DUDE IT'S A SCIFI SHOW!!!!!

Is is funny that ever ET comes to the planet in the exact same type of space craft. Nice points!

Tiolawa is right. Besides, things are different in the parallel universe where reptiles, aka "dinosaurs," did not become extinct but evolved into galaxy hopping dinonauts who can disguise themselves as very sexy aliens.

What a stupid article!!! Like tlolawa said: It's a SciFi show. On top of that you can't even begin to analyze alien tech as if it's earth created. If there were aliens like that capable of interstellar travel, why would even consider that their technology has anything similar to our own.

Again, what a silly article, but I'm getting used to reading this kind of thing here on this site. Fortunately there are still other content that keeps me coming back. If it were for articles like this I would simply delete my bookmark for this site.

If the aliens had some sort of infinite or near-infinite power-generation technology, it could cover most of the points above: FTL or higher-dimensional travel, the ability to circumvent gravity, the ability to "pass-through" the air in our atmosphere without disturbing it, etc.

But then the question remains -- if they can do all that, what could they possibly need from us?

I find it quite amusing that scientist on this world can speculate what technologies an alien race would have. just because it isn't practical here on earth doesn't mean it isn't practical some where else. For a scientist to say they can't do it or that if they have the technology why would they use it in this fashion would be stupid. They only know what is going on in this world not all the others out there. Have a little faith that if we were ever visited by an alien race I would like to think that they have a much higher level of technology and everything that is speculation here on earth could actually be reality on some other planet. It has never happened so they actually can't prove it and their computer models, even tho they are damn good, can only predict what MIGHT happen, not what actually would because, well it has never happened. So lets just leave it be let Sci-Fi (Science FICTION) be.

I'll give you point 1 except that the military shows up in the city at almost the same time the motherships arrive. I suspect the government did know of the visitors arrival.

Point 3 depends on how they manipulate gravity. They didn't say thrust in the show, just because that is our only known way of manipulating gravity doesn't make it so. What if the ships use the Earth's magnetic field to ride the skies? Fission generators could provide enough energy to control the magnetic field of the ships to hover, only requiring thrust when moving.

Point 4 is at this point a non issue. The ships are already in our atmosphere so the subsequent detonation of one falling wouldn't be as severe. Yeah, the city that's under it would be hosed but that's about it.

V was alright, but I think I am going back to watching NCIS tonight rather then the second ep of V. Just seems NCIS to have better writing... that and every ABC SciFi show seems to start with a massive global event now...

Am I one of the few people in the world who think that even fictional universes should maintain internal cohesive logic? Yes it's a show, but it's set in modern day earth, which has certain rules and laws that need to be explained or addressed in scifi story structure.

Good Article.

Killjoy!!
#1 they were cloaked
#2 if they can control gravity, they can control weather. it's probably always sunny when the Vs are here
#3 you don't understand their highly advanced technology
#4 their self-destruct sequence would vaporize their ship into tiny pieces.

John's not talking whether aliens have technology like this or not, HD. He is talking about the believability of such fantasy aircraft on the scifi show V. I see nothing wrong with this article. Scifi is called Science Fiction meaning it is fiction yes but it should attempt to be scientifically believable. So, bringing a little actual science to this scifi show makes perfect sense to me! ;-)

Thanks John for a well thought out & insightful view of what real aircraft of that size would do!

I found out about this article because @Syfy actually linked to it on twitter! ;-) So someone at that channel actually liked it!

If you actually watched Independence Day, the alien ship that got brought down made a semi-controlled descent, not a screaming-at-terminal-velocity crash.

This is the kind of sloppy writing I expect from Gizmodo. Well, and syfy.

This is just SciFi channel being bitchy cuz ABC and Fox are producing more and better science fiction programming than them. If you want to see science fiction on tv, the scifi channel is 3rd or 4th choice now.

It will probably get worse once comcast owns em, but maybe at least comcast will fire some of the tools in charge now.

I agree with Dannyp - 'syfy' has the worst lineup possible now. The only thing mildly interesting show is battlestargate galactica (stargate universe).

I'm sure there wouldn't be as much nitpicking if it wasn't on ABC. you know what else isn't likely to happen in reality? finding a magic ring shaped gate that connects to different planets / universes

I'm kinda curious about the tidal forces a 15 mile spaceship would have below it, hovering as it does at helicopter altitudes.

