attempted communication are, obviously pointless and dull. (Such as a two-hour movie about an intrepid captain of a spacecraft spending a decade trying to talk to an alien amoeba on the surface of Mars.)
Attempts to communicate with obviously sentient beings will be a much better use of someone’s time, therefore it also makes a far more compelling story to watch.
I must say that, even for a lobster pinching at you, you could very well misinterpret its purpose. Part of lobster mating rituals involve waving and pinching wit their claws. Now I am not saying that this lobster is attracted to you and wants to mate with you, but you hopefully understand what I mean, in a situation where only physical gestures pass as communication, mistakes can easily be made.
One wee thing that’s always bugged me is that, although we’ve had ‘universal translators’ around to sidestep language problems from Plan Nine to Star Trek, the audio language is always perfectly in sync with the alien’s lip movements (when the alien is allowed lips, that is).
Cheers. Neil
all i can say is..good list. uhm,do aliens really exists? if yes,wow.
can you add,top 10 greatest hairstyles in school????? say it to me if you have one,thanks.
@LordCalvert, I was thinking the exact same thing… Firefly/Serenity is notable for following the sound-in-space rule. & what we see of the planets isn’t simplistic.
2001 may not fall for a few errors but it is still a crap film, if i wanted to listen to half an hour of twirling space ships to the blue danube i’d go to the proms with a modle of the millenium falcon. and would someone kindly explain wtf the ending was about, the series of events makes about as much sense as an acid trip in a modern art gallery;
space craft is landing on saturn(one of the gas giants which for some reason is a rocky planet made overly bright and “trippy” by dodgy visual effects)
pilot is in a bedroom with an old man on the bed
old man becomes foetus
foetus begins floating in space
I can’t believe you left out one of the most irritating and yet too common errors in sci-fi films. The popular phrase, they “were light years ahead of their time” Considering that light years is a distance, not a measure of time, that grates horribly and shows a lack on the part of the writers of these sci-fi disasters.
I disagree. Why does being ahead of your time have to be a time measurement? It could very well be a distance measurement, in fact, using time doesn't really make it seem like they are much better anyway. Consider the idea that knowledge is a road, the farther down the road you get the smarter the ideas you have, well these guys are 30 trillion km (about 3 light years) ahead of everybody else on this path. It makes a lot of sense with that added *****ogy.
whom ever wrote this is a complete idiot . i am an engineer. any one with 1/2 a brain and any common sense would not believe a single thing in this article. fitst off you speak in the typical arrogance of unscientific people. meaning if its not here or its different then we are used to then it cant exist elsewhere. of course there are aliens out there. and why would we beable to communicate. just because a planet would support human life then why not non human life. most of the movies you mentioned where good movies. obviously there are mistakes but all very close. if you look at star trp with an open and intelligent mind then you definately see how most of WILL be TRUE
10. I’m not sure about living around pulsars-don’t they emit gamma rays and other harmful radiation. Dead suns, too; you need light to survive, right? Black holes suck in everything around, so eventually any species on a planet around there is going to die, but it might be interesting for a while. I agree, though, many thought-provoking scenarious are unused. More scientists really should write science fiction, that’s number one.
9. I do agree that just one environment on a habitable world seems implausible. However, it might be that a few habitable planets have more one environment than many, I don’t know. Generally, though, I agree this seems to be stretching it.
8. It depends on how closely different species are related. Horses and donkeys mate routinely, the offspring are mules. Something that is never mentioned, however, was if Spock was fertile. Mules are not; this is because nature renders cross-breeds sterile to prevent further mutation. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase reveals how a number of species have related ancestry. Therefore, Mr. Spock and other hybrids we see are possible, but would be sterile. I don’t think anyone mentioned this.
7. I do think communication is a problem. Star Trek explains this by saying the Universal Translator reads brainwaves and interprets a language from this. Of course, since it’s TV everybody speaks English. However, advanced species would probably have related concepts. I agree culture gap is going to occur-we have plenty of it right here on Earth! Contact, which I enjoyed, put forth mathematics as the universal language, which seems true, although I’m no mathematician. One thing I do think is a problem: What if, like in the classic short story First Contact, aliens use non-verbal communication? In that story, they communicate via micro-waves from an organ in their heads. This may not make sense in reality, but if there are such non-verbal languages, it could be difficult. Also, perhaps another species has an entirely different throat structure and so cannot speak our language, with vice versa. At least in the beginning, things could be difficult indeed.
