6 ms·

On the Science of Interstellar

56 points by ibrahimcesar 12y ago

chulk90 12y ago
If you're on the fence of reading it, I'd say read it. He really put it nicely in laymen terms.
noobermin 12y ago
I had no idea Kip Thorne was a producer for this. For non-physicists, Thorne is one of the authors of _the_ general relativity book for graduates, _Gravitation_ [1]. It's this huge telephone book sized tome that was published in 1973, and while it has fallen behind the times with respect to experimental data included in it, it is still unparallelled in scope and depth today in covering Einstein's theory. I certainly enjoyed the movie, and I really loved the visualizations of a wormhole and of the large spinning black hole, things you usually have to imagine as a physicist without ever seeing with your eyes. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Series-Charles-Misner/dp/0716703440 http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Series-Charles-Mis...
metaphorm 12y ago
pretty cool to see some of the math of this spelled out. I appreciate the effort the author has put into this. unfortunately, my issues with Interstellar have very little to do with whether or not the black hole was portrayed realistically. edit: why was I downvoted? for saying I didn't like the movie? come on guys.
- Frafrared 12y ago
  Care to share your criticism of the movie? I really enjoyed it compared to the usual superhero sequel
  - metaphorm 12y ago
    sure. I didn't elaborate in my first post because its slightly off topic considering the article posted is about the science of the movie rather than the writing of the story. that's where my problem is. I think its a kind of poorly written story. hollow characters, implausible social explanations, and a bit too much deus ex machina. I understand that the deus ex machina elements of the story are at least partially explained by the conclusion, but they are also largely unexplained and creates a premise that we are forced to accept on faith. that harms my suspension of disbelief.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - SkyMarshal 12y ago
    Overall I'd say it was worth seeing, especially on big screen, the effects were great and the exploration of relativistic time dilation was generally really cool in a mass market movie, but there were a number of absurdities. SPOILERS: 1. Thousand foot high waves don't move across 2ft deep water without breaking. Also, lame camera tricks prevent the astronauts from simply scanning 360d and realizing there's a huge wave bearing down on them. Also, there was no reason whatsoever for Doyle to die on the water planet. 2. Too emo. Too much bawling and crying, too much emotional decision making, the actors weren't convincing as trained scientists or disciplined test pilots. The audience actually burst out laughing when Mann and Cooper got into the fight on the ice planet, and when Cooper just let Mann bash his helmet in a couple times instead of pulling away like normal person would. See 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff for how such people should be portrayed. Artistic integrity sacrificed for artful, faux emotional appeal, SOP for Hollywood these days. 3. When Mann crashed the shuttle into the mothership, then Cooper and Brand saved the mothership, one second it was over a planet, and not the first planet they visited that was really close to the black hole but the next one out. The next instant they were in danger of falling into the black hole. Months or years worth of distance traversed in seconds. 4. Cooper saved Brand by dropping both TARS and himself into the black hole, giving Brand on the mothership enough velocity/lack of mass/whatever to escape the black hole. The time dilation effects of him dropping into the black hole should have meant he and Brand diverged greatly in age, yet the end of the movie showed him taking off to go find her, same age. 5. The premise of the movie is that future, advanced, five-dimensional humanity was using its power over gravity, time, and higher dimensions to help humanity of the past survive the dying and 'Marsification' of the earth. But the paradox was never resolved - if humanity of the past couldn't survive on its own, how did it ever become humanity of the future? I suppose they did that on purpose to let the audience have fun debating it afterwards. There were a few others I can't remember atm, but you get the gist. Some of these, like #3, I suppose have to be done to cram the whole story into a 2hr45m movie (another cool thing about it - nice and long), but others were just annoyingly pointless. But again, overall it was good, worth watching, and having Kip Thorne co-produce helped a lot. Just don't expect perfection, even with his name in the credits.
    - NolF 12y ago
      1. It was a largely uniformly flat planet. It was only 2ft deep due to the tidal wave borrowing water ahead of it. See videos of Tsunamis doing the same thing 4. I thought this one was explained by the baseball scene at the end as the ball falls upwards when it crosses some sort of mid point. 5. You are thinking of time linearly moving forward, cause and effect. I think the library scene and their explanations of the 5th dimension aimed to explain that time is another dimension that can be altered. "Whatever can happen will happen".
