Hollywood has lied to us! But now scientists, armed to the teeth with slide rules and pipettes, are setting it straight. Offended by the scientific unreality perpetrated by such blockbusters as Starship Troopers and Angels & Demons, US physics professor Sidney Perkowitz has suggested guidelines for Hollywood that permit just one violation of the laws of physics per film.

It is beyond question that the adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons is offensive to science. The plot features (SPOILER ALERT, as if anybody cares) a lump of stolen antimatter fashioned into a bomb to destroy the Vatican.

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Only someone as brilliant and ridiculous as Homer Simpson would strictly enforce scientific reality at the expense of plot. In reaction to his daughter inventing a physics-violating perpetual motion machine, he bellows "Lisa! In this house we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics."

If we strive towards realism in cinema, much wonderful fiction is swept into a bin of nerdish snorting. The Shining? Gone, because ghosts don't exist. A Matter of Life and Death? Gone, because heaven doesn't exist. Avatar? Gone, because giant blue aliens don't ... hold on, maybe there is something in this after all.

Original post at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/scientific-accuracy-holly...