1. In lots of the literature of Star Wars it’s implied that the sound is generated from Star Wars ships for the pilot in order to simulate noise.
2. As you yourself said, it’s theoretically possible.
3. This is based on the fallacy that something is a laser simply because laser. Star Wars literature confirms numerous times that turbolasers and blasters and not lasers but are instead plasma (turbolasers and some blasters) and some sort of heated gas (blasters). Oh, and a single blast from a medium turbolaser has the firepower of 200 gigatons of tnt, which is millions of times that of the nuclear bomb that devastated hiroshima.
4 – 6 are good points, 7 and 8 are typically valid (as in your comments on the aliens looking similar and shape shifting).
9 is another part in which you did poor research (no offense). Star Wars planets are typically around Earth size and Star Wars has anti gravity technology. If anything it would make more sense for you to complain about how the Death Star produced more energy than the Sun. Seriously.
10. That’s a good point in this case.

But it is found that a lot of things do not ‘scale’ up or down..
EG, Gold nanoparticles actually appear red or black..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoparticle

There are organisms on earth that “control” the brains of others. There’s a fungus that affects ants, compelling them to climb as high as possible so that the fungus can sprout and send out spores.

If you actually watch Star Trek TNG, you’d know that all of the humanoid aliens that humans encounter on M-class planets are actually from the same batch of humanoids who seeded the galaxy when they realised they were going extinct. So they all share the same basic DNA and happened to evolve different physical structures. It’s not nuts to think that a bunch of them evolved extremely similar and compatible sexual systems. Afterall, a donkey isn’t a horse but you can still mate them.

Neat list. It just sounds like it was compiled by somebody who likes to complain more than they like to read.

Why does anyone beleive a word Einstein says anyway?

Because he could spell.

Ah ha, but it could be a very heavy, or rather, a very dense rat. The mass would remain the same, but the density would be increased.

Buyin’ it?

We pretty much know nothing of what we will learn in the next century.

Haven’t you ever seen people out on a street corner claiming to have seen something or have some secret knowledge of the future. Well, how do you know that someone from the future hasn’t come back and was just not believed by anyone on earth. Yes, they could have brought back some future tech to show off, but look at Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong will. Say one of them brought back a phone with no physical display, only for it to be dropped and no longer work. Hmmm?

To #84 edc:

Adam and Eve is also a christian belief, you are the weakest link, good-bye.

Now, I’m not saying I believe any of this can happen, I’m not really sure, but what I am saying is that a closed mind is a wasted mind. You can’t just say, “This scenario can never happen”. Why? Because we simply don’t know every single possible thing that could happen to that scenario. Anything CAN plausibly happen, simply because we will never be able to rule out everything that can’t.

1) Sounds, as far as we’re concerned) are vibrations in a gas. If you (or a story character) are in a spaceship, you will hear vibrations in the gas you’re breathing. Therefore, if any varying field, such as (but not limited to) a magnetic field, impinges upon the ship’s hull, the hull vibrates, the gas vibrates, and you will hear it if the amplitude and frequency range are compatible with your hearing. Likewise, if physical objects impact your ship, or weapons cause damage on it, you’ll hear that, too. This is a perfectly good explanation for many sounds in space.

2) Faster than light travel: Our understanding of physics is incomplete. With the successful teleportation of information having been achieved recently, to say that travel (going from point a to point b) at rates faster than c is impossible is to assume facts not in evidence.

3) Dodging lasers: No one will be dodging lasers visually. But space battles may occur over distances significant enough that a laser may take a finite, useful time to transit the distance from weapon to target. If the detection of the emission can be made using another form (such as teleportation of information, which we can do already), then we might be able to analyze the emission vector and not be in the way when the beam arrives; this information might be displayed in a heads-up format for the pilot, giving the exact impression we see a laser beam — that can be dodged because it isn’t *there* yet. Also, just because something manifests in a beam configuration does not mean it is either a laser, or light, or that the initial beam carries the deadly payload. For instance, we have weapons now that emit two IR laser beams that after a few moments, significantly ionize the air they are traveling through. Once ionization is complete, the weapon routes a high voltage charge across the two emission points, effectively “tasering” the target at the other end. If one detected the initial IR pulse, dodging is perfectly practical. In that case, you’d need IR sensitive goggles to see the beams to dodge them, but that’s also practical. Any weapon that emits light as a side effect, but where light is not *the* weapon might be dodged, depends on what is being delivered to the target, and just how fast. Finally, if someone shoots a laser at you and misses (quite possible), you *will* see it, and you may have time to duck before they fire again. The beam gives you a vector to the source, and that tells you which objects in the area might be between you and them.

4) Aliens similar to us: The claim here is based upon the idea that humans evolved only on earth. This has not been established. They may have been seeded here — as humans or even as pre-animal cells — and elsewhere. In which case we will could easily find similar forms elsewhere. Quite aside from this, our forms are reasonably efficient forms, and if one accepts that evolution generates, over time, efficient forms, similar forms are likely, especially in a large universe with many planets.