Otherwise...It's just a stinkin' story! I can't conceive of an advanced civilization dedicating the resources of an entire solar system traveling '50 billion light-years' just to harvest the gonads of cattle or prod and poke the innards of some drug-addled trailer trash.

First off as stated already, this is all make believe. It has not and probably never will happen (hopefully in reference to the original visitors!).

However, if in the realm of this make believe world, any intelligent race with the means, power and money to propel a ship that is 3 miles in diameter some 56 trillion miles within one life time could rather easily levitate it above a city. Nuff said.

I dont know, or claim to know how or what makes the alien technology work or function....What I do know is this...If an alien ship appeared over any major city, go ahead and prepare for an invasion....a peaceful society would not show up over a metrapolotin area just to spread their word of peace across the world...the would not want to risk causing a panic....just like if you take all the movies that have something like this happening in them....they want to eliminate all life in some way or another when they get here.....a peaceful society would show themselves to a small pocket of people and then have them spread word then begin appearing to others....not say HELLO WE ARE HERE!!!! to everyone on the planet all at once.

If I were an alien I would force Earth to orbit my spaceship

Okay, this is the worst and saddest post ever on dvice.

Dude...

1) Future Alien Tech solves it.
2) Future Alien Tech solves it.
3) Future Alien Tech solves it.
4) Future Alien Tech solves it.

Hey, Genious who wrote this article...did you ever stop to consider:
What you fail to comprehend, is that you are assuming that these alien beings, who are all light years more advanced than us, create their ships and structures within the same physical parameters as us.

Ever thought that maybe, just maybe, their ships are more advanced, and do not have the same physical limitations as us?

I’m sure their periodic table of elements is five times larger than ours.

Imagination, kids….

I think it is amusing how the same fanboys who are complaining about what I found to be a humorous article about V are the same type of people that bitch about how "realistic" BSG was(or wasn't).

The guy makes some good points. Yes, it is a show, but the best Sci-Fi is always firmly rooted in the realm of the plausible.

I personally liked V but maybe that was because I was paying more attention to the story than the science(or lack thereof).

Ok - Science Fiction Geek basics:
1. Unless it's a multigenerational ship that flies slower than light, the V motherships are likely equipped with some kind of FTL drive. If they arrived in close proximity to Earth, they would simply “appear” in orbit without warning, much like the Galactica “Jumps” into space. Nothing revealed yet in the series gives us an explanation, though.
2. The amount of atmospheric disturbance created is directly related to the speed at which the mothership is going when in enters the atmosphere. If it’s moving as fast as an asteroid, kaboom! If, however, it’s a controlled entry where the ship slows down considerably before atmosphere interface, it’s big, pretty contrails, and that’s it. (ID4 did get it right!)
3. A ‘Solid’ steal ellipsoid? Bet not. Besides, no detailed explanation is given for the power of the drive system of the mothership. There is enormous energy contained the quantum structure of the universe and atoms and even space in particular. Maybe it’s a kind of self-sustaining reaction once initiated. There are plenty of imaginative explanations – some of them actually with some near-real-theory content. Energy doesn’t seem to be the V’s issue.
4. Again comparison with Asteroid a little off. A. completely dissimilar internal structure: Asteroid-solid rock and metal. Mothership - Not-solid engineered object. B. Asteroid: High-Velocity orbit. Mothership: From a hovering position, from a relative fixed position. Even from miles up, a fall would be locally catastrophic, but not extinction-level.
How about this: No biological precautions when the V’s come off the ship? Where were the Hazard suites? V’s looking “Perfectly” human? Need more than a one-liner from Anna for me.
V is mostly about the drama and metaphor for me. But the tech needs to be realistic to free us from the distraction of it. If it’s fake, it stand out. Realistic fades to the background.

While I have no problem with a sci-fi show ignoring these issues for the sake of storytelling, I'd like to see one that takes all this into account.

Could be interesting.

With regards to the science (or lack of) in SF, there are two broad segments of the audience: those who *don't care*, and those who admit exactly how unlikely it all is and have fun building solutions anyway. A large chunk of "Trek" fandom falls into the latter camp.

