DavidK93

Factual error: When Diana first brings Steve into the DC Metro, the modern-day signage visible inside L'Enfant Plaza Station is not era-appropriate to 1984. It includes markers for the Green Line (opened in 1991) and Silver Line (opened in 2014), and all markers are shown with printed abbreviations, which were not added until the Silver Line opened. (00:57:49)

DavidK93

Invasion! - S5-E8

Factual error: Felicity tracks the abducted team members to latitude and longitude values that are negative, which she and others present regard as impossible results until they realise the captives are in outer space. In actuality, south latitudes are conventionally represented as negative, as are west longitudes; and negative values would not convey information about an outer space location, which would instead be referenced with celestial coordinates. (00:36:50)

DavidK93

Kill the Moon - S8-E7

Factual error: Near the end of the episode, the full moon is shown in the daytime sky, well above the horizon. This is impossible, as any celestial body lit by the Sun has its full phase only when it is directly opposite the Sun; thus, a full Moon rises at sunset and sits high in the sky only during the night. For the Moon to be in the sky during the day as shown, it would have to be visibly of a phase other than full.

DavidK93

The Vengeance Formulation - S3-E9

Factual error: Sheldon's voice becomes squeaky when helium is pumped into his office. But if the room contained enough helium to make his voice squeaky just by breathing, Sheldon would actually be suffocating due to lack of oxygen, the lighter helium having displaced the heavier oxygen. You can do it with a balloon because you can breathe normal air between huffs, but if you're in a room full of helium, you won't last long before passing out and asphyxiating.

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: On 1/12/10, Parker and Liberty have gotten lost hiking while on a family trip to Detroit, and Jack says that the command center is "half a mile away up the side of a mountain." Detroit is in the Great Plains; there are no mountains remotely nearby.

DavidK93

Factual error: When the brown dwarf fragment embeds itself in the Moon, the Moon continues to orbit the Earth. But the brown dwarf fragment is twice as massive as the Earth, so the Moon and Earth now have comparable masses, instead of the Moon having about 1/80 of the Earth's mass, as it really does. In this case, both the Earth and Moon would be visibly orbiting a common center of gravity that would be outside of both bodies, but closer to the Moon. Even now, the Earth and Moon orbit this common center of gravity; it just happens to be inside of the Earth (though not at its center).

DavidK93

Factual error: The Moon is struck by a brown dwarf fragment having twice the mass of the Earth but a diameter of only 19 km. The initial effects to the Moon are akin to what would be expected of an impact from a 19-km body made from terrestrial material: formation of a large crater, release of ejecta, and seemingly minor disruption of the Moon's orbit. However, it is primarily the mass, not the size of the impactor, that determines the effect. Since the body had twice the mass of the Earth, it would have smashed the Moon into smithereens. Conversely, a 19-km asteroid made from cotton candy would have done very little damage.

DavidK93

Factual error: It is stated that, due to the Moon's increased mass, the astronauts will weigh twice as much there as they do on the Earth. The Moon's new mass is twice that of the Earth, but the Moon's diameter remains one-fourth that of the Earth. Since gravity varies inversely with the square of distance, the astronauts would actually weigh closer to 32 times their Earth weights, which would likely be prohibitive for the mission.

DavidK93

Factual error: A graduate student states that a frog was levitated by using a magnetic field to "manipulate gravity," and a college professor, presented as an expert on the topic, agrees. It's true that a frog was levitated via a magnetic field, but the field was used to produce a diamagnetic force on the frog greater than the force of gravity. Gravity itself was not affected in any way. A layperson could make this mistake, but not anyone with a basic understanding of electromagnetism.

DavidK93

Factual error: Almost immediately after the brown dwarf fragment embeds itself in the Moon, the Moon moves 30 million km closer to the Earth. The brown dwarf fragment is said to have twice the mass of Earth. The result is that tidal forces due to the Earth-Moon interaction would be 200 times greater than our real tidal forces. This would cause widespread flooding as massive tidal surges affected coastal areas, an effect not seen in the film.

