Take This Class! Sci-Fi vs. Sci Fact

In the famous “chestburster” scene from the 1979 movie “Alien,” an ordinary dinner on the spaceship Nostromo is rudely interrupted when one of the crew, Kane, suffers some thoracic distress. He chokes, seizes and screams before we see what’s really going on with him: Blood spurts from his chest, and then a wormlike creature, baring a terrifying set of teeth, explodes through the poor guy’s chest and scampers off to start its reign of terror throughout the Nostromo.

But, that’s all just made up—right?

Don’t be so sure.

In “The Science and Fiction of Planetary Systems,” students use science fiction films, television shows and books to learn about the realities of planetary systems. How do planets form? How do they acquire heat? Could anything depicted in “Star Wars” actually happen?

“The idea behind the class is to allow students to explore the possibilities of what the universe can be,” said Marvin Jones, the lecturer in the astronomy department who teaches the class. “It gives them the chance to put together math, physics, biology, chemistry, even some philosophy and the bridge of science fiction to create their own planetary systems and life forms in a very scientific manner.”

To put the “Alien” scene in scientific perspective, Jones recently showed a clip from a National Geographic documentary called “Body Invaders.” (Warning: grossness described ahead.) In it, a parasitic wasp has infiltrated a caterpillar and laid eggs inside its squishy body. The larvae, each the size of a grain of rice, have been living off the caterpillar’s blood and are now ready to grow beyond its corporeal confines. “To complete the next stage of their life cycle, they must break out,” the narrator says, and break out they do, using their tiny, saw-like teeth to cut their way through the caterpillar’s layers of skin. Eventually, their little yellow bodies burst through, wriggling and fluttering as the caterpillar lies there, paralyzed—just like Kane in “Alien.”

Other movies discussed in the class include “Interstellar,” “The Martian” and the goofy “Galaxy Quest.” Some common tropes are debunked, like the idea that people could easily walk on any planet, or that a spaceship flying through an asteroid belt would have to zig-zag through a dense field of rock and metals. “Our asteroid belt is very loosely packed, so it’s easy to navigate through,” said Jones.

A lover of science fiction, especially the novels of Octavia Butler, Jones began teaching the class in 2024, two years after course developer Alan Peel, an instructor and director of College Park Scholars’ Science, Discovery and the Universe Program, left the university. “I enjoy the ‘a-ha’ moments students have when they start to realize that a lot of the things they know about the universe are very limited, and where they question everything about science fiction,” Jones said.

The “a-ha” moments come regardless of academic background. Alyssa Shen Filerman ’26, a double major in sociology and human development, said that she’s loved previous science classes, but hasn’t spent much time on the subject since high school. Jones and teaching assistant and astronomy Ph.D. candidate Jordan Ealy “have spent so much time with me helping me understand what’s going on, and that has made the hugest difference in this experience,” she said. “They’ve done so much to make the class accessible to more people.”

For their final project, students work in groups to design their own planetary system based on a real star of their choosing. Sylph Illaeoko’s group chose Epsilon Eridani, located about 10.5 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus. “Our star is somewhere between 200 to 800 million years old—not all that old in the grand scheme of things,” said Illaeoko ’25, a mechanical engineering major. “We’re not going to have intelligent life.”

Some students say the course has had an impact on how they’ll consume media from now on. “I was watching ‘The Avengers’ and something happened, and I was like, ‘That would not actually be possible,’” said Shen Filerman. “It’s funny to go back and watch all these sci-fi movies that I loved and say, ‘Oh, this super couldn’t happen in real life.’”