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Kip Thorne: The science of Interstellar

134 points by tonteldoos 12y ago

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chton 12y ago
Surely Kip Thorne himself has to realize that he's grasping at straws. A lot of the things he mentions are of the type "in this precise, extremely rare situation it is possible, if we ignore all the other side effects". For example, I'm sure his calculations will be correct regarding the planet orbiting a black hole close enough for relativistic effects. What it also means is that the planet would pass through the extremely hot accretion disk twice every orbit, killing everything and evaporating all the water. And considering the speed that a stable orbit would require, that would be a very common occurrence. The point is: don't claim that you're scientifically accurate. Usually, a good sci-fi movie will set up rules for itself, and follow those rules appropriately. If you make your ruleset "real world physics", you have to be extremely accurate if you still want to make it believable. The rules set up expectations, and breaking your own rules is an instant turn-off for science fiction fans. The movie shows other cases where it doesn't follow its own rules: they have spaceplanes that can get to orbit from a planet with 1.8 times earth gravity, but not from earth without huge boosters? For the record: I like Interstellar a lot. It was a great film, and I'll definitely be buying it when it comes out on DVD. I just have my gripes with the lofty claims of accuracy that Hollywood films so love to make.
- gglon 12y ago
  The movie shows other cases where it doesn't follow its own rules: they have spaceplanes that can get to orbit from a planet with 1.8 times earth gravity, but not from earth without huge boosters? Normal fuel is just less expensive.
  - chton 12y ago
    That's a possibility, but the special fuel they have would have to have been extremely expensive then. That would have been a fine explanation, and if they had mentioned it in the movie that would be one less point I could make. But here's another one: They set up this nice system with pings to know what planets might be suitable, but they can't detect when a ping is being repeated instead of actually sent by a person? They couldn't put a timestamp in it, or some minor variation? They couldn't figure out that it's impossible to receive a ping every hour if the relativistic effects mean an hour takes 7 years? There are other issues like this, I'm sure I could come up with a load more if I had the time :)
    - xxxyy 12y ago
      Ping issues were especially bugging me. Take those pings from the relativistic planet. First it is believed that the person has been sending data for many years, yet only after landing do they recall relativistic effects, and that in fact that person has spend only a couple of hours at the surface.
    - gglon 12y ago
      But they could. That is exactly why they did know about nice atmosphere and water on the planet, but didn't know about the waves since the first wave that killed first astronaut happened during the landing. They also left one of the team member to do gravitation research and planned to spend as little time as possible on the planet.
      - chton 12y ago
        Yes, they knew about the relativistic effects. And they could obviously send some data. But somehow they can't figure out that they've been getting a repeat of the same ping for the last 10 years? And even if they couldn't figure that out, how could the person on the planet possibly send a ping every year, if she only spent an hour and half on it according to her frame of reference?
        gglon 12y ago
        I don't remember how many pings they received in the movie. I've understood that they had received just one ping from that planet.
- xxxyy 12y ago
  I believe it is possible to set the rules at the real physics level, take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example. But not if you are forced by Hollywood producers to put all the little pieces that follow inner feelings of the masses. This is what I believe happened to Matrix movies, progressively keeping worse and worse grip on their own rules.
  - chton 12y ago
    Absolutely, it is possible to claim accuracy, but then you have the hard task of making that actually true. 2001 was better because of that accuracy, but for many movies it's not a good way of doing it. Interstellar could have worked with complete scientific accuracy, or they could simply not have claimed that it was scientific. Either would have been fine. I agree on the Matrix movies, but they had much more of a free pass already, because the core concepts are so flexible.
  - nilkn 12y ago
    To be fair, though, 2001: A Space Odyssey didn't explore nearly as many exotic phenomena as Interstellar did. It was a lot easier for that movie to remain mostly accurate.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      2001 explored some pretty darn exotic phenomena, it just didn't both to try to explain them scientifically.
      - nilkn 12y ago
        Admittedly it's been some time since I watched the full movie, but I don't recall anything in it, other than the highly abstract ending, that would be considered exotic by today's standards. Maybe they were exotic at the time, but they were still quite well understood at the time of the film's production, whereas the interactions near the singularity of a black hole, say, are very much not understood even at the present day. Did you have some specific examples in mind? I still feel as though 2001, excluding its ending, stayed much further away from speculative topics of theoretical physics than did Interstellar (which in fact has explicit references, in its dialogue, to "the bulk" -- a term from brane cosmology; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology).
