Pseudo-Science In Some Sci-Fi Shows

Garovorkin said:

How do dampen Intetia space? How do you stop physical movement in frictionless space ? you would need some type of breaking engines

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I think that the only scientific way for a ship to stop in space should be by using front atmospheric thrusters just like the Star Furies move in normal space.The modern space shuttles also use thrusters to correct their orbit.The problem is that the ship needs a large amount of compressed air to do that.

Come to think of it, seems to me that almost every science fiction movie gets it wrong in some way. I was just watching the exception that proves the rule: Gattaca. Truly hard science, no hand-waving, and as far as I know, they didn't violate any scientific principles. (We now know more about Titan, their destination, than they did when they made the movie, but all they say about Titan is that they don't know anything about it, so it still tracks well.)

Great movie, too.

Any resemblance between Gattaca and a science fiction movie are purely co incidental. This is movie that there is no middle ground,either you love it or hate it. I do not love this film in any way.

I think that most of the concepts and specifics of B5's technology are possible from a scientific point of view.

-Artificial Gravity is still not commonly used in space projects but it's scientifically possible according to physics.The Omega Class Destroyers and some commercial ships also had rotating sections which was very original compared to other sci fi shows.

-"Star Furies" and other ships using thrusters to move in normal space, not some unexplainable "impulse power"

-Space ships in B5 don't have magnetic or energy shields which are common for other sci fi shows.

-Hyperspace is proven scientifically by the modern theoretical physicists.Dr.Michio Kaku has a book called "Hyperspace"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspace_%28book%29

"Worm Holes" were first discovered in 1921 by the German mathematician Hermann Weyl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

Truth Seeker I agree of all the science fiction shows that I have seen B5 does the Best on the science end of things> by the way there is early science fiction novel you might want to cehck out. Its by Abraham Merritt, Its called The Metal Monsters. A group of explorers are in an unexplored part of Asia and they encounter a race of Machines who are bent on conquering the world. These machines have things like almost a communication and a sort of Nano technology in the from of theses liquid metal machines that can shift shape almost like the T 1000. The remarkable thing is that this book science fiction novel was written in the 1920's he was way ahead of the curve . Merrit also wrote The Moon Pool and The Ship Of Ishtar, The face in the Abyss, he is one of greats in both science fiction and Fantasy.

KoshFan said:

Come to think of it, seems to me that almost every science fiction movie gets it wrong in some way. I was just watching the exception that proves the rule: Gattaca. Truly hard science, no hand-waving, and as far as I know, they didn't violate any scientific principles. (We now know more about Titan, their destination, than they did when they made the movie, but all they say about Titan is that they don't know anything about it, so it still tracks well.)

Great movie, too.

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I think some of us here are being a bit hard on maybe-possible-science-but-we-have-no-idea-how-to-get-there-now science fiction. Even time travel may be possible, though I personally doubt it. But we should hang onto the idea that not knowing how now isn't equivalent to never knowing how. And that includes hyperspace and wormholes and things that most likely will never be plausible for us to actually use to travel. At some point we have to be willing to suspend disbelief, and to approach a story more on a "what if it were possible" angle.

But I do agree that Gattaca is not only highly realistic, but could almost be achieved in our time. As the science of genetics advances, if society's attitudes shifted towards making "perfect" people, the techology is certainly there. Almost to Gattaca level.

I personally really enjoyed the movie. Yes, it's more a story with genetic science in it as a kind of by-product, but it's a great story, and it is based on solid science. It touches a chord with me, too, having been such close friends to a very disabled young woman whose life span was always predicted to be much shorter than average. She still made her mark, and quite a significant one, on her community. The idea of editing her out before she was even born is quite a sobering one to me. It's one issue where I can actually sympathize a bit with the Catholic church's viewpoint on abortion.

But I can also see how some would find the film less than fantastic. that's the great thing about having a lot of science fiction to choose from: something for everybody. We don't see a lot of that in today's cinema in the USA.

Koshfan and Hypatia im sorry be so dismissive of Gattica I read the reviews saw the film and flat out hated it. I watched the whole film, I could not find even one thing to like about this film. Not the characters, story concept or even the look of the film.

Don't apologize, Gar. That's what makes the world go 'round: different tastes.

What I hate seeing is people who imply you are an IDIOT if you don't agree with their particular tastes in literature,music, films, etc.

But I can certainly see how it's a love or hate kind of film.

One further note about Gattica A friend saw the film before me hated it, told me about it. Though I do take stock in his opinions though we don't agree on absolutely everything , I wanted to see the film for myself out of curiosity again I found plenty of good things said about the film and I do keep an open mind on things .But in the end I agreed with him. By the Way The Movie Freejack and it Body Swaping concept implausible to say the least as was Mick Jaggers acting.

Garov, I don't mind if you don't like Gattaca, but don't try to say that it's not a science fiction movie. It takes place in the future, the plot hinges on advanced but achievable technology, and at its core is the old story of lone-man-facing-Dystopia, which is standard SF fare. You may hate it and desire to destroy every copy ever made, but I stand by my assertion it's sci-fi. And hard sci-fi at that, which is extraordinarily rare.

Hyp, we may be being hard on not-yet-discovered tech, but almost every sci-fi film or show violates the speed of light one way or another, and that's a very hard one to get around. Even B5 does to a certain extent, since they seem to have developed FTL communications if not actual transit.

