What Can Movies Teach Us About Space Travel?

Anything that interests people in wanting a better understanding of science is priceless, and for the nation eventually improves our competitive position, compared to the rest of the world. I don't care if it's movies, TV shows, or newspaper articles, bring it on.

Very interesting article here. I've read up on all these things and so it was nothing new for me, but It was cool to read. Afterall, I had never heard of that Event Horizon; they enter some dimension or other universe of pure chaos? In real life I doubt they would have survived that. ;)

I'm a bit surprised you did not seem to know the explanation for jump drive. As far as I know, BSG has never explained it and thus I don't blame you in that sense, but jump is seen in other scifi universes and is always fairly consistent. Though I believe it's in anime too, the scifi universe I know personally is the BattleTech universe, which is what games such as MechWarrior and MechAsssault are based on.

Although mind-boggling how we could ever make this possible with technology, especially due to the Uncertainty Principle, jump drive works by causing every particle of the ship to jump to another location in the SAME WAY that an electron jumps and disappears as it approaches an atom's nucleus, and reappears on the other side, and the continues to follow its orbital. It is sometimes thought of as "phasing" into the other location, thought if could also be considered as using another dimension for travel, and thus be a form of hyperspace.

Due to this, depending on the scifi universe, exact destinations can never be ascertained. Compared to battletech, BSG can do presicion jumps; in BattleTech, you would NEVER have a fleet jump; only one ship will do it, with the destination clear. In BSG at least, the farther the jump, the less precise it is. In BattleTech, misjumps are common. Usually it means nothing more than arriving a bit farther away from your destination, but in other cases, you may end up lightyears away, jump into a heavily trafficked route, or in one famous case, the computer failed to abort the jump in time, so that the ship was stopped mid-jump and stuck there for 250 years. It took 250 years for natural quantum and gravity fluctuations to tip the scale and cause the ship to finally phase completely at its destination. The crew had a big shock when they discovered 250 years had passed, when it had felt to them like an instataneous jump.

An episode of BSG, in 2nd or 3rd season, showed just what can happen when the risk is taken to jump too close to existing matter. A fleet of Raptors jumped to explore a distant planet (what became New Caprica, was it?). All arrived dangerously close to the planet; one of them, sadly, jumped into a mountain. Of course that meant, if you were to examine the site, the ship and bodies of the two aboard were fused within the rock of the mountain.