When writing a fact-meets-fiction article like this, you have to be careful how you frame the critique to accomodate both camps. "If we were to build this, these are the physical constraints we'd have to work within, and which would probably sink the idea. If aliens built it, these are the physical laws they somehow bypassed, and *these* are the probable consequences of doing so."

This kind of blatant display is sometimes called "uber technology" -- it's not just better armor or a working fusion generator, it completely transcends our understanding of physics. Sometimes the story handles it matter of factly as part of the scenery, and sometimes the mind-blowing is the whole point.

davma. I think when scientict say"it won't work" it's because they know the basic laws of physics and those laws are absolute EVERYWHERE in the universe.Thats why they are called "LAWS"There is no difference in those LAWS no matter were you go in this universe.And not to put to fine a point on it ,they ARE called LAWS of physics for a reason.

As everybody knows, the reptilian aliens are really from Earth, and destroyed the planet once in a global war that wiped out all of the large reptiles. Seriously, though, nobody actually KNOWS what gravity is or how it works. Our best guess is that matter magically warps space, producing a sustainable effect that requires no power expenditure. Everything else, though, works by pressure differentials. I'm going to go with the idea of dark (kali) energy creating everything in the quantum continuum for now.

All of your questions are answered by two simple axioms: one they are aliens and their technology is far more advanced than your earthbound analysis allows for. Two- it's a fricking TV show. That you accept 50 giant spacecraft over major cities in the U.S. (and of course not Johannesburg) but that they wouldn't be able to stay aloft is truly comedic. FAIL.

As I tell my wife it is a TV show. Plus when Wells said we would go to the moon in space people laughed. Who know what aliens look like or who cares. If it happens most of us would bend over and kiss our asses goodbye.

"Assuming that real-world visitors wouldn't have any laws-of-physics-defying tricks up their sleeve (like faster-than-light travel or cloaking devices)"
...or flat black paint.

The more I think about it, Clarke's axiom certainly applies here; that is, "...Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic..."

Mr. Pavlus, if alien race(s) do exist and are technologically advanced, what do you think they could achieve in regards to their understanding of physical laws and technical applications? What do you think an alien race can or could achieve if it was 4,000 years ahead of us? 10,000 years ahead of us? From our stand point, some of what they could achieve would be "magic". What do you think an integrated circuit would look like to a man living in the first millenium on this world?

I didn't expect such a low level article on DVICE :(

Come on guys! It's a fairy tale! Just a show!

And who the hell told you they should have used 368 quadrillion joules??
They are not using rockets or anything else "known" to lift their ship..

Anyhow till now I still prefer the old V show.
Let's see the second episode hoping for the best.

I believe it's called "suspension of disbelief."

The real question here is whether or not the story is strong enough to make us ignore these (rather petty) issues. I think it is.

Besides, as others have pointed out, we can't comment on these issues simply because we don't have all the facts. If the characters spew techno-babble (see - Transformers "atomic computing") then we can critique it. But V has been pretty good about mucking things up with woo.

In all your talk of "why do this just to impress us" you miss the obvious point... maybe the giant ships are really meant just to impress us into submission. They could be much smaller craft that inflate into huge, solid appearing balloons using some kind of nanotech or whatever once they are in postion. Maybe their internal volumes even contain vacumn pockets that make them lighter than air so that their anti-grav technology is actually only needed to keep them from drifting away. Any humans allowed onto the craft would only see the parts that appeared solid, thus maintaining the illusion.

LOL. Well, at least for #3 you are judging by our knowledge of energy and use of solid of fluid fuel.... my biggest problem with the ship was that the bottom was covered with hexes but the panels were rectangular.

Some of these comments are pretty funny. I don't know if some o' y'all have tongues deeply imbedded in your cheeks or you really believe what you're printing.
The reemark about periodic table 5X ours was a snicker. Our periodic table goes 5X what we list, too. But unless somewhere there's the "MAGIC" double magic number anything over 105 breaks down in milliseconds--and the higher ya go, the faster they fall.
The LAWS comment was spot on! 'Less'n ya slide into a different universe (maybe where we get gravity and the energy for it?). If you're from a different universe w/ different physics, you'd still be stuck with the physics in THIS universe, and your tech won't be worth a fart in a tornado.
I reckon you could tap vacuum energy. Ricky Feinman figures any cubic centimeter of vac has enough energy to boil all the oceans of Earth. And if E+M, you could prolly snag the reaction mass while you're at it. I'm guessing conservation would actually cause you to slow down as you take on the energy and the mass, plus the slop in the conversion.
Like I say, I can enjoy Potter and Milne without having to believe rabbits and stuffed animals can talk.

