10 Sci-Fi Movies That Got The Science Right
7. Contact (1997)
The movie Contact is based on a book of the same name written by the late great Carl Sagan. Because Sagan was so knowledgeable about the nature of the cosmos, a great deal of careful thought went into making sure the science was realistic.
The movie came out a year after Sagan's death, and it didn't stray from the source material, which is all about humanity making contact with extraterrestrials. This was something Sagan knew a lot about, as he was one of the pioneers of SETI, otherwise known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
The movie kicks off with the receipt of a radio signal from the Vega star system, which is about 26 light-years away. The signal contained encoded data revealing a video of Adolf Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Olympic Games. Because of the time and power of the original broadcast, it was scientifically accurate for the signal to take decades to go from Earth to Vega and back again.
That detail was 100% accurate regarding the speed of light in a vacuum, and the ability to encode thousands of pages of data in a radio signal is also possible. While the alien interactions and other elements are more aligned with the fiction aspect of sci-fi, the science was spot on.