6. If you posit that some kind of FTL travel is possible, obviously such communication should follow. However, even so I think communication would be spotty over such a distance, since there is so much radiation in the way it might disrupt things significantly. Overall, even with FTL, communications will probably be anything but instant.
5. This, I think, is not a good point. There is a reason our species evovled above others. What do you think aliens would be like, if not upright with bilateral (two of everything) symmetry? Maybe some king of energy beings do exist, but otherwise any other species is likely going to be somewhat like us in their appearance. Not to say they might be more related to reptiles or different mammals, but there is a reason as I said before we have survived this long. For one, to make tools you need two hands that can manipulate things. A favorite science fiction author, Robert J. Sawyer, has featured some very inventive aliens, including ones which are essentially giant spiders and others who have an extra hands on their backs. Very creative, but probably not real. Sawyer posits that evolution could easily gone another way and these creatures evolved. To a certain extent, he’s right of course, evolution would be different on planets that have another environment. Still, I don’t think its likely any insect-descended species like that would exist, simply because for one all we know says they do not grow that big! A race of microscopic size compared to us might be cool (a la certain Twilight Zone episodes) but unlikely. The whole theory of natural selection is predicated on what I’m saying-it would be different to a degree, but not so much as to be completely unrecognizable.
4. Space ships must have oxygen to sustain the crew, so fire could exist. Also, explosives mostly would produce fire. The problem of sound is another matter, though. One thing does bother me, though. I’ve heard that light does not spread in a vacuum because there is nothing to pass through. Is this right? If so, the explosions would like much different.
3. I’m not a physicist, but this seems to me a matter of license. For science fiction to work in a theatre, you’re going to need FTL travel. Besides, as someone above said, the universe is not infinite, so I don’t understand how reaching the speed of light makes you something which the universe isn’t. Doubtless I’m wrong on this, but maybe it would be possible. As mentioned too, Event Horizon posits folding space-time, which actually means the ship does not go faster-than-light, it just appears to. I don’t know if this is possible, but it was the only thing I liked about the movie. For a great explanation, read Warp Speed by Travis S. Taylor. It’s about the invention of warp drive by a physicist, which the author is true. Basically his idea sums up in the Casimir Effect, which allows you to draw in electromagnetci energy from the vacuum of space. I don’t know if this is possible, but he’s a physicist, so maybe it could be. Anyway, science fiction is about possibilities. Robert J. Sawyer, who I mention above, never has FTL in any of his books, much like Ben Bova. They are enthralling none the less, but it does help to explore without it taking you millennia, even so.
2. I believe the artificial gravity one is better answered than most. Generating spin is one way, but perhaps magnetic fields is another? In any case, we need artificial gravity, because otherwise bones and muscles demineralize, as seen in many real modern astronauts. NASA is hard at work on this, I’m sure. However, Earth-like gravity in the galaxy. Yes, here’s where the science wears thin is most genres. There is some mention of different gravity, but one problem would be having beings of various levels in one place. In our world alone, the gravity level slowly changed. Dinosaurs and big mammals evolved, but are now quite uncommon. This would be a point of interest, as heavier-gravity people would be small and lighter-gravity big. If this is possible, there could be a race of (to us) giants or dwarves. Very interesing!
1. As people mentioned, sound does not travel in a vacuum. However, someone also mentioned that space is not really a vacuum. There is gas and radiation scattered throughout. How much sound, if any, could be heard? Also, if you are firing, do your weapons make a sound? If you’re ship was hit, would you hear it? Does impact against the hull cause sound, which you should be able to hear. Most likely you don’t hear your strikes on another ship, but yours? I’d like to know more about this, as I’m sure would others. Also, this does not relate exactly, but exposure into space does not make you explode. It does instantly freeze you, suck the air from lungs and cause the skin to swell, but no explosion. Plus, contrary to pretty much every airplane disaster movie you will ever see, just shooting a hole in the cabin probably does not make it depressurize totally. It’s bad, certainly, but not enough to cause people to fly out. This is also true of space. Just thought I’d add that on for everyone.
By the way, explosions in space are very bad. The debris stays up there and is hazardous to any other ship. We’ve got I don’t know how much space junk floating around in orbit right here. The use of nuclear weapons in close-quarters combat (Battlestar Galactica) is dangerous to its user too. Just imagine what the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars left-planet-killer asteroids, perhaps dozens of them. Not good for neighboring worlds sucking them in. Lasers, plasma or particle beams too-does light spread in space? Maybe if there’s something to go through, but not otherwise. If so, a lot of space battles are totally inaccurate, not that most aren’t to begin with.