I think think Syfy Started going down hill when they changed the spelling.Bringing back the SciFi will fix all there problems.......and perhaps some good shows as well would help them too.

Fantastic article! While it's all good to dabble in fantasy of SciFi, wouldn't it be great to get back to the old days of actually trying to constrain the fantasy to something more technically credible....without the obvious video manipulations?

This of course would require stronger storylines and plausible science for future application by humanity. Go figure ;-)

one of these days I want to start an article about why it is pointless to debate fiction, scientific as it might be it is still FICTION and they go for what looks good.

Were Alexander Pavlov's comments taken out of context? Doesn't point 4 depend on density? Even if it was a ship of solid rock I'd still have a hard time believing you. Assuming the ship isn't solid-- but bunch of rooms and corridors made of metal-- it's density and mass isn't going to be like that of a giant rock, like the picture depicts.

I am pretty sure that in the first episode the V's stated they have total control of gravity. That answers most of your points right there.

Increase gravity to a point that a singularity develops causing a rip in space time.
travel through the whole in space time
Appear instantly inside our atmosphere using matter transfer to replace the air your ship displaces ( ie send the air through the same wormhole you just came through).

Any civilization that has the ability to control gravity in such a way should have at least the faintest idea of anti-matter and how to create easily and efficiently enough, and that alone would create many times over the energy needed to stay afloat.

I cannot argue with the final point, in reality the V ship would be made of a composite much lighter and more durable than anything we have on earth now, if we just came up with carbon nano-tubes then the V ships would be at the quark or even smaller level, allowing for infinitely lighter materials.

Keep in mind that if ABC or even syfy were to explain any of that inside the 44 minutes allotted for a TV show then it would not be watched by enough viewers to even air a second time.

I love how, even though something's fiction, we think we understand everything. That if it can be known, we know it. That there's just no conceivable way that any other method is used. Are we really so ignorant as to believe that? Forget the show for a second and tell me you think that what we know is the only thing there is to know. Is it not possible there are other methods to achieve that level of energy? Or do we know it all? Because...really? You really think we know it all? Really?

In the old Series, they come 4 food and water, right? well if they have near-infinite power-generation tech, why can't they just create water with some kind of fusion (hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and oxygen is the 3rd) or grow food by cloning or something?... It seems we need the bad guys to be others beside ourselves

If I were going to have a problem with V, it would be the *reason* why they're here. They need water?

Um, hydrogen is an extraordinarily easy to find element, even in space. It's one of the most common actually. And they obviously breathe oxygen, so they're ships can produce that.

So take two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, and VOILA! Water! And I'm not talking Star Trek replicator style. This is something *we* can do *right now* in labs. So... why can't the space faring aliens do it?

V's spaceships don't make sense? News flash: NOBODY'S spaceships make sense. Not Star Trek's, not BSG's, certainly not the ones from Star Wars. To this day, there is still only one movie that got space travel right: 2001. You can thank Arthur Clarke for insisting on scientific accuracy, and Kubrick for depicting it so vividly. (Okay, arguably there are two movies in this category. The other is "Destination Moon" from 1955.)

I'm only commenting so I can be apart of Dvice's most commented on article.

whooooooooo!!!

Pssst! Hey buddy, there's something called the Suspension of Disbelief. It's *required* for these shows....

(3rd try -- captcha!)

Ok, ok...now give me the 4 reasons why a Stargate wouldn't make sense, please.

The only reason they make these kinds of articles is because they know it will inflame the sci fi fan community. They just want to increase website traffic.

I remember back in the day when science fiction shows would at least try to use actual science in their fiction, and when they did step a little too far into the fiction part, they would try to make it believable. Those were the days...

