Five Most Egregious Scientific Errors of Battleship

So, I watched the new Peter Berg-directed, Taylor Kitsch-starring Battleship last weekend. I was expecting a dumb, popcorn-munching affair with big action hinging on the thinnest of story pretenses. I was hoping to turn my brain off and watch stuff blow up. Sometimes all I want is a movie that speaks to the basal, reptilian part of my brain, the part of me that still gets excited about making fire and smashing golf balls with clubs.

I will admit that there were elements of Battleship that made that guy happy. When it gets going, there are some gleefully outrageous moments of destruction and stupid mayhem that are very fun.

Unfortunately, Battleship completely pissed off every brain cell not dedicated to firemaking and hunter-gathering.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

See, I am a scientist. I’ve been in school a long time learning sciency things, and I am on track to earn a Ph.D. in marine biology in the very near future. I try not to boast about my education. I try not to have an elitist attitude about it. I certainly know things that the average person does not, like where to find the ceratohyal in a fish, but I also acknowledge that every person I meet knows important things that I don’t. For all my education, I don’t consider myself smarter than anyone else. If you know how to change the oil in your car, then you know something I don’t.

Ceratohyals are the two large bones on top. Find them under the gills of the next fish you catch.

One of the things those years in the classroom has taught me is how to be a critical thinker. I’m always asking ‘how does that work’ or ‘how is that possible’. So, even when I want to see a dumb action flick, that analytical part of my brain is still turned on. Usually for Transformers or The Expendables or other silly movies, I can tune it out. As long as they make at least a passing effort to make sense, I’ll play along. However…

Battleship is an affront to science, reason, logic, and common sense.

There are so many things scientifically wrong with the film that it destroyed my ability to enjoy any of it. Things go terribly wrong about three minutes into the movie, and it never gets any better. It doesn’t even try to get it right. It crams ‘science’ into its storyline using whatever bits and pieces it wants, and none of the pieces make any sense.

I started trying to keep track of all of the wrong things in Battleship from the opening scene. I gave up that exercise about twenty minutes in when my ears could only hear a high-pitch tone and my nose started bleeding. Rather than give myself an outright stroke, I decided to limit myself to discussing the five most egregious errors in the movie.

Yes, spoilers follow.

Point One: Contacting Planet G

The opening of the film shows a group of scientists in 2005 preparing to contact an Earth-like planet, named Planet G, using a sophisticated satellite in high-altitude orbit over Earth. Using a ground-based satellite dish array, they send a focused beam of energy to the satellite. The super-satellite then amplifies the beam and fires light at Planet G. This energy pulse carries with it a message of some sort that, if intelligent life exists on Planet G, should alert them to our presence.

Here are the things wrong with that:

They fired a light beam at the Planet G.

There is no way to contact an alien planet in 2005 and expect a response by 2012.

I don’t claim to know the best way to contact a planet, but I’m pretty sure shining a flashlight at one is not a great way to do it. What would happen if we just sent a beam of light at Planet G? They would see a bright flash, think ‘WTF?’, and start looking our way? I kind of doubt it.

There are frequently short bursts of radiation erupting all across the universe. The most impressive come in the form of supernovae. Supernovae are quite enormous explosions that expel all sorts of light and other radiation and solar material across the galaxy when a star dies and explodes. They become the brightest things in the galaxy for several weeks. Those things are much cooler than shining a flashlight and attract far more attention. I doubt that our satellite-generated light source can compete with the luminosity of a supernova. Our flash of light would likely go completely unnoticed.

Crab Nebula - remnants of a supernova.

There is a chance that a sudden flash of radiation restricted to the visible spectrum might garner attention, but only if the intelligent beings from Planet G were already looking our way. They might even be able to detect our hidden message in the beam of light (I’m not quite sure how our scientists imbedded a message in a beam of light) and know that intelligent life exists on Earth. Of course, if they were already looking our way, they would already have picked up on the crazy and diverse amounts of radiation that we humans generate and blast out into space. They might have realized that something weird is going on around our star and that intelligent life on our planet might be responsible. Shining a light at them, ultimately, is pointless.

