I get that they're trying to help people understand the science. I use fictional references all the time, but that's to make jokes about the awesome achievements, not to undermine and replace them with topically trending bullshit. We're building brand-new materials that have never existed before. We're mastering the fundamental structures of reality to invent things it couldn't. And the best professional communicators can say is, "Oh yeah, that fictional whining orphan had something like that!"
Even worse is how the Harry Pottering sets up ridiculous expectations. None of the "cloaking" materials developed so far could render a person fully invisible. When people find out that fact, they get disappointed. The fact that we can bend light in previously impossible ways becomes a let-down because people can't use it to sneak through rooms in a child-filled school.
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And we're going to have to ask you to step off the broomstick and come down to the station.
Researchers write about bending spacetime itself and headlines don't think it's interesting unless they also mention a warp drive. Even though that's impossible for the mechanism they're talking about. And wasn't even the point of warp drive in the fictional show. A huge part of Star Trek is that their technology wasn't hard-science-fiction. It was magic boxes to make sure Kirk met new people to punch or screw every week.
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"And the Universal Translator works because 45 minutes of shouting, 'WHAT?' is shit television, Chad."
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