Hi, I put the story together for ID4 with Stevie Spielberg back in 1972. I named the film and put extremely big space ships over the cities. First off, it was 1972, dude. There was no surveillance of near space at that time. (There were no computer viruses, either, but I will NEVER get credit for that one.) Indeed, Independence Day and two other flicks I worked on (Armageddon and Deep Impact) probably brought about the near earth surveillance program in the first place.
Your energy calculations are way off, of course. There aren't rockets under there, porky. There's no description of mass, either. The Hindenburg was heavier. Consider the low mass of the ships and the air resistance to that shape coming down--parachute anyone?
We figured for the re-entry turbulence, and wind circulation around the umbra, too.
Jeepers you make a classic and they snake you!

Nice this coming from a network that had a movie with a giant shark jump up in to the sky 30,000 feet and snatch a passenger jet traveling at 500 miles per hour out of the sky.

Give me a freaking break. Once SciFi starts putting out things that don't suck like a hoover and are based totally in fact and are totally believeable then they can make these stupid comments.

As for number one ever hear of stealth, with little light out there they would be hard to spot by eye. In fact all of your stupid comments can be explained, its called advanced technology.

God, this network is run by a bunch of stupid freaks.

Robert

At this point, screw the science, the only thing I am waiting for with V, is when the alien egg is found, and a little spider squid facehugger comes out to looking for a host to implant. If that does not happen, and soon, I will be very VERY pissed! That will be the only thing that can save V, in my opinion.

The people above are missing the point, this is hilarious stuff. Clearly written just to be funny, its great, keep it up.

Uh, guys... poking holes in the science of scifi is what makes people like us geeks and nerds. Yeah, it is just a show. But do you guys not find any of the above even remotely interesting?

Regarding #1 though... what if the saucer is side on? Presumably there's a finite "thickness" at which the NEO detection systems are foiled. It'd be like trying to spot a frizbee from the other side of a field: if it's flying straight at you, it has to be a heck of a lot closer for you to see it than if you were looking at one of the circular faces.

And o'course, they could just paint the thing matt black, so it's non-reflective. That'd probably make it a bit easier for 'em to sneak up. So again, something that ID4 did right. ;)

Wow, The most posts I've ever seen on an article on DVice.

#1 - They project video from the bottom of their ships. I'm pretty sure they can hide from detection from a distance. Plus they've been on Earth for some time and have agents throughout the government. If they wanted to stay hidden until the last moment they're well equipped for it.

#2 - You're right, but it's a show.

#3 - Anti-Gravity. It's alien tech. I truly believe it's powered by a AAA battery. Seriously though, in the original show the self-destruct was enough to supposedly destroy the planet. I'd think that's enough power to keep the ship aloft.

#4 - They city's hosed (like said above), but they're about a mile up. The damage on a global scale would be minimal.

I'd like to see articles like this about Stargate, Farscape... Don't just pick on "non-SyFy" shows now ;)

I had to come back here and say same thing again, this is the worst and the saddest post ever on dvice.

Any science fiction that stirs up rational thought is good science fiction. And any post that can stir up the rational thought process and invoke critical thinking is a good post. Maybe it should be categorized as science fantasy, though you hardly ever hear a critique on why dragons aren't possible. But maybe that is because there really isn't a need for dragons and there isn't any profit in overcoming the obstacles in dragon construction. Anti-gravity and interstellar travel, though, may have useful applications.

This article should be in Syfy's main blog, not a blog about actual tech and vaporware (since many things on here never get past the concept stage...)

As for the article's points...
1) Its called stealth... Modern stealth aircraft have a radar crossection of what, a large bird? Somehow I think that any race advanced enough to travel between stars could sneak up on us without any difficulty. If they used FTL, we would have zero chance of detecting their approach. The article completely fails on this point.

2) Our atmosphere is screwy enough on its own the last few years. If they inserted slowy and at the right angle we would barely notice - however, this probably give them away as weather satelites might be able to see them at this point.

3) Sorry, but the state of our technology does not allow us to speculate on this issue with ANY authority. Again, they traveled between STARS - their power generation capabilities are -FAR- beyond ours.

As far as the "Laws of Physics," I strongly suggest people go look up what a scientific "law" means. Remember, we used think the sun revolved around a flat earth. We do not understand quantum physics yet, hell, we barely understand physics as it is. Who's to say we have it right? We would be children to any starfaring race - to assume WE know better is arrogant.

