Let There be Sound in Space
A mainstay of scientific critiques of movies that include space travel is the lament that we hear explosions and the roar of the spaceship’s engines. After all, in space no one can hear you scream, right? Right. But so what? Do we really want the movie to be dead silent when the Death Star annihilates a planet, or when the starship Enterprise goes to warp speed? Or even in a less fantastical science fiction movie like Deep Impact: would the movie really be better if all external shots of the spaceship and the comet were accompanied by silence interrupted only by the radio communications of the astronauts? I say that not only would it be less enjoyable, it would not truly be any more realistic. There may not be sound in space, but there’s also no movie camera. And there’s no orchestra to play the soundtrack. And there’s certainly no male voice choir to sing eerie music en route to Jupiter (which we couldn’t hear anyway because there’s no sound in space) in the timeless 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As members of the movie-watching audience we are participating in the charade that is the movie. How do we hear or see anything in a movie? We have made a contract with the filmmakers to ignore the camera, lights, and microphones that allow us to be shown the action. So, every time you hear the rumble of a spaceship’s engines while you’re seeing the spaceship from the depths of space, you can pretend that you’re hearing those sounds because they are transmitted by radio from microphones planted throughout the ship. It’s no more silly than the ability to see the ship, because while there is light in space, there aren’t many Hollywood movie cameras to let us see it.
There are plenty of potentially damaging (to public perceptions of science and reality) and definitely misleading elements of movies with scientific elements. Sound effects are not among them. Which are worse? You can check these sites for some ideas, or suggest your own.
Sci-Fi Science Blunders
The Intuitor
I think the regular violation of the conservation of momentum in movies and TV shows has contributed to societal misconception about how things move.