- harshreality 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I don't understand why Kip Thorne is so desperate to declare that the movie doesn't violate known physics, when it clearly does, just not in the areas he's most concerned with. Planetary dynamics, propulsion systems... but as long as there aren't Na'vi or dragons on the planets, I suppose they consider it realistic enough. On second thought, Na'vi or dragons might be more realistic than some of what's shown. FTL travel is "possible" too, if quantum gravity provides some loophole for violating GR on scales where GR is currently assumed. It seems like there's a reasonable basis for excluding it from the plot without declaring it impossible: if Earth technology was that advanced, they wouldn't need to travel to Gargantua's system. I think Nolan's insistence on the extreme time dilation for the first planet in the plot is a mistake, because if they thought about what time dilation would mean for the readings sent back, they never would have investigated that risky planet first. What's great about Interstellar, though, is that it gets viewers talking and thinking about physics. On that point, it's far better than Gravity.
  - vacri 12y ago
    The point of the time dilation is 'plot'. It's to age the daughter to a point where she's now a prominent scientist and can interpret the main character's weird sendings, while not being dismissed as a weird kid. In terms of the literal events of the film, it's the last planet they should have visited, given the urgency they have to find a place for the people back home - a few months round trip to come back and check it is only a few months back home, but a couple of hours at the known 'time dilation' is decades back home. Doesn't make internal sense... except for 'plot'.
    - harshreality 12y ago
      I understand that time dilation was necessary for the plot. They should have found another way to age the crew, though, that didn't violate common sense. The crew knew about the time dilation before deciding to try that first planet. They should have realized the data they were getting was only about an hour old. Didn't they say something about not getting any communication from the scientist, just automated transmission of probe data? Only an hour's worth of data and no communication from the scientist should have easily put that planet in the last resort category.
- vacri 12y ago
  I liked Intersteller a lot as well, but its plot was horribly contrived in places and the science isn't as good as it was purported to be - even moreso if you include the behaviour of the scientists involved :). The science was certainly better than most other serious sci-fi films though. The real problem with the film is the needlessly long hour of character establishment. (SPOILER) Rather interestingly, I've seen very little discussion about the christ story in the film - the 33-year-old man, who is also the 'father', who is also the 'ghost'; who disappears presumed dead, only to return; who has the only information that can save humanity (the 'quantum data') and also sacrificed himself to save humanity; and who was helped along by 12 others - one being the questionable [Dr] Man[n] who is weak of spirit. There's a few more other parallels, but the gist is there.
  - hessenwolf 12y ago
    My wife, ordinarily interested in more economic, financial, and fashion-related literature, has been gorging on tesseracts since the movie. She'll adore this. Thank you for the brownie points.
  - cryoshon 12y ago
    Very interesting observations about the christ story, I didn't pick up on any of them.
  - lobster_johnson 12y ago
    Not to mention the use of organ music — easily reminiscent of Christian hymns — in Hans Zimmer's soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5m5GXF9Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5m5GXF9Ec. The parallels between "quantum data" and the Logos of Gnostic Christianity are also apparent.
- nilkn 12y ago
  I think Thorne is approaching this from a different perspective than you are. Thorne is aiming this at people who've never even heard of time dilation. He's aiming this at people who, when they hear about the time dilation on Miller's planet due to its presence in a gravitational field, will say that this is all just made up for the plot, having no idea that this has been known since Einstein's general theory was published nearly 100 years ago in 1915. I also think that the writing of the movie consisted of the following process: - Nolan proposes something completely outlandish. - Thorne explains why it won't work. - Nolan says it's "non-negotiable" for plot purposes. - Thorne insists it's not possible. - Nolan says to make it possible. - Thorne either figures out a set of exotic circumstances in which it's possible (e.g., a time dilation factor of 1 hour = 7 years), or continues to insist that it's just too far fetched (astronauts traveling faster than light -- something that Nolan originally had told Thorne was non-negotiable but eventually agreed to scrap). Overall, I think this quote from Thorne really sums up the goal behind the movie's science: > To a great extent, my motivation here was to try to use the movie as a lure to get people who might otherwise not have much interest in science curious about it, by exposing them to strange, exotic phenomena like wormholes. The film is the bait, and the book is the hook I want to use to draw them in even further, to get them to dig in and learn something new. If they are young, maybe they will consider careers in science rather than in finance or law. If they are older, I still think it’s tremendously important that larger fractions of our citizenry possess enough understanding of science to appreciate its powers and its limitations. It reminds me of something Feynman said before he delivered his famous lectures at Caltech. The students there at the time were getting bored with the curriculum, and Feynman had observed that it's because none of the new and exciting ideas of modern physics were being presented to them. So he designed his lectures to cover relativity and quantum mechanics, even if it meant leaving out a lot of details to fit it into an undergraduate level. I feel like Thorne and Nolan wanted to present a few of the more exciting ideas of modern physics to viewers who otherwise might think they're made up, and when they insist the science is realistic, that's the perspective they're coming from.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  I am actually just happy that they are making movies involving space exploration. We really need to bring back space exploration into the minds of the public so we can get support for awesome missions in the future.
