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January 4, 2008
Q. What's the most common cinematic sci-fi error, unsound science, you might say, to which Stanley Kubrick's classic is the quiet exception?
A. Outer space noise. Sound waves require a medium through which to travel, such as air or water, points out Adam Weiner in “Don't Try This at Home: The Physics of Hollywood Movies.” Sound cannot propagate through a vacuum and therefore even a supernova explosion in space would make no sound, never mind spaceships whizzing around. In the 1977 “Star Wars,” the evil empire develops a death star capable of destroying an entire planet with a single high-energy beam. Numerous exciting space battles ensue, and in every one of them, the noise is deafening, as the ships emit whizzing, screeching and whirring sounds. This same blunder occurs in movies like “Star Trek,” “Galaxy Quest,” “Starship Troopers,” but “Star Wars” surely ranks as the consistently loudest. Only the beautiful exception of “2001: A Space Odyssey” portrays the silence of space as it really is.
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