Ok, I harp on this a lot. But that’s because I think it really, really matters. Here’s why.
Those who craft stories that get labelled Science Fiction have an obligation to make sure the science is defensible. Otherwise, at best it’s science fantasy — which *is* another genre of story telling and perfectly legitimate — or at worst it’s even just bad story telling. Science Fiction must adhere to known science, or be extrapolatable from known principles about How Things Work(1).
Take this image:
This comes from a game called Mass Effect, which, for a computer game, is delightfully heavy on story, with an almost plausible science fiction background. You wouldn’t get it published as a novel, because written science fiction has far higher standards, but this is probably the best sci-fi computer game to date. (Of course, others will have other opinions, but I’m speaking strictly as a science-fiction editor here — let’s pretend I know what I’m talking about, and just move on, ok?)
You can’t really see what the problem is in the above still, so look at this enlargement:
Mass Effect is a game that takes you to a couple dozen different star systems. This layout — a gas giant right next to the star — is a frequent arrangement among those solar systems, and, of course, utterly impossible. The star’s “solar wind” would have stripped off the atmosphere and other volatiles a long, long time ago. The writers / designers of Mass Effect clearly knew a lot about a lot including a lot of science, and this, too, they really should have known. It’s the most serious science flub in the game (there are others, of course — a story this complex, being told by the 100’s of people working on it, can not but have multiple flubs in it — that’s the state of the art for software and for the entertainment industry right now — by the way, the tightest stories, with the fewest holes are always written by a single person. Figure that one out…).
When a solar system forms, it “condenses” from a cloud of materials hanging around out in space. (From a previous super nova, and probably from a variety of other sources as well.) It is condensing under the accumulated gravity of all that mass coming within a certain radius of itself, forming a gravitational well. It probably takes a long time but all that stuff condenses, most densely at the center — the “bottom” of the gravity well — but will also have various “eddies” that are like calm places with in the chaotic cloud that therefore accumulate large amounts of material; the more they accumulate, the more they will accumulate as their own gravity wells get more powerful. That is, until the center “ignites” and becomes a star.
When the center reaches critical mass — literally — it ignites with atomic fusion — not fission — and begins making helium out of hydrogen — releasing really incredible amounts of energy in the process(2). All that energy starts radiating out from the center of this no longer condensing cloud. No longer condensing because now there is a solar wind, the energy and particles that are now radiating from this newly ignited star. This wind blows away things like planetary atmospheres, especially in those bodies close to the star, and what ever residual dust and gas hadn’t yet been claimed by the “nodes” which now begin their own complex processes of becoming planets. The pressure of this solar wind now counter-balances the pull of gravity within this used-to-be-a-cloud.
Balance of forces.
Why does Jupiter still have all that gaseous mass then? I mean, it’s huge, right? Because it’s far, far away from the Sun, and the solar wind is more diffused that far out. Jupiter was probably bigger before the Sun ignited and solar wind whipped away some of its mass, what Jupiter’s gravity was too weak to hold onto against that onslaught. Eventually the layers were stripped down to what the wind was now too weak to strip off against Jupiter’s gravity (and its own rather powerful magnetosphere, at what ever point that actually got going — see below).
The Universe and our planet — oh yes, our lovely planet — work like that. Combinations of forces that strike a balance. Often a very, very delicate balance. The slightest variation in the Sun’s output and we have problems.
Ok, why does Earth still have an atmosphere if all that solar wind is blowing hard enough to whip things right out of the solar system? Because of what’s called the magnetosphere. 
It a big magnetic field, partially produced because the Earth spins and has a molten core, and the interactions between this magnetic field and the oncoming solar wind creates a barrier that deflects most of the solar onslaught. Most, not all (and, of course, not the light — light is an interesting thing, spooky, really when you look at it closely — but that’s another tale).
Again, precarious balances. Any slight change in the magnetosphere and the planet would get roasted and lose its atmosphere. Life — at least as we know — would be impossible here.
Couldn’t a gas giant be near a star and be defended by a very large magnetosphere? I mean, Jupiter has a Mighty Magnetosphere, yes? Indeed, it does. But consider this: at the time the center ignited, under incredible pressure and heat into fusion and began its next phase of existence, the planets themselves were unlikely to be anything actually as yet resembling a planet. A lot of the “debris” would have to get cleared away or claimed by the various proto-planets before things could settle down enough for each of them to “raise shields” against the solar onslaught.
There’s a lot and a lot and a lot more that could be said here, but I think the point’s been made, except for why this matters.
Why is it that I truly wish that our(3) public education system made such things more obvious to more people? This is not not simply about a video game. These principles are vastly important in understanding nuclear power, climate change, why fusion research needs more funding, or even that the Sun is already a huge (and free) fusion reactor that simply needs to be properly tapped (i.e., solar power), or how an earthquake shifts the length of a day or why a block of ice the size of Pennsylvania breaking off from the Antarctic also can shift weather and the length of day, simply by the act of breaking off. (Hint: the Earth spins.) It matters in deciding who gets to make the top decisions and why that person should be extremely well educated. It matters also just in the little things we do in our homes every day.
It matters.
Delicate Balance between various forces (opposing or otherwise) is what makes life as we know it the way it is on this planet. Very delicate. Humans have upset a number of balances within Earth’s ecosystem. It’s doubtful there’s a whole lot of margin left there to keep things “as we know it.”