In previous post, you mention black holes with a common misconception. Any object can become a black hole if it can be compressed to its Schwarzschild radius which is the point where light can't escape. For the earth this radius is about 1 cm. If the sun were to suddenly change into a black hole with the same mass, gravitationally nothing would change.
Does nobody care about Sol three? Earth is a nickname for our planet, our sun, Sol , would be the basis for all the planets names.
Sol one would be mercury, Sol two venus, sol three earth…
And the official name is Terra, for earth.
Only because things in science most often have Latin names: Terra is Latin (and Portuguese and Italian and Romanian and…) for earth.
I think you overlooked Galactica series (latest edition). When robots attack the Earth fleet the nuclear explosions don’t make any sound.
There’s one extremely stupid and irritating thing missing on your list. In many movies humans and aliens are chasing each other through the space, shooting at each other manually, missing most of the shots (again Galactica – but old edition). We have guided missiles since 50′es, so I don’t see a reason why spacecrafts wouldn’t have automated fire systems that miss very rarely.
Alien – human breeding is explained in Star Trek by a common ancestor, the primal – race – something. And the sound in space is posible, becouse of the particles emited during explosions which in turn react on your suit/ship/metal and produce thumping sound. Of course depends on vicinity of the object. Otherwise they could just stay there and watch the explosion from point blank range. What? You wouldn’t? Heheh
And also the speed greater than light is explained in Star Trek.
Anyway, would you rather watch star wars without sound effects?
What a bunch of nerds.
Hey jfrater: Couldn’t there be an explosion in space, because the spaceship itself is air-locked or something, so there is air in thee spaceship? I’m not sure, just asking really. I don’t know much about space.
2001 was such a crap documentary. none of that stuff happened in 2001.
Lolz I stumbled into this list of 10 errors in science fiction and noticed the comments about sound in space…
My own idea of sound in space (which I also saw someone else have) is just adding an sensory system that observes events happening in space and then via computer stuff generates sound or uses sound from a sound bank and makes them play in speakers to the Austronaut, space pilot, Spaceship for whatever reason they need to hear it.
About the humanoid aliens…
I myself have created an alternative reality Aka Imagination that also has whatsoever no humanoid aliens, instead I make them look liked some kind of animals with alien traits, most biped but there are unique some that look really alien.
Faster than ligth traveling is not neccesary if you warp without it science fiction would be horrible.
The only thing that my Imagination doesn’t incorporate is Stargates, teleportation and phasers. (Lasers and plasma weapons are used instead which does’nt work like phasers)
But something I really miss in most science fiction is Exoskeletons, interesting vehicles tanks and mechs. (With an exeption to rare movies that have exoskeletons)
I mean exoskeletons could vastly enhance performance to any user and improving their chances for success.
Not only that exoskeletons are also being developed today (By Japanese and Americans)
It would be very dangerous for most science fiction to jump into my Imagination, bacause in a battle I would have everything covered from Starfigthers Exoskeletons mechs you name it.
This is most for fun but there are some extreme stuff I imagined like the biggest mech that walks the largest impossibly big planet is the Megaton, It is 28000 (European)Miles high, when it walks it would break every single rule of physics by so much that the planet itself must be another dimension which looks like our world of 3d but does’nt work the same.
Ok there are so much more I could write about from my Sci-fi but the words would expand rapidly and absorb the iternet itself
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Just to clear up before someone mentions Satrwars…
The comment about vehicles in sci-fi exludes Starwars which is the most complete sci-fi movies that has a good variation of vehicles, aliens and almost everything.
What I ment was that when I saw “Battlestar galactica” in some episodes they went down to a planet during their stay there they had “Ancient” vehicles and poor weaponry even though its the future, oh and the planet had plant life but was seemingly devoid of animal life. I know its just a series but I was kinda expecting something more.
did the director for the movie 2001 write this list?
Troll. From your first listing of simplicity, it was evident that you have watched less of scifi/fantasy movies than my Grandparents who are in their 80s.
By the way, My Grandfather, who fought in WW2 loves the speeder bikes and Ewoks.
You must be a blast at parties.
Humanoid aliens? It’s a cost factor. Spock ears vs. a whole blob costume.
Gravity… I suppose you could put the whole set in one of those gravity training planes… will only boost the production cost by 10000%, so no problem.
Simplicity – Everything living on a dead star would be flatter than a turtle… nothing much interesting happening at 110g constant downward velocity.
Around a pulsar? Instant skin-cancer, so we can’t get close.