- delinka 12y ago
  "in this precise, extremely rare situation it is possible, if we ignore all the other side effects" Isn't that storytelling? The impossibly ridiculous plot works only when all the pieces fall exactly as the author wants. Depending on your point of view, all the circumstances that brought intelligent beings into existence on our planet are themselves an extremely rare situation.
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ThePhysicist 12y ago
Accuracy aside, from a scientific point of view Interstellar was one of the most interesting movies in a long time, and it really made me think about Physics a lot again. It's really cool to see how much you can actually learn about the universe of Interstellar by making use of some Physics knowledge and the information given to you in the movie. An example: The first planet they visit orbits Gargantua (the supermassive black hole mentioned in the movie - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole) at a distance very close to its Schwarzschild radius (or event horizon). In the movie, they say that the time dilation there is such that one hour passed at the surface of the planet corresponds to 7 years (!) on Earth. Interestingly, with that information alone we are already able to calculate how close the planet is to the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole by using a really simple formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius (here we have to assume that the black hole is not rotating very fast). Making some assumptions about the mass of the black hole then allows us to see how large the actual Schwarzschild radius is in fact, and if the time dilation shown in the movie is possible (it is). Similarly, if we use the information they give us about the gravity constant on the planet (about 1.3 times Earth gravity if I remember correctly) as well as an estimate of the height of the tidal waves they find there (maybe 200 meters?), we could even estimate the rotation period of the planet. There are many more examples of clues like this in the movie, which offer great 'Fermi problems' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem) and allow us to learn many things about the universe presented to us in Interstellar. Of course I also have to mention the absolutely stunning rendering of the black hole, which incorporated the gravitational lensing effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens) that make the accretion disk of the black hole appear like a halo surrounding it. Also, the rendering of the wormhole as a four-dimensional "hole" embedded in three-dimensional space was absolutely gorgeous. Amazing movie, amazing science, amazing universe.
- TorKlingberg 12y ago
  I also love the movie, but there one thing with the time dilation I suspect does not add up. If the first planet is so deep into Gargantua's gravity well that it has such time dilation, would the energy required to get a spaceship out of the gravity well not be ridiculously huge? Given that they had limited energy, did it make sense to visit that planet first?
nsxwolf 12y ago
Why was the Ranger launched from Earth on a giant rocket, but was single stage to orbit on all the other Earth-like worlds? The only thing I've been able to think of was that they used some kind of exotic propulsion, like antimatter, therefore there was no sense wasting such a precious commodity to leave Earth if you had a rocket available. But nothing in the movie seemed to explain it.
- magicalist 12y ago
  There is the one-off about this being the last of its kind space vehicle, and the booster pack in orbit had been there for quite some time. You can somewhat fanwank that into meaning they had to use older, simpler technology to get the capsule itself into orbit, but then could take advantage of the pre-Blight technology already in orbit for the rest of the movie. That's about the same as your explanation, though. Pretty weak, so it would be nice if they had at least given us a throwaway sentence or two to wave it away like they did with spaghettification, as the rocket orbital mechanics, at least, were distracting. I imagine the real reason was Nolan wanted to invoke a parallel to the Apollo missions in the liftoff from earth, but didn't want to waste time with the very hard problem of getting off other worlds once you get there.
Tycho 12y ago
Does he explain the glaring paradox of the time travel storyline? Someone said it is permissible as a 'closed timelike curve' but smells like BS to me.
- chton 12y ago
  I'll just link you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_princ... It's by far my favorite way to explain time travel system like the one we see in Interstellar, and it's rooted in real science rather than Paradox Philosophy.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve > in a CTC, causality breaks down, because an event can be "simultaneous" with its cause—in some sense an event may be able to cause itself.
- mindcrime 12y ago
  The thing is, you don't really have to explain that, exactly because we don't know what the "rules" of time-travel are, IF it were even possible. We talk about "grandfather paradoxes" and "ontological paradox" in sci-fi, and speculate about what would happen in "real life" if some of these things happened, but the paradox might be completely irrelevant for all we know. Anyway, for my money, this issue falls well into the "willful suspension of disbelief" category - and didn't affect my appreciation of the movie at all. I mean, yeah, it was billed as a "scientifically accurate' movie, but it's still science fiction at the end of the day, with the emphasis on "fiction".