Okay Koshfan fair enough.

KoshFan said:

Garov, I don't mind if you don't like Gattaca, but don't try to say that it's not a science fiction movie. It takes place in the future, the plot hinges on advanced but achievable technology, and at its core is the old story of lone-man-facing-Dystopia, which is standard SF fare. You may hate it and desire to destroy every copy ever made, but I stand by my assertion it's sci-fi. And hard sci-fi at that, which is extraordinarily rare.

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A strong second from me on that. I thought Gattaca was great, a chilling projection of where we are headed. To me, that is sci fi at its best.

Yea, FTL travel and everyone being able to communicate easily, so the audience can understand them, are kind of necessary to get an interesting television show or movie.

If it were done on screen realistically, man would it be boring. I think Close Encounters probably is the best at giving the impression of "boy, we've got a lot to learn to communicate with them. They gave us a template (musical) to start us out, but even then all we could manage was a kind of extended "greetings" and "everything is going according to plan".

Even in a movie I love dearly, Judgement at Neuremberg (where they had only two languages to grapple with), they start the defense attorney's dialoge in German, then suddenly switch to English. It was a good idea. It gave the idea to the audience that many of these people are speaking in German, but made the film a lot easier to listen to in just one language. Besides, as many of the Europeans have pointed out, Americans just seem turned off by subtitles. So part-English, part-German would have really ticked off the audience.

And that's dealing with just two languages, both developed on Earth.

hypatia said:

Yea, FTL travel and everyone being able to communicate easily, so the audience can understand them, are kind of necessary to get an interesting television show or movie.

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Firefly didn't have any FTL technology, travel-wise or communication-wise.

I don't know much about Firefly, but that is interesting. Thanks for letting me know.

Yes, I was thinking of sci-fi where travelling through space was a key element. There actually is quite a bit of sci-fi, in book form especially, where the entire plot takes place on one planet.

Yeah, Firefly all takes place in a single solar system that's had a bunch of planets and moons terraformed, so there's no need for FTL technologies.

Superman from the planet Krypton. this one has some interesting items. The planet had a red sun which I am assuming is a re giant Star, Now the problem here is that Red Star is very old and in the final stages of it existence, it expanded long ago and swallowed the inner planets and has maybe a few million years of life left. Now its extremely unlikely that the Kryptionan could have evolved on Krypton under a red sun given the life expectancy of the Star at that stage. one possiblity is that at one time early in its history Kyrpton had a Yellow sun billions of years ago and when it when it went red they moved the planet. I don't know if this is the case on this issue. But if they could move a planet then with that level of stellar engineering the whole scientific community on Krypton with the exception of Jorel should have been oblivious to the growing instability within the core of their own planet. did none of their earthquake experts and Geologists and scientists with Eons of Scientific data and experience know how to interpret data from a seismograph? Waht about their sophistocated technology was the scientific community on Krypton really that stupid/

And no alien species, right? So no need for the magic language commonality/comprehension either.

But again, in fairness, FTL travel might well be possible. It just seems very unlikely we'll get there in the next century or something. Discovering gates made by an alien species is far more realistic than someone's discovery on Earth suddenly opening interstellar travel to us.

here is a question with regard to Firefly, now when the show starts up they explain that earth got all used up meaning no longer habitable i suppose. If they have terrafroming technology, what is preventing them from making earth at least habitable again. Also I don't see how this could all be taking place in Earth Solar system. If they are in fact terraforming the moons and I am assuming we are talking about say the moons of Jupiter Saturn ext. There is problem here and it has to do with the distance that those bodies are from earth sun.also the gravity of these bodies is not enough to sustain an atmosphere Those terraformed worlds would be dim place given the distance they are from the sun and without the right amount of sunlight you cannot live on the surface of those moons, nor plants grow nor will you have a temperate climate, so how is it that these wild west worlds could exist as they are? Its never established or explained also most of them might not have active molten core without which no life is possible on any planet some of them are made of Ice and Rock which you cannot terraform in any event No molten core no magnetic field the solar winds would erode any atmosphere that you could put on that planet, no internal heat means atmosphere is frozen to the ground anyways This cannot be in the Earth Solar system it has to be other systems so they must have FTL drive otherwise this show concept is not viable

hypatia said:

And no alien species, right? So no need for the magic language commonality/comprehension either.

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Correct, there are no non-humans in Firefly. There is more than one language used in the show though, much to the joy of many a fan: characters occasionally speak -- mostly to curse -- Chinese. It's not translated, so those of us who can't speak it are left wondering what they said. But I find it very fun to hear them really go off on a tear cursing in Chinese and quickly switch back to talking in English. There's an actual in-universe explanation for the dual use of English and Chinese. Long before the time period in which the show is set, when humans on an overpopulated Earth have gotten to a point that they've polluted and used up too much of Earth's resources, a mission is devised to send a large number of people on several generational ships to a not too far solar system. The only two nations that had the resources to do this was the US and China, so over the hundreds of years or whatever it took for the generational ships to go from Earth to that solar system, and then however longer still it took to terraform the planets and moons of that system, the two cultures blended together such that most people can speak both English and Chinese. That blending of cultures also caused the dominant religion to be Buddhism, though Christianity does still have a presence. All of this is done just to give the show texture and has nothing to do with the plot of the story.