Myths Hollywood Has Taught Us About Space

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

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

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.

If the sound from roaring engines is heard within the ship, but not when the camera pans outside of the ship, that would be an accurate depiction of how sound would work in and out of a space ship.

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.

Hollywood: "But the chances of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 3,720 to 1!" Real life: "We're in an asteroid field?"

The Total Recall scene was not in space, it was in the Mars atmosphere. Mars' atmosphere is composed of 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon and 0.13% oxygen. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 6.35 mbar which is over 100 times less than Earth's. Making it even less scientifically accurate, but I thought I'd make that distinction.

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

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

I remember reading a Sci-Fi short story a long time ago, that was written by one of the classic Sci-Fi authors in the 1950s, although I can't remember which one. It featured a rescue of some passengers on a space ship that had suffered some kind of accident and needed to be evacuated quickly, but there were no space suits for the passengers to wear while moving over to the rescue ship. The distance between the two ships was short and could be traversed in less than 2 minutes by pulling one's self along a tether between the two ships, so they had the passengers enter the airlock of the doomed ship one by one, hyper-ventilate to maximally oxygenate their blood and then expel as much air as possible from their lungs before holding their breath on the exhale, so that there was little to no pressure from air in their lungs. Then they opened the airlock and had the rescuing astronaut (iirc) drag them to the rescue ship by pulling himself and the passenger along the tether. This blew my mind at the time, but tracks with all the information in this video. Those old Sci-Fi authors sure knew their science.

The statement "sound only exists if there are eardrums" is incorrect. I can obviously put a recorder in the woods where the tree falls, and despite there being no eardrums around, the sound will exist and be recorded. A more accurate statement would simply be "sound only exists if there is something to detect the molecular vibrations", eardrums are not a requirement.

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.

If a tree fell in the forest, it does produce sound because it does make sound regardless if someone is their to hear it. Physics demands it.

So that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where David Bowman outsmarts HAL and goes into space and into the spaceship is realistic? Cool

Hollywood treats space like they treat based-upon-book films; discard the stuff they think is boring, and add some drama to bits they want to keep.

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

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

Surprisingly, one of the best depictions of the effects of space on an unprotected human body takes place in the space horror film Event Horizon. When one of the crew members is about to be expelled into space, the captain tells him to exhale quickly, then rushes to save him before asphyxia, but the crew member is all bruised and battered. They did their homework!

So I looked up the definition of the word “sound”, and it lists as “vibrations that travel through air or another medium and CAN be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear.” -the Oxford English Dictionary This wording implies that the vibrations have to be of those that COULD be heard by humans, were humans there to hear it, not that a sound can only be defined as such when a human hears it.