Thursday, August 16, 2007

Things that make my eyes glaze over, part 857

At least three times in the last day I've followed links from various blogs or other sites to different sites that complain about scientifically impossible stuff in science fiction movies, which invariably leads to kvetching about that old chestnut, "You can't hear explosions in space!"

Well, duh. I also can't hear the London Symphony Orchestra in space, but nobody's bitching about Star Wars on that basis.

So I, for one, will keep hearing explosions in my space movies, OK?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The people who gripe about that one strike me as the same sort of killjoys who would point out that Chaplin's Little Tramp couldn't really eat shoelaces like they were made of licorice, or who obsessively count the number of shots John Wayne fires to see if he's reloading as often as he'd need to in real life.

The sound effects in space movies are there for the sake of drama people! It's entertainment, not hard science. Duh!

Anonymous said...

Actually, if one is in a spacecraft with an atmosphere, one would in fact be able to hear sounds. Presumably, the rocket thrusters of one's vessel would be heard and felt in the ship's atmosphere, as well as the firing of any of that ship's weapons, any collisions with micrometeorites, and so on.

Space isn't a perfect vacuum, either. Though sparse, it does contain enough gas & dust particles to serve as a very poor medium for sound. If one's artificial atmosphere was within 100 feet of what would normally be a deafening explosion, then perhaps some small amount of sound could be realized in the artificial atmosphere.

It's like Sting wrote years ago:
My feet don't hardly make no sound...

Never mind the double negatives, though.