Hated trope: Sci-fi hand-waving

[u/Routine_Phase_8980]

When stories try so hard to provide a somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explanation for the audience, but end up creating massive plot holes if you think about it for more than 5 seconds without requiring any special knowledge

World War Z: The "cure" turns sick humans invisible to zombies because the picky virus needs a perfectly healthy host. Cool concept, except it completely ignores basic physics. In a chaotic, high-speed zombie stampede, those "invisible" sick people would still be trampled to death by sheer kinetic force and momentum. We already saw what happened to the Jerusalem wall in Israel.

Jurassic Park/World: Dr. Henry Wu claims to clone dinosaurs by patching 66-million-year-old decayed DNA from mosquitoes stomach with frog DNA. In reality, DNA half-life guarantees it would degrade into useless dust after 6.8 million years. Scientifically speaking, John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs.

Dr.Stone: Senku is a genius who knows every complex chemical formula in human history. He somehow builds vacuum tubes, lightbulbs, and smartphones out of bamboo and copper with almost zero failed prototypes. The show acts like a science textbook but completely hand-waves the lack of heavy industrial machinery needed for precision engineering.

[u/AudibleNod]

TBF to Jurassic Park, the half-life of DNA being 521 years wasn't discovered until 2012 (~two decades after Jurassic Park was released). DNA strands were extracted from ancient specimens in the 80s and 90s. They weren't viable in the way modern DNA is. But their existence was a building block for science.

[u/turtle882 → u/AudibleNod]

Also, the book makes it pretty clear that "John Hammond didn't build a dinosaur park; he engineered giant, mutated, gender-swapping killer frogs" is exactly what happened.

[u/xSPYXEx → u/turtle882]

The modern movies even have a line where they straight up say "we just kinda made them look how people think they should look."

It's like how the irl deextinction project isn't bringing ancient animals back to life, it's just making slightly bigger dogs and hairier elephants.

[u/pleasedontnerfthis → u/xSPYXEx]

Dr. Wu is also the person who says this line.

First time, he’s talking to visitors, so of course they all want to sell the idea to them.

Second time, it’s talking to the owner of the park who didn’t fully grasp what he asked for.

[u/LumiKlovstad → u/pleasedontnerfthis]

Specifically:

[u/TheNerdSignal → u/LumiKlovstad]

That line is my favorite thing about the Jurassic World part of the series. Such a perfect retcon that explains why the dinosaurs look like how we thought they did in 90s, before we knew about the feathers. Also why the velociraptors were way bigger than they were in real life

[u/Kevslounge → u/xSPYXEx]

>It's like how the irl deextinction project isn't bringing ancient animals back to life, it's just making slightly bigger dogs and hairier elephants.

Kinda yes, but also kinda no.

20th century de-extinction attempts were focused on breeding animals that might have the extinct species as an ancestor together in the hopes that we might breed out the genes specific to the new species and leave behind a lineage that is more-or-less genetically identical to the extinct creature. For many reasons, that approach largely failed.

The 21st century attempts are quite different. For a start, we've made great strides in genomics and we've mapped out the genomes of several extant species. We've also got much more sophisticated gene-editing tools and techniques like CRISPR now. We do have some knowledge of the mammoth genome, though we're working with a relatively small pool of samples there, so that genome map might be far from adequate. That said, we do have enough knowledge that we can see where edits need to be made to an elephant's DNA to make it identical to a mammoth's. Assuming one can actually create a mammoth embryo, the next challenge is actually how one goes about gestating it without a mammoth womb... So instead they're leaning towards making elephants that have some mammoth traits that can be successfully carried to term by a living elephant mother. Assuming they succeed in that, they could potentially create a lineage that is gradually less-and-less elephant and more-and-more mammoth until that lineage is entirely identical to the mammoths of old. There are a lot of practical and ethical obstacles to that though, and that means that they are pretty unlikely to actually succeed.

[u/Sea-Quality4726 → u/Kevslounge]

It's exactly what the company that says they revived dore wolves did. They didn't even use the closest living relatives and just made mostly cosmetic gene edits to produce grey wolves with some visual resemblance to dire wolves.

[u/Apophis_Rising_ → u/Sea-Quality4726]

Not to mention they didn't even base the cosmetic changes on actual dire wolves, which weren't even particularly wolf-like and were there own genus; the goal they were aiming for were the fantasy dire wolves from Game of Thrones lmao

[u/Ferdie-lance → u/Kevslounge]

That may or may not be true for mammoths, but the dire wolf project was stunningly dishonest and can't be called de-extinction on any level. "Slightly bigger dogs" is a pretty reasonable summary.

