bad science

A Guide to Bad Space Science In Movies

Sorry to ruin your enjoyment of Mission to Mars—or, fine, Aliens and Star Wars—but it joins a host of sci-fi movies that just can’t quite get their space science right. Here are the most common offenses and offenders. You’ll note that The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, the two movies that are based on actual…

Space & Spaceflight Brian Barrett Dec 28

When science narratives go bad

In the following essay, Jennifer Ouellette explores what happens when otherwise normal science documentaries attempt to give their topics dramatic flourish…and fail hard. So, the Spousal Unit and I clicked on the Science Channel last week for a bit of Monday evening viewing to unwind after a long day’s work. Being of a macabre bent,…

Television Jennifer Ouellette Jul 3

Terry Pratchett Explains Why Doctor Who Is Ludicrous

Doctor Who shouldn’t really be called science fiction, says author Terry Pratchett. It’s “ludicrous and breaks most of the laws of narrative,” he adds, in a tongue-in-cheek but fairly bracing critique. Guards! Guards? Writing in SFX, Pratchett says: The unexpected, unadvertised solution which kisses it all better is known as a deus ex machina –…

Television Charlie Jane Anders May 3

Second Best “Outrunning Cold” Scene In Movie History

Jeff Fahey and his random scummy colleague have just a few seconds to get to their underground bunker before the Earth’s temperature reaches… Absolute Zero! Yes, the temperature is going to be colder than space. But they can outrun it! You have to love Absolute Zero, not least for the scene early on where Fahey’s…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders Apr 29

Scientist To Hollywood: Stop Making Shit Up

Physicist Sidney Perkowitz has one simple request for scifi filmmakers: please break the laws of physics only once per movie. He insists this for Tinseltown’s own good, as audiences’ disbelief can be only be suspended so far. The Emory University physicist believes that good science in science fiction is beneficial for both scientists and filmmakers.…

Movies Cyriaque Lamar Feb 22

Which Movies Really Have The Best And Worst Science?

The debate over bad science in science-fiction movies has gotten a major new source of ammunition: Phil Plait, writing for Discover Magazine, has rounded up a fairly definitive list of the best and worst moments in movie science. Some of the inclusions for bad science won’t surprise you too much. There’s The Core, of course,…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders Jan 23

Physicists to FlashForward: You Are Full Of Crap

On physics-gone-haywire show FlashForward, characters recently suggested that an accelerator in Palo Alto, CA might have caused a worldwide blackout that killed millions by conducting “proton-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration” experiments. Now scientists at the real accelerator in Palo Alto have responded. The premise of FlashForward is that everybody in the world blacks out at the same…

io9 Annalee Newitz Dec 11

Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)

Can’t recall which items the media claims prevent cancer and those that cause it? Kill or Cure takes aim at bad science journalism with its tongue-in-cheek index of items the Daily Mail links to cancer. [via Metafilter, Image from SMBC]

io9 Lauren Davis Aug 31

CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction’s War Against Science

CERN, home of the notorious Large Hadron Collider, threatened destruction (via anti-matter) in the recent movie Angels And Demons and (via ghosts) in a recent Torchwood radio play. But CERN is just one example of how science fiction demonizes science. No matter that the anti-matter menace in Angels And Demons is about as realistic as…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jul 14

Clever New Breast Gadgets Can’t Support Their Claims

A bevy of terrible contraptions have been concocted lately for the benefit of our breasts. Here are a few of the more recent “WTF get the away from me” over-the-shoulder boulder-holder gadgets. We already told you about NASA’s space-age project to create a bra that can detect breast cancer, but these new devices are even…

io9 Meredith Woerner Jun 24

Teen with Home Chemistry Lab Arrested for Meth, Bombs

A Canadian college student majoring in chemistry built himself a home lab – and discovered that trying to do science in your own home quickly leads to accusations of drug-making and terrorism. Lewis Casey, an 18-year-old in Saskatchewan, had built a small chemistry lab in his family’s garage near the university where he studies. Then…

io9 Annalee Newitz Dec 27

Computer-Generated Paper Accepted for Prestigious Technical Conference

A prankster who submitted a computer-generated research paper to the International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering discovered that not only was his fake paper accepted – its “author” is to chair a panel. The prankster, known only by his pseudonym Schlangemann (which he used to submit the paper), created the paper using SCIGen…

io9 Annalee Newitz Dec 24

Bad Science Can Lead To Good Stories

“My favorite science fiction movies generally deal in some really, really bad science. Laws of physics are regularly flouted. Aliens make no physiological sense. That’s because the directors are just using fragments of science to assemble fiction that reach down deep inside us, not to our internal database of scientific facts, but to our addiction…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Dec 5