No matter how you signal Planet G, the second point outweighs it in utter stupidity. Let’s do some interplanetary space travel math, shall we?

If we signal Planet G on January 1, 2005 and get invaded on December 31, 2012 (giving the maximum amount of time allowable for our movie timeline), then how much time has elapsed? If you said about 9 years, then good on you. Now, assuming our light beam signal travels at the speed of light, and the aliens from Planet G have ships capable of traveling at (or near) the speed of light, then what is the minimum distance they must travel? If you said 4.5 light years, then move to the head of the class.

Planet G must be within 4.5 light years of Earth to get a response as quickly as occurred in the film.

How close is the nearest star to us? Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away, which is cutting things close. Good thing it has an Earth-like planet in orbit, right? Oh, wait. It doesn’t! Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star containing no known planets. Neither does Alpha Centauri AB, which is 4.37 light years away. In fact, the nearest star with a planet is about 10.5 light years away, which is far outside the range of travel for our Planet G invaders.

They are close, but not that close!

Bottom line, there are no Earth-like planets nearby! Our Planet G-ites could not possibly have reacted as quickly as shown in the movie. Unless there is a hidden Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri (one of the best studied stars in the universe, given its proximity), AND an alien race was waiting at the ready with near-light speed capable ships, then they don’t make it to us in nine years.

Point 2: Unidentified elements in the crashed space ship

One of the five ships our alien invaders sent to investigate/exterminate us hits a satellite and crashes into Hong Kong. The Chinese recover the crash and make the staggering announcement that this alien material is composed of elements otherwise unknown to science.

Let me say that again: The elements of the space ship are not known to science!

Let me introduce you to the Periodic Table of Elements. On this chart are all of the different types of atoms that make up all matter in the universe. These things are, quite literally, the building blocks of the universe. Everything that exists is composed of some arrangement of these elements.

Everything in the universe is composed of this stuff.

If the Chinese could not identify the elements of the space ship, then our Chinese friends don’t have a working mass spectrometer, which is a machine commonly used to determine the mass of particles and allows for identification of elements. This seems unlikely. The Chinese are pretty on top of the technological curve. It could also mean that the spaceship is composed of atoms that haven’t been identified yet. Since we’ve been able to identify or create several heavy atoms of high molecular weight, this must mean that the spaceship is composed of super-heavy atoms. The problem with this is that heavy elements are extremely radioactive. The elements at the bottom right of the table are very heavy and very unstable. These guys only exist for hours or minutes or fractions of seconds before they decompose into lighter elements with an accompanying burst of radiation. If the spaceships were composed of these things, not only would the entire structure of the ship degrade in a matter of hours as those atoms decompose into something else, but the Chinese scientists would also all be dead from severe radiation sickness.

Hilariously, the Chinese were able to identify one element from the alien spaceship: lawrencium. This is hilarious because, wouldn’t you know, lawrencium is a radioactive element that can only be created in the lab. All isotopes of lawrencium are radioactive. The most stable isotope is lawrencium-262, which has a half-life of about 3.6 hours. After 3.6 hours, lawrencium decomposes into a suite of other radioactive elements with fun names such as bismuth, americium, californium, and einsteinium. So, lawrencium is unstable and deadly and, if the Chinese detected it, then they would also detect the decomposed elements as well.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence has an element named in his honor.

It’s entirely possible that the alien ships are composed of alloys that are not known. There are lots of cool alloys out there, and material scientists and chemists are constantly creating new ones. But to say that the elements, the very building blocks of these alloys, is unknown is beyond dumb.

Point 3: De-masking the alien

At one point in the film, an alien is recovered from the sea, and our rag-tag group of Navy heroes decides to take a look. The alien is wearing a suit of armor and a helmet. One of the first things newly appointed captain Taylor Kitsch does is remove the humanoid alien’s helmet so they can get an up close view of the enemy. This is an unwise move for several reasons.

