I recently saw The Core, and I must say, it rocked the house with furious vengeance. It had a witty script that skated close — but not too close — to being meta; note-perfect fidelity to the conventions of the disaster-flick genre; and, of course, Hilary Swank.

There was only one major problem. The science.

I do not, of course, expectation disastersploitation flicks to reflect rigorous, peer-reviewed science. But nor do I expect them to just wantonly, promiscuously screw stuff up with total and complete abandon. Among the most painfully egregious errors: The ship is shaped like a subway train falling head-first downwards into the core, but everyone walks around on the floor as if gravity didn’t exist. Christ, even Plan 9 From Outer Space doesn’t have continuity errors that bad. I was talking about this with a friend afterwards, when he remembered his own worst-science moment in a movie — Armageddon:

There’s this moment on the space station when Bruce Willis leans over to throw a switch and yells, “I’m turnin’ the gravity on!”

Later on, they’re flying the Space Shuttle through a blizzard of meteorites, and it’s swerving around all over the place, handling like a Porsche.

Though when I think about it, I suppose that “turning on the gravity thing” is actually possible. Gravity equals acceleration, so if you had a cylindrical space station, you could theoretically “turn the gravity on” by flicking a switch that set it quickly rotating — effectively producing gravity, a la the space orbiters in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So I’m thinking it’s time to produce the Top 10 list of Worst Science Moments Ever In Movies. Any suggestions?

(Coolness alert: Check out the discussion thread for this item. Plenty of people have written in superb examples, and we are building a really great list of stinktacular movie science!)