I know of 5 obvious ones. But there's probably many more. But I'll leave them to be mentioned by other forum-goers.

#1: In the anime Sailor Moon, the main character Usagi Tsukino is the modern day reincarnation of the princess of the Moon Kingdom, an ancient kingdom on the moon. While her modern reincarnation is born on the earth, her "original" was born over 1000 years ago on the moon, a Princess Serenity. The moon people look like regular humans, but obviously aren't as humans live on the earth and back in the middle ages there were no astronauts to go to the moon The kingdom on the moon has since ceased to exist due to alien invasion. And the same is about to happen to humanity as the aliens are now about to attack the earth, with Sailor Moon being the only hero who can stop them.

Nice sci-fi story, but the science is TERRIBLE. Now I have several things to say about this story. First, is life (especially inteligent life) as we know it requires an atmosphere to breath. There is no air on the moon. So that means life shouldn't be able to exist there without space suits. Also, reincarnation is a spiritual subject and therefore can't even be analyzed scientifically so shall remain not analyzed in this post. And finally, we have no proof of aliens EVER visiting the earth (or the moon for that matter), and DEFINITELY no alien invasion has taken place on the earth (in spite of this being a staple of sci-fi films). Currently any so called "evidence" of alien visitations of the earth is sketchy at best.



#2: In the sci-fi show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, there are alien enemies of earth living on the moon. The aliens can travel to the earth to invade in about 1 second.

The first thing that that is rediculous is the same as in my last post, there is no air on the moon so life couldn't exist. Secondly, to reach the earth from the moon in 1 to 2 seconds, you'd have to be traveling near, or even above the speed of light (depending on your exact travel time). Traveling this fast would require technology that currently is out of our reach and if faster than light, would be impossible. Lets just hope any hostile aliens that MIGHT exist aren't this advanced in their technology.



3#: Back to Sailor Moon, it seems that when they transform, they convert their bodies to energy, then materialize their new super hero costumes on themselves, and finally convert their bodies back to matter, ready to fight the invading aliens.

Now the ONLY science behind this that is correct is that indeed matter CAN be converted to energy and back. The rest is pure fantasy, as is the possibility of containing, and controlling or manipulating that energy so that when it is converted back into matter it is in the exact shape you wanted (preferably in the shape of a super hero costume). The problem with containing the energy is that with Einstein's equation E=m*c^2 you would have a HUGE amount of energy released. In this case you are taking the mass of a 14 year old girl and her regular outfit, and converting it into energy so that part of it can be manipulated into the shape of a super hero costume before rematerialization. Taking the mass of a person and converting it into pure energy to start with would needless to say release so much energy that you would make an explosion big enough that you wouldn't even want to be ANYWHERE on the earth when it happened. That is she'd nuke herself and our whole planet which she was trying to protect as she attempted to "transform" into her super hero mode so she could save it. Bad idea.




#4: Back to Power Rangers again. But this time, lets look at Power Rangers in Space. The problem I saw REALLY stand out was in the final episode, where after analyzing sensor data on their hyperdrive equipped starship called the Astro Megaship, the came to the conclusion that the enemy aliens were trying to "conquer the whole universe" (this assuming it seems that intelligent life is abundant with at least one planet around every star or at least nearly every star could support intelligent life which would have to be "conquered", as seemed to be implied in the show). That statement was ridiculous to say the least. For aliens who could conquer our planet after maybe a week of fighting, the prospect of conquering every planet even in our own Milky Way galaxy would be ridiculous. And to do so to every galaxy in the known universe would be that level of ridiculousness times the number of galaxies in the visible universe. But since the whole universe is theoretically INFINITELY large, then it would be impossible even if 10^100 generations of hostile aliens tried it, as ANY finite number of attacks on inhabited planets would NEVER get you to an infinite number as there theoretically is. This show REALLY made the universe seem small!




#5: While it may be "aesthetically pleasing", this picture of a crescent moon as depicted in the intro video of Sailor Moon is never possible. Here's an annotated screenshot of that image from the video.

Remember it is IMPOSSIBLE for the moon to ever look like that.

Almost 200 views, and no comments?

