Post by inlovewithcrow on May 23, 2007 13:35:04 GMT -5
I know the science fiction movies MST chose are not among the most accurate in science (though sometimes, the writers do an amazingly good job of getting some stuff right). But a couple bits of scientific error drive me CRAZY every time I see them.
1) The Incredible Melting Man. Man in space capsule: "You've never seen anything until you've seen the sun through the rings of Saturn." Shot: The Sun from about the distance of Mercury with a huge solar prominence. Okay, director, you see, Saturn is FURTHER from the sun than the earth--ten times as far, in fact, so the sun is one-tenth the diameter in the sky. And Saturn has a magnetic field, so if there was some sort of solar event that would send out radiation enough to shred the astronaut's DNA and make him melt (I'll even give you that one, okay? I'll accept melting), all life on Earth would be extinguished too--and first. AND, if he's at Saturn when he's fried, how the hell does he get home? It'd take a year or two to get back. Who drove? And why didn't he start melting DURING that trip? How convenient that he waited to melt until he got himself and his dead buddies back.
2) Terror from the year 5000. The museum guy gets a bronze statue in the mail. Forget that his carbon-14 decay test somehow shows it's from the future. (?!) Forget, even that he later gets hysterical that it's radioactive (like, duh, what's Carbon-14, fool?) What fries my ass is this: in order to Carbon-14 date something, IT HAS TO BE MADE OF CARBON! At least in part! A metal statue ain't even close. Argghhhh, pant pant.
3) Space Children (which I kinda like, actually). A minor science, geography, but this really irritates me, too. A 35-year old woman grew up in San Francisco. She goes to San Diego and complains about the BEACH and the SAND and it being like THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. What the hell did she do in SF? San Francisco (I've lived there, I know), is a peninsula. It has about a 28-mile perimeter, of which about 20 miles is BEACH. Am I to believe that this woman never went west of Sunset or north of Lombard in 35 years? Never drove over a bridge? Never climbed a hill and noticed there were beaches in the distance? Had someone staple-gunned this woman to a chair for 35 years? Or what?
Okay, vent with me. What bad science in these movies makes you hyperventilate?
1) The Incredible Melting Man. Man in space capsule: "You've never seen anything until you've seen the sun through the rings of Saturn." Shot: The Sun from about the distance of Mercury with a huge solar prominence. Okay, director, you see, Saturn is FURTHER from the sun than the earth--ten times as far, in fact, so the sun is one-tenth the diameter in the sky. And Saturn has a magnetic field, so if there was some sort of solar event that would send out radiation enough to shred the astronaut's DNA and make him melt (I'll even give you that one, okay? I'll accept melting), all life on Earth would be extinguished too--and first. AND, if he's at Saturn when he's fried, how the hell does he get home? It'd take a year or two to get back. Who drove? And why didn't he start melting DURING that trip? How convenient that he waited to melt until he got himself and his dead buddies back.
2) Terror from the year 5000. The museum guy gets a bronze statue in the mail. Forget that his carbon-14 decay test somehow shows it's from the future. (?!) Forget, even that he later gets hysterical that it's radioactive (like, duh, what's Carbon-14, fool?) What fries my ass is this: in order to Carbon-14 date something, IT HAS TO BE MADE OF CARBON! At least in part! A metal statue ain't even close. Argghhhh, pant pant.
3) Space Children (which I kinda like, actually). A minor science, geography, but this really irritates me, too. A 35-year old woman grew up in San Francisco. She goes to San Diego and complains about the BEACH and the SAND and it being like THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. What the hell did she do in SF? San Francisco (I've lived there, I know), is a peninsula. It has about a 28-mile perimeter, of which about 20 miles is BEACH. Am I to believe that this woman never went west of Sunset or north of Lombard in 35 years? Never drove over a bridge? Never climbed a hill and noticed there were beaches in the distance? Had someone staple-gunned this woman to a chair for 35 years? Or what?
Okay, vent with me. What bad science in these movies makes you hyperventilate?
