Myths Hollywood Has Taught Us About Space

did the tagline for alien in space no one can hear you scream refer to the notion that no one is around to hear you scream at that alarmingly frisky face hugger or to the fact that sound waves don't do particularly well in a vacuum this won't come as a shock but Hollywood tends to take more than a few Liberties when it comes to accuracy especially as far as outer space is concerned the fact is that the vast almost completely unexplored territory beyond our planet is a rather complicated Beast to represent and since most Hollywood writers don't possess the prerequisite p HDs movie outer space is sometimes more fiction than it is science now that isn't to say that Hollywood writers aren't trying it's just that real outer space is often far more difficult to depict than even the most outlandish of fantasy films so today we'll bust some myths the reality of outer space is that you can't hear much of anything due to the lack of atmosphere so any movie that depicts the Roar of spacecraft engines or the boom of cosmetic explosions is well just plain wrong sound propagates via molecular vibrations using primarily air as its medium tightly packed air molecules collide with one another when Disturbed sort of like the chain reaction that occurs when someone in a tightly packed crowd pushes the person in front of them only in the case of air molecules there is rapid oscillation back and forth creating the wave pattern that we recognize as a sound wave the wave moves at the speed of sound 343 m/s until finding a path to our eard drums for a good visual representation throw a rock into a pond water ripples are surprisingly accurate representations of sound waves now throw a rock into an empty Pond to see why you can't hear anything in a vacuum of course if we're being nitpicky space is not a complete void there are some rare particles floating around primarily gas and dust but certainly not enough to transmit sound waves further in the spirit of being nitpicky it isn't that sound doesn't exist in a vacuum at all the astute will have realized that technically all molecules can act as a medium for sound including the original vibrating object itself take the example of an outer space Anvil struck with a hammer that ringing Anvil itself is making plenty of noise it just simply can't transfer the sound to adjacent molecules because there aren't any on a similar note if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it that tree doesn't make a sound sound only exists by definition if there's eard drums to sense the molecular fluctuations so without sound in space many Outer Space movie explosions already have a lot to answer for but as misleading a sound design can be it's the least of the average Hollywood space explosions in accuracies first and foremost can there even be explosions in space given that there's no air well yeah there can be certain types of explosions in a vacuum namely from high explosives at their core all explosions are simply the Rapid Release of potential energy and while all rapid releases of energy tend to go boom to some extent not all of these reactions are created the same way the burning of back powder for example is referred to as deflagration or the rapid consecutive burning of a fuel a high explosive on the other hand such as C4 detonates rather than defrates detonation is characterized by an explosive material instantly releasing all of its energy via a shock wave notably explosive shock waves travel at a much faster speed than the speed of sound propagating through atmosphere and solids in a strikingly similar way but put the pieces together and you'll realize that like sound waves shock waves don't do particularly well in a vacuum so what we're left with is a soundless space explosion with nowhere to go not exactly a flaming Death Star worthy affair on the other hand all of that doesn't mean that a high explosive can't be destructive in a vacuum it's just that the transfer of energy will be limited to directly adjacent materials such as the spacecraft R C4 is assumedly detonating in thus expect the spacecraft to still be torn to shreds and the pieces to still be propelled into deadly shards of shrapnel now speaking of shrapnel you probably noticed that flying bits of debris on Earth tend to quickly land back on the ground in a vacuum however there's no air resistance standing in the way of shrapnel and a virtually infinite journey into the unknown or at least until the shrapnel smashes into another physical object this means that the explosion you're seeing in outer space perhaps hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away may still kill you only as it be after a few hours days or weeks though when the trapnel eventually plows through your spaceship at that point you're probably going to want to be wearing a space suit lest you join the handful of others that have experienced their blood boiling in a vacuum depending on which film you're using as reference Landing up in space without a suit is amongst the most horrendous Ways to Die your eyeballs May burst out of your head according to Total Recall or you may land up instantly freezing according to Mission to Mars as far as instantly freezing in space is concerned once again there is no atmosphere in a vacuum meaning that heat transfer doesn't occur as it does on Earth on Earth we experience temperature primarily as convection or conduction the transfer of heat with Gases such as air or the transfer of heat with nearby solid objects in Space the primary temperature you're going to experience is thermal radiation from nearby Stars hence if you're unlucky enough to be without a space suit you would certainly feel cold if you were in the shadow of a planet or hot if you were in the eyeline of a star but key to our myth neither temperature reaction would be very dramatic or instant in the case of the protruding eyeballs of Total Recall the filmmakers obviously believed that violent decompression occurs in a vacuum but you might be astonished to learn that the human body is well capable of handling a pressure differential of one atmosphere to put it in perspective every 10 m you dive underwater equals a one atmospheric pressure difference so since you don't see scuba divers abruptly being crushed into sardine cans you won't be exploding in outer space there in your lungs on the other hand is going want to expand rather rapidly into your chest cavity resulting in ruptures but don't panic if you breathe that air out fast enough you should be okay at least until the liquid in your body starts spontaneously converting to Vapor via