Myths Hollywood Has Taught Us About Space

"Helium fuses to produce Hydrogen" - you WILL not hear the end of this!😂😂

Minor correction Simon. I heard on April 26th that Voyager 1 is back online and communication with earth. In general, software engineers discovered one of the computers had areas that were corrupted and after re-uploading the software / coding using areas of other computers, Voyager 1 started communicating again. The signal (travelling at the speed of light) took almost 23 hrs to reach Voyager 1. The round trip signal (travelling at the speed of light) took almost two days. It’s amazing that both Voyagers are still working and communication after almost 48 years.

The Expanse is phenomenal. It proved you can still have action, drama, and suspense in space, but still be scientifically accurate. That IS the suspense. Physics practically is a villain, a hero, and a secret weapon by itself.

Actually, the tree falling in the woods with no one around to "hear" it, still causes air molecules to be moved in waves. The presence of ear drums is not required for the physics of the air molecules to be moved by an object. It's the same as tossing a rock over your shoulder into a pond while not looking at the water. The water reacts with waves regardless of whether it is being watched or not.

a tree in the forest will always be surrounded by ear drums, they just won't be human ones

8:28 I think you misspoke. Hydrogen fuses to become helium, not the other way around that you said.

11:31 Great news -- as of April 5, 2024, Voyager 1 is back on-line!! Major kudos to the Voyager team, for figuring out what was wrong, and devising a fix.

Kudos to the editor for throwing a beret on Simon when he said "We're going to bust some myths". Even without the stash, it was a good throwback to Jamie.

Astronaut 1: "I can't find any milk for my coffee" Astronaut 2: "In space no-one can. Here, use cream"

A couple of updates since Simon's team wrote the script: Voyager 1 is communicating again. NASA engineers told the onboard chip to disable the "dead" or damaged part and transfer the instructions to functional portions of the chip. Eventually, yes, Voyager 1 will "die". The other thing is that neither Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have not left the solar system. Assuming they keep going, eventually they will enter the Kuiper Belt and indeed the system, but that hasn't happened at this time.

I'd say sound is the air vibrations itself, which can affect things other than ear drums, and the air vibrations from a falling tree are still there whether anyone is there to hear it or not. The actual definition of sound is "vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear" which means air vibrations bring sound is not contingent on being heard, just that they could be heard if an ear was near.

Direct energy ejected from an explosion can still reach the hull of the ship you're in, as a stream (not wave) of energetic micro particles. This would allow you to, "hear the explosion", kind of. On the other hand, an energy burst large enough to do that will have distracted from the faint whooshing sound by the extremely loud sound of your ship's atmosphere escaping through myriad new tiny holes. Screw sound! :P

I would question the conclusion concerning your body's ability to adapt to one atmosphere (Atm) of pressure change. As a scuba diver and a former US Navy Aerospace Physiology Technician, I admit that a single Atm is reasonably easily handled when moving above 1 Atm, but when going in the opposite direction the relationship between temperature, pressure, volume and boiling points of liquids. There is a very good reason pilots who fly at extreme altitudes are required to wear pressure suits. Although it is cold enough to freeze very quickly at approximately 63,000 ft in altitude, the air pressure at that altitude brings the boiling point of the blood to around standard body temperature. In space, depending on your protective gear etc it would just be a race between what kills you first, but I believe the embolism, possibly secondary to your blood gasses coming out of solution (boiling) would win.

That Total Recall scene might be completely inaccurate... but DAMN it was a genius bit of movie magic!

0:55 - Chapter 1 - Sound doesn't exist in a vaccum 2:30 - Chapter 2 - Explosions in space 4:45 - Chapter 3 - A human body will freeze or explode in space 7:10 - Chapter 4 - The sun is a burning fiery ball 9:55 - Chapter 5 - Flying through an asteroid belt is dangerous

One of my favorites is how hollywoods portrays storms on mars, blowing around people and heavy equipment. It seems EVERY movie about mars has at least one storm to set up the drama. While a 70 mph wind on mars would affect you as much as a light breeze on earth.

A tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it does make a sound. The sound is the vibration of the molecules, not the act of hitting a sensory device like an eardrum. If you come into your house with the phone already ringing, for example, it didn't start making the sound when you entered.

Cold fusion is the least of ST: Into Darkness's problems

Stars don't go nova when they're born, they go nova when they are old and dying.

When I hear sound effects in sci-fi movies, I always interpret the sound we hear in the cinema as a representation of what a person dying in that explosion is experiencing. One of the best representations of an actual space explosion was in The Last Jedi when it went totally silent for a few seconds. It was dramatic, it was effective, and somewhat realistic given that sound doesn't travel in a vacuum.