Corrected entry: At the end of the film, when the comet hits, the tidal wave washes over New York City, smashing first into the Statue of Liberty, then Downtown and the World Trade Centre, then sweeping uptown, depositing Lady Liberty's head somewhere in Midtown. The only problem with this is the fact that Manhattan Island doesn't face East. It doesn't even face the South. It lies on an angle in a Northeast/Southwest direction, top to bottom (1:00 to 7:00 on a clock face). That means a wave that started in the middle of the Atlantic would have to take a pretty sharp right turn at Brooklyn (over 90 degrees) to travel uptown in a North-easterly direction.
Corrected entry: When they are launched into space and change over to the other space craft they are all wearing street clothes, and then in a scene when they are getting closer to the comet they are all wearing NASA shirts.
Correction: There's a 5 month gap.
Corrected entry: 2 days before impact, when the heroine has collected her mother's effects, she refuses to get in her father's car and hails a taxi. By that stage, surely there would be no taxis on the street and money would be worthless?
Correction: Money isn't worthless because the president had announced a price freeze. Also, given that the National Guard can't manage to convince people in Florida that they should leave when they KNOW a huricane is coming, it's not hard to believe that some D.C. cabbies have ignored the warnings and stayed to make a few extra bucks.
Corrected entry: The astronauts' communication with their loved ones was without delay, when in fact it should have been a couple of seconds.
Correction: Just like with the entry of the tidal wave taking 45 minutes to reach shore (with the correction being it would be too boring to wait the 45 minutes) it would be boring to have to sit through the seconds of delay as well.
Correction: It was said that the delay was because of the distance from Earth. When they say goodbye to their loved ones, they are much closer to Earth (only a few hours before impact), so there no longer is any (noticeable) delay on the line.
Corrected entry: When the Beiderman comet hits the Earth you can see from the audience's view that it stays about the same size from when it first enters Earth's atmosphere and when it hits the ground. This is not possible; the heat and pressure generated by the velocity of something as large as a comet slamming into the Earth's atmosphere is enough to even deteriorate rock and metal partially upon reentry, and Beiderman is a comet, meaning it is made mostly of ice, which melts much faster than an asteroid made of rock would. Realistically, even by conservative estimates, a great deal of the Beiderman comet would have been burned off or separated during its entry into the Earth's atmosphere, certainly enough to visibly reduce its size.
Correction: There is no evidence of this (the comet NOT changing size). We don't even see the comet itself at all upon entering Earth's atmosphere. It is seen burning up with a huge ashy trail/path. Clearly indicating that comet is undergoing significant "change."
Corrected entry: In one of his speeches, the President says that once the smaller comet hits the ocean, it will take the tidal wave about 45 minutes to reach the shore. But when Jenny and her father is standing on the beach, it only takes about half a minute from the time when the comet hits the water to the time where the wave reaches the beach.
Correction: The 45 minutes just isn't shown. The movie would've been incredibly boring if you had to wait through 45 minutes of water moving through open ocean.
Corrected entry: The missile barrage near the end of the movie happens about seven hours before the impact. ICBMs have flight times of no more than 45 minutes and can lift their normal payloads at most a few thousand miles from the Earth. There actually *was* a plan to divert an asteroid once but it would have involved putting a nuclear warhead on a Saturn 5, many times more powerful than any current missile. Fortunately the asteroid missed Earth by a million miles or so.
Correction: Once a missile has broken free of the earth's gravitational pull there is no longer any need for sustained propulsion as the missile will simply coast along.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, when Dr. Wolf is trying to open the mail server, we see that he's using a POP server. This is not possible; POP servers are for incoming mail only. Outgoing mail goes through SMTP servers.
Correction: Some mail servers require "POP before SMTP" in order to authenticate that the user is allowed to send email via that server. Once the user is authenticated via POP they are allowed to send email via SMTP.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the professional astronomer figures out that the comet will hit Earth, he tries twice to log on to email. The server is down both tries. He then gets panicky and makes a floppy of the data and addresses an envelope for mailing. Then gets himself killed while racing down the mountain to mail his package. This is stupidly wrong on several fronts. 1) A pro astronomer would be used to astronomical things happening very slowly. So he would not be in this big of a rush. 2)Being a pro, he would at least double check and probably quadruple check his data over more nights before running off to make the big announcement. 3) His first impulse was to email someone. Therefore he'd have to know enough about email to know that he could screw around with it all that night and into the next day and still have his data to whoever faster than FedEx and three days faster than US mail.
Correction: The submitter gives the reason for the mistake: "He then gets panicky.". People who are panicking will make faulty decisions, like rushing, not double checking data and not waiting for the e-mail to come back up. Yes, very bad decisions - but remains a character mistakes. As an astronomer he is trained to patiently watch the heavens, not deal with crisis situations.
Corrected entry: When the astronauts are getting ready to fly into the 'wolf' astroid, you can hear (and see) the time to impact being counted down. They stop verbally counting down, but if you continue to count you see that the nukes detonate over 15 seconds after they should have.
Corrected entry: Its impossible for the comet to hit earth during the day in the movie, the tail of a comet usually points away from the sun meaning the comet in the movie was headed toward the sun.
Correction: The tail would be pointing away from the sun no matter which direction the comet is going so that has no bearing on the situation. The movie never states whether the comet is going towards or away from the sun when it is projected to hit the planet.
