10 Things Science Fiction Got Wrong

Most of the time we're willing to shovel down the popcorn and watch Yoda lift X-Wings out
of the swamp using nothing but the Force and a smattering of questionably parsed English, or
let Jean-Luc Picard get the Enterprise out of a scrape by the convenient discovery of yet
another type of particle beam. But every once in a while we just have to vent about some of
the truly egregious "fiction" in science fiction.

1. Sounds in Space

The tag line from Alien got it right: "In Space, no one can hear you scream". The reason no
one can hear you scream is that sound needs air to travel in, and there's none in space.

Most of space is a hard vacuum, with a molecule or two of hydrogen floating around in every
cubic meter - not nearly enough to transmit sound. Every sound in the movies, from photon
torpedoes and laser beams to exploding starships and hyperspace booms, would never happen
in real life.

For that matter, you'd never see laser beams in space either, since in a vacuum there's no
medium to reveal them. So a real-life laser dog fight in space would be really boring to watch.
2. Faster-Than-Light Travel
Warp drives and hyperspace are very useful in science fiction, but there's one catch.
According to Einstein, the speed of light isn't just a good idea, it's the law. Nothing can go
faster than the speed of light in a vacuum (that's about 186,000 miles per second).

Even inching toward the speed of light is difficult - immense energy is required to get to even
a fraction of the speed of light, and the closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy is
required. The amount of energy you'd need to achieve the speed of light is infinite (i.e., more
than you've got, even with those supercool long-lasting batteries). So just tossing in a few
more dilithium crystals into the warp drives isn't going to make it happen.

There are loopholes in our understanding of the physics that make faster-than-light travel
theoretically possible. For example, it's theoretically possible to create a "bubble" of space
that breaks itself off from other space and moves faster than light relative to that space (all the
while everything inside both "spaces" moves no faster than the speed of light). This is known
as an Alcubierre Warp Bubble. The catch (there had to be one) is that these bubbles require
the existence of exotic matter that has negative energy, and wouldn't you know, there isn't
really any lying around, and it's not clear that any actually exists.

3. Laser Bolts You Can Dodge

Aside from the issue of Imperial Stormtroopers being bad shots, let's
review a fundamental fact of light (which is what lasers are): It travels at 186,000 miles per
second. So the idea of ducking before the laser hits you is just plain silly.

Not to mention (of course) the idea of a laser bolt being visible as a streak that has a
beginning, a middle, and an end. If you were zapped by a laser from a laser gun, it would look
like a single stream of light, with one end attached to the barrel of said gun, and the end
attached to whatever portion of your head had not melted yet (assuming you're having a laser
battle somewhere where there is enough air around to illuminate the entire beam).

Most "laser" beams in science fiction movies travel slower than bullets do today. Let's see Obi
Wan whip his light saber around fast enough to stop the spray of a Mac-10 (and let's not even
begin to talk about all the things wrong with a sword made of light).

4. Human-Looking Aliens
 This is endemic on the various Star Trek series, where creatures from
entirely different sectors of the universe look just like humans except for the occasional
bulging ridge on their foreheads. Yes, this is the result of having only humans at casting calls,
but in a large sense, all these "humanoid" variations ain't gonna happen.

Look, humans evolved on earth and shared a basic body format (four limbs, one head, side-to-
side symmetry) with just about every other vertebrate on the planet. It's a form that works fine
for this planet, but not even every vertebrate sticks with it (see: snakes, whales, seals, etc).

Given that any planet with life on it will have that life evolve in it's own way, the chances of
the universe being stocked with chesty alien princesses who crave human starship captains is
slim at best.

Related to this is the following.

5. Half-Breed Aliens

Humans don't even interbreed with other species here on earth. Our
DNA is simply too different from other species to allow such a mating to produce offspring.

Given this, what are the chances of successful mating with an alien species that may not even
have DNA as its genetic encoding medium?

Also going back to the idea that aliens probably won't look like Humans, how would you do it
anyway? It's not exactly the "Insert Tab A Into Slot B" proposition it would be here at home.

6. Brain-Sucking Aliens
 The Good News of an Alien Facehugger Attack T-Shirt, art by Mike Jacobsen

Ditto aliens that control your body by using your brains, or gestate in your chest, or whatnot.
Let's posit that any creature that controls the brain of any other creature (not that any exist
here on Earth) does so only after a few million years of what's called "speciation" – i.e., one
species eventually enters a symbiotic relationship with another species. This relationship
would have to be pretty specific, as symbiotic relationships are here on Earth.

Which is to say just because you're in a symbiotic relationship with one species doesn't mean
it transfers over to another species, especially an alien species, who's body chemistry, DNA,
brain wiring, etc., isn't even remotely close to your own. So don't worry about the "Puppet
Master" scenario too much, or that you'll be nothing more than a glorified egg sac for some
nasty breed of space monster.

7. Shape-Shifting Aliens

Shape-changing aliens are all very well, but there's a tiny problem in
having a roughly human sized lump of alien protoplasm turning itself into, say, a rat, to scurry
around in the ventilation shaft: Where does rest of the alien go? You can't just make 99% of
your mass disappear into thin air (or reappear, as the case may be); it has to go somewhere.

Unless that "rat" is running around with a highly compressed mass of a human-sized object
(which presents its own problems), shape-shifting in to different sized objects is not very
likely (one of the smart things about Terminator 2 was that the T-1000 only shape shifted into
things of roughly the same mass, like human beings or a floor).

8. Time Travel

Got an itch to spend time in the Arthurian England? Or perhaps

Gettysburg during the Civil War?

The same relativistic principles that keep us from going faster than light also keep us rom
traveling backward in time and messing with the past. It's possible to slow down time - the
closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time moves for you relative to your original
frame of reference - but to get the clock spinning in the other direction would require you to
go faster than light, and you can't do that.

Again, there are theoretical loopholes that could allow it - worm holes, actually, which are
"tunnels" in the fabric of space-time that could possibly allow travel back in time. but once
again, keeping these wormholes open would require exotic matter with negative energy. Got
any? Neither do we.

9. The Planetary Gravity Scam

Everywhere you go in science fiction, people are walking around like they weigh just what
they do on Earth. Chances of that happening in the real universe? Slim. Consider our own
solar system. On Mars, a 180-pound man would weigh just 70 pounds; on Jupiter, 424 pounds
(not that you can walk on Jupiter, as it has no solid surface). That man on the moon? Just 30
pounds. The man's mass is the same, it's just that different planets have different gravitational
pulls.
The idea that all the planets that humans might visit would exactly match Earth's own
gravitational profile is a little much. As is, alternately, the idea that all alien creatures would
be as comfortable in our gravitational field as we are.

10 The Planetary Sameness Principle

Tatooine looks just like the ! I stand corrected, it's Tunisia ... y'know, on the continent of
Africa, Earth. Photo via Wookieepedia

The desert planet of Tatooine. The ice planet of Hoth. The jungle planet of Dagobah. What do
these planets all have in common? One planetary-wide ecosystem. Which isn't too likely.

Our own planet has varying zones and ecological areas: desert, tundra, jungle, and so on;
other planets in the system also show marked zones of varying atmospheric and weather
patterns. Mars has ice caps as well as (relatively) temperate zones; Jupiter has distinct weather
systems based in different areas on its globe. The planets that show a sameness are the ones
we couldn't live on. Venus is all desert, but that's because a runaway greenhouse effect makes
it hot enough to melt lead. Pluto is all ice, but it's so far away from the Sun that its atmosphere
freezes for most of its orbit.

There may well be purely desert or jungle planets, but most planets we'd want to live on
would probably be able to accommodate both.