No faster than light possible? – Well nevermind, we’ll just have 110 episodes of Starship Enterprise going from here to Alpha Centauri only to find it has no planets. At least it was realistic!
I found 2001 extremely boring. Ive tried to watch it a few times and couldn’t get past the first 45 mins. If they showed everything the way it is in reality most films would be rubbish. In an action movie if the guy/girl got shot and didn’t fly across the room and just limply slumped to the ground it would be sh*t. Things we think of as impossible may happen in the future. The list of things people in the past have described as impossible is huge, like air travel, walking on the moon(although there are those who question this) etc…
They need electrical fuses on all these shows. Every time there in a battle the controls explode!
The explosions in space are the result of the oxygen content of the vessel burning up, which would happen. Faster than light travel may not be physically possible but the bending of space to travel long distances in a short time is. Scientists have already theorized the “warp” effect and “slipstream” effect. This involves either the warping of space to bring two points closer together or rippling space in front of a n object and then stretching it out behind the object. Other theories involve moving space around an object in which an object would stay completely stationary and the universe would be moved around it.
This list and the comments about dated hairstyles make me think of the episode of star trek DS9 (Trials and Tribble-ations) where the crew goes back in time into an old original series episode (the tribbles one) and the DS9ers are making fun of the dated hairstyles, clothes and technology.
But most funny of all is when they see the “klingons”… who in TOS don’t even have ribbed heads, they just look like humans. And Worfs explaination is… “They are klingons… We don’t talk about it to outsiders.”
For some reason that backpeddling on behalf of the writers just cracked me up.
I hate to come off as a total nerd, and it’s quite possible somewhere in the comments this has already been adressed, but as far as Spock goes, this is explained in one of the books. Spock’s parents spent years with geneticists in order to find a way to combine the two incompatible species. Spock was made in a test tube- not a true specimen of a successful crossbreed
Read a few comments, but of those, this was GREAT:
39. PeteFloyd – November 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
If there are no explosions in space, then where does sunlight come from?
And, yes, TacoDog, I, too, agree that 2001 was one of the suckiest movies EVER made!
Sunlight comes from fusion, not explosions…
All these rules are based on theroies and although they all work out many great theories in the past have been proved wrong with new ways of looking at things.
And aliens existing part, well there are over 300 billion stars in our galaxy alone, so its hard to believe that only one of them would contain a planet with life on it.
yes but considering theories wrong with no proof, regardless of how many other theories have been proved wrong, is bad science, hell its stupid.
Anyway interested can look up Alcubierre drive on Wikipedia. It’s physics theory which may allow for FTL speed travel. It requires conflicting gravity/anti-gravity, so not doable yet. There are kinks to work out, putting it mildly. Still, the fact that physics supports the idea thrills me. It might be done someday.
Of course, most of these examples are fantasy films. Fantasy means that you can alter your universe as you (a writer, producer, et al) see fit. Your fantasy does not have to conform to scientific reality. That should be obvious, so why are so many of you acting geeky and believing that these people made factual errors when these films are clearly NOT mean to represent any sort of factual reality? You’re all lost.
if its fantasy don't put it on the scifi channel
true but its a movie not real life it wont be real in every way but the aliens having human features does annoy me
Go to Top 15 Great Science Fiction Books
And review the comments.
Then read these comments (perhaps you already have).
On the one hand, you have those who read: on the other, those who can operate a DVD player (or a VCR) (or pay a movie ticket).
The difference is striking.
I haven’t read all the comments, but another movie that got the sound in space right, was Robot Jox. I’m kind of embarrassed to know this.
How about Solaris? There’s an interesting idea for a life-form: an incomprehensible, seemingly intelligent planet.
Also, no one has mentioned viruses. If an alien ever came to Earth, the US military’s first action would be to quarantine it. Just look what happened when Cortez went to South America… and that is amongst humans. The ignorance of this point when two drastically different species meet each other permeates most sci-fi… but for understandable reasons of story.
Galactaca sort of doesn’t make sense it that regard The cylons biologically replicate and tweek humans, but they resort primarily to nuclear warfare rather than biological warfare.
