I feel so überleet right now. Why do I feel this way you ask? Simple, one of my many boyhood dreams has come true this morning. Today I was the number one person to cast a vote for the IMDB daily poll. While the majority of the population was asleep, I was out there gallantly leading the way by casting my vote for “Which film features the least probable ‘first contact?’” Gathering my courage I selected Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi movie that stars Will Smith and Bill Pullman. That is correct, I chose the scientifically inept movie Independence Day from the list and submitted my vote. To my awe, it was the only one that had been submitted so far.  All right, now that my two seconds of (imaginary) fame is over. I’ll shut the hell up now and move on.

As I said, the movie was scientifically inept. Here is a little list of science errors that demonstrates this, and since I’m to lazy to type these all up myself, i’m just going to steal them from IMDB.

• In the opening shots, the Earth is shown in the background of the alien mother ship. The rotation of the Earth is plainly visible, at about 2 or 3 degrees per second, giving an Earth day of about 2 or 3 minutes.
• It is impossible for the moon and the earth to be illuminated simultaneously as shown in the opening scene.
• A firestorm of that size in a tunnel would consume all of the oxygen, asphyxiating any person not burnt to death.
• Many pilots of supersonic aircraft are shown executing high speed turns while not wearing flight suits. This would result in them blacking out and losing control.
• It is impossible for an F-18 to maneuver through the Grand Canyon, even when going at its minimum speed.
• Early in the film we learn that the alien mother ship has a mass one quarter that of the Moon and has “settled into a stationary orbit.” If this means a geostationary orbit, then the tidal force due to the mother ship would be over 180 times that of the Moon (since tides vary as m/r^3). Almost all coastal cities would see major changes in the sea level one way or the other, enough to command general attention even before the the city-sized spaceships took up their places.
• Late in the movie the mother ship seems to be only a few hundred miles above ground; presumably the aliens had used the geostationary position only temporarily, before their attack. Also, such a descent would increase the already gigantic tidal forces by a further factor of perhaps 200, probably causing disastrous earthquakes. However, it could be that the particular places we see in the movie did not happen to the ones suffering these quakes, and by this time the invasion itself would be the only thing on anyone’s mind anywhere else.

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