10 Huge Disaster Movies That Scientists Called Bullsh*t (And Why)

8. That's Not How Meteors Work - Deep Impact (1998)

The Disaster: When a teenage astronomer discovers an unusual object near the stars Mizar and Alcor, his teacher drafts in an expert for a second opinion. The astronomer in question discovers that the object is a 7 mile long comet on a collision course with earth, though he dies in a car crash before he can alert the world to its impending doom. By the time the comet is discovered, humanity's only hope is to divert its course with a nuclear bomb, though the explosion only succeeds in splitting the comet in two with both pieces still heading for earth. Why It's Bullshit: They say good things come in pairs, and 1998 was the summer of mass extinction via giant space rock. While Deep Impact certainly serves up less bullshit than Armageddon from a scientific perspective, it isn't exactly free of it. For instance, when the team arrive at the comet to give it a nuclear nudge they see it is a white/grey colour when comets are in fact among the darkest objects in the solar system. The crew's landing spot is then hit by sunlight and the comet immediately starts to vent the gases frozen beneath its surface, with one astronaut blown into space. In reality the comet would not have exploded into life the moment sunlight touched it, nor would the astronauts have been wondering around on it to begin with as there simply wouldn't be enough gravity. 7 miles across may seem big, but by planetary standards it is nothing, and gravity on the comet would have been 0.0001 times gravity on earth. You sneeze on there and you're flying through space for eternity, so digging a hole big enough for a nuclear bomb would have been an impossible task.