Worst Movies for Science

[bilby]

The one need have no influence on the other. Indeed, if they are simultaneous, it is easier for them not to influence each other (at that point in time) than it is for them to do so.

Your whim to be in the past in most definitely causing them to do this.

They are not doing it for any other reason.

Not a theoretical possibility. But forcing that possibility to occur in a very complex and specific way.

EVERYTHING happens in a specific and complex way.

But not because we will it to do so.

If I will for myself to be in the past then by your logic my will to be in the past will cause every single particle in my body to simultaneously also exist as particles in other objects.

Nothing is 'forced'; it happens the way it happens. Which is always specific and complex.

Earth calling.

The way it happens is that matter moves forward in time. Complex yes, but not a willed complexity.

Just because something is theoretically possible doesn't mean I can shape it to my whims.

No, it doesn't. But it does mean you can't reasonably use it as justification for ruling it out as a possibility - which is where we came in.

Of course I can.

They say it is theoretically possible for a universe to form out of nothing.

That doesn't mean I can form a universe out of nothing at my command.

Electrons can exist at two places at the same time. That doesn't mean they can exist where I command.

I never suggested it could.

Matter moving backwards in time is called antimatter. The existence of antimatter is not in doubt; nor it it in doubt that antimatter can be created by concentrating energy in a small area.

So, if you want to move particles backward in time, it can be done.

A person is a LOT of particles; it is obviously hugely difficult - and likely practically impossible - to do; but theoretically it is possible.

 

[untermensche]

So, if you want to move particles backward in time, it can be done.

A person is a LOT of particles; it is obviously hugely difficult - and likely practically impossible - to do; but theoretically it is possible.

The complexity is infinitely beyond saying; well all those particles are able to be in two places, therefore it can happen.

What has to happen is the particles have to be forced to exist in two places in a very specific way.

 

[steve_bnk]

Let's do the time warp again...we are after all talking about science and movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBHONx9vTtI

There are no known theories of time travel which are conceivably implementable. There is always a catch in the theory.

There are plenty of mathematically consistent theories that have a catch. A warp bubble form of FTL is possible, but energy in the theory must have a negative sign.

Time travel as it stands today is pure science fiction and speculative science..

 

[skepticalbip]

Matter moving backwards in time is called antimatter. The existence of antimatter is not in doubt; nor it it in doubt that antimatter can be created by concentrating energy in a small area.

I think you are thinking of tachyons rather than antimater. Antimatter has all the same properties as matter (including how they "travel in time") only with opposite charge such as a positron is an anti-electron. Let them meet and they annihilate becoming gamma rays. Antimatter is quite common (at least common enough for me to have done positron annihilation experiments in school) but tachyons are only theoretical so far since they haven’t yet been observed. They are FTL particles so travel backward in time in fact they are limited by c too but the limit is that it would take an infinite amount of energy for them to slow to c.

 

[Shadowy Man]

No one has seen or captured a single electron for observation.

Depends on what your definition of "captured" is. And probably "observation" too.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Most of the injuries and deaths in Star Trek could have been avoided if they were wearing seat belts.
But I like Star Trek.

And they never sent ensigns on missions.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

ETA:
For decent Sci-Fi, I kinda liked Contact. The assumed science wasn't ours but that of a super advanced society. It was so advanced that it appeared to be magic but the movie didn't try to explain it. I've found that it is generally in the explaining that so much of the hollywood nonsense appears.

The movie couldn't explain it, other than it created a sort of wormhole. The reason why Contact managed to stay reasonable is that the author bothered to talk about Physicists about the premise before finalizing the book.

 

[Shadowy Man]

ETA:
For decent Sci-Fi, I kinda liked Contact. The assumed science wasn't ours but that of a super advanced society. It was so advanced that it appeared to be magic but the movie didn't try to explain it. I've found that it is generally in the explaining that so much of the hollywood nonsense appears.

The movie couldn't explain it, other than it created a sort of wormhole. The reason why Contact managed to stay reasonable is that the author bothered to talk about Physicists about the premise before finalizing the book.

But the point is that they gave themselves the out in the writing. They stated that they didn't understand the technology, so the details of how the technology worked weren't critical to the advancement of the plot or at the basis of the story-telling. For the movie Gravity, orbital mechanics was the basis of the story -- the attempt at a heartfelt human triumph story was somewhat secondary and fell flat because of the poor writing and lack of character development.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Among several other problems, to add to the #3 in your spoiler alert:

Show

Even if the Hubble had been in the same orbit as the communication satellite that caused the debris, the critical plot idea of the debris passing by every ninety minutes is a serious problem. If the debris were in the same orbit as them then they couldn't have encountered it. The story seems to assume that either they or the debris were orbiting the Earth and the other was just hanging there somehow so that they met every ninety minutes.

I disagree here.