Well, your five shows seem to be two. And they're not really the sort of shows intended for an adult audience - at least Power Rangers isn't. And as far as I can tell from your description, Sailor Moon is set in a fantasy universe where the rules are different.

If you want to criticise bad science, you're better off picking a series that takes itself fairly seriously, and in which the poor science undermines the credibility of the story.

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They weren't supposed to be 5 shows. They were 5 facts that the story writers sucked at taking into account. And it could have been from 1 to 5 different shows. I just picked 2 shows to take 5 facts from. And while Power Rangers is SUPPOSED to be for kids, I find most science fiction shows including Power Rangers to be interesting, and I'm 24 years old. If any show has enough aliens, laser guns, space ships, and kickass robots, or magic and swords and wizards, or any combination of sci-fi and fantasy genres, it is interesting to me. I don't care whether it's Power Rangers in Space, or Star Trek: The Next Generation. If it's sci-fi, I will tend to like it. I do draw a line though. I don't for example care to watch Peter Pan (unless I'm watching it to "reminisce" about my childhood, as everyone periodically wants to "go down memory lane"), as that movie is WAY TOO obviously for little kids, even though it does have the science fiction aspect of space travel and I could use it as an example of when a sci-fi movie neglects to give people space suits as they are traveling between planets with no space craft at all.



But now I want to here from others who would like to share any shows and/or movies that have bad science.

Finding Nemo. It's a well-established scientific fact that fish can't talk, because they don't have lungs.

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(As you can guess from the location, English is not my native language.)

Please, don't shout.

Really, all you have to do throw a dart at a listing of SF TV shows and movies, and you'll hit one with bad science. Even a classic like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) has screw-ups: For one, Klaatu says he came from 250,000,000 miles away.

Phil Plait's lists from the original Bad Astronomy site.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is still in business, too.

Edit to add: Nitpickers, but you'll probably have to sift out the genres yourself.

Fred

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Good point. I just used a unit converter and found that that many miles is only 0.000042527 light years. That is a TINY fraction of one light year. But the closes star to earth (other than the Sun) is Alpha Centauri, which is 4 light years away. Bad mistake there!

If you know that the Earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun, then you know that 250,000,000 miles is well within the bounds of the solar system, no LY conversion necessary. Klaatu is a local boy.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
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One of my favorite science goofs in science fiction I've seen is in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. In one episode a "positron cannon" is used. I love anti-matter guns in sci-fi, but using them in an atmosphere in reality (if such a gun could even be built) could be catastrophic. The beam would annihilate the electrons in the atoms in the air (positrons are anti-electrons), and the result would be really bad, to put it mildly. Here are some things I could see happening.

The electrons in the atoms of the air would be annihilated and converted into energy. Some of this would be gamma rays which would irradiate everyone and possibly lead to cancers. Some of this would be converted to heat and result in the air that had been caught in the antimatter beam literally exploding (with devastating results). And the air being fully ionized would repel against itself aiding the force of the explosion. Ultimately the electrostatic repulsion might send some or the atoms into outer space causing some loss of atmosphere on the earth. Other ionized air ions might collide with electronics in computers and ruin them. Still others might collide with biological tissue and ionize some of the atoms resulting in bad chemical reactions within the biological tissues. This would be ESPECIALLY bad if breathed in (just like inhaling an alpha particle from a radioactive alpha source). Some of these chemical reactions could lead to cancers if they resulted in damaged DNA.

If any of the positron beam ever reached the target without reacting to the air the results would be MUCH worse as it would then annihilate a much more dense amount of matter (due to the target being solid, whereas the air is a gas). This would result in an explosion that would easily exceed the energy released in the most powerful hydrogen fusion nuclear weapon to date.

Needless to say, it would be very bad if this happened.


In other words this would be better used as an anti-spaceship weapon for battles in space where there is no air, and the distance to the target could be far enough that the gunner himself wouldn't be in danger. It would NOT be a safe way to take out an alien space craft that was already invading a city on the earth as it was used in this anime TV show Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Pretty much all of them.