For starters, ripping away the alien’s mask might be effective, if the crew wanted to suffocate it. Earth’s atmosphere is a finely stratified covering of gases consisting mostly of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (1%), and trace amounts of other gases.

The composition of our atmosphere has changed greatly over the course of Earth history. The primordial Earth atmosphere contained 60% hydrogen, 20% oxygen (mostly tied up in water vapor), 10% carbon dioxide, 5% hydrogen sulfide, and small amounts of other gases. Try breathing that for a few minutes and see how you feel. You would be poisoned almost instantly.

At this point in time, the composition of the atmosphere at sea level is stable. However, there are great differences in pressure related to elevation. For example, the pressure at the top of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, is about 1/3 of its pressure at sea level. This low pressure makes it difficult for oxygen to enter the bloodstream. Climbers of Mount Everest must carry canisters of pure oxygen to increase the loading of oxygen into their bloodstream.

The chances that the alien could breathe our atmosphere and survive, much less be able to run around and fight are very remote. It would require an exact match of atmospheres, both in composition and pressures, even with regards to trace gases. The chances of our atmosphere exactly matching that of the alien’s home planet is very unlikely. Odds are one of our gas mixes would prove toxic to the alien. Poor guy would die instantly if you took his mask away.

Secondly, an alien that travels across light years of space is probably harboring all sorts of nasty things that are incompatible with human existence. Disease might be a major problem for our heroes (or the aliens). There could be acute or long-term disease effects on our guys. Exposing themselves to possible alien microbes for which we humans have no defenses is a big mistake. It is true that relatively few diseases jump across species lines. It’s likely that microbes that cause disease in aliens simply wouldn’t recognize us or have any real effect. However, all it takes is one exotic microbe to decimate the human race, or all life on Earth, for that matter. We would have absolutely no defenses against these alien diseases, and, if they did hurt us, they could race through us like wildfire.

The aliens could also respire toxic gases or emit caustic fluids when they get injured. Remember in Alien how the Xenomorph’s blood was acidic? That might not sit well with our Navy crew if a wounded alien was bleeding acid on deck or outgasing some toxic gas like hydrogen sulfide or cyanide. Just standing near an alien could lead to death.

Don't let this guy bleed on you!

So, yeah. Don’t go taking off the alien’s mask unless you want to kill the alien or yourself.

Point 4: Homonid aliens

Why must all aliens look like humans?

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Battleship, but it fits here. The aliens that we see in the film look almost exactly like us. They follow the same basic body plan of humans and share a lot of our features. They are the same height as us (maybe a little taller), they have four limbs, walk upright, have two eyes, have hands and feet with fingers and toes, etc. They even have spiky projections off their head and chin that resemble hair. In one scene, the aliens fog up their masks while breathing. This tells us that they are warm-blooded, since the condensation is forming because of temperature differences between the exhaled air and the glass of the mask. It’s an indication that they breathe like us. It is very, very unlikely that an alien being would be so similar to us.

Aliens will not look like this guy.

Look at the diversity of life on planet Earth. There are millions of distinct extant life forms and millions more that are extinct. Many of them are single-cell microbes, but there are a great many multi-cellular life forms as well. Of al that diversity, only the apes look like us, and even within apes only a few routinely walk upright like humans.

The chances of an alien life form resembling us are so far remote that it’s laughable. Why can’t they look like insects or birds or plants? Why can’t they look like some wholly unique creation, a conglomeration of parts and pieces for which we humans have no frame of reference?

Given the uncertainty of the forward progress of evolution, it’s impossible to predict what an alien life form will resemble. The driving forces behind natural selection on our own planet are difficult to determine. We can make inferences on what happened in the past, but there is no realistic way to predict what organisms will be like in the future. It’s hard to say what humans will look like in 1,000 years much less 10,000 years from now. Who knows what natural selection forces are driving evolution on other planets? There simply is no way to predict what an alien will look like, even if it originated on an Earth-like planet. The path of evolution for an alien life form will have been so fundamentally different from that of humans that it is inconceivable that they would resemble us, even if their home planet was exactly like Earth in every way (which it wouldn’t be).