Show

Lets take a more simplistic case. Object A is in a 300km circular orbit inclined at 30 degrees. Object B is in a 300km circular orbit inclined at -30 degrees. The timing is such that they meet up. They encounter each other twice an orbit--45 minutes at that altitude.

Now lets make it more complex. B is in a 250km x 300km orbit. Now, at one encounter they're 50km apart, the other they hit. Presto--valid orbits that hit every 90 minutes.

 

[Mageth]

ETA:
For decent Sci-Fi, I kinda liked Contact. The assumed science wasn't ours but that of a super advanced society. It was so advanced that it appeared to be magic but the movie didn't try to explain it. I've found that it is generally in the explaining that so much of the hollywood nonsense appears.

The movie couldn't explain it, other than it created a sort of wormhole. The reason why Contact managed to stay reasonable is that the author bothered to talk about Physicists about the premise before finalizing the book.

For the record, the author of Contact was none other than Dr. Carl Sagan.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Don't like time travel. Total nonsense.

When I go back in time, what exactly happens to all the matter that is now me that was scattered all over the place before I existed?

Until we know the true nature of time we can't answer that.

Most time travel stories assume there can be two copies of you in a time. I see no reason to think that wouldn't be the case.

As for time travel being total nonsense, I disagree. There are multiple scenarios where current physics permits time travel. Most involve devices that almost certainly can not be built (for example, one design requires a huge neutronium rod. You're dealing with stuff dense enough to crush atomic nuclei, how do you shape it??) but the wormhole-based designs have no such impossible engineering requirements. If you have a wormhole you can make a time machine. Whether wormholes exist or not is unproven.

Furthermore, every design I've seen proposed is actually a time road, not a time machine. The machine sits there, you can only use it to go to a time when the machine exists. Thus it doesn't fall victim to Larry Niven's hypothesis about time machines. (If time machines can change time before they exist no time machine will ever be invented--in any universe where they are invented the past eventually gets changed until you get a universe in which they aren't invented.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the ST unversed apparently they could build starships, but not fire retardant material sand uniforms....

If they built the bridge equipment to UL standards equipment would not explode or catch fire.

And those shock hazards when crewmen get knocked on their butt touching a piece of equipment.. Sheesh, talk about shoddy engineering.

I disagree. No engineering standards can avoid something exploding when it absorbs a big enough power surge. About the only thing you could do is isolate the bridge, all communication by fiber-optic cables (technology that was unknown when Star Trek was made) but this simply moves the problem elsewhere. It also means you have a big problem powering that bridge.

 

[steve_bnk]

No one has seen or captured a single electron for observation.

Depends on what your definition of "captured" is. And probably "observation" too.

Semantics.

The concepts of an electron have ranged from discrete particles in orbit around a nucleus to an amorphous swarm.

No one can say what an electron looks like or is. It is a variable with an SI number and dimension assigned to it.

I used to have a copy of Milikan’s book Electron. He placed charges on oil drops and centered the drops between two plates using a voltage. He observed that a ratio occurred in integer numbers and inferred that electric charge must then be quantized.

You could say he observed an electron.

A digital multimeter measures current by measuring the voltage across a known resistance and calculating. current.

Total charge or number of electrons is the derivative of current.

I = dq/dt.

If I measure 1 amp of current then I could say I have observed that 6.24x10^18 electrons have passed through a wire. Even that has semantic issues because from theory a discrete electron does not enter one end of a wire and come out the other end. A common useful visualization but incorrect.

When you say you are observing an electron or any particle it is always indirect through macroscopic measurements and instrumentation.

I have a relative who works at Brookhaven and worked on RHIC. I got to walk part of the ring before it went cold and saw a detection chamber.


http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/PHENIX.asp

'...PHENIX weighs 4,000 tons and has a dozen detector sub-systems. Three large steel magnets produce high magnetic fields to bend charged particles along curved paths. Tracking chambers record hits along the flight path to measure the curvature and thus determine each particle's momentum. Other detectors identify the particle type and/or measure the particle's energy. Still others record where the collision occurred and determine whether each collision was "head-on" (central), a "near-miss" (peripheral), or something in between...'

You can call it observing particles and in common speech I would say so, but it is an indirect inference.

As to isolating an electron any control mechanism and measurement system ultimately reduces to voltages and currents. You would have to explain how you achieved such a measurement feat in detecting a single electron.

Photon avalanche detectors like photo multiplier tubes can have high sensitivity. However proving it can detect a single photon requires knowing only one photon impinges on the tube.

The concept of a particle itself is just a useful visualization.

Is an electron a homogeneous sphere?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In the ST unversed apparently they could build starships, but not fire retardant material sand uniforms....

If they built the bridge equipment to UL standards equipment would not explode or catch fire.

And those shock hazards when crewmen get knocked on their butt touching a piece of equipment.. Sheesh, talk about shoddy engineering.