I never watched Sailor Moon, but I have seen a decent amount of anime. I am aware of only a few anime series that are (more or less) hard science fiction, and only one series that does an impressively good job on the science: Planetes. Of course, it isn't perfect, and in fact I can poke quite a few holes in it, but it does better than 99% of anime, or American movies and TV shows for that matter.

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All of what?

Uhm, I don't think it is a good idea to look in flicks like Power Rangers or Sailor Moon for bad science. I mean, they don't even have good reality, sci-fi or not.
When Donald Duck runs across the edge of an abyss and only begins to drop after recognizing he is walking in mid-air, already a lot of bad science has happened.

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But at least Power Rangers is NOT a cartoon, but rather an ordinary sci-fi show. And Sailor Moon (actually an "anime" not a "cartoon", as it comes from Japan, and anime aren't as silly as cartoons and often have people that look like people unlike cartoons) I just couldn't leave out as this IS a site about "bad astronomy" and Sailor Moon IS named after the moon. So I tried to find SOMETHING in the anime Sailor Moon that had SOME scientific aspect with which to see the show as sci-fi (for critical examination) rather than just outright fantasy (which most of that show is). And I easily found 3 science related problems in the show:

1: Life (even intelligent life) on the moon (in spite of it's lack of any atmosphere)

2: Alien invasions of the earth (which in reality no extraterrestrial encounter on the earth of any kind either hostile or friendly has ever been proven)

3: That picture of a crescent moon (which actually is an IMPOSSIBLE picture of the moon, in spite of how "artistic" it looks)

All sci fi shows on TV and Film...(it's a response to the original post of this thread). I've never seen a sci-fi movie or TV show that didn't contain some bad science. Even 2001, A Space Odyssey had errors although they are nits rather than outlandish. Some of the factual errors can be read on IMDB.

I had the same thought, hence my tongue-in-cheek remark about Finding Nemo.

Seriously, Ben321, why do you bother at all to point out "bad science" in a magical girl show? This is not even "shooting fish in a barrel", it's more like "pounding empty air" or "tearing apart wet tissue paper". If you know someone who is an avid fan of Sailor Moon, this could be a way to smuggle some knowledge about science in their mind, but in all other cases is a waste of time.

Only for sufficiently large values of "look like". I personally don't know any people with eyes the size of teacups...

You do know what "fiction" and/or "alternative history" is, don't you?

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(As you can guess from the location, English is not my native language.)

Agreed. It'd be a shorter list to put together those that actually have good science.

I don't know how Swan Lake has the nerve to call itself a documentary about swan rearing.

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Why, that's an outrage!

I have one: Mighty Mouse. I knew that mice could talk but I was shocked to learn that they can sing.

You know, anime has a wide range of skill, artistry, and intelligence levels expected. Sailor Moon, for example, isn't very good. It is also intended for a very different audience than, say, Akira or Samurai Seven. Just as the aforementioned Finding Nemo has a different intended audience than Persepolis. I could give even more extreme answers than that. "Anime" is not some magic word that makes animation good or "not cartoons."

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

And likewise for Starman--it is also not a cartoon (he's from the Emerald Planet BTW). Have a look-see about the science in this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd4jZoKGK5A

What's "Persepolis"?

And my favorite gaff that is in "magical girl" animes, and especially obvious in Sailor Moon is the way they badly mess up the E=m*c^2 bit. I mean the "transformation" scenes where they go from powerless and wearing regular clothes to a full powered super hero wearing a super hero costume RELIES on conversion of matter to energy and back to matter again. But the problem as I mentioned in my first post is that the ammount of energy directly contained in all of the mass of a person's body is probably enough to blow up the whole earth, or at least cause a 100% complete extinction of life on the earth and make a crater the size of a country and move the earth significantly in it's orbit around the sun.

IMDB is your friend.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

You're way off. Assuming a Sailor Scout has a mass of 50 kilograms, the energy contained in all the atoms of one's body is 4.4938^18 joules, or 1.074043977055 gigatons.

A big bang, to be sure, but unless the country is on the small end of what exists in Europe, it's not going to excavate a crater that big.

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The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

From the laws of Anime

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

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As a note, that's because of law 38: Law of Hydrostatic Emission

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Is that what they're called?

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684