  - Tycho 12y ago
    I think you do if it comes across as a fundamental breach of logic.
- hansjorg 12y ago
  One resolution I've seen mentioned is that if Brand succeeded with Plan B then maybe "they" are the ancestors of the Edmunds-planet. That would resolve the paradox at least.
Morgawr 12y ago
One thing I cannot understand is... Sure, this movie was very "accurate", all these explanations can make sense, the calculations fit but.. why is nobody talking about the major obviously impossible/inconsistent problems in the plot? INTERSTELLAR SPOILER BELOW For example, how did he survive inside a black hole, how did he pass through the Schwarzschild radius with his simple spaceship, why was there no time dilation as he approached the black hole, why did his spaceship break down inside the black hole but he was able to eject with his simple spacesuit and survive, how did he realistically survive out in cold space (at the end, yes okay I know this is technically possible but still..)? When I watched this movie, I saw a lot of problems that made me think "has a physicist ACTUALLY worked on this and said 'yes, this is accurate'?". And those certainly weren't the minor details like the time dilation on the planet, the structure of the black hole and the icy clouds on that one other planet. Disclaimer: I enjoyed Interstellar a lot, it was a pretty good movie, although I felt that at times the director was pretty much screaming in my face: "SEE? WE ARE SO REALISTIC! LOOK THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE, AREN'T WE REALISTIC?" (sorry for caps lock but it's to provide emphasis)
- m_mueller 12y ago
  from my layman physics knowledge * how did he survive inside a black hole possible for supermassive black holes up to a certain distance from the singularity. To my knowledge there's still the possibility of ring shaped singularities that could be passed through and we don't really know yet what would happen there. Unified quantum gravity theory needed first, so remains in the artistic freedom of the director. * how did he pass through the Schwarzschild radius with his simple spaceship Again the only question is whether the tidal forces would be too strong and a supermassive black hole does not have extremely strong forces at its event horizon. * why was there no time dilation as he approached the black hole I think there was. After returning from the closely orbiting planet they had a few decades such that he now was a bit younger than his daughter, after coming out of the black hole another 50-60 years have passed for the outside world. Granted though, as far as I understand GRT, actually entering a black hole takes literally forever from the point of view of the outside world (i.e. time breaks down completely), but again, we don't know what would happen with quantum gravity, so maybe the infinity would cancel out somehow if our theories were better. * why did his spaceship break down inside the black hole but he was able to eject with his simple spacesuit and survive Tidal forces act the stronger the more vertical distance from the gravitational center an object has in itself (i.e. the height of the object from the singularity's point of view). A spaceship is much larger than a human, so it will break down earlier. * how did he realistically survive out in cold space (at the end, yes okay I know this is technically possible but still..) You do have a few minutes in space - the coldness isn't actually a problem since nothing can transport heat in a vacuum. It's rather the pressure difference that will give you trouble, but there are some measures such as emptying your lungs that will give you more time.
tambourine_man 12y ago
spoilers I liked the film, and it bothers me a bit that they can launch from a planet with stronger gravity using tiny rockets, or that we would consider a planet orbiting the event horizon of a huge black hole as good candidate for our new home. But my biggest gripe is with the premisse of the film. We have a catastrophic ecological disaster, which is unconvincingly explained in a single sentence by Michael Caine, and our solution is to take the entire species on an intergalactic travel through a worm hole. Instead of, you know, digging a big hole right here and creating an artificial biosphere underground. Or maybe check out Mars or Europa, which are right around the corner.
- patrickk 12y ago
  Or the idea of abandoning Earth because it's too hostile to grow crops with some dust storms, yet the idea of colonising a distant, extremely harsh-for-human-life planet is a more realistic idea. Surely building massive "vertical farms" or other artificial environments here on Earth would be more cost effective and realistic. Overall I think we may be thinking too deeply about the plot ;-)
drivingmenuts 12y ago
It's not a science movie. It's fiction. Science is a passenger, not the vehicle. You want science - go watch a Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan (and don't get too wound up about how they gloss things over - the kind of science they're doing is too complicated for an hour long show). The science used in sci-fi movies is not about the science - it's about the myth of science; the things we wish science could do or lead us to do. But more than that, it's about telling a story. We are not relating facts here, we're off into Joseph Campbell territory. Even the most scientifically accurate movie is going to do some jazz hands once in a while just to keep things interesting/heroic/funny/whatever because: failure is not an option - the movie has to make money.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  All that I could swallow, if only. If only it made any attempt to even fake it well. If only it didn't ignore plot holes the size of a truck. If I could only figure out what the plot was, or who the characters were (from moment to moment), or what they meant by the words that came out of their mouths. If only it was a real movie, and not just a bunch of images on a screen to give teenagers the impression they're watching a movie.