eism eism a rather horrifying thing to imagine refers to a process that occurs when air pressure gets too low consequently dropping the boiling point of liquid to room temperature you may have heard that your blood boils in space and that is why it's not actually due to any changes in temperature regardless the longer eism is allowed to occur the more destructive it will be resulting in swelling bruising and the formation of gas bubbles in your bloodstream all rather gruesome all not instantly fatal instead you're going to die in outer space for the most obvious reason asphixiation it will be perhaps a minute until deoxygenated blood is delivered to your brain at which point you'll pass out and die soon afterwards if someone does indeed plan on saving you they have perhaps a minute and a half to 2 minutes minutes the good news is that you may recover without any serious injuries depending on how long you endured the vacuum according to more than a few Hollywood movies stars are just massive fiery balls in space well not only are stars not actually burning at least not like a piece of paper burns they also aren't yellow or they're mostly not yellow we'll get to that in a minute fully understanding stars is an extremely complicated topic so let's just do a bit of a crash course shall we clouds of mostly hydrogen gas and dust particles Gather in space appearing as a nebula the dust and gas particles within nebulas sometimes clumped together be it due to a nearby planet's gravity or perhaps just due to Natural oscillation within the cloud itself either way critical mass is achieved and the particles collapse to a point in this way a mass is formed large enough to produce its own Gravity the new Gravity in a process called accretion gradually drags in more dust and gas during accretion a number of interesting things may happen mulle Pro Proto Stars may form as well as multiple Proto planets depending on conditions most important to our story today is that once a Proto star gathers enough gas and dust particles creating immense pressure and heat at the center nuclear fusion occurs the entire mass is then said to go Nova if you're unfamiliar with nuclear fusion this reversed atoms being forced together with such immense pressure that they fuse and create a new atom in the case of a star helium fuses to create hydrogen releasing excess energy in the process nuclear fusion therefore generates heat and radiation as a byproduct thus making a star hot and bright cold fusion as a side note is a hypothetical version of nuclear fusion that can occur at room temperature rather than at the millions of degrees inside a star and let's pause here for a moment just to appreciate how misguided Star Trek Into Darkness is where cold fusion is used to freeze a volcano into ice moving on let's talk about the color of stars the color of stars is a bit of a squirely topic very depending on who you're asking according to NASA it's temperature that determines the color of a star in the case of our sun you'll have noticed it tends to appear yellow during sunrise and sunet and somewhat bluish during peak hours needless to say these perceived color variations are largely due to interference from our atmosphere the colors implied by NASA although accurate are mostly only relevant assuming that you're making observations with specialized equipment in reality anytime you're looking at a star with your naked eye it's only ever going to appear why or retina searingly blindingly white depending on how close you are there is after all a reason that the windows on the International Space Station are filtered and equipped with shutters lest the astronauts spend most of their time partially blind and very very suntanned of course the RSS window shutters do serve another purpose protection against impacts from potentially dangerous space debris speaking of dangerous objects hurtling through space Hollywood sure does love asteroid belt and who can blame them flying through an asteroid belt is all the excitement of a cart Trace only with the added spectacle of lasers or asteroid belts would be exciting if the objects weren't roughly a million kilm apart considering that the Moon is 384,000 km from the earth barely a quarter of the distance between the average asteroids in a belt you're probably going to be okay passing through unless you are extremely unlucky as to why asteroid belts themselves exist they occur for a variety of reasons but are generally The Leftovers of some or other Cosmic event that took place a long time ago in many cases interplanetary collisions will produce asteroid Fields as is the case of our own asteroid belt the asteroid formations between Mars and Jupiter referred to as the main asteroid belt came about when Gravity from Jupiter interrupted the accretion of planets causing partially formed planetesimals to collide and shatter most of the gathered Mass was lost but some found its way into our solar system where it remains today so any danger we Face from asteroids clearly isn't VI crashing into them with a spaceship but then again that's something we've known about for a long time most explicitly since the 1970s the Voyager space probes 1 and two were launched in 1977 their mission was to provide data on distant planets like Jupiter and Mars and we now know about the active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon solely because of the voyage of mission it will no doubt not Shock you to learn that neither probe was in danger of crashing into an asteroid as they passed through the belt Voyage one went into Stellar passing into the space beyond our own solar system in August 2012 and Voyager did the same thing in November 2018 making the probes the furthest man-made objects from Earth Voyager One sadly stopped sending good information in November 2023 while Voyager 2 remains active and in communication to this day as a closing thought it's probably fair to assume that many Hollywood filmmakers are actually aware of the information that we shared here the problem is that Hollywood is making entertainment not science documentaries and thus they're much more concerned about whether an audience understands the film rather than the film being scientifically accurate on that note do check out the Martian 2001 A Space Odyssey and the expand for far more realistic depictions of outer space [Music]

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 1,116,543

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects, sideprojects, sound in space, space, space myths, science fiction, sci-fi

Id: 9hezX1njIT0

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2024