4) Sorry, no. Their ship falling from the height shown in the series would not be an extinction level event. It would surely devastate the city, and the ship, but not end all life on earth. If they slammed into the planet at a sizeable % of C, then yes, we would be toast. If these lizards are like those of the original series, then they want to eat us - not vaporize us.

Its a TV show. STFU and enjoy the escapism.

In the original V, the aliens looked human because of skin and hair prosthetics. I'm guessing the same idea applies here. Pretty clever idea: they assume biological drives would override logical thought, and no one would say 'Hey, how in the world did an alien race zillions of miles away from earth beat the tremendous odds and evolve to look like human hotties?' They were right.

Fun.

1) "Cloaking" isn't outside the realm of possible physics. Bending light around an object effectively cloaks it. If the aliens can control gravity, then sure, they can bend light too.

1B) They could have approached the earth from outside of the plane of the solar ecliptic. Since all the planets move somewhat within this plane, and NEO monitors objects primarily inside this plane, it's not inconceivable they could approach as such.

2) Nikolai Kardashev created a ranking system for "types" of civilizations capable of controlling the elements around them. In his scale, a Type I civilization is capable of controlling the energies of an entire planet, including the weather.

3) A valid point as general relativity, for the most part, dismisses "anti-gravity". It's possible the ships "float" on some contrived cushion of air, but ships of that scale would create air pressures that would crush anything beneath them.

4)Iffy. In ID4, the ship came down at an angle instead of crashing flat. Far less surface area impacted the ground than if it had simply fallen straight down. It still would have had a devastating local effect, but it's doubtful it would be global in nature. Your paragraph also makes assumption on the overall mass of such an object, the types of materials used, and dismisses drag (minute as it would be) and possible "resistive" forces (such as still operable anti-gravity generators,etc.) [note: we are, afterall, talking science fiction, so anti-gravity is a plausible plot device].

In summary, it's sci-fi. It's for fun. But I understand the 'fun' in picking it apart too..

Robert Englund in a good guy role for once in his career. He was a pro-human (as in not wanting to eat his human friends, so much as help them fight back) Visitor. However, if he were a "bad" Visitor, he could use his Kreuger glove to slice the humans up for dinner.

How many remember Englund on the original series?

You mean big metal city size ships really couldn't hover hundred of feet in the sky for weeks like that???

WOO0O0OO0OW!

Next you'll be telling me there's no Santa Claus, or Easter bunny.

That's just stupid crap from someone who obviously is not only irrationally anti-UFO and anti-"alien existence", it is nonsensical to anyone with half a brain. And/or they are just a poor writer with way too much time on their hands. It erroneously presupposes that they didn't attempt to hide themselves on the way in, which would NOT be all that difficult if they really have that much technology, that they entered the atmosphere "at speed", which they probably would not, not like the Space Shuttle, as an example, that they don't (supposedly obviously and self-evidently) have some extremely powerful energy source that we can only dream of (let's just call it a Zed-P-M), and #4 is just more ridiculous crap. What brain trust came up with this? I'm really getting tired of these Idiots, their stupidity, their ignorance, their undeserved egotism, and all the rest.

For a vessel to hover or even rise and fall, there can be more to it than simple brute force. What about a warp type of technology that puts the ship in an alternate dimension or location without gravity? What about a device that orients the polarity of the ship to that it repels gravitational fields?

Heck, we as a species only left the surface of our own planet a little more than a hundred years ago. Image what we could create, invent and imagine in a 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 years. If you cannot imagine that we would be able to hover a large vessel over a city if we wanted to in that future, then you are in the wrong line of business here at SyFi !

first of all, IT'S A FREAKIN' TV SHOW!!! not the science channel. secondly, as far as their last point went, the crashed ships from INDEPENDENCE DAY didn't drop from orbit. they were only a few hundred feet up. SHEESH, lighten up!!

Here's my two-cents worth on the fact that it's FICTION. Did I say that it's fiction? In cartoons, a character running appears to be moving only about half the speed its legs are going if it were in the REAL world. Or a character get blown up or falls 500 feet off a cliff- and they walk away. That being said- it's fiction.

But then again there's a great post about ships two other shows battling it out - who would win (BSG vs ST). It doesn't really matter- it's fiction. Let the show be the show.

Todays' Science Fiction is tomorrows' Science Fact. It almost seems that if we can think of something fantastic, we actually develop the technology to create it.

