List of scientific howlers in literature

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A howler is a glaring blunder, usually in an academic examination; a scientific howler is a howler which shows the author to be either ignorant of some aspect of science, or to be a poor observer of the natural world (or, frequently, both). Many works of literature contain scientific howlers. Although these are typically unimportant in a literary sense, many people enjoy finding and discussing the misconceptions that the author reveals.

It might be argued that science fiction contains more scientific howlers than any other genre (such as faster than light travel, time travel, teleportation, and so on, which contradict known laws of physics). However, it might be reasonable to forgive these authors such lapses, because one point of sci-fi (especially soft science fiction) is to ponder the impact of actual or imagined science upon society and individuals.

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Part 3, the following lines appear:

"... Til clomb above the eastern bar

The horned Moon, with one bright star

Within the nether tip."

The Moon obscures objects behind it (whether or not the relevant part of the Moon is illuminated by the sun) so no star could appear inside the crescent. In context, these lines are readily understood to be not an error, but rather a deliberate evocation of unreality, heralding the supernatural death of the Mariner's shipmates after the passage of the nightmarish "spectre-bark". Throughout the poem, sun and moon are used in a sense more symbolic than scientific, and so the bizarre image of the moon's body pierced by starlight has a profound effect in terms of the wider themes of the work; it represents a distortion of divine guidance (as the heavens guide earthly events), and a denial of the peace the Mariner seeks (exemplified by the earlier picture of soft moonlight on a calm ocean). Only the shallowest of readings can object to the image on the grounds of scientific implausibility, for the rest of the poem is entirely concerned with fantastic, unnatural occurrences.

• In Lord of the Flies by William Golding. One child uses the spectacles of a myopic boy to light a fire. However, myopia requires a concave lens for its correction, while fire lighting would require a convex lens to concentrate sunlight.
• Jack London's short story, The Shadow and the Flash, concerns the bitter rivalry of two brothers who devise methods of achieving personal invisibility. One method is based on the assumption that a perfectly black object reflects no light and is "therefore" invisible, apart from casting a shadow (such an object would be visible by virtue of obscuring objects behind it). The other is based on the assumption that a perfectly transparent object is invisible, apart from creating rainbow-colored flashes of light (such an object would be visible due to refraction).
• In Jules Verne's novel Autour de la Lune (second book of "From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip Around It"), Chapter VIII, "The Neutral Point," describes how gravity experienced by the travellers gradually diminishes until the spacecraft reaches the "neutral point" where "the respective attractions" of the Earth and the Moon "may be entirely annihilated by mutual counteraction." According to Verne, this point is "situated at 9/10 of the total distance or ... 216,000 miles from the earth", and only at this point would weightlessness be experienced. He is, of course, describing the first Lagrangian point, but does not realise that free-fall allows weightlessness in any orbit when no propulsion is used, not just at this point.
• In John P. Marquand's novel, Wickford Point, chapter XXXIII, the narrator says: "Once the entire road had been sandy, and I can remember looking down from the buggy seat to watch the fine sand carried along the thin rims of the wheels by centrifugal force until it dropped back perpendicularly into the dust again" (note that the quote refers to sand on the outside rim of the wheel. The author seems to imply that Centrifugal force would make sand stay on the rim, when in actuality, it would make the sand tend to leave the rim).

[edit] See also

• List of scientific howlers in film
• List of scientific howlers in painting
• List of famous scientific mistakes