Bad Science on TV (again)
One of the things I severely dislike in popular entertainment is bad science on TV. I don’t mind stretching the truth a little for dramatic reasons, or for inducing people to think, but often Hollywood writers (and their ilk) have a tendency to go way overboard.
This evening, NBC broadcast part one of “Meteor“, a movie about the imminent destruction of life on earth by as asteroid thrown out of the asteroid belt towards the earth. In the film it is detected with “24 to 48 hours” until it hits the earth… At which point the military starts planning on throwing nuclear weapons at the rock in an attempt to deflect or destroy it.
Here are the problems:
- 114 Kassandra, the rock in question, has an estimated mass of about 1018 kg. Meteors travel at approximately 40 km/s. Which means a kinetic energy of 1027 joules. This is equivalent to the 2.5 × 1011 megatons of TNT – or about 50 million warheads. The world has tens of thousands, not millions – and we currently have no rockets with sufficient range to throw them out of earth orbit. Of course, that would be how many we would need to stop the rock.
- The next problem is the speed and distance, if we were trying to deflect it. With 48 hours lead time, the asteroid would be only 7 million kilometers from the earth. This is about 18 times the distance to the moon – and about 13% of the minimum distance to Mars… So in space terms – damn close. Deflecting the rock would take a significant amount of energy ( I don’t feel like doing the vector math to work out the numbers). It will be a small fraction of the billions of megatons I noted above, but even that is a ridiculous quantity.
- The final thing I noted in the program were the images of the asteroid passing the moon and then racing towards the Earth. At meteor approach velocities, it would take less than three (3) hours for the asteroid to reach the surface of the earth after passing the moon. On the program they still seemed to have at least a day.
I don’t know if I will watch part 2 – I can imagine that debris rains down on the Earth and the show follows those who survive (miraculous considering the equivalent of 50 million nuclear warheads will have just landed); or the scientists and military people will save the world (by again violating the laws of physics).
Pssst…
It’s a MOVIE. You’re supposed to suspend your disbelief.
Script writers don’t care about facts.
I’m always irritated when a particular myth is perpetrated regarding gasoline and the use of it as a weapon.
I cringe whenever I see a character pour gasoline over a large area, either indoor or out, and then strike a match and threaten to blow the place up by throwing said match into the pool of this flammable liquid.
This implies that the liquid is what will burn when in fact it is the vapour that burns and, unfortunately for the person striking the match, the vapour is released when it’s spread across the floor and that person is standing right in the middle of this explosive cloud.
Striking the match will usually result in an immediate explosion that would likely kill or seriously injure everyone in the area.
No time to issue threats or give the good guys time to get away. Just a big bang and bodies all over the place.
People also don’t realize that when a scene inside of a burning building is being played out the special effects people have to remove all of the smoke to allow the actors to be seen. Otherwise the screen would be black and that’s hardly exciting to watch.
Problem is that it’s usually the smoke that kills people in fires so for the sake of the story line the danger of smoke is replaced by the danger of flames but the truth is that if a body burns in a fire that person is usually dead already from smoke inhalation.
NeilD
That’s why they don’t make shows for smart people.
As a musician, it annoys me when they can’t get actors to at least reasonably simulate playing a musical instrument. One of the worst for this is the Bond movie “Moonraker.” The actor isn’t even pushing down on the keys of his piano while playing. Ugh.