Case in point: Classic "Star Trek" and the flip open "Communicator"... Has anyone here ever NOT Owned a "flip style" cellular telephone...???

With that said, I'M STILL WAITING FOR MY BLOODY FLYING CAR...!!!

Of course it's an TV show, if the producers, writers, director, etc, knew anything about science they would not have gone into film making. It leaves them free to parade their ignorance and teach it to the rest of the viewers.
How could the real world ever be so interesting?

If ET ever does show up, considering how technically advanced he would be compared to us, there is only one thing he would need from us: resources. Water, minerals, food. We would be like an intergalactic Waffle House when he arrives, barren wasteland when he left.

Calculations on unknown parameters with no basis of fact or fiction results in "Man you folks are Idiots" award.
Saying that something that big dropped out the air a few miles up would kill a planet is just plain dumb. Weather impacted by mile+ wide systems does not take into account advance beings bent on trick us knowing what they are doing. Does not much good to swoon a population if you cause their destruction.
Reality sucks folks, but 3+ billion years on this planet and life still exists here does not bode well for the conjecture of science idiots.
Please note that "those in the know" said that the world was flat, there is no global warming, we can go faster then sound, we will never fly, and breathing any kind of water is not possible (and yea we can).
Oh well - another waisted artictile to rile folks.

The syfy chan has gone down hill from the good old days.
Know they have to many reality shows and who would think wrestling would be on syfy.
I now only watch on Fridays now SGU,SGA and SG-1 repeats.

This is by far the most stupid article. Are you really trying to dissect a SciFi show?

You guys are all Dorks. With a capital D.
Of course it's a sci-fi show, and of course the easy answer to any sci-fi discrepancies is "super-technology" (or occasionally, the force).
This article was just meant to be an interesting way to think about the technology posited by the show.

That in mind, the big-ol saucers are hovering just above the tallest skyscraper in new york, so their fall would be much shorter than from "where jets fly." Also, it's important to note that their shape is wide and flat and the air resistance would slow them down immensely. (Penny versus feather, it's the density vs size, not the weight). A killed V-ship left mostly intact (like in ID4), would have a relatively low terminal velocity because of this resistance. So, it would just smoosh the city below it to rubble, not vaporize everything for miles and miles around.
Thanks for the article, though. And here's hoping V stays watchable, at least for the first season or two.

The Reason why this stupid comment was made about the Show "V" was because as you can see by SYFY's show line up.. Very few Shows on the channel now are even Sci-Fi... They are all stupid Ghost this or Scare Tactics, or Dumb ass Monster movies, and now the Only regular SC-FI show they are even playing with is this real slow moving and almost Boring STAR GATE UNIVERSE whacked weekly show, I have watched it and I am still waiting for something good to happen!!!
Now I was not that Impressed with "V".. in fact I really thought it was too A.B.C. for me to enjoy.. BUT... at least it was Real SCI-FI.. unlike what this new SY-FY programing has been recently...
Bring back Battlestar... Get Old re-runs of BUCK RODGERS on, forget about that stupid re-vision on Flash Gordon (That was stupid as all Hell).. Lets get some Real SCI-FI, ya know like it used to be when the channel first started about 18 + years ago.. GOOD SPACE movies!
LOGANS RUN! STAR WARS! BABYLON5! SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND! FAR SCAPE!
RIDDICK! ...Come on People at This Channle need to get back to the basics and leave the Ghost hunting stuff to the Other Channels, or how about make a New Cable Channel Only for Scary stupid Ghost and Monster stuff... No More Bad shows about Giant Spiders, or Snakes, or Dogs or Cats..
Lets get back to Aliens and Robots and Space ship stuff guys!
And Yes.. CHNAGE the name back to what we all tunned in for.. SCI-FI!

So far, I don't mind the show but yes, the science seems like a bit of a stretch at times.

As has been talked about here though... who really knows what advanced technology could do... I think of it like this...

As far as required energy and such:
Think back to pre-firearm days... everything was by muscle power... living then, an aircraft would be impossible: "There's no source of energy that could possibly load a catapult powerful enough to through that into the air... timbers can't be found strong enough", etc.

