Corrected entry: How can the head that's been dead for 2,000 years or more explode with gelatinous goo? Everything would have long since dried up.
Corrected entry: By the end of the movie, the squid-like alien that was surgically removed from Elizabeth grows to a creature at least 10 times the size of the original. This happens inside of the lab where there is no organic matter present. Definitely against the law of conservation of mass.
Correction: This is consistent with the biology of the xenomorphs. In the first Alien movie, the xenomorph grew from chestburster to full size without eating any of the crew. It's possible that their physiology allows them to grow by absorbing air/water alone.
Corrected entry: During the presentation Holloway mentions Hawaii as one of the locations of the star maps. Hawaii was first populated around 650 AD, meaning the engineers decided to pay Earth a social visit over 600 years after deciding to destroy it, along with themselves being dead for over 600 years too. All the star maps are identical. Holloway also mentions that the civilizations were separated by centuries and had no contact with each other. It's impossible to argue the maps were drawn by humans.
Correction: I believe this entry is an error. First, Hawaii was populated as early as 300 AD (Kirch 1985; Athens 1997). Second, the people who populated did not just appear from no where, but came from other civilizations. Third, Hawaii Mythology also talks about a possible earlier race that was encountered. The assumptions that are made by the poster are not valid. There is rational evidence that contradicts it entirely.
Corrected entry: The giant humanoid alien, apparently the last of his kind, dies in the escape pod from the parasite alien breaking through his rib cage, However, in the 1979 Alien movie, which chronologically happens after Prometheus, it shows the crew of the Nostromo spaceship finding the humanoid sitting and appearing to take flight of his spaceship.
Correction: The Engineer's the last of his kind on LV-226, the planet they visit. There's no evidence to suggest that he's supposed to be the last of his kind anywhere in the universe - indeed, the movie ends with Shaw and David setting off to find the Engineer homeworld in an attempt to ask them why they now wish to destroy humanity, which seems a pretty clear indication that they actively expect to find more. Clearly this is not intended to be the same Engineer as is found on LV-426 during the events of Alien.
Corrected entry: Upon reentry, a crew member comments that the atmosphere is like "breathing through an exhaust pipe, CO2 is over 3%, two minutes without a suit and you're dead." However, human beings can live in an environment of over 5% CO2, with only mild discomfort in the 3% range.
Correction: They're just rattling off a list of details about the atmosphere, concluding with the fact that it will kill you. Its lethal toxicity is not to do with the CO2 levels.
"Not to do with the CO2 levels"? Read the quote. They're saying you'll die in minutes from exposure to 3% CO2. That would make mouth-to-mouth resuscitation an impossibility as we exhale about 4% CO2. Even if they meant carbon monoxide - ie. What comes out of an exhaust pipe - you'd still have have to be WELL over 3% concentration for it to be lethal within minutes.
The quote does say the atmosphere is over 3%, not at 3%. Could be 6%.
It's unlikely after saying 71% nitrogen and 21% oxygen that "over 3%" would mean double the amount. Over 3% would mean less than 4%. But I would like to know what studies shows humans surviving over 5% CO2 levels to see what the rest of the air is made up of.
Corrected entry: Shaw and Ford struggle to lift the engineer's helmet off the head asking David over claiming "it's too heavy to lift". Earlier in the movie, Shaw had no problems carrying the helmet, still with the head in it, in a bag, with one arm and still held on to it in the storm.
Correction: Shaw and Ford carried the head together, hanging straight down between them in a bag with handles. That's a far cry from reaching out across the table, reducing the lifting power of their arms by extending them, and single-handedly removing the helmet which has no readily apparent gripping points.
Corrected entry: To enter the central sector of the alien spaceship, David, the android, cleverly types some signal that causes the door to open. We see him climb a silver metallic ladder to reach the necessary keys to make this happen. Where did this ladder come from? The crew did not bring it, and it was not shown prior to David using it.
Corrected entry: Shaw found David's head and body in the same place that they'd fallen after the Engineer attacked him. But considering that the entire spaceship had just violently crashed, shouldn't the parts of his body been tossed all over the chamber?
Corrected entry: How did the Engineer get from the crashed ship to the lifeboat without a spacesuit and why didn't the "hull breach" cause oxygen to leak when the he tore into the lifeboat?
Correction: The Engineers most likely did not need a suit on that planet, as shown by the free roaming Engineer at the start of the movie. The engineer did not "tear" into the lifeboat. He entered through the door like humans do. Besides the rooms in the Lifeboat are sealed; so oxygen can flow even with any breach in another room.
Corrected entry: Near the end of the movie, after the two ships have crashed, Shaw is lowering David's remains from the crashed ship to the ground. Despite having her helmet on, her hair is blowing in the wind.
Correction: It is common practice in spacesuit design to blow fresh oxygen from the back of the helmet so that it flows down over the astronaut's face. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Life_Support_System.
Corrected entry: The Space Jockey/Engineer in the original ALIEN movie is almost three times the size of the Engineers in Prometheus.
Correction: We have zero idea of how much the Engineers grow as they age. Or if they have a caste system and the largest ones are created to be workers or soldiers. There are too many plausible reasons for the size difference to be a mistake.
Corrected entry: The attack by the mutated Fifield on the ship was deleted from the theatrical edit. This has led to an unknown fate to one of the extras: When Shaw meets Weyland for the first time, he is accompanied by 2 mercenaries. But only one mercenary accompanies Weyland to the engineer, leaving the second mercenary behind. He would have been on the ship until the end, and the captain never gave an order to abandon ship.