Corrected entry: The Messiah uses its Orion drive to give itself a slight lead on the comet coming back to Earth (since it was already matched with the comet it would return to Earth anyway without firing its drive). Robert Duvall comes up with his last-ditch solution hours from impact, with the mood of the scene being that the astronauts are just now having to get used to the idea of laying down their lives when before Duvall's speech they thought they were going home in one piece (land a shuttle in Missouri and be helicoptered to the Ark caverns at the last minute? - or stay on the space station for 2 years, assuming it had been provisioned for this?). It is spelt out that they cannot get off the comet again because they have so little fuel left. This means their orbit is still very similar to that of the comet or they would not be able to navigate the vent. They are therefore approaching the Earth at unmanageable velocity and rather than assume a parking orbit they would either shoot right past the Earth or hit it at the same speed as the comet. They have been doomed for months without noticing (a different Orion burn when leaving the comet would put them on a slower orbit which would allow a safe approach to Earth long after the impact, or they could have a boost burn and a braking burn at opposite ends of the trip, but the latter would leave them with plenty of fuel).
Correction: This ignores the fact that the Earth moves in it's orbit. The powered ship could have been heading for the spot that the Earth would be in hours (or a day or a week) ahead of the spot where the comet would meet it on a course that would leave them enough fuel to properly slow down and land, i.e. they just had enough fuel to slow down. In order to destroy the comet, they had to use their "slowing-down" fuel to accelerate to the comet.
Corrected entry: Leo tells Sarah that if they get married she can go with him into the Ark. He then mentions that because he's the "famous Leo Beiderman" he can insist that the authorities let Sarah's family into the Ark too. If he's as "famous" as he says he is, couldn't he persuade the authorities to let in Sarah and her parents without having to get married?
Correction: The chances of persuading the authorities are much slimmer when he is not related in any way to Sarah's parents. With a marriage in place, they would technically be related (by law) and would be covered by the rules that said he could bring family with him to the Ark.
Corrected entry: When Jenny and her father are chatting in the rain this is occurring at the same time that the buses are collecting people ready for the Ark. Didn't the President say that there would be a curfew in place at this time? So how can she be out and her father driving around?
Correction: Who is going to enforce a curfew if the police have all hightailed it outta there?
Corrected entry: As happens in just about EVERY disaster movie, there is a scene where everybody is evacuating a major city, while one person is driving INTO the city, and they show the road leading out to be jam packed, while the main character is on an empty road. How idiotic do these people have to be to sit there in a huge traffic jam separated from a wide open unused road by just 15 feet of a grass median. Perhaps now is not the time to obey all traffic laws, don't you think?
Correction: Actually, the car coming into the city is driving on grass, not the road. When it shows the clogged traffic jam, there are cars leaving the city all over the road, the sides of the road, and the opposite lane, not just on the side of the highway that leads away from the city.
Corrected entry: In the part where the older mother is getting ready for her suicide by dressing up and putting on makeup she is wearing a one shouldered dress. In one cut the right shoulder is bare, and on the next her left one is bare. Or vice versa. Either way the dress is worn two different ways.
Correction: If you look at the first shot of the mother in the dress she is putting on makeup and it looks like she is looking in a mirror to do this. So the shot we see of her could be her reflection. Therefore in the next shot of her the dress seems to be the other way round even though it isn't.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the comet hits the ocean, there is a massive traffic jam just 5 miles from the beach. Since everyone has known about the comet for over a year, wouldn't they have headed away from the ocean a few days/weeks/months earlier?
Correction: There was only reason to move away from the ocean after the President announced, quite close to impact time, that the smaller portion of the comet would cause tidal waves. Before, with the comet as a whole, it wouldn't have mattered how close you were to the coast.
Correction: There still was the plan with the missiles, so many people probably were hoping that would do the trick. The message from the president that the missiles had failed was only several hours before the impact.
Corrected entry: Sara's dad put the key for the motorcycle in the jar 3rd to the right. When Leo "steals" the motorcycle he finds the key in the jar 4th to the right.
Correction: Perhaps the last jar was cut out of the video version, but in the widescreen version you can see him put it in the 4th jar.
Corrected entry: When the Messiah mission withdraws from the Comet to remote-detonate its nukes, the implication is that the nukes must be let off NOW to have any chance of success, and the Messiah is thus caught in the blast and damaged, conveniently putting it out of communication with Earth for the duration of its journey home. They are months away from impact and there would be time to fire up the main drive and make the return burn before detonating the nukes, thus putting a safe distance between themselves and the blast. The only argument against this is that if the attempt failed they might go back to the comet with the remaining nukes for a second try - this is never suggested, so why not get out of there?
Correction: Actually, the reason they have to leave the comet is because of a very low fuel tank. They only had enough to get to the comet, land, get off and get back. If they were to land on it a second time they wouldn't had enough fuel to return home, and most of us would remember the scene where they decide to sacrifice themselves? They didn't plan a second launch until the suicide launch.
Correction: It may be that they had to be within a certain range in order to send the signal to the detonators.
Corrected entry: At the end of the film, when Tea Leoni's character and someone are standing on the beach, waiting for the tidal wave to come, the tidal wave seems to make a miraculous stop, right before the beach, where as in reality, tidal waves go so fast, that once you've seen it, it has already hit.
Correction: Just as regular wind waves do, tsunami slow down in shallow water while also gaining height (just as Morgan Freeman explains).
Correction: The comet hit south of New York near North Carolina...the wave would in fact move northward into New York like it was pictured.