While it is very smart to quarantine that being, it is entirely unlikely that a virus from some other planet would affect us. We would have a very different biology from this being. Cortez had the same biology as the natives.
the whole thing bout sound in space is ***** and explosions what wud a a scfi movie be without explosions u dum *****s nd without sound what the point in watching them
This is a very crapy list. The person who wrote this list doesn’t have a clue of what is science, history and, in general, imagination. Most of the errors you listed are not errors at all, like many comments say. And while writing them you made a lot of real errors, not fiction. Who knows, is the correct answer to most of the question placed, and I’m a man of science, I’m a chemist. No-one understands completely physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology, geology, etc. A lot is to be discovered, and what was true yesterday, is not true today, and what we believe to be true today will not be tomorrow, this is what history teaches us. So how can you make such assumptions at all? Just to finish, all Sci-Fi is supposed to be fiction, right? It’s a product of imagination. Do you know that you can imagine whatever you want? Don’t you? If you want to imagine that you are very smart and wrote a very good and interesting list, you can. But it’s was not an error, it was just your imagination. Maybe today you are smarter and really make good lists.
There was an episode of the new Doctor Who where the doctor and rose land on a planet orbiting a black hole. The planet emanate gravity itself and propels itself around the black hole, much like a magnet. The episode is called “the impossible planet” if you want to check it out.
You seem to be forgetting somethings. In Star Wars They use “Moisture Vaporators” to collect drinkable water from below the surface. Explosions in space can happen because ships have air in them and the air needs to go somewhere. As for human alien hybrids In Star Trek Enterprise Dr. Phlox discovered a way of making human Vulcan mating possible. And Humanoid aliens is easy to explain Trek had a limited budget making for limited alien species.
Who ever mad this list is an ass hole! It defeats the charm of science fiction! Plus point 9 and 5 contradict each other! If a plant would be similar to earth then so would the life existing on it!
being similar has nothing to do with the life being similar. Had a comet/asteroid not hit earth a long time ago, it is very likely that the dinosaurs would still dominate and we would likely have never developed as a result. The history of the planet has as much to do with the life on it as does the climate.
The humanist aliens one always annoyed me. And this list has found me some new things to be annoyed at.
The possibilities are endless, that’s what makes it so appealing…budget&impracticalities shouldn’t stand in the way of a good idea or a great story. The whole beauty of Sci-fi or Sci-fantasy if you wanna call it that, is you can go where the hell you like with it…perhaps where no man, woman or small furry creature from Alpha Centauri has gone before….
I’ve always made the argument for Star Wars that it is a galaxy far far away and no one can comprehend the physical make up. Maybe that particular galaxy has properties that solve all the problems we have with sci-fi such as limited air in space or ecosystems that support humanoids or DNA which transends species to produce hybrids. Just remember that it is fiction. Anything goes at that point.
Where Sci-fi movies are concerned, there’s nearly always gonna be a conflict between portraying the physics of space accurately according to our current limited knowledge/theories & giving the audience what it wants it terms of thrills, explosions & *****y blue alien ladies with three breasts;o) Getting the balance right so everyone’s happy is a tricky business, but a lot of it depends on the context of the movie as to how much artistic license they can get away with… Comedy (I’m very fond of Red Dwarf & the UK TV series of HitchHiker’s Guide)has a far higher threshold for the absurd/preposterous as long as it IS funny, but ultimately any Sci-fi/fantasy movie requires at least a little ‘suspension of disbelief’. My all-time favourites are BladeRunner & Alien:o)
Most of the 10 make perfect sense except that Black Holes don’t exist, especially in a universe which ‘dead stars’ are found- suggesting almost an infinitely old universe which contradict the black hole hypothesis (black holes= Big Bang, dead stars=infinite universe). But the “humanoid” half humans-half aliens are the most unbelievable nonsense. Humans can’t even breed with close terrestrial relatives like apes, what makes it so possible they could breed with something ‘else’, let alone a different species.
You should include psychic powers. You make the mistake yourself of suggesting aliens communicating with their minds. We do the same. Our brains manipulate neurons to fire in certain sequences giving rise to verbal, visual and other sensory outputs which send messages intended to be received and understood by the sensory organs of others. Every species will communicate with their minds through whatever life tools they have.
Too much use of nonsensical “psychic” powers, when such things can be explained in the context of cybernetic wi-fi systems, nano-utility fogs, manipulation of electromagnetism, holographic projections, high-level AI data extrapolation, ultra-sensitive sensory arrays, and virtual representations of effects. Psychic junk is really unnecessary.
you know many shows have reality errors, like cars going down the road while music from some displaced source plays, or the unending clip of bullets helps our hero take out a hundred men, so why does everybody bug on sci-fi, give sci-fi the same liberties you give any other show.
nuclear reactions occur without oxygen so when the spacefighters, deathstar, etc explode there will be flame.
no flame in nuclear reactions, fission or fusion