  - geuis 12y ago
    I wrote up some thoughts right after seeing it Friday. I mixed up Mann and Edmund, but otherwise I think I summarized the problems well. http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_bad_parts_of_interstellar_spoilers/clwgrzb http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_b...
  - justifier 12y ago
    stunning, intense impactical for pith due recursion, any endorsement requires a full dialogue of caveats only able to discuss after you have seen it
cthalupa 12y ago
Fascinating read. I'm generally not too concerned with science being 100% accurate in my sci-fi movies, but to find that it is all grounded in real science - even the far out, funky, stuff of the last act - is pretty cool. I personally loved the movie, and the cinematography brought me back to the same feeling I had as a kid watching 2001 for the first time. I grew up completely enamored in space and all of the things in it, and some of the shots produced a very visceral reaction. Almost enough to make me regret that I didn't follow the oh so ubiquitous dream of trying to become an astronaut.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zeynalov 12y ago
Ok, this is very well written article explaning some problematic parts that people don't understand. But there is one more paradoxal point I didn't get it why and how the writers could not figure it out that, if a nation can't survive in itself and needs help from aliens (later cooper finds out that these aliens are actually us, who are already in 5 dimensional universe) to solve the equation for their existence and if people would die without help of outside, how could their descendens survive and then live in 5 dimensional world to save their ancestors?! This is pure paradox and not possible. And it's very well known that one can be in the future but can't go or change things in the past, even in 5 dimensional universe.
- austinz 12y ago
  This is a well-worn trope used in many science fiction works dealing with time travel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox
- TheCoreh 12y ago
  That is known as the bootstrap paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox). You could argue that the entire point of the movie is to highlight this specific paradox that can result from time travel. As with most time travel paradoxes, and pretty much anything related to time travel, it's not known exactly how things would work out in the real world.
- ewang1 12y ago
  Perhaps in some parallel universe the humans survived and figured out a way to travel between the different universes, and decide to cross over to help this universe survive.
- jfoutz 12y ago
  Murph figured the physics out by herself. Her father knew plan A was a pipe dream, and he did abandon her. She couldn't bear hating her father. The movie is her elaborate fantasy about her father telling her the answer. So elaborate, she hallucinated him on her deathbed. Her father never came back through the wormhole.
geuis 12y ago
Visual and practical effects were nicely done. Really liked the depiction of the Saturn colony at the end. It's a proposed style from the 60's that has never gotten a proper cinematic representation. The bad parts of the movie were mainly editing, non rational emotionalism (main characters making obviously bad choices for shallow emotional reasons), and a giant paradox. With editing, the drone scene was interesting but did nothing to advance the story. School scene was ok but too long. The entire "power of love" scene was just dumb. People in that situation would not act like that. The biggest problem was the paradox. Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Future humans must influence the past to save humanity. But there are no future humans in the first place since the Earth is dying. This is the biggest plot hole in the movie and it's the size of a black hole. Even slightly changing the story so that humans do survive, then are reaching back to make the survival process easier would be fine. Kind of a Redemption of Christopher Columbus type of story.
- baddox 12y ago
  I loved how these brilliant astronauts can't see how loving deceased people could possibly have social utility or could otherwise be explained without resorting to "love is supernatural magic." That is a particularly strong example of how bad the screenwriting is in this film.
TheCoreh 12y ago
How does one explain the frozen clouds? Are those actually possible? How do they remain afloat if they're more dense than the atmosphere?
- austinz 12y ago
  Apparently the clouds are not all that plausible, but they were left in because they were so visually impressive. http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/11/physicist-who-inspired-interstellar-spills-backstory-and-scene-makes-him http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/11/physicist-w...
justifier 12y ago
i'd love a binary where i can have complete control of the camera in these visualizations

56 points by ibrahimcesar 12y ago

If you're on the fence of reading it, I'd say read it. He really put it nicely in laymen terms.