I disagree. No engineering standards can avoid something exploding when it absorbs a big enough power surge.

Why not? They can contain anti-matter, go magnitudes faster than light, scramble people's molecules and transport them elsewhere without having their head on backwards at the destination, can replicate food... what is so hard about a surge protector?!

 

[Keith&Co.]

but this simply moves the problem elsewhere.

And that would be the point. There should be SOMETHING between the bridge and the spot on the hull that's half a mile away from the bridge, or the spot just inside the hull, that would explode before the power surge makes it to within five feet of the Captain's head.
How much work would it take to purposefully design a system so that a shot on the secondary hull surges all the way to the bridge?
Maybe route everything through the secondary bridge, so it explodes, leaving the A team up there with functional equipment and no distracting explosions while they're trying to come up with a firing solution for the bad guys.

 

[skepticalbip]

I disagree. No engineering standards can avoid something exploding when it absorbs a big enough power surge.

Why not? They can contain anti-matter, go magnitudes faster than light, scramble people's molecules and transport them elsewhere without having their head on backwards at the destination, can replicate food... what is so hard about a surge protector?!

That is just silly. Everybody knows that, for Sci-Fi movies, surge protectors would be devices so far advanced that they would destroy most plot devices. We could no longer hear, "I canna stop it captain." or witness the sparks, flashes, and smoke from the control panel so necessary in any space ship battle scene.

 

[steve_bnk]

In the ST unversed apparently they could build starships, but not fire retardant material sand uniforms....

If they built the bridge equipment to UL standards equipment would not explode or catch fire.

And those shock hazards when crewmen get knocked on their butt touching a piece of equipment.. Sheesh, talk about shoddy engineering.

I disagree. No engineering standards can avoid something exploding when it absorbs a big enough power surge. About the only thing you could do is isolate the bridge, all communication by fiber-optic cables (technology that was unknown when Star Trek was made) but this simply moves the problem elsewhere. It also means you have a big problem powering that bridge.

Exactly, no protection on power distribution. No subsystem protection against power fault extremes.


A
nd I refer you to DO-160 the basic avionic standard section 9 Explosive Atmosphere. Does not apply to all avionics.

The chassis is filled with a fuel-air mixture and a spark gap is paced inside. The chassis is placed in a chamber with a fuel-air mixture. The spark gap is triggered detonating the mixture in the chassis. The chassis must contain the explosion such that the explosive atmosphere outside the chassis does not ignite.

From an engineering perspective,ST, STNG, and DS9 were kind of laughable. Didn't detract from the stories or enjoyment.

Any local fault on the bridge or cascading faults in the ship leading to a fire and parts flying off bridge consoles is a graphic plot device, but absurd in such an era of advanced technology. Even today.

Going into deep space without sufficient protective devices on the power distribution system would be a bit absurd. The idea that in a battle crisis someone has to manually adjust power distribution to weapons equally absurd.

In ST subsystem redundancy seemed to be lacking, but then things would never go wrong in support of a plot.

Uh oh...the main containment system just broke and we are seconds away from a warp core detonation, what should I do Captain Picard? 'Switch to backup ensign '....groan, give me a break.

 

[Veritass]

I also have issues with the overuse of time travel as a plot device.

Unrelated to that, however, is the worst science fiction movie of all time: Disney's The Black Hole. My personal favorite scene is the ship being struck by a roughly spheroid asteroid, that (a) is glowing for some reason, and (b) hits with just enough delta velocity to roll(!) down the corridor chasing someone running away from it.

 

[James Brown]

Nightfall was pretty awful.

I'll bet no one else in this thread has seen it.

 

[untermensche]

Don't like time travel. Total nonsense.

When I go back in time, what exactly happens to all the matter that is now me that was scattered all over the place before I existed?

Until we know the true nature of time we can't answer that.

Most time travel stories assume there can be two copies of you in a time. I see no reason to think that wouldn't be the case.

As for time travel being total nonsense, I disagree. There are multiple scenarios where current physics permits time travel. Most involve devices that almost certainly can not be built (for example, one design requires a huge neutronium rod. You're dealing with stuff dense enough to crush atomic nuclei, how do you shape it??) but the wormhole-based designs have no such impossible engineering requirements. If you have a wormhole you can make a time machine. Whether wormholes exist or not is unproven.

Furthermore, every design I've seen proposed is actually a time road, not a time machine. The machine sits there, you can only use it to go to a time when the machine exists. Thus it doesn't fall victim to Larry Niven's hypothesis about time machines. (If time machines can change time before they exist no time machine will ever be invented--in any universe where they are invented the past eventually gets changed until you get a universe in which they aren't invented.)

You say the physics permits it.

I say the physics also permits entire universes arising from nothing.

I am just as likely to do one as the other.