Bad Science

I hate when science fiction shows display bad science.


I know what you're thinking.  "But Brian," you're thinking, "it's called science fiction."

Yes, yes, but it's my celebrated¹ opinion that the fiction of science fiction should be complete fiction, not a mish-mash of half-truths and total lies about real-world science.  I have an example.

I'm watching a series called Stargate Universe on Netflix.  In this episode, the heroes are looking for calcium carbonate in order to scrub carbon dioxide out of the air (and I have no idea whether CaCO₃ assists in the sequestration of CO₂—that could be yet more bad science). A character just said, slightly paraphrased, "gypsum is calcium sulfate, which is thirty-six percent calcium carbonate."

Uh, no it isn't.  Though gypsum is indeed calcium sulfate, calcium sulfate is a salt formed from a calcium ion (Ca⁺²) bonded with a sulfate ion (SO₄^-2), while calcium carbonate is formed from a calcium ion bonded with a carbonate ion (CO₃^-2).  There is no carbon in calcium sulfate, so it's utterly fallacious to say calcium sulfate is any percent calcium carbonate.

So yeah, it's science fiction, after all.  But it's stuff like this, where they take real-world science and get it totally wrong, that disrupts my suspension of disbelief.  Who writes this stuff?


¹ I celebrate my opinion, and that's all that matters.