The answer, of course, as to why aliens in sci-fi films look like humans has nothing to do with biology. These creatures are the star villains of a Hollywood blockbuster. They have been designed to make them relatable to the audience. The best way to do that is to make them look human. There are all sorts of psychological connotations with viewing a humanoid antagonist. We immediately assume that they are intelligent (hey, like us!), that they have similar needs and motivations, and that they present an equal challenge to our human counterparts. If they looked too different from us, then we would never know what to expect from them. Because the aliens look human, the audience has a sense of their capabilities.

To be fair, Battleship tried to show us that the aliens were different from us by making a big deal out of their reptile-like eyes. Nevermind that the eye is an inefficient design for vision. It works, obviously, but the mechanism is so convoluted that it doesn’t make sense. Shine light through a lens, mess with the focus a bit, bounce the light off of different light sensors (cones and rods), flip the image around, and send it to the brain. There are a lot of moving parts to vision as we know it. There has to be a simpler way of doing that, and aliens may have evolved a different way of viewing their surroundings. Imagine eyes that can process a far greater portion of the electromagnetic spectrum while keeping everything in focus. That would be pretty neat.

Scary eyes. Not that alien.

Our aliens are poorly suited to vision on Earth. Their eyes were overly sensitive to light and require a visor for the aliens to see. They are even less efficient than our own. At least they resemble something to which an audience can relate. We’ve all seen snake eyes and know how ominous those things can be. It serves the purpose of making our bad guys even badder while keeping them familiar.

A dollar say that aliens, when we finally meet them, won’t look anything like us.

Point 5: The Brooklyn effect

Brooklyn Decker is hot. Like, smoking hot. She’s an actual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model.

She's hot! I'm supposed to be a moron to get her attention?

Inexplicably, our moronic hero of the film, Taylor Kitsch, woos this hot girl early in the film by the dumbest means imaginable. He gets himself arrested trying to secure her a chicken burrito.

In the opening of the film, our down-on-his-luck Kitsch (no job, no money, no future) decides he will do anything in his power to get Decker’s character a chicken burrito. See, this strange beautiful woman comes into the local bar craving a late night snack, and the star of the film takes it upon himself to save the damsel in distress. He solves this problem by breaking into the nearby gas station, stealing a burrito (he leaves a few buck on the counter, cause, you know, he’s a nice imbecile) and warming it in the microwave. Naturally, he sets off the alarm, and the police arrive to arrest him. He breaks out of the gas station and runs past the cops to deliver his prize to Decker. Along the way, he gets tasered a couple of times. At the end of this scene, he successfully delivers his chicken burrito to the girl before being arrested. Good job Taylor. You have established yourself as one of the stupidest guys on the planet.

A chicken burrito. What it takes to get the girl, apparently.

And the hot chick falls for it! In the next scene, we learn that she, who happens to be the admiral’s daughter, and he, who is now a Navy officer, have moved in together and are happily in love. All I can think is that Brooklyn’s character must like puppy dogs because she’s about to marry one. He will obviously do anything to keep her happy, but he’s also likely to pee on the rug or wander off into traffic.

In my experience, it is scientifically impossible to get the girl by being such a complete doofus. If it were easy to land a hot girlfriend by displaying a total lack of common sense, then I would have a steady stream of hot girls flocking to my door. Taylor Kitsch’s character in Battleship defies all logic or reason.

In fact, most of Battleship defies logic or reason.

Yet, despite these and other issues with the movie, there were parts of it that I legitimately enjoyed. There are several moments of excitement and fun in the film. Parts of it are funny, parts of it are moving.

Just be advised that trying to think your way through the movie could result in permanent brain damage. 

How many scientific inaccuracies did you spot in Battleship? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter!