post Category: Physics Talk — Sunny Kalara @ 6:58 am — post

Here are some of the most common physics errors in SF movies:

  • There’s no sound in space - next time I hear an explosion when a spaceship breaks apart, I am calling the physics police. Also, sound and light don’t travel at the same speed and can’t arrive at the same time!
  • There are no fires in space - even if you provided oxygen, the vacuum of the space will dissipate it all so fast! No flaming things in the space please.
  • You can’t see a laser beam in space. You see the laser beam on earth because of the reflections from the dust particles.
  • And there’s no reason why someone would move in slow-motion in zero gravity; in fact, they should be moving around much faster. Stop showing those goofy slo-mo movies.

Image

The bad movie physics - report card.

Horaayy..there are 4 comment(s) for me so far ;)

#1

phil plait has a response to this.

dj empirical wrote on March 28, 2008 - 2:01 pm
#2

Sunny Kalara:”There’s no sound in space - next time I hear an explosion when a spaceship breaks apart, I am calling the physics police. Also, sound and light don’t travel at the same speed and can’t arrive at the same time!”

But it is not the same sound. It is the sound of scales recalibrating (see also CV movies).

Sunny Kalara:”You can’t see a laser beam in space.”

Sure. Only strings.

Guess Who wrote on March 28, 2008 - 2:03 pm
#3

Yeah!! Nice blog you have here. I’ve enjoyed much reading your last posts. Keep it that way.

crashcrash wrote on April 11, 2008 - 6:13 am
#4

Come,come, astronauts do move sluggishly in zero gravity. We need only look at the footage from spacecraft.

Aaron Carine wrote on April 16, 2008 - 1:12 am
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Write Your Comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs will be generated automatically.

You should have a name, right? 
Your email address, I promised I won't tell it to anyone. 
If you have a web site or blog, you can type the URL right here. 
This is where you type your comments. 
Remember my information for the next time I visit.