Hard Scifi Flick “Splice” Actually Based on Internet-Rumor Science

Turns out that the hard science underpinning Splice, a forthcoming flick about genetic engineering directed by Vincenzo “Cube” Natali, is actually not so hard. In a recent interview, the director claims his inspiration to do a genetic chimera movie was seeing a now-famous image of a mouse with a human ear grafted onto its back.…

Movies Annalee Newitz Apr 23

Ultra-Bright X-Ray Machine in Danger

Next time a scientist in the United States wants to use an ultrapowerful x-ray machine (pictured here) to aid pharmaceutical development, or the nation’s biggest particle accelerator to study neutrinos, it may be impossible. The Argonne and

io9 Annalee Newitz Jan 14

What if Sony Really Did Have Corporate DNA?

Synthetic biologist and science blogger Keith Robison is sick of seeing advertising campaigns for companies that say “such-and-such is in our corporate DNA.” So he strikes back by explaining what it REALLY means for you to have something in your DNA. The results are hilarious. Find out what Sony is really saying about itself in…

io9 Annalee Newitz Dec 14

Climate Change Traced to High Divorce Rate

Divorce is pushing global warming into the danger zone. Each time a family splits up, according to a study released yesterday, it creates a double-sized carbon footprint. And since global warming is causing a general rise in thunderstorms across the planet, when you and your spouse consider splitting up, you are threatening the world with…

io9 Annalee Newitz Dec 4

Bad Movie Science Will Drive You To Cannibalism

People give science fiction movies a free pass when it comes to bad science, complains astronomer and novelist Mike Brotherton: Why is it when people go to see a mediocre drama, they complain about the acting or the unrealistic characters, but when they go see a mediocre science fiction film (“sci-fi”), with bad science, they…

Movies Charliejane Oct 12

Cure Acne With a Crappy MP3 Player or a Shower, Your Choice

I’m all for gadgets doing more than one thing — cameraphones are great and all — but this pimple-curing MP3 player is kind of ridiculous. It looks like a pretty generic/terrible MP3 player on its own, what with its horrible 128MB of onboard memory, but while you listen to those 10-20 songs it can store…

Tech News Adam Frucci Sep 25

Einstein Wrong, Form a Queue for Time Travel

So, it turns out that maybe Einstein was wrong about that whole relativity thing. A couple of German physicists claim that they’ve broken the speed of light (with a photon, not a rocket, disappointingly). What this means is that time travel, instantaneous traveling between distant locations and really fast download speeds could all be possible.…

Physics & Chemistry Msparkes Aug 16

A Guide to Bad Space Science In Movies

When science narratives go bad

Terry Pratchett Explains Why Doctor Who Is Ludicrous

Second Best “Outrunning Cold” Scene In Movie History

Scientist To Hollywood: Stop Making Shit Up

Which Movies Really Have The Best And Worst Science?

Physicists to FlashForward: You Are Full Of Crap

Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)

CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction’s War Against Science

Clever New Breast Gadgets Can’t Support Their Claims

Teen with Home Chemistry Lab Arrested for Meth, Bombs

Computer-Generated Paper Accepted for Prestigious Technical Conference

Bad Science Can Lead To Good Stories

Hard Scifi Flick “Splice” Actually Based on Internet-Rumor Science

Ultra-Bright X-Ray Machine in Danger

What if Sony Really Did Have Corporate DNA?

Climate Change Traced to High Divorce Rate

Bad Movie Science Will Drive You To Cannibalism

Cure Acne With a Crappy MP3 Player or a Shower, Your Choice

Einstein Wrong, Form a Queue for Time Travel

Two Songs We Really Wish Were the Anime Outros for ‘Steel Ball Run’

AI Training Data Giant Mercor Is Reportedly Looking to Buy the Work You Did at Your Old Job

Utah Is Giving Dr. AI the Power to Renew Drug Prescriptions

Here’s the Perfect Excuse to See ‘Project Hail Mary’ Again

US Airlines Are Hiking Bag Fees Amid Iran War Oil Crisis

This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch

‘Starfleet Academy’ Season 3 Could Have Done the ‘Voyager’ Sequel Episode of Robert Picardo’s Dreams

Judge Kills Lawsuit Against Infamous Study That Might Have Increased Teen Suicides

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

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DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

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