I had no idea Kip Thorne was a producer for this. For non-physicists, Thorne is one of the authors of _the_ general relativity book for graduates, _Gravitation_ [1]. It's this huge telephone book sized tome that was published in 1973, and while it has fallen behind the times with respect to experimental data included in it, it is still unparallelled in scope and depth today in covering Einstein's theory. I certainly enjoyed the movie, and I really loved the visualizations of a wormhole and of the large spinning black hole, things you usually have to imagine as a physicist without ever seeing with your eyes. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Series-Charles-Misner/dp/0716703440 http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Series-Charles-Mis...

metaphorm 12y ago

pretty cool to see some of the math of this spelled out. I appreciate the effort the author has put into this. unfortunately, my issues with Interstellar have very little to do with whether or not the black hole was portrayed realistically. edit: why was I downvoted? for saying I didn't like the movie? come on guys.

Frafrared 12y ago
Care to share your criticism of the movie? I really enjoyed it compared to the usual superhero sequel
- metaphorm 12y ago
  sure. I didn't elaborate in my first post because its slightly off topic considering the article posted is about the science of the movie rather than the writing of the story. that's where my problem is. I think its a kind of poorly written story. hollow characters, implausible social explanations, and a bit too much deus ex machina. I understand that the deus ex machina elements of the story are at least partially explained by the conclusion, but they are also largely unexplained and creates a premise that we are forced to accept on faith. that harms my suspension of disbelief.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- SkyMarshal 12y ago
  Overall I'd say it was worth seeing, especially on big screen, the effects were great and the exploration of relativistic time dilation was generally really cool in a mass market movie, but there were a number of absurdities. SPOILERS: 1. Thousand foot high waves don't move across 2ft deep water without breaking. Also, lame camera tricks prevent the astronauts from simply scanning 360d and realizing there's a huge wave bearing down on them. Also, there was no reason whatsoever for Doyle to die on the water planet. 2. Too emo. Too much bawling and crying, too much emotional decision making, the actors weren't convincing as trained scientists or disciplined test pilots. The audience actually burst out laughing when Mann and Cooper got into the fight on the ice planet, and when Cooper just let Mann bash his helmet in a couple times instead of pulling away like normal person would. See 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff for how such people should be portrayed. Artistic integrity sacrificed for artful, faux emotional appeal, SOP for Hollywood these days. 3. When Mann crashed the shuttle into the mothership, then Cooper and Brand saved the mothership, one second it was over a planet, and not the first planet they visited that was really close to the black hole but the next one out. The next instant they were in danger of falling into the black hole. Months or years worth of distance traversed in seconds. 4. Cooper saved Brand by dropping both TARS and himself into the black hole, giving Brand on the mothership enough velocity/lack of mass/whatever to escape the black hole. The time dilation effects of him dropping into the black hole should have meant he and Brand diverged greatly in age, yet the end of the movie showed him taking off to go find her, same age. 5. The premise of the movie is that future, advanced, five-dimensional humanity was using its power over gravity, time, and higher dimensions to help humanity of the past survive the dying and 'Marsification' of the earth. But the paradox was never resolved - if humanity of the past couldn't survive on its own, how did it ever become humanity of the future? I suppose they did that on purpose to let the audience have fun debating it afterwards. There were a few others I can't remember atm, but you get the gist. Some of these, like #3, I suppose have to be done to cram the whole story into a 2hr45m movie (another cool thing about it - nice and long), but others were just annoyingly pointless. But again, overall it was good, worth watching, and having Kip Thorne co-produce helped a lot. Just don't expect perfection, even with his name in the credits.
  - NolF 12y ago
    1. It was a largely uniformly flat planet. It was only 2ft deep due to the tidal wave borrowing water ahead of it. See videos of Tsunamis doing the same thing 4. I thought this one was explained by the baseball scene at the end as the ball falls upwards when it crosses some sort of mid point. 5. You are thinking of time linearly moving forward, cause and effect. I think the library scene and their explanations of the 5th dimension aimed to explain that time is another dimension that can be altered. "Whatever can happen will happen".
- geuis 12y ago
  I wrote up some thoughts right after seeing it Friday. I mixed up Mann and Edmund, but otherwise I think I summarized the problems well. http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_bad_parts_of_interstellar_spoilers/clwgrzb http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_b...
- justifier 12y ago
  stunning, intense impactical for pith due recursion, any endorsement requires a full dialogue of caveats only able to discuss after you have seen it

