Space is a favourite setting for many Hollywood films, but just how accurate are their portrayals? Patricia Skelton, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, sheds some light on the scientific rigour of her favourite movies.
For example, during an explosive space battle scene in Star Trek, a crew member is tossed out into space and suddenly into silence. For Skelton, this moment accurately portrays physics: space is an almost perfect vacuum, and sound can’t travel without a medium.
Apollo 13 tells the story of NASA’s ill-fated 1970 lunar mission. What stands out for Skelton is how the film-makers tackled the challenge of portraying zero gravity by using NASA’s KC-135 aeroplane, affectionately known as the “Vomit Comet”. By flying in parabolic arcs, the jet creates brief moments of weightlessness, just long enough to film scenes in realistic zero gravity.
In the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader meets with the Emperor Palpatine via hologram. Despite being vast galactic distances apart, their conversation flows surprisingly well, without any communication delay. In reality, that would be impossible, says Skelton. To illustrate this, she uses the example of Voyager 1, a space probe that is currently the most distant human-made object from Earth. Communicating with it involves sending radio signals, which are electromagnetic waves that travel at 300,000 kilometres per second. Since Voyager 1 is 24 billion kilometres away, a message sent today takes about 22.5 hours to arrive. Real-time chats across galaxies may not be possible, but a little creative licence is all part of the magic of sci-fi.
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