Armageddon (1998 Film) - Scientific Accuracy

Scientific Accuracy

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Michael Bay admitted that the central premise of the film, "that could actually do something in a situation like this," was unrealistic. Robert Roy Pool, a contributing screenwriter, stated that his script, in which an anti-gravity device is used to deflect a comet from a collision course with Earth, was "much more in line with top-secret research." Additionally, near the end of the credits there is a disclaimer stating, "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's cooperation and assistance does not reflect an endorsement of the contents of the film or the treatment of the characters depicted therein."

NASA shows the film as part of its management training program. Prospective managers are asked to find as many inaccuracies in the movie as they can. At least 168 impossible things have been found during these screenings of the film.

In 2012, following a mathematical analysis of the situation, an article titled "Could Bruce Willis Save the World?" was published in the Special Physics Topics Journal. It found that for Willis' approach to be effective, he would need to be in possession of an H-bomb a billion times stronger than the Soviet Union's "Big Ivan", the biggest ever detonated on Earth. Using estimates of the asteroid's size, density, speed and distance from Earth based on information in the film, postgraduate students from the University of Leicester found that to split the asteroid in two with both pieces clearing Earth, would require 800 trillion terajoules of energy. In contrast the total energy output of "Big Ivan", which was tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, was only 418,000 terajoules.