MovieChat Forums > Armageddon (1998) Discussion > Let's name all the scientific inaccuraci...

Let's name all the scientific inaccuracies in this movie


1. Space shuttles can turn and glide in space with ease despite having no air to maneuver in.

2. A Texas sized asteroid's gravity doesn't cause tsunamis to form or volcanoes to erupt on Earth.

3. A Texas sized asteroid is unable to be seen by the naked eye despite it's colossal size and luminosity.

4. Drilling 800 feet and dropping a nuclear device will somehow split the asteroid in two.

5. The asteroid (planetoid) has canyons and razor sharp rocks despite being large enough to pull its mass in to be spherical.

Continue.

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Fire in space.... No oxygen, no fire. Right?

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The fire at the independents crash site bothered me.

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A Texas sized asteroid is unable to be seen by the naked eye despite it's colossal size and luminosity.
Well, last time I checked, asteroids aren't ever luminous. And has an asteroid (other than one entering our atmosphere) ever been seen with the naked eye? But enough of that; let's just keep dissing the movie instead of this poster.

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It that collosal size and proximity to Earth that sunlight should be enough to reflect enough light off of it to be seen.

Let's see. Let's say our killer asteroid is the same size as Ceres (remember, 900 km across). The movie says it is moving at 22,000 miles per hour (not metric, of course!), and is 18 days away. That puts it about ten million miles away, or 40 times the Moon's distance. At that distance it is 30 times closer than Ceres. Ceres itself is just barely too faint to seen by the naked eye, but if it were 30 times closer, it would be 900 times brighter! [Note: actually, it would be even brighter than that. Since it would be closer to the Sun, it would receive more light from the Sun, making it about four or so times brighter, plus the 900 times, making it about 3000-4000 times brighter than Ceres. My thanks to Bad Reader Craig Berry for pointing that out to me!] That would make it one of the brightest objects in the sky. Even if we were to assume it was farther away, like 60 days from impact (two months), it would be ten times brighter than Ceres, and an easy naked eye object to spot. Anyone familiar with the sky would spot that easily. Incidentally, they said in the movie that only 15 telescopes in the world could spot the asteroid. As I have just shown, there are billions of unaided eyes that could have seen it as well.


http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/armpitageddon.html

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Hi, Miller. I would argue those figures, and say that the brightness of the object will come down to what it is made of. Objects of differing matter will have a different reflective value, or albedo. My point would only be that I have never, ever seen an example of an asteroid (outside the atmosphere) being a naked eye object. We've had a number of near earth situations over the years with asteroids. If any were naked eye objects, I didn't hear about it. I'm sure this thing in the movie was visible in the last hours of its approach, but certainly not when it's many distances from the moon.

And let me say; just because I don't know of a NEO being visible to the naked eye, I'm not saying I must be right. Give me an example and then we can move onto why 2 shuttles launching together is not a goof... it's part of the story. The astronauts dividing up on the gantry to walk to each shuttle? That's a goof.

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It was mentioned that the asteroid/planetoid was made up of iron and as far as I can recall, iron is rather reflective, but I could be wrong though.

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Thanks, Miller. And I'd be the first to say my strike-rate isn't that high either, but if you can point out any visible-to-the-eye asteroids out there; other than the few that's no more than a faint dot that's (to the untrained eye) indistinguishable from the star background to the untrained eye. Especially an instance of where one of these NEO passes where we could go out and watch it go by...

After all, in those opening scenes, think I was suffering from the astronomer's equivalent of penis envy. The telescope that guy had for his hobby! Telescopes are one of the few examples in nature where bigger truly is better!

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And lets remember, the 'Texas sized' data that everyone uses to trash the rather accurate science in the film was a simple quoted estimation that Truman gives to an obviously ignorant president. The comet was probably much smaller, and iron ferrite only accounted for a small portion of its composition.
Again, directors of big action films take liberties to convey a great story that looks awesome on the big screen. Bay accomplished this wonderfully with this film. So there are some subtle real scientific inaccuracies, note one of my other posts for them. Most of what the general ignorant population argues about this film is either 1. A liberty taken by the director or 2. Can actually be scientifically explained if one had passed high school science courses.

And then Im sure most of you argued that
-Superman cannot fly because of gravity.
-Jack Sparrow cannot escape the belly of the beastie.
ect ect

Oh wait, ITS SCIENCE FICTION!

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Ok I'll play.