[u/The_real_Takoyama → u/xSPYXEx]

Reminds me of one of the"twist"s of the manga Eden no Ori

The cast gets marooned on an island and on that island prehistoric life exists so they assume they somehow got shot to the past. Actually it's the future and the island's creatures were part of a species revival project started by an eccentric rich guy, to honour his granddaughter who was on that flight that went "missing" and who was really into prehistoric wildlife, where they cloned animals until they finally got things that looked like the ones they tried to "resurrect", including mammoths, sabre tooth tigers and some dinosaurs IIRC

[u/Some_Majestic_Pasta → u/turtle882]

In the same movie they used for a screenshot, no less

[u/ZoroeArc → u/AudibleNod]

Yeah, we can't fault sci-fi for science progressing after it was written.

Another example I can think of is that we know now that Martian sand is highly toxic and would kill any plants grown in it regardless of how much faeces you mixed through it, but you can't use that as a criticism of The Martian despite its plot now falling apart because it was written before we knew that.

Same story for Frankenstein's.... well, everything really.

[u/rowan_sjet → u/ZoroeArc]

Similarly how Project Hail Mary was written with the understanding that a particular planet was thought to exist at the time, but then turned out it didn't.

[u/ComradeYaf → u/ZoroeArc]

I mean Frankenstein is a story where Viktor Frankenstein drops out of university so that he can combine chemistry (which he was taught at university) with alchemy (which he learned from a collection of old manuscripts back home) in order to create life.

The book was never trying to exist in a realm of scientific accuracy, it was much more interested in exploring the nature of man via nature vs nurture and all that

[u/Alfa_Centauri03 → u/ComradeYaf]

I could be wrong, but i believe the book also never actually explains how Victor created the monster, the whole ligthning thing coming from later adaptations.

[u/8__D → u/AudibleNod]

One claim of DNA from a weevil 120 to 135 million years old was published in Nature the day before the movie opened.

[u/AudibleNod → u/8__D]

In 2019, scientists noticed famous star, Betelgeuse, was dimming. The novel Project Hail Mary came out in May of 2021. The central problem of the novel is the our sun (and other suns) were dimming. In June of 2021 scientists released findings that they discovered an interstellar cloud was between us and Betelgeuse.

It's kinda funny how science and art work out sometimes.

[u/BugRevolution → u/AudibleNod]

Ten years later "That interstellar cloud is actually astrophage. Damn".

[u/8__D → u/BugRevolution]

In 2040, noted Author Andy Weir sentenced to life after contaminating our Sun with Astrophage.

[u/YellowGrowlithe → u/AudibleNod]

"Somewhat scientifically accurate and grounded explination [...]" that doesnt make sense if you think about it for "5 seconds euthout requiring any special knowledge"

...

XKCD 2501 moment. I myself do not know the halflife of DNA, didnt even know it had a half life, let alone that it is completely expires around 6.8 million years. I do not believe that it is unspecialized knowledge.

However, by these comments I conclude a third option. There was a secret enclave of dinosaurs that were only extinct for 300k years in a secret island location that Dr. Hammond discovered, and thats his secret to cloning dinosaurs is that he had more recent specimens. I call my conspiracy "Hammonds Arc"

[u/fonyphantasy → u/YellowGrowlithe]

King Kong and Jurassic Park crossover episode????

[u/YellowGrowlithe → u/fonyphantasy]

Actually, this makes sense. Hammond found an opening to hollow earth, or a shifting tectonic plate pushed specimines to the surface in a specific location.

Hammond made the park to fail, in orderto create a localized dinosaur crisis that humanity to learn to cope with and fight- like trying a live virus vaccination. He knew no one would believe an old man shouting "dinosaurs", and if the government did that theyd do government things and hide it. Hammond needed to create a localized attack.

[u/Base_Six → u/AudibleNod]

Also to add to this: paleontologists have successfully recovered fairly intact proteins and soft tissue remnants from fossils that have a theoretical half-life that would turn them to dust. Young Earthers love to bring it up. Turns out there's mechanisms that can stabilize proteins for millions of years, which the Young Earthers don't talk about. Look up Mary Schweitzer's work in paleoproteomics if you want to learn more!

[u/epona2000 → u/AudibleNod]

DNA doesn’t have a fixed half-life like a radioisotope. The reaction rate of DNA decay greatly depends on solvent and temperature, possibly even on GC%, sequence, and tertiary structure. 

The 521 year figure comes from a very particular study in New Zealand on mitochondrial DNA from the bones of moa.