Science in Popular Culture: A Reference Guide

Explains the real science behind the fictional! Spaceships travel faster than the speed of light and through time. Scientists clone, shrink, and transmit themselves as needed. Animals can talk and accomplish feats attributed only to humans. The media makes it all look so easy. Can scientists hope to accomplish these things in the real world someday, or are these scientific abilities only wishful thinking? Science in Popular Culture is a fun look at what can, and can’t, be achieved with current technology in today’s laboratory experiments. Fans of the Jetsons cartoon, and the Star Trek and Star Wars films, will pore over entries that describe the scientific inventions and procedures they see on the screen, and how they differ from real-life technological ability. Van Riper shows us the real men behind the media representations of Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Isaac Newton. He discusses how animals such as chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, and gorillas are portrayed in books and films, and what we know today about real-life animal intelligence. He discusses the differences between androids, cyborgs, robots, and superhumans, and whether or not any exist today or in our future. Scientific laws, such as gravity and the speed of light, are defined, and the author then shows us how and where they are discarded for the sake of a good plot. Students of astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics, and all science fiction fans, will not be able to put this book down.