Another example is the very popular (i.e., successful) game Fallout 4. This is made by Bethesda (now owned by Microsoft, unfortunately — as sad a day as when Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney) and they normally do really good socially-valuable work. They sneakily introduce valuable concepts upon the players in most of their games. However, in Fallout 4 they made a very, very serious error: they have linked Fusion power with Nuclear Waste. In that game, the world is filled with nuclear waste, and it appears that all power generation was from Fusion. Those do not go together; Fission produces the nuclear waste, not fusion. The whole point of Fusion Generation is that it produces no such waste. It’s clean power, other than the heat generated — which is always the ultimate waste product, the one that there is not a darn thing we can ever do about except produce less of it.
As I say, Bethesda usually does extremely well on these matters. In this case, however, they planted a very serious piece of misinformation into the minds of millions of players of all ages. Sheesh…
I say again, Science Fiction and Those Who Write It have an obligation to use good, solid science while telling a story. Particularly Hollywood (by which I mean all makers of video entertainment, not just the staid and stodgy money barons of Hollywood, California, USA) needs to recognize this obligation, since movies and computer games are the only “science education” the majority of people will actually get. (Grade school “science class” for too many people was what you suffered through by tossing spit balls at the ceiling or unfastening the bra strap on the girl in front of you, right?)
Everything, every news cast, every entertainment, every ad that ends up in front of the masses is a Teaching. Everything, whether you mean it to be or not. But what are you teaching them?
What?
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(1) There are things that Hollywood does where I am actually grateful for the mistakes. Such as scribing a circle on glass and tapping it out from the same side. You can’t do that, it has to be the other side, which makes it an impossible way to break in, but there is no reason to educate would-be criminals, is there? Another one is shooting out the keypad to unlock a electronically locked door. Can’t possibly work, but again why educate the criminals who don’t already know that? Just sayin’
By the way, Science Fantasy still has to be internally consistent. If you’re going to make up rules, or new physics, or new engineering principals, stay consistent with those rules. In Sci-Fi for new rules, see James Blish’s Cities in Flight series, which is dependent on a previously unsuspected law of physics. The Lord of the Rings is thoroughly internally consistent, which is part of why it is such an enduring story. Star Trek flubbed badly when they attempted to explain how a matter transmitter works (that is, when they added the Heisenberg compensator to the transporter) because frankly it simply can not work. There is NO SCIENCE in the idea of a matter beam reassembling itself on a spot miles away, besides the problems of transmitting that matter beam through intervening atmosphere, clouds, buildings, etc… Simply impossible. Heisenberg Uncertainty is truly the least of the problems with the transporter. When you attempt to explain this stuff, you invariably ruin it. This is what Stephen King — in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre — calls the Hill House Rule (referring to the original The Haunting, not to the remake which, ironically, violated the Hill House Rule. Go figure…) Show it, but don’t try to explain it; always a mistake.
And why the heck would a control console on the bridge of a sophisticated star ship, a console attached to say, the computers that control engineering, explode when engineering takes a hit during a fire fight? No reason, none at all. Again, bad science, unbelievably bad engineering. Obviously just a bit of “action” aimed at an ignorant audience. Highly insulting, if you examine it closely. Just sayin’
(2) This is the idea behind the research into fusion power here on Earth. It’s non-nuclear, at least in the way meant by the media by “nuclear.” No atomic radiation, can’t explode in a mushroom cloud, no highly toxic garbage that will linger around for a half-life of 25,000 years, and so on. (By the way: Plutonium, which is what powers these nuclear reactors, doesn’t really occur in nature — did you know that? That is, it does occur in nature, but given its “short” half life — the time it takes half of a given mass of it to “decay” into something less dangerous) so in practical terms it all decayed long before Humans and Human Engineering came along. So we actually create plutonium, from other power sources (such as uranium, in what’s called a breeder reactor, and is normally used for creating weapons grade plutonium, with some diverted to civilian use). This is then used as a heat source to drive the steam turbines in a nuclear power plant. Yes, that’s what I said: steam turbines. Nuclear fuel is nothing but the single most dangerous and long lasting heat source Humans have yet invented. The nuclear power plant is just a steam turbine, ultimately, no magic science involved that actually turns “nuclear power” into energy. Just the same old mechanical power, same as wind or water or a work house from Charles Dickens’ time would give. Once the plutonium rods are “spent” they are still powerfully radioactive and now we have to store this debris for many times 25,000 years before it becomes even reasonably non-harmful to biological life. All Biological Life. Yeah… that’s a good idea, isn’t it?
One more thing: did you catch it? It takes energy to create plutonium; in fact more energy than you are going to get out of it, given the state of the art. How come to anti-nukers don’t discuss it from this angle?
Oh, and by the way, there are several tons of plutonium in our atmosphere now, which never existed before all that nuclear testing Humans did in the 40’s, 50’s and such. That stuff will linger for 1000’s of years. No idea what can possibly be done about that…
(3) By Our education system. I mean, Earth’s education system, not any one nation’s. Western Civilization (for want of a better term) has a totally crappy educational system, that mostly teaches our precious younglings that 1) learning is hard, and 2) “I’m not smart” which is a nasty thing to teach any one. All children are geniuses (ask any passing child psychologist — he/she’ll concur with only minor caveats, trust me) and learning is easy, until public education “re-educates” them). We learn to walk, for Pete’s sake. We master (sort of) the outrageously complex skill called language. How can we all (ALL) do that and yet end up believing that learning is hard? Preposterous.
(NOTE: there are some minority educational systems that actually work. Home schooling, some of the private schools, etc, which have the students college-ready by age 14 usually. In the above paragraph, I am picking specifically on the public education systems — which are just awful and even a crime against Humanity if you examine it closely enough.)