What's the worst example of bad science in a film you've watched?

[The Afrodactyl]

Any time anyone outruns an explosion.

You know who you are.

 

[Infinatex]

I don't know enough science (reality) to know. I just sit and believe everything they tell me. Now where can I buy one of those DeLoren time machines I've heard so much about...?

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Star wars, laser is concentrated light right? And NO ONE thought of using mirrors?

Weeeell, mirrors are hardly 100% effective, a small portion wouldn't reflect, and would probably melt or vaporize it... Although it would provide fairly adequate protection, definitely improving the defenses to a degree.

 

[Imsmarterthanyou]

Any time anyone outruns an explosion.

You know who you are.

Best moment in The Other Guys... except for the bus.

 

[Casimir_Effect]

A load of stuff in Iron Man 2 kind of took physics behind the shed and violated it.

 

[Capt. Crankypants]

The movie 'Terminal Error'. The whole movie. Go watch it now. Hilariously bad.

 

[Tandrews]

As for movies with bad science...hrrmmm... I'd have to say Pandorum. At the end of the movie they save humanity appearently with only 1,2k people left. So yeah, thats a pretty nitpicky point but it bugged me as the critical limit beforer we die out is around what 20k people? If we get to low from that we'll just weed ourselves out with inbreeding and poor genetical diversity.

I thought the limit was more like 200. They've saved species in genetic bottlenecks with much smaller number than 20k before eg. (If i remember this correctly) back in the 60's with cheetahs (or a smilar big cat in Africa) they only had about 1000 of them and managed to get them out the bottleneck.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Well I don't know about bad science, but this confused me... in the Fly, if the telepod thing flipped the monkey inside out instantly, why was Jeff Goldblum's transformation so gradual to the point where he barely noticed it?

 

[V3x]

From the movie Starcrash.

Akton: [talking about an icy planet] You must be extremely careful when the sun sets, the temperature drops thousands of degrees.

Stella star: These are pre-programmed computers! They will run forever!

 

[BlackLiger]

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

I've tried thinking of a way to do this in a movie, and I just can't.

Imagine if you will, a movie in which a giant epic space battle is taking place, all while no sound is heard. It would be boring.

Really, really boring.

Never watched Serenity, did you?

 

[ICanBreakTheseCuffs]

Zombieland,
thinking its a good ideal to turn on an entire amusement park with a million zombies around you.
[edit]not "real" science but practical scien if that counts

 

[-Ezio-]

surprised no one has mentioned lightsabers. now don't get me wrong lightsabers are ossum but from a purely scientific point of view they are rediculous.

 

[The Austin]

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

I've tried thinking of a way to do this in a movie, and I just can't.

Imagine if you will, a movie in which a giant epic space battle is taking place, all while no sound is heard. It would be boring.

Really, really boring.

Never watched Serenity, did you?

Nope. Why, did it actually pull it off?

 

[Blame]

Sunshine, where the Sun is dying and needs to be reactivated by a nuclear explosion is pretty bad science.

If you can stand watching the film again, I recommend you get the DVD and listen to the commentary by Dr Brian Cox, a Professor of Physics from the University of Manchester. He goes into considerable, (yet still quite interesting) detail regarding the scientific validity of the film.

Basically the sun was dying because of something called a 'Q-ball' falling into the Sun's gravity well and disrupting the normal fusion reaction. The blast of thier bomb is hoping to knock the Q-Ball out of position, or obliterate it. I don't really want to be arguing semantics but it is a 'Stellar' bomb, and not a Nuclear bomb at all. General principle is the same, but there are marked differences and a much larger explosion, (hypothetically.)

I am not a physics major, I recommend you watch the commentary. He does comment on a few inaccuraciess in the film. Two of which I notices watching it in the Cinema and almost ruined it for me. Firstly, they get the temperature of deep space wrong. You'd tihnk as a collection of astronauts, they'd know. Secondly, a graphic in the film shows the ship being in orbit around Mercury although they made it clear they were 'slingshotting' around the planet. Going into orbit would waste alot of energy and there is no reason why they would do it.

 

[Soylent Dave]

Sunshine, where the Sun is dying and needs to be reactivated by a nuclear explosion is pretty bad science.

If you can stand watching the film again, I recommend you get the DVD and listen to the commentary by Dr Brian Cox, a Professor of Physics from the University of Manchester.

That'd be Brian "I used to play keyboards for D:ream" Cox there. I've always had trouble taking him seriously as a result...

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

This. It seriously pisses me off.

I once was give a plausible(ish) explanation for this.

