Factual error: At the beginning of the movie, the space shuttle is landing off course and they only have moments to figure something out. This makes no sense. Shuttles take a long time to land - about an hour from the time of the reentry burn to touchdown. After the burn, reentry begins about a half an hour before touchdown. There is at least 20+ minutes of glide time. Surely somebody would have noticed they were off course a lot sooner than they did.
Factual error: In the end when Rat sends the information about DESTINI around the world, it says "Der Spiegel" in Berlin, Germany. "Der Spiegel" is based in Hamburg.
Plot hole: In the scene where they show how the earth's core has stopped moving and at the end of the movie where they show it moving again what instruments are they using to show these momentous events? According to the film, the inside of the earth is filled with various rock formations, huge diamonds and molten lava, not to mention intense heat, so what device(s) could sustain itself long enough to give back accurate readings?
Factual error: The Mariana's trench is not found in the South Pacific, but about 500 east of the Philippines,putting it in the centre closer to the north.
Factual error: When Dr. Keys is giving a lecture, he mentions that sound waves gain wavelength and lose frequency as they enter a denser medium. That's not completely true. Sound does gain wavelength, but frequency NEVER changes. It is velocity and wavelength which change to maintain the relationship velocity = frequency x wavelength. It is impossible for frequency (no. of waves per second) to change since that would mean waves get lost or created from nothing.
Continuity mistake: During the "landing" of the space shuttle, Hilary Swank sets the air brakes to full. The first exterior shot from the back shows the brakes still engaged, the second shot shows them retracted. There was no command to retract them, besides the crew is still trying to slow the shuttle down, so they should still be deployed.
Factual error: It is claimed that the Unobtanium shell doesn't conduct heat, but gets stronger from it. If it can't conduct heat, then how do they solder the thermocouple to it and obtain electricity? If the wall could conduct enough heat for the thermocouple then it would have had to have been hot enough to roast the two crew alive.
Factual error: When Eckart is decrypting data from Qualls using primes, the first number he enters is '1', which is not prime. [Some people have debated this, saying that as primes are any numbers not divisible by any number except themselves and 1, 1 must be prime. While it technically fits the description, 1 is generally considered NOT to be prime (http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/lists/small/1000.txt)].
Factual error: In a few shots through the movie the gauges or screens displaying information, they use "PPI" for pounds per sq. inch instead of PSI. PPI is wrong it's always PSI. The first time you see it is in the scene when they just launch the ship right before they pierce the crust with Braz and Serge for sure.
Suggested correction: They are measuring pounds per linear inch which is PPI.
Factual error: If you are in the military, you will note that all of service dresses worn by army and air force officers have their U.S. insignia pinned onto their collars incorrectly. The insignia is supposed to be pinned so that the letters are parallel to the ground, not parallel to the bottom collar. It's a complete myth that movie uniforms are frequently deliberately incorrect to avoid prosecution, so that's not a valid reason.
Plot hole: When they come up with the idea of setting off the 5 bombs separately, there is a computer screen showing a picture of the Earth and the shock waves starting and interfering with each other. Each shock wave starts off from a different point - they are separated by at least 2000 km. But when they are dropping the bombs, they manage to drop them all within 2 hours (judging by the timer that they set on the first bomb). How did they manage to travel 10000 km in 2 hours?
Audio problem: When the man in the car on the Golden Gate Bridge gets crushed, you can hear him screaming, but his reflection in the rear-view mirror shows that his mouth is closed.
Character mistake: When Rat is in the Cyber Cafe, just after he has pressed enter on his computer to send the file "unsung heroes.doc" over the Internet, the message "on it's way" appears on the computer screen, but the correct message would be "on its way."
Factual error: The view of the Earth at the end of the movie while the credits are rolling shows a sunrise line advancing in a direction that appears to be east south-east.
Continuity mistake: When they are going to go aboard the ship, it's raining, but they aren't wet.
Character mistake: When Zimsky talks about using DESTINI again, he says something like "a shock can stop a heart, and it can also restart it." That is a fundamentally false assumption that TV and movies get wrong all the time. Once a heart has actually stopped you can never shock it back. You can only shock a heart that is out of normal rhythm.
Suggested correction: The premise is the core, like a heart, is still beating. A shock destabilizes the rhythm of the heart, and without further help, the heart will stop beating. Destini did this to the core by sending a shock and destabilizing the core and without help, the core would stop spinning. A shock to a destabilized heart can shock and restart the heart back to normal rhythm. That is the theory of Destini restarting the core. At no point has the core or the heart fully stopped or flatlined.
Factual error: In the manic pigeon scene in Trafalgar Square, pigeons possess neither the mass or velocity to shatter most of the glass panes they are hitting and smashing.
Revealing mistake: The underground crystal chamber is completely encased in a cobalt shell, yet a light source has to come from somewhere to allow all the crystals to reflect in the dark. The light from the ship wouldn't have been enough to make them all reflect and the magma had not yet breached the ceiling.
Suggested correction: The lights are bright enough. Standard headlights and flashlights easily light a couple hundred meters. The ship had numerous lights so this is easily feasible. Once the magma breached, then you could see even more.
Suggested correction: They have handheld flashlights that can easily hit between 1000 to 2000 meters. The lights from the ship would have been more than powerful enough to cause the crystals to reflect light.
Factual error: When they land the space shuttle in the river canal, they are approaching too low, so the commander commands to retract the gear. That would be impossible, as the landing gear of a space shuttle is controlled only by gravity. The gear can't be raised again after being deployed.
Suggested correction: The landing gears can be hydraulically retracted, per NASA.
Citation needed. NASA's website says "The nose and main landing gear can be retracted only during ground operations".
They're literally on the ground, hence ground operations.
Revealing mistake: When the ship breaks the wall outside the geode chamber we see the rock reform and harden as soon as the ship is through, so how could the magma leak into the geode if that rock had already hardened?
Suggested correction: Because the ship had weakened that spot of the outer shell enough that the magma pressure eventually punched through.