DavidK93

Factual error: The Moon is struck by a "brown dwarf fragment" having twice the mass of the Earth, which isn't noticed by anyone on Earth until a few minutes before impact. But an object of this mass would have profound effects on Earth's tides; its effects would have been equal to those of the Moon from the time that the object was within 2 million km of the Earth, over five times the Earth-Moon distance. (At astronomical speeds, this would provide nearly a full day's warning.) Such anomalies would not have gone unreported; they would be of universal interest to the scientific community. And because the planet's tides are highly predictable and heavily monitored, anomalies worthy of scientific examination would have occurred when the object was further still.

DavidK93

Three Days Of Snow - S4-E13

Factual error: A shot zooms out to show a powerful storm system just offshore from the eastern seaboard. However, the cyclonic storm system is rotating clockwise, while low pressure systems in the Northern Hemisphere rotate counterclockwise.

DavidK93

Husbands and Knives - S19-E7

Factual error: The cover of "World's Finest Comics" #94 is shown on the wall at the comic book store. It features Superman with a sign that says, "Gotham or Bust," and Batman gulping. The actual cover of "World's Finest Comics" #94 shows Superman being sprayed with liquid kryptonite while Batman and Robin catch sight of him.

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: On 7/4/07, Hope told Ciara that Alice was her, Ciara's, "great-great-grandma." But Alice is Hope's grandmother and Ciara is Hope's daughter, so Alice is Ciara's great-grandmother, not great-great-grandmother.

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: On 6/26/07, Sami's obstetrician told her that she was pregnant with fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and that the sample of amniotic fluid that had already been drawn could be used for paternity testing on both babies. But fraternal twins always have separate amniotic sacs, meaning that the amniotic fluid must be drawn separately. Since the doctor didn't know there were two babies until the fluid was already drawn, it must have been drawn only once, from one sac, meaning a second amnio would have to be performed.

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: On May 17 and 18, 2007, there were frequent references by multiple characters to a "level four typhoon" on its way. However, there is no such thing as a level four typhoon. Typhoon strengths are not designated by numbers, but by the prefixes "severe" and "super." On the other hand, strong tropical systems near Australia, which is where these events took place, are not even called "typhoons," but "tropical cyclones," although there are numerical categories for them.

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: On 4/5/07, Chad had a flashback to when he met Vincent at a gay bar, over a year earlier. The song playing in the bar was Pink's "U + Ur Hand," which came from a CD that wasn't released until months after the scene took place. That particular song wasn't released as a single until about an additional year later.

DavidK93

Factual error: Jerry says that Flynn argued with Stephen Hawking regarding the thesis of Hawking's book when Flynn was only nine years old. However, Flynn celebrates his 32nd birthday in the movie in 2006, meaning he'd have been 9 in 1983 and 1984, while Hawking's first book, A Brief History of Time, wasn't published until 1988.

DavidK93

The Impossible Planet (1) - S2-E11

Factual error: Ida, the science officer, says that the planet is in geostationary orbit around the black hole. However, the word "geostationary" applies very specifically to objects orbiting the planet Earth. Since a black hole is a type of star, this planet's orbit could be described as astrostationary, or even just stationary, but definitely not as geostationary. A science expert on an interstellar mission wouldn't make this mistake, and she wasn't dumbing things down, either, since "geostationary orbit" is already a pretty obscure topic for people unfamiliar with space technology. (00:07:40)

DavidK93

Show generally

Factual error: In the spring of 2006, Whitney traveled from Harmony to Rome, and we are left to assume that she flew. After Whitney had arrived in Rome, Chad and Simone found out and went to Rome to find her. Paloma and Jessica accompanied Simone. After Paloma arrived in Rome and got into some trouble, Theresa and Ethan found out about it and went to Rome as well. So there were three consecutive trips from Harmony to Rome, and they all happened during the same night; Whitney left after dark, and Theresa and Ethan arrived in Rome the following morning. But each flight to Rome should take six hours, and there is a six hour time difference, which adds up to a full twenty-four hours. So nobody who left Harmony at night could have arrived in Rome before morning. And Theresa and Ethan should have arrived in Rome after dark on the second day, not first thing in the morning.

DavidK93