After digging out from underneath the Snowpocalypse this past weekend, we finally were able to make good on our promise to see Avatar. To put it mildly, we were not disappointed. The film managed to capture a truly different world, its inhabitants and its flora and fauna… flawlessly. From astounding examples of bioluminescence to the careful detail paid to Pandora’s animal life, we were blown away. (A word of advice… see it in 3-D if you can)

Now, Popular Mechanics beat us to the punch in analyzing the science behind Avatar: the exoskeletal war machines; alpha centauri; antimatter propulsion; and even the plausibility of linking one’s consciousness to a biological being. And these science experts are absolutely right on these fronts. However, we do have a few lingering questions which popped up during the movie…

Connectivity: Beyond the fact that we are nowhere near understanding how to integrate consciousness into a foreign biological body, we here take issue with the mechanics behind this amazing connection everyone is able to maintain with their respective Avatar. For example, at one point in the film, the main character is lost on Pandora in his avatar. The embedded military conducts a widespread search for him, but cannot locate him. NONE THE LESS… his connection with his avatar remains unbroken. Umm… what?! No GPS? No signal tracking? Speaking of which, how in the heck does the signal even reach through jungle and swamp all over the moon of Pandora? The energy output on a transmitter would have to be unimaginable. And how about the avatars themselves? Do their biomechanical energies (as mentioned in the movie) power the receiver? This is probably the weakest scientific point, and is never really addressed in the film.

Geology: On the moon of Pandora, we find floating mountains (the Hallelujah Mountains) and a new mineral referred to as unobtainium (yes, we think they phoned that one in too). Pandora has less gravity on it, and it orbits a massive gas giant, similar to Jupiter. But how exactly would either of these factors allow huge stone mountains to float in mid-air? If the gravity of a nearby gas giant is enough to pull mountains aloft, wouldn’t it just pull the whole kit n’ kaboodle (aka: Pandora) along with it? As for the unobtainium mineral deposits and their energy potential, we’ve decided to let James Cameron have a free pass on that, because the movie was so damn good in general. We’ll assume for now that this was just “creative license”.

Disease: We all know that nature abhors a vacuum. We also know that close contact between any two living beings will result in bacterial/viral exchange. So how is it that all of Pandora’s creatures we were introduced to, have these organic “plugs” hot-wired to their central nervous system which allow them to download or upload the consciousness of others… yet there is no worry about disease? To me, that’s tantamount to french kissing a komodo dragon on the lips and expecting you’ll be juuust fine. Are there no viruses or bacteria on Pandora? With such a diverse array of flora and fauna, one would assume that somewhere along the evolutionary tree, a virus or two evolved, no?

What do you think? Did we miss something in Avatar? Did you see something that didn’t quite meet the high bar of scientific accuracy James Cameron set for the film? We would love to hear about it. Email us, tweet us or let us know in the comments below!