Bad Astronomy Movie #1 - Armageddon

This will be the first in an 8 part series on bad astronomy movies.  I'm currently teaching a 2 week May term class in which we watch 8 astronomy based movies and discuss the bad science in them.  This course was motivated in part by Phil Plait and his Bad Astronomy book.  Our first movie of the course was Armageddon, quite possibly one of the WORST movies out there based on the quality of the science.  Armageddon has an entertainment factor to it, I won't deny that, but when it comes to the science, it is absolutely horrible.

The premise of the movie is that Earth is about to be destroyed by an extremely large asteroid in 17 days, and only a team of oil drillers can save the day.  That alone tells you this movie is filled with bad science, LOL!  I won't go through every aspect of the bad science in the movie, but let me take a moment to cover a few. 

For starters, the asteroid is bigger than the size of Texas.  Although an asteroid this big will certainly destroy life on Earth, the movie could have gone with a 1 km sized object since this is looked at as a life killer.  A Texas sized asteroid is HUGE and would have been discovered decades if not centuries ago!!!

Gravity is extremely messed up in this movie.  They bounce around a bit on the asteroid, and sort of get the idea of gravity right, but there are scenes on the asteroid and in the ship when the ship is on the asteroid where the "astronauts" walk normally, under normal Earth gravity.  Obviously incorrect.

The one good thing in this movie is the description of blowing up the asteroid.  It's stated that slamming the asteroid with a nuke won't do the job, and it won't.  They then go with the plan of burying a nuke and breaking it up from within.  Um...bad idea.  Unless all pieces avoid the Earth, the same damage will occur when pieces strike the Earth.  In addition, they only bury the nuke 800 feet into an asteroid that is several hundred miles in size.  They've barely buried the bomb and are essentially doing the same thing as slamming the surface with a nuke.  LOL!  In fact, legitimate methods of deflecting an asteroid using lasers and solar sails were completely tossed out!  They ignored every idea that could actually stop the asteroid!  Another LOL!

Armageddon has a bit of enjoyable entertainment in it, but overall it is a horrible on the science.  If there's a word that is worse than horrible, I'd go with that, but I can't think of one right now!!!