The Martian and Bad Astronomy

The Martian and Bad Astronomy

Philip Plait is the author of Bad Astronomy and in Chapter 24 he gives 10 examples of bad astronomy in major motion pictures. While some of these are not directly correlated to the movie The Martian some of the examples do apply.

The first example has to do with the fact that there is no sound in space. As you may or may not know is that there is no sound in space, and in most movies you can hear ships as they go passing by or maybe even explosions. Unfortunately The Martian is one of these movies that have sound in space when it is not physically possible because sound cannot travel in space. For example, when they try to save the main character and through out the entire scene there is sound from thrusters and other objects that the characters are interacting with. The second example that he list does not apply to the movie and it has to do with asteroid fields which you do not see in the movie.

The next example that is listed is about banking in space and changing directions suddenly. This scene I believe is somewhat represented within the movie when Mark is in his pod flying into space to be saved by his team mates. When he was taking off into space and started getting flung around in different directions and he blacks out is when this example is truly shown. The next example however has to do with laser beams  and being able to dodge them but in the movie there are no lasers being fired.

The fifth example that is talked about is the distance between stars and other objects in space and how long it would take to travel between these objects. In the movie I believe that this is shown relatively well because it does take a long time to travel in space. In the movie it takes the stories crew over a year to make the trip to Mars and back which is an incredible amount of time to be traveling in space. Compared to some distances this may be small but the movie does a good job of showing it takes time to travel in space. The next example has to do with aliens stealing water from planets and the lack of water in our galaxy. This is somewhat shown in regards to there not being a lot of water besides here on earth. Even in the movie Mark Watney talks about there being no water on Mars and the fact that he has to make his own to survive.

The next example talks about objects trying to escape Earth's gravity but being caught in mid air and not moving. This is not shown at all in the movie and does not have any connection to what is going on. The eighth example however is very clearly shown and gotten wrong in this movie. This example talks about the fact that if you are traveling in space that the stars that you see around you will not go passing by but rather they will most likely stay fixed in the same position the entire time that you are traveling. This is violated in a couple of scenes that show the main ship flying in space. As you look out into space through a window or as they travel the stars in the background pass by which is not what would actually be happening.

The ninth example talks about explosions in space and the shape and features of the explosion once it does happen. In most cases you would not get some cool explosion that you might see in some movies like star wars. While some movies have explosions that go out in a ring at the center of the explosion that is not the case and the explosion would most likely have a spherical shape to the explosion. In the movie this is shown in a good way as far as I am aware of due to the fact that the explosion happens and there is nothing special that happens after and it just disappears. The last example talks about the phase changing of the moon and how the phases are inaccurately portrayed over time. However, in the movie we do not get to see the moon very much and therefore it does not really apply.
 


Comments

  1. Prof. Chris FragileNovember 17, 2019 at 6:00 AM

    One difference between a blog post and normal writing is that it gives you the opportunity to incorporate different media (like scenes from movies) into your writing. You should take advantage of this.

    ReplyDelete

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