Personally, I find the whole saucer shape unlikely since the wider and thinner you make something, the more challenging the engineering. It seems to me like ships past a certain size would be closer to spherical for structural simplicity and certain would use smaller ships for atmospheric entry which is the only time a smaller cross section (like a disk) would seem to be of any use.
But again, if indeed you can manipulate gravity, most of these questions don't matter.

Earlier in the thread someone wondered out loud about tidal stresses and such... I didn't try to do the calcs for it but it seems unlikely to be enough to matter. I'm just thinking that the ship is smaller than even a small mountain and there's no noticeable sideways pull when you build near a steep hill. I'm not saying it wouldn't be detectable... just doesn't seem like it would be significant.

Anyway... sci-fi = fun and entertainment...
not neccessarily total reality :)
(although it's nice if they at least stay consistent within their own rules... it makes suspension of disbelief easier!)

There are reasons this article is pointless... and they come from the author who practically invented the alien-spaceship-as-big-as-a-city concept, and the reasons cover each of this articles pointless points

Clarke's Laws.

For those of you who keep trying to impress upon us the fact that "V" is "just a sci-fi" show and are calling this a "dumb" article have missed the point. The article is using sci-fi to provide a real-life explanation of how physics works. How many people here already knew how much energy it would takes to keep a 3km object aloft? How many people here knew that large objects entering our atmosphere would cause weather disturbances? How many people here knew that a large object dropping from just a few miles up could release enough energy to destroy continents? Come on, people ~ look beyond narrow-mindedness and take someone home from what the author is saying.

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First the aliens are obviously 2k+ years more advanced than us technologically. In a gamers term, what technological era would they even be in? Second, let's put the shoe on the other foot. Say we're the visitors, and we're getting our asses whipped by a more advanced interstellar culture. When we just happen to spy a planet like Earth with plenty of water. Which we need, even if it's just for putting out fires on our ships after every battle with the afore mentioned culture. We would annihilate, or enslave every sentient being on the planet for that resource. Think about it, the Spaniards destroyed the Aztec culture for gold. Don't ask stupid questions like, why would advanced interstellar cultures even bother attacking our planet? We would given the chance. But we're putting human reasons and thoughts into alien heads, try thinking like an alien. We've been doing this in sci-fi for years, simply because we can't think how an alien race can or even imagine what they would think about.

Oh I forgot something. This is a propaganda article, trying to get people to tune out V. Since ABC is doing the one thing this channel can't seem to do anymore, air a science fiction program.

Actually, it'd be EXTREMELY easy to get to Earth without being detected. Anyone with half a brain would just approach from the far side of the Sun. DUH

I saw a show on TV that had flying vehicles shaped like birds...but their wings didn't flap! They made some kind of roaring noise...birds don't roar!

Don't these people do any research?

Huh? Has the person not kept up with cutting edge technology?

We are already working on ways of making objects invisible to radar, and other forms of radiation. DVICE even reports on them from time to time.

If an antigravity device is invented, then keeping a giant craft aloft would be easy, with little energy output required to keep it aloft. As for how much energy the antigravity device would need - we don't know do we, because we don't have one yet.

What a inanely silly article. Does this guy get paid to write this? Really? Come on SyFy.

why dont you ask the V people they might tell you how it works.

Who cares, it's a tv show ffs.

Its just a TV show, although it does serve to again demonstrate the great legs of the lead actress who is also apearing on Flash forward and Lost. "V" is created to enrich her I guess.
Note that almost all commentors correctly use the 100 year old abbr "Sci-Fi" instead of the recently created and silly abbr "SYFY". Hopefully the producers will just tell a fictional story and leave name bungling to the bureaucrats

I think a lot of the commenters here are missing the point. SyFy isn't poking fun at "V" specifically. It's pointing out a commonly used Science Fiction trope that has been around since the birth of the film-genre. They're not saying, "Look how stupid the makers of V are," they're saying, "You know that cliche you see over and over again in countless movies? It doesn't really work."

You know what? If I want reality, I'll tune into to TruTV.

Its science fiction it doesn't have to make sense in respect to tech that we have now. There are plenty of things that we can't explain now that may be explainable with the new tech that may come into existence in the next few generations. For now you just have accept that it is part of the story line and that aliens have more advanced tech than us.

My little comparison of Vs video gadget to other sci-fi devices
http://v-series-abs.blogspot.com/2009/11/comparison-of-sci-fi-communication.html