5) Alien interbreeding: Can you say genetic engineering? I knew you could. Even if an alien uses a different form of encoding bodily form and function, there’s nothing saying that advanced engineering could not duplicate form and function such that we could have it, too. From here, it’s not a huge leap to imagine an alien and a human collaborating on some offspring based upon their own codes. And as for sex itself… if you don’t think THAT would happen, you’re just silly. And then there are parasites. You’re not a womb, per se, you’re a food store and temporary shelter. Perfectly reasonable.

6) Brain-sucking aliens: Various body parts have various nutritional loads. And tastes. Etc. This is why I can’t be in a room where liver is being cooked; and why I get almost dizzy with anticipation when a T-bone is being cooked. Some people eat brains, liver, heart, etc. If an alien form finds anything about our nutritional load attractive (and not outright poisonous), there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t have a preference for one part of your biology over another. Again, we’re down to compatibility for nutrition; and that remains to be seen. As a potential for a story line, there’s nothing wrong or incorrect about it.

7) Aliens that change volume / shape significantly: Have you ever watch a sea anemone? I have on ein my fishtank. At one point, it is a large, tentacle-waving entity, capable of grabbing a large fish, shoving it in it’s two-inch wide mouth, and digesting it in its several inch-across stem. But later, when the lights are out, the entire thing shrinks to about the size of a nickle, plus some thickness. It does this by using water to inflate its cells. Likewise, an octopus can demonstrate to you significant strength at one moment, and the ability to oooze underneath a sill the next. While I am not aware of an animal that does these tricks with gas, as opposed to a fluid, it is certainly well within the realm of possibility that such an animal might evolve somewhere. The basic trick is to use the gas or fluid in the environment for most of your volume, and to have stretchy cells. There might be other ways to do this as well, but this came right to mind. And as for built-in camouflage… that’s well established on land and sea.

Time travel. One can go forward, all it takes is enough energy to get you going faster than the things around you are going. The faster you go, the more the time differential increases (tau.) Backwards… I’m inclined to agree. But I would also hastily point out that there’s a great deal we don’t know about physics and the basic structure of the universe as yet. So I’m not going to rule it out for SF.

9) Gravity scams? I must watch and read different SF than the author. Ii have seen, and read, many stories where folks were bouncing around in low gravity, or had to wear power suits to get around in high gravity. Steve Perry posits characters who, raised on heavy gravity worlds, are very strong; they are purpose-bred mutants who can take the load. Starwolf posited a man raised on a slightly heavy gravity world (Varna) from childhood who successfully adapted and enjoyed many benefits. James Blish wrote about building a bridge on Jupiter using remotes, because the gravity was out of the question. Forces similar to gravity on spacecraft can be controlled currently by spinning the vessel, and we saw this in 2001; given that this is the case (and it is), then why not one G? Just design the structure for it and you’re good to go.

10) Planetary sameness… come on now, this is really stretching it. First of all, the assumption is that the planet is ok to settle on. This implies similar gases and gravity. Which in turn imply similar geology. We’re evolved for a particular spectral environment as well, and so blue skies (oxygen present in compatible amounts, Raleigh scattering) are likely. As far as erosion and rocks go, sedimentation, these are not things limited to our planet alone. Just look at the martian terrain. Nope, not going to give you this one, either.

So the reader is ten for ten — wrong in every case. SF has it right; though I will certainly give you that some writers – Asimov, Benford, Blish, DeCamp, Hogan, Silverberg, Zelazny – are a lot better at painting a likely picture than others, or anything that’s been filtered through the collective idiocy of Hollywood inc. I am always reminded of the scene in “The Majestic” where the writer is sitting there, and the high up muckity mucks are discussing his script, and the one is pacing around and goes “I know! Let’s add a dog! Everyone loves a dog!” Oy. Or “Soylent Green is People!”, from “Soylent Green” (the movie title), but actually from “Make Room, Make Room”, by Harry Harrison, a wonderful novel where soylent green was, in fact, seaweed and had *nothing* to do with any key plot element other than the difficulty of obtaining foods as we currently know them.

[tips hat]

Come on, man. You’re debating science fiction here! It’s fiction, it’s made up, but here’s 10 things you got wrong about it

1. Obi-Wan Kenobi vs Mac 10
First of all lightsaber blades are emitted from a crystal, it’s not “light” and he could use the force to sizzle Mac 10 bullets any day

2. Aliens and Humans
Okay, if the universe is infinite and there’s millions of solar systems out there with countless possibilities for life there’s a great chance that many of them have DNA or are even close enough to humans genetically to look like us and reproduce with us. That is, this opinion or yours can be proved empirically, but there is a good chance that there is life out there similar to humans

3. Mind Controlling Alien
Even on earth there’s a fungus called the Cordyceps that infect and control the brains of insects. There’s a different variety for each insect in the rain forest. They get into the brain of an ant and cause it to climb high up where it grows out of the ant’s head and sends spores out to infect other ants. The possibility of an alien with this adaptation in an infinite universe is pretty likely.