cthalupa 12y ago

Fascinating read. I'm generally not too concerned with science being 100% accurate in my sci-fi movies, but to find that it is all grounded in real science - even the far out, funky, stuff of the last act - is pretty cool. I personally loved the movie, and the cinematography brought me back to the same feeling I had as a kid watching 2001 for the first time. I grew up completely enamored in space and all of the things in it, and some of the shots produced a very visceral reaction. Almost enough to make me regret that I didn't follow the oh so ubiquitous dream of trying to become an astronaut.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

zeynalov 12y ago

Ok, this is very well written article explaning some problematic parts that people don't understand. But there is one more paradoxal point I didn't get it why and how the writers could not figure it out that, if a nation can't survive in itself and needs help from aliens (later cooper finds out that these aliens are actually us, who are already in 5 dimensional universe) to solve the equation for their existence and if people would die without help of outside, how could their descendens survive and then live in 5 dimensional world to save their ancestors?! This is pure paradox and not possible. And it's very well known that one can be in the future but can't go or change things in the past, even in 5 dimensional universe.

austinz 12y ago
This is a well-worn trope used in many science fiction works dealing with time travel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox
TheCoreh 12y ago
That is known as the bootstrap paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrap_paradox). You could argue that the entire point of the movie is to highlight this specific paradox that can result from time travel. As with most time travel paradoxes, and pretty much anything related to time travel, it's not known exactly how things would work out in the real world.
ewang1 12y ago
Perhaps in some parallel universe the humans survived and figured out a way to travel between the different universes, and decide to cross over to help this universe survive.
jfoutz 12y ago
Murph figured the physics out by herself. Her father knew plan A was a pipe dream, and he did abandon her. She couldn't bear hating her father. The movie is her elaborate fantasy about her father telling her the answer. So elaborate, she hallucinated him on her deathbed. Her father never came back through the wormhole.

geuis 12y ago

Visual and practical effects were nicely done. Really liked the depiction of the Saturn colony at the end. It's a proposed style from the 60's that has never gotten a proper cinematic representation. The bad parts of the movie were mainly editing, non rational emotionalism (main characters making obviously bad choices for shallow emotional reasons), and a giant paradox. With editing, the drone scene was interesting but did nothing to advance the story. School scene was ok but too long. The entire "power of love" scene was just dumb. People in that situation would not act like that. The biggest problem was the paradox. Earth is becoming uninhabitable. Future humans must influence the past to save humanity. But there are no future humans in the first place since the Earth is dying. This is the biggest plot hole in the movie and it's the size of a black hole. Even slightly changing the story so that humans do survive, then are reaching back to make the survival process easier would be fine. Kind of a Redemption of Christopher Columbus type of story.

baddox 12y ago
I loved how these brilliant astronauts can't see how loving deceased people could possibly have social utility or could otherwise be explained without resorting to "love is supernatural magic." That is a particularly strong example of how bad the screenwriting is in this film.

TheCoreh 12y ago

How does one explain the frozen clouds? Are those actually possible? How do they remain afloat if they're more dense than the atmosphere?

austinz 12y ago
Apparently the clouds are not all that plausible, but they were left in because they were so visually impressive. http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/11/physicist-who-inspired-interstellar-spills-backstory-and-scene-makes-him http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/11/physicist-w...

justifier 12y ago

i'd love a binary where i can have complete control of the camera in these visualizations