Realism in Movies

The movie Passengers is a very good science fiction movie with excellent computer-generated graphics but, how accurate are some of the scenes?

Although the scene depicting the transit of Arcturus puts the spaceship a bit close for comfort, the time it takes to cross from one side of Arcturus to the other side is too short in the movie which roughly times to about 25 seconds.

The space ship is travelling at ½ the speed of light which is 299,792/2 = 149,896 km/s. The diameter of Arcturus is 35,341,560 km. Therefore, the transit would take 35,341,560/149,896 = 235.773 seconds. That is about 3.93 minutes.

At the beginning of the movie, the spaceship rams into a bunch of floating space rocks.

I calculated the kinetic energy of 1-kilogram rock to see what damage would be done by smacking into it. There are several calculators on the Internet that makes that job easy.

The speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s
Half the speed of light is 149,896,229 m/s
According to the calculator found at
http://www.csgnetwork.com/kineticenergycalc.html
the kinetic energy of 1-kilogram rock would be
11234439734210220 Joules

According to the calculator found at
http://www.google.ca/#q=joules+to+tons+of+tnt
converting those Joules is equal to
2685095.5387691729702 tons of TNT

Therefore a 1 kg rock travelling at ½ the speed of light would explode with the force of 2.6 Megatons of TNT. That is a pretty big thermonuclear explosion. The amount of energy the shield would have to absorb for the scene in the movie would be astronomical for sure.

Val Gretchev said:

The movie Passengers is a very good science fiction movie with excellent computer-generated graphics but, how accurate are some of the scenes? ...

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Your post made me chortle, ValG.

I'm pretty sure that the concept of any "Realism in Movies" is a classic example of an oxymoron...

In the "Flash Gordon" short movie serials (Buster Crabbe, et al, 1930s. I watched them in the late '50s in a small town theater - entry cost was 5 cents), his space craft had a white vapor trail that always rose up from the back of the ship.

A "willful suspension of disbelief" is essential for any form of entertainment.

And, thanks for the energy conversion sites.

One thing which always makes me wonder, in the second episode of the "Back to the Future" trilogy,
how was "Old Biff" able to operate the time circuits of the DeLorean?
He always was a bit thick, how did he manage to suss out how to go back in time and then return to the same time and place?
It is not as if he could have seen another time-travel system elsewhere.

JimB

I very much enjoy watching some of the older movies for the continuity clangers, like .. ..

The Gregory Peck western, where he is galloping away from a bunch of Geronimo's warmongers and there is a biplane crossing the horizon in the opposite direction.

In 'Ben Hur', one of the Roman Centurion guards is holding a spear upright, with a watch strapped to his wrist.

In one of the 'Dirty Harry' stories, Clint Eastwood jumps about 6 or 8ft down off a wall onto a paved area - when he leaves the wall he's wearing brown leather boots, when he lands on the paved area he's wearing shoes with white laces and white piping around the soles.

In 'Diamonds are Forever .. James Bond tips a Ford Mustang on to 2 RH wheels to pass through a narrow passage; when it emerges from the passage it's on 2 LH wheels.

and finally .. .. .

In '633 Squadron' a shot showing a road train of bombs behind a tractor being towed towards the Mosquito bombers, whilst a white Austin Mini passes the end of the road.

S

If you are traveling in a space ship at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

JimB said:

One thing which always makes me wonder, in the second episode of the "Back to the Future" trilogy,
how was "Old Biff" able to operate the time circuits of the DeLorean?
He always was a bit thick, how did he manage to suss out how to go back in time and then return to the same time and place?
It is not as if he could have seen another time-travel system elsewhere.

JimB

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Maybe he just kept trying over and over again until he got to the right place and time. After all, he has all the time in the world.

ClydeCrashKop said:

If you are traveling in a space ship at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

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Except for the fact that you can't travel at the speed of light, Einstein stated that there is no difference for a stationary observer or one that is moving. So, they'll light up ahead.

Mike.

Musicmanager said:

In 'Ben Hur', one of the Roman Centurion guards is holding a spear upright, with a watch strapped to his wrist.

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He'd obviously had a ride in the DeLorean and picked up the watch as a souvenir of his time travels.

ClydeCrashKop said:

If you are traveling in a space ship at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

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Pommie said:

Except for the fact that you can't travel at the speed of light, Einstein stated that there is no difference for a stationary observer or one that is moving. So, they'll light up ahead.

Mike.

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Pommie is right: it all depends on where you are while making the observation. Since you are on the spaceship, you will measure the light leaving the headlights at the speed of light and everything would be normal. If you were observing from a planet and watching the spaceship zoom by at the speed of light while turning on the headlights, the beam of light would keep pace with the spaceship and the two would zoom by at the same speed. From this observation point, the spaceship would have zero length and would have infinite mass and the clocks on the spaceship would be standing still.

Realism in movies?

Kinda on topic here then....
I was looking at some of our pics, with my wife, on her laptop. I was driving because I'm quicker with a touchpad than she is, but she was directing.
"Next pic", "Zoom in", "Scroll up", "Left a bit", "Zoom in a bit"
I was waiting for "Zoom in", then ""Enhance", but luckily she is a bit brighter than that.

One thing which always makes me wonder, in the second episode of the "Back to the Future" trilogy,
how was "Old Biff" able to operate the time circuits of the DeLorean?
He always was a bit thick, how did he manage to suss out how to go back in time and then return to the same time and place?
It is not as if he could have seen another time-travel system elsewhere.

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Hi Jim,
He may have picked up a few pointers by watching episode one...

E

I found this simulator of a spaceship quite good. After you enter the variables such as Distance 26 light-years, Acceleration 9.8 m/s^2 (or 1 g), Maximum velocity 149896229 m/s (or 0.5 light speed), and set Observer time elapsed to years and Travel time elapsed during journey to years, click Calculate then click Run under the graphics panel to start the simulation. Have fun with it.

**broken link removed**

One of the most glaring continuity errors was in the film Goldfinger. The DB5 was fitted with Dunlop RS5's when the car was first introduced by Q. When James Bond first pulled up later on, the DB5 was clearly running on Pirelli Cinturato tyres. Completely ruined the movie for me...

Daniel Wood said:

One of the most glaring continuity errors was in the film Goldfinger. The DB5 was fitted with Dunlop RS5's when the car was first introduced by Q. When James Bond first pulled up later on, the DB5 was clearly running on Pirelli Cinturato tyres. Completely ruined the movie for me...

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Maybe he had the tires changed along the way because the Dunlops weren't prestigous enough?

dknguyen said:

Maybe he had the tires changed along the way because the Dunlops weren't prestigous enough?

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"Oh thessh Dunlopsh are ushless. I better get shum Pirelleesh on thish, pronto!"

Daniel Wood said:

"Oh thessh Dunlopsh are ushless. I better get shum Pirelleesh on thish, pronto!"

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Sean Connery? I've never seen Goldfinger so I assume it was him who was Bond in that movie lol

My wife hates watching movies with me. I know too much about aviation, radio communications, electronics, mechanics, physics to let the "artistic license" crap pass...

MikeMl said:

My wife hates watching movies with me. I know too much about aviation, radio communications, electronics, mechanics, physics to let the "artistic license" crap pass...

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Looks like you're limited to cartoons.

dknguyen said:

Sean Connery? I've never seen Goldfinger so I assume it was him who was Bond in that movie lol

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Yes it was .. .. ..

The reason for the different tyres is probably because they used more than one car .. .

S

dknguyen said:

Looks like you're limited to cartoons.

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Ha Ha I had an account with Acme.