In the future starships will come equipped with a program that replicates the noises humans expect to hear through the internal speakers, including zappy lasers and doppler effects when approaching\passing an object, just to help them make decisions faster and feel more comfortable.

It think it was on the free-space forums I was told that, I mean why else go to the effort of making a doppler effect sound program that calculates everything on the fly for your space game?

I guess another explenation could be that plasma or laserguns ionizes the air around it, within the gun from which it is fired. This could make it produce sound since oxygen might exist within the guns firing, thus enabling the sound to travel, with the shot, into a tiny fraction of space before the oxygen is dissolved.

Hell. I don't know, it was just a random thought that ocurred to me just now.

It's also been suggested that spaceships might be flying around in a vacuum, but they have air inside them (generally) - and that air rushes out with the explosion, carrying sound with it.

So if the microphone is inside the explosion, you'd hear it (and you'd hear impacts on the hull of a spaceship from inside the ship).

-

OT: My 'favourite' bit of bad science comes from an episode of Star Trek (TNG) where they use an 'anti mass spectrometer' to detect a hull breach.

I've used a mass spectrometer. They're pretty good at weighing molecules, but not a lot else...

 

[TheSorrow1145]

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

This. It seriously pisses me off.

I once was give a plausible(ish) explanation for this.

In the future starships will come equipped with a program that replicates the noises humans expect to hear through the internal speakers, including zappy lasers and doppler effects when approaching\passing an object, just to help them make decisions faster and feel more comfortable.

It think it was on the free-space forums I was told that, I mean why else go to the effort of making a doppler effect sound program that calculates everything on the fly for your space game?

I guess another explenation could be that plasma or laserguns ionizes the air around it, within the gun from which it is fired. This could make it produce sound since oxygen might exist within the guns firing, thus enabling the sound to travel, with the shot, into a tiny fraction of space before the oxygen is dissolved.

Hell. I don't know, it was just a random thought that ocurred to me just now.

Even if that were the case, there's no other oxygen in space for the sound to travel on, so you won't hear it from any distance.

Also, one thing that annoyed me was in the beginning of Halo 2 when an orbital platform the could have been a couple miles away exploded and caused a shockwave on the station I was one. There's no way for that to happen unless a piece of the exploding station hit the hull, which from that distance is bloody unlikely, especially not in the short time between the station exploding and the shockwave being felt

 

[Mikeyfell]

this is probably going to sound stupid

Spoiler

at the end of Wanted Angelina Jolie's character fires a bullet around in a circle that kills 9 people I think. that was so unbelievably ridiculous that it ruined the whole movie for me.

I'm sure I can think of other ones but that one sticks out in my mind the most

 

[TheMadTypist]

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

Well it might not be scientific but I'd rather have Star Wars with its lasers and explosions then have what scientists have said real space warfare would be like.

The explanation they've come up for in Star Wars is that it's an audio simulation so that pilots (and gunners) can track ships and incoming attacks that aren't in their field of vision. That's supposedly why Luke and Han wear those headsets (you know, beyond communicating with each-other) when in the turret bubbles of the Millennium Falcon in Episode IV.

 

[Agayek]

This. It seriously pisses me off.

EDIT: Following a quote from Unrulyhandbag, I'll edit this in here;

I guess an explenation could be that plasma or laser, ionizes the air around it, within the gun from which it is fired. This could make it produce sound since oxygen might exist within the mechanics firing. This could enable the sound to travel, with the shot, into a tiny fraction of space before the oxygen dissolves.

Hell. I don't know, it was just a random thought that ocurred to me just now.

That won't work, since there's no medium for the sound to travel through, regardless of what the source does. You might be able to hear something inside the ship, but since I've fired an exceptionally powerful laser and didn't hear a peep I doubt it

 

[Canid117]

The "Science" from superman returns. A fucking crystal that grows land? Really?

this is probably going to sound stupid

Spoiler

at the end of Wanted Angelina Jolie's character fires a bullet around in a circle that kills 9 people I think. that was so unbelievably ridiculous that it ruined the whole movie for me.

I'm sure I can think of other ones but that one sticks out in my mind the most

Bending the path of a bullet by flicking your wrist while you fire is just plain retarded no matter how few people one bullet kills.

That you can hear explosions and laserguns in space.
It's the worst because the film-makers can't even plead ignorance - everybody knows about this.

I've tried thinking of a way to do this in a movie, and I just can't.

Imagine if you will, a movie in which a giant epic space battle is taking place, all while no sound is heard. It would be boring.

Really, really boring.

Never watched Serenity, did you?

Nope. Why, did it actually pull it off?

Just because you won't hear the cannons going off doesn't mean you can't have the soundtrack playing.