Note to the producers of Heroes (and many other TV shows...)

[ffutures]

There is no such thing as an unexpected eclipse - yes, I'm talking to you, Whedon - they can be predicted centuries to thousands of years in advance. The only way to produce one unexpectedly is to move the bloody moon!

You cannot see the moon in the sky next to the sun before an eclipse of the sun starts - the light of the sun drowns out the moonlight completely. You do not see the moon in the sky once the eclipse has started - you just see a circular area missing from one edge of the disk of the sun, which gradually gets bigger.

Eclipses of the sun do not happen suddenly - it takes an hour or more for the moon to cover the sun. For most of that time it will look almost as bright as a normal day, and you will only notice that there is an eclipse if you look at the sun with the appropriate filters etc. There is a window of a few minutes, not several hours, when it actually feels abnormally dark.

Eclipses of the sun are NOT global events - there is a relatively narrow track on which the eclipse occurs, and different places see it at different times as the shadow of the moon moves across the surface of the Earth. Places off the track get a partial eclipse or don't see it at all.

All of this should be obvious to anyone who has ever watched an eclipse. So why the hell do TV, comics, etc. consistently get it wrong?

Comments

[paulofcthulhu.livejournal.com]

"Never let the truth get in the way of a [good?] story"

It's a good point about breaking reality too much - you can only suspend your disbelief so much - too far and it all falls down.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Think of it as your punishment for illegally downloading the show.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Download? It's on BBC3!

[paratti.livejournal.com]

The writers paid absolutely no attention in science, history...?

[lillian13.livejournal.com]

Remember, these are the same people who consistently get email and the internet wrong. How can we expect them to get the hard stuff right?

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

It's obviously a magic eclipse.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

In addition to running water and flush toilets, in recent years Britons have been able to enjoy the wonder of television in the comfort of their own homes.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that the climax of Ladyhawke involved a solar eclipse—which took place something like three days after the full moon! That's perhaps a slightly subtler error, as it involves keeping track of the calendar; but it's obviously wrong from the orbital mechanics. Or am I misremembering the movie? It's been quite a long time.

As to whole-planet eclipses, isn't that much the same fallacy as "It was raining on Mongo that night"?

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

There's a graphic in Science Made Stupid which says something like

A Solar eclipse is when the moon is between the sun and the earth,
a Lunar eclipse is when the earth is between the sun and the moon and then goes on to show the sort of eclipse when the sun is between the earth and the moon ... :-)

A full earth eclipse and an unexpected eclipse have the same cause, a spaceship much larger than the earth between the earth and the sun! That would be very unexpected!!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. And it is the sort of thing that makes me go WTF? and be distracted from the story. Often to the point of stopping watching or reading.

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

They usually don't.

Flash! Flash I love you...

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

"This morning's unprecedented solar eclipse is no cause for alarm..."

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

A full earth eclipse and an unexpected eclipse have the same cause, a spaceship much larger than the earth between the earth and the sun! That would be very unexpected!!

This, or something like Ghorath, is implicitly what happened in the backstory to the movie musical version of Little Shop of Horrors (it beamed Audrey II down).

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

My Buffy RPG journal has a sticker on the back bought from Cafepress, it says;

I learned all the science I need to know from Joss Whedon. (cause I don't need to know much science)

Having it there makes me happy, especially having run a Firefly RPG in the past...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

;-)

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. That was certainly the case with the one in Angel, if that's the one we're talking about re Whedon.

As for Heroes, I couldn't say. We seem to have dropped out of watching it, for no conscious reason. But since an eclipse that takes an hour to happen would cause the episode to overrun, and/or lead to a marked lessening of the dramatic tension, I have no difficulty in accepting that things happen differently in stories.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I don't have access to digital TV channels, so I have to wait a whole week longer to see this travesty of science on BBC2.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Technically, if you could see the moon during an eclipse, it would be the dark side, illuminated only by earthlight; even dimmer than the reflected sunlight we're used to seeing the moon by.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Think of it as your punishment for watching BBC3.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You can't fool me: I've BEEN to your country.

You can only watch TV if you buy a license, or the TV Detector Van will disgorge goons to drag you off to the jail!