Corrected entry: The geologist and the biologist leave the group to return to the ship after finding the dead engineer. We are later shown that neither of them ever left the alien facility. But when the others leave the facility, Holloway says "Damn it, they've already taken off", implying that a vehicle is missing, considering that he didn't make this assumption until seeing the vehicles. But we can see that there are no vehicles missing, nor is there any indication that either the geologist or the biologist had ever left. Holloway's dialogue doesn't make any sense.
Correction: There is no indications that Holloway is basing that comment on the fact that a vehicle is missing. The ship is close enough for a walk, and thus it is not unreasonable to assume that since they are not waiting by the vehicles, they must have walked back to the ship.
Corrected entry: When Shaw programs the AutoMed for an abdominal surgery to remove a "foreign body" the machine proceeds to perform a Caesarian section. Since it was calibrated only for male surgery, the entire female reproductive system would have been considered a "foreign body", and the machine would have performed a hysterectomy.
Correction: The machine was 'calibrated' to perform designated operations on male patients only, which didn't include a Caesarian section. However, Shaw put the machine into manual override [with a lot of button-pressing] and specifically told it to remove a 'foreign body'. One may reasonably assume that the machine was capable of detecting non-human DNA and therefore had the capability of identifying and removing it, regardless of the physiology of the patient.
Corrected entry: Shaw finds Holloway's ring and puts it on her ring finger - a perfect fit, despite the fact that she's a really-petite 5'4" woman and her boyfriend's a well-built 5'11.
Correction: I'm 6', my mother is 5'3. My ring finger while substantially longer is of about the same circumference, ring size is not necessarily related to height and build.
Corrected entry: The spaceship travels approximately 14.5 times faster than the speed of light [the absolute maximum speed possible in universe]. You find that by dividing the distance to earth [3.27*10^17m] by the time they needed to arrive there [two years, four months, 18 days, 36 hours and 15 minutes], which is mentioned by David five minutes after the distance shows up.
Correction: First off, it's 3.27 x 10^14 km. And it's a science-fiction film set in the future, a genre well known for fictional technologies that enable FTL travel.
Corrected entry: When the Prometheus collides with the departing spaceship, the close up of the impact shows devastating damage which results in a massive explosion and fireball as seen from the ground. However as the spaceship falls to earth there is no sign of any damage from the collision or explosion in the area where the Prometheus hit the ship.
Correction: I think the director's intention in showing almost no impact damage on the alien ship is to show that the construction and technology of the Engineers is far more advanced than the Human advancements. The Engineers have such an advanced technology that their constructions are far more superior than ours, and it might also be due to the fact that the Engineers' ships are made of an element that cannot be found on Earth, an element that is virtually indestructible. This is only my interpretation.
Ramming the Prometheus into the alien ship caused enough damage to disable the ship and send it crashing back down to the planet. If the implication is supposed to be the alien ship is so advanced it doesn't take damage, then it makes no sense that it crashes.
Corrected entry: Because of constant motion of the stars in a galaxy is visible, constellations change their shape over the time. But all old civilizations' star maps and future maps are the same in the movie, even they are separated from each other by several (tens of) thousands of years. It is impossible to get any useful data from carbon dating like they do when they examine the first "engineer" body. For carbon dating, you need to know the exact mixture of carbon isotopes and changes in it in the atmosphere of the planet for about 20,000 years. Because there are many vectors in the air that change carbon isotopes ratio over time, you cannot use only the present data for any accurate dating. On Earth, the old data is taken from air bubbles trapped in glaciers. Carbon dating is also correct only if the "engineers" ate food that was grown in that planet's original atmosphere. Even now, many Earth greenhouses add extra carbon dioxide gas for quicker plant growth. Depending of the origin of the gas (nowadays wood or oil that is millions of years), it makes carbon dating in the technological era civilization (especially in the space-faring era) totally useless.
Correction: Carbon dating has absolutely nothing to do with atmospheric carbon in any form, neither carbon dioxide nor any other organic volatile gasses which are fractionally present in the "air". Carbon dating relies on the differences in the ratio of elemental carbon isotopes, specifically carbon12 and carbon14 which is radioactive and decays over time. By comparing a sample of known age's ratios to those of an unknown and using the fixed, constant decay rate of carbon14 the age of the unknown can be determined. Organic carbon in living items is "fixed" when and organism like a tree dies or when an animal metabolizes the carbon it consumes, carbon dioxide is not consumed or metabolized by the body but expelled by the body as waste.
Corrected entry: One of the smart-ass crew members says Shaw's theory of alien engineers only makes sense if you ignore three centuries of Darwinism. The movie is set in 2093, so 3 centuries before would be 1793, about 100 years before Darwin's theories of natural selection took hold.
Correction: On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 and the genesis of Darwin's theory dates back into the 1830s. This is still not a full three centuries prior to the events of the film, true, but it's far closer than the hundred years out that you claim. For an off-the-cuff remark, "three centuries" is an acceptable rounded figure.
Corrected entry: Temp when the ship is on the surface is listed for the atmosphere as 2.724 K which is -454.7628 F. How in the world do all those clouds and presumably flowing water exist with the rest of the atmosphere stated as 72% N, 21% O, and traces of Argon if it's that cold?
Correction: Those clouds don't have to be made of water vapor; they could be dust or some other gas condensing in the extreme cold. Since the water is only "presumably flowing" and not "absolutely flowing", that observation is irrelevant.
Correction: You are talking about a very ancient and biologically advanced species in who knows what kind of environment. You can't know what their physiology is and what would dry up or not.
lionhead
Actually, after the room was open and was explored for a bit, Shaw notices that material inside the room started to actively degrade. This implies that something in the sealed room preserved the head until the door was opened.