This stinker has the audacity to ask the audience to believe that NASA, who knows that fuel is at a premium and every ounce of cargo has to be justified, decided to include in said cargo a Gatling Gun weighing perhaps 500kg(?), on a trip to an uninhabited f'ing asteroid?????????????????? Perhaps they feared an attack from Asteroidians??



"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them are just made up" Abraham Lincoln

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Gatling gun- haha well spotted!

Other little points of interest that few picked up on were-

. The trajectory of the mini meteors that levelled buildings in New York at the films beginning. For their size and relative speed, they would not be at acute angles to the Earth as depicted. Gravity and wind resistance would have made them more perpendicular.

. At one point Billy bob Thornton's character tells everyone that 'Not even bacteria would survive'. Erm, well maybe not at the precise point of impact, the heat would kill just about everything, but worldwide? Not a chance, many forms of life would survive an impact such as this, inc bacteria, amoebae, small mammals and maybe some humans too.

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He was exaggerating to the president, who wasn't going to care to fact check whether only bacteria will actually survive this impact. It emphasized the seriousness of said impact.

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It's not really scientific, but Ben Affleck as a semi leading man, as well any semblance of chemistry between him and Liv Tyler is not believable at all. Bad movie, bad dialogue, bad acting, bad directing and also at least 45 minutes too long.

~~~~~~Do or do not. There is no try.~~~~~~

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Seriously, you quote Yoda as your signature as you criticize the acting, dialogue, and length of a movie? Were you being ironic?

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Not to spoil anybody's fun but I've got to ask, as I said in another thread, what exactly were people expecting from this movie from the trailers?

I keep seeing people complaining about how scientifically inaccurate this movie is and how over the top, cheesy, and flashy it is, but I've just got to ask...What were people really expecting based off of the trailers? None of the trailers ever made this movie out to be a scientifically realistic film or the most sophisticated one either, if anything it was marketed as another flashy, big budget popcorn movie with tons of CGI and action, and that's what the movie was in the end. So...Why so serious? As one of the top rated comments says, at least it's honest.

2014: The Year of Godzilla

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The movie is scientifically accurate, we just haven't developed the technology to match the science yet

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Exactly, no less realistic than any other big action hit nowadays.
YOu wanted realism? Ok mission fails because the space shuttle flew in an unscientific fashion, mankind gets wiped out.

I gotta give them credit for the twist at the end instead of having everyone die, or everyone fly off and live.

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Good point.

It's a "popcorn flick", featuring Aerosmith music, light comedy, intense action, a love story, and a heartwarming familial element if you allow yourself to enjoy it. Not for intellectualizing, as you would with "Memento".

Lot's of cultural references, and Tarantino film actors.

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First and foremost it is a movie for entertaining, not scientific facts. It is no different than The Matrix, hi flying Martial Arts movies, The Punisher, Transformers, and any other supposedly called real life comic book movies. The only real problem I had with the movie was the first real time scene in space. They had astronauts in space...watching them work and could not see the meteorite shower on the way?

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Please don't explain. What they don't realize is that the smarter they try to sound the stupider they appear. Attacking the scientific inaccuracies of Armageddon? Next, let's look tough by fighting a baby.

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Well said!

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Too funny, point well made.

:-)

It's even arguable that the film is intentionally tongue-in-cheek, like "Independence Day" or "Men In Black".

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I don't want to write a laundry list.

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NASA: "We don't take chances". Picking a group of people who have never been in space (some are even deemed unfit, get injured in a fight or fail complex tasks) and preparing them in two weeks to go there would be the most reckless chance possible.

Blowing up an asteroid "the size of Texas" so close to Earth won't have horrifying consequences, such as a global rain of massive fireballs impacting every square mile on Earth, Earth's atmosphere catching on fire, oceans boiling, a worldwide EMP etc etc.

No forms of quarantine take place.


They call me the wanderer.

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You should wander yourself to a bookstore and buy a tome on science.

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That's what makes the film more comedic and tongue-in-cheek.

Obviously there would be a plethora of more qualified and better suited astronauts available for the mission, and they could just take the expert drillers along to help, maybe 2-3.

It's supposed to be unrealistic... as if "Die Hard", for example, is any more plausible.

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They've detonated nukes in the upper atmosphere before, were still here. One detonating thousands of miles away in space won't hurt.

Many thought, in the early development stages of nuclear bomb technology, that even a detonation on the surface might be strong enough to ignite the earth atmosphere and kill everything on earth. At one point, people also thought the earth was flat....

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