Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

2 BAD ASTRONOMY
luminous, against a velvet canvas of blackness so dark you can
hardly convince yourself that your eyes are open.
Nowadays it would be a bit harder for me to give up everything
to take such a ride. Maybe I would so my daughter could
someday . . . but that day is not yet here. We’re still stuck here on
the Earth, more or less, and the only way we can see distant vistas
is either vicariously through the eye of the telescope or through the
eye of a movie director. One of those eyes, perhaps, is a bit more
clearly focused than the other. Despite my childhood yearnings, as
an adult I can wish that movies did a better job of portraying
astronomy (and astronomers) to the public.
The movies may be inspiring, which is their most important job
as far as I’m concerned, but there is a downside to the bad astronomy.
It muddies the distinction between fantasy and science, between
what is only pretend and what can really happen. Movies can
portray the make-believe so realistically that the line gets blurred.
It’s fair to say that most people don’t understand all that much
about how space travel, for example, really works. Space travel is
complicated, difficult, and relies heavily on unfamiliar physics.
Movies, however, make it look easy. Just get in your ship and
go! All you have to do is watch out for the stray meteor shower or
alien starship and everything should work out pretty well. Unfortunately,
it doesn’t work out that way in the real universe. If it did,
we’d have colonies on Mars and the other planets by now. I’ve
given talks to audiences about movies and astronomy, and the
question almost always arises: why aren’t we on the Moon now?
Why haven’t we built starships, or at least colonized the solar system?
Sometimes these are honest questions, and sometimes they
are asked with an edge of impatience, as if the people asking the
question are concerned that the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration engineers aren’t as up to speed as Scotty from Star
Trek. The film industry makes a big impression on people and, as
the scenes play over and over again, they worm their way into our
brains. Movies show space travel all the time, but they show it
incorrectly, and so it doesn’t surprise me that the majority of the
viewing public has the wrong impression about how it really
works.