And that photo of Tatooine is actually from Tunisa not Arizona. The parts of Tatooine that were shot in Arizona are in Return of the Jedi, not Star Wars.

greetings from Belgium , please take this seriously, alien abductees dont just like are more traumatized than vietnam veterans, and sorry for my bad English too . Any questions are welcome, i am convinced its about the biggest surprise in history ……

Monika

No drama here.

But you missed one category of errors that can really be a major annoyance when watching science fiction TV. That’s when characters get basic grade school level science wrong.
I guess we’ve all accepted by now that when ships pass by in space they make a big wooshing noises, I hardly ever notice that anymore but when are “galaxy” “solar system” and even “universe” are synonymous terms I tend to lose the ability to suspend disbelief.
It’s really shouldn’t be too much trouble to have the scripts checked for errors like this but they show up all too often.
Ever seen the “Bad Astronomer’s” web site? Google it for tons of very funny fact checking on your favorite science fiction.

heck theres a 25%human sheep. around 25 anyway i think by injecting human dna into the baby when its like a week after being made in wowb if they hit 50/50 who knows what ya get

In some of my favorite sci-fi you see lasers in space, and hear explosions and such. Why? Because your interaction with space is a simulation, and these effects are added to allow a pilot to use all of his senses to react and interact in combat.

Gimmicky? Yeah, sure, but it makes it halfway believable and ten times cooler than the hard physics method.

You said
“4) Human-looking aliens. There’s no reason there couldn’t be human-looking aliens. In fact, people who claim to have seen aliens see basically humanoid-looking creatures”

Sorry pal, there is a lot of reasons there shouldnt be human looking aliens. For an alien to look like a human, they would need to have followed all the same evolutionary path as humans! That means, they would need to have evolved from apes, who would have evolved from monkeys, who would have evolved from other simples mammals, who would have evolved from… well, you see where I am going.

The reason we are like we are is merely an accident, billions of years of natural selection and random mutation, where animals have adapted to their specific environments! How many millions of animal species there existed so far on Earth? How many look so similar to us?

“5) Half-breed aliens. Humans and hamsters have compatible sperm and eggs. Strange, I know. And certainly a birth from such a joining would be improbable. But it’s possible.”

Although I doubt humans and hamsters can generate offspring even if by in vitro fertilization… humans and hamsters are CLOSE COUSINS on the huge Earth tree of life. Aliens wouldnt even BELONG to that tree of life! Even if they had DNA with the same nucleotids, double helix, etc, etc (already quite hard), they would be so different from humans that they would be LESS COMPATIBLE with us than is a Sea Spounge and a Human.

1.) Movement in space: No matter how fast you go, you will never see stars swoosh by. Actually only a very few movies do it right (for example 2001: A Space Odyssey).

2.) Using light years to measure time instead of distance (also a common mistake among journalists, for example there’s an article on usatoday.com called “A device light-years ahead of its time”). I find this one quite funny, it reminds me of the kids joke “What’s heavier: A kilo of iron or a kilo of feathers?”.

And I accidentally implied rabies was an amoeba – but I was referring to all sorts of viruses, bacteria, and other small infectious organisms in that part.

2) Faster-than-light travel. You forgot to mention wormholes, which are used in a lot of science fiction stories. Space folding as well. These are ways of covering fast distances without crossing the light barrier.

4) Human-looking aliens. There’s no reason there couldn’t be human-looking aliens. In fact, people who claim to have seen aliens see basically humanoid-looking creatures

5) Half-breed aliens. Humans and hamsters have compatible sperm and eggs. Strange, I know. And certainly a birth from such a joining would be improbable. But it’s possible.

6) Brain-sucking aliens. First, there is a kind of fungus that controls the brains of ants. It causes them to act weird, then climb up to a high place where the fungus them grows like a horn out of the ant and drops spores. There is another kind of parasite or creature that controls crabs, able to drive them around. There are amoebas that affect behavior to cause their host to behave in such a way as to continue their life cycle. Like rabies, which causes rage, and is transferred by bites. Also, brains are found in almost all life forms here, so it’s not a stretch to think they would be found in alien life forms.

Anyways, an interesting post, but reality is closer to sci-fi in a lot of instances here.

Toxoplasma gondii, the protozoa that causes toxoplasmosis, is known to change the behavior of rats and mice causing them to be drawn to the scent of cats as opposed to fearful of the scent. This results in the mouse being eaten to allow the parasite to sexually reproduce in its host, the cat. There are other similar examples in nature.

And, just to nit-pick, your examples of earth’s animals that do not share human’s basic body shape is incorrect. Seals have four limbs, bilateral symmetry, and one head. Earlier ancestors of snakes and whales did as well, and vestigial remnants remain in many modern species of these animals.