  - drivingmenuts 12y ago
    All of the problems you mention are problems created by the writer, director, producers, etc., and have nothing to do with bad science. They can, and frequently do, show up in every genre of film. One of my favorite films is Big Trouble in Little China (as an example) and I'm sure there are all kinds of issues about the film itself, but I still love the film. Ditto Blade Runner, Brazil, Contact, etc. Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist by profession.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Its an interesting question: who failed this movie? The director is easy to blame - why are characters changing without motivation? Who is connected to whom, emotionally? What is that grandfather doing there anyhow? How can a father care deeply about his daughter, but ignore his son (and grandson)? If there're reasons, let us know! As for science: its more than technical details. Its why they are so dumb. Why can a 12-year-old out-guess the plans made by the scientists? (We're in a terrible hurry; lets set down on a time-dilated planet for a few hours and let the masses on Earth rot for a decade or two). Once decided, why park your interstellar ship outside the time-dilation zone, so you can take your shuttle to the surface? Makes no difference to Earth - they wait either way. But the ship burns half their fuel, just station-keeping for 20 years. If it had been time-dilated too, that wouldn't have happened! Not even to mention the poor sap on the ship, stuck waiting for half his life. Oh I can go on (have, for hours, to my family's dismay)
stillsut 12y ago
What was the deal with "the blight"? At one point, they mentioned it had to do with the ability to fix nitrogen? Also, wouldn't any pestilence as widespread as that be transported on the cargo ships with the people and their plants to the new planet?
- mcguire 12y ago
  In hard science fiction, "science" is physics. Maybe chemistry, maybe. But biology is all squishy and such and doesn't carry the mathematical gravitas needed to be taken seriously.
arikrak 12y ago
It sounds like he's just discussing certain aspects of the film, while ignoring much more glaring issues. It's not ice clouds that are the issue, it's the entire story. [Spoiler alert] Here's the whole plot of the movie, does any aspect of it make sense? Earth is dusty so the simplest solution is to transport all of humanity through a wormhole to another planet. The main characters go through a wormhole and walk around on a planet where 1 hour = 7 years of Earth. Later, to help the mission succeed, the main character detaches from their main spaceship into a blackhole and he ends up in a multi-dimensional space where he sends Morse code messages to his daughter in the past by moving her books and watch. How does he do that? Because love. And gravity. She understands the message which contains gravity data from the blackhole that lets them get everyone off earth. The main character then pops out of the blackhole thing near Saturn and is re-united with his daughter just before she dies.
- timdiggerm 12y ago
  >he ends up in a multi-dimensional space where he sends Morse code messages to his daughter in the past by moving her books and watch. How does he do that? Because the multi-dimensional space was set up by higher-dimensional creatures, who also created the wormhole, specifically so he could accomplish all this (right down to preventing him from going on the earlier missions by causing his craft to crash with a gravitational anomaly at the beginning of the film).
  - debacle 12y ago
    That seems like a rather roundabout way to save the human race, no? A love-powered hyper-dimensional gateway used to transmit Morse code sounds like something straight out of h2g2.
    - magicalist 12y ago
      (spoilers, obviously) It's a predestination paradox -- so, as with all predestination paradoxes in fiction, the story is a little too in love with the use of it -- but the movie sets the ground rule that the only way to communicate backwards is to manipulate gravity, therefore that's how they're going to have to accomplish it. As for the love-powered part, everyone's a little too hung up on that set of dialog. There's nothing in the plot that relies on it. Sufficiently advanced magic gravity technology is more than enough. Is any advancement of the plot motivated by more than the fact that he wants to see his daughter again? Sure, if they had listened to Brand's feelings they wouldn't have ended up with crazy guy and would have ended up on a (seemingly) habitable planet, but the human race also would have died on earth and lived on entirely from the test tube embryos. The whole tesseract section doesn't entirely fit with the tone of the rest of the movie but it's not powered by love.

134 points by tonteldoos 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

chton 12y ago

Surely Kip Thorne himself has to realize that he's grasping at straws. A lot of the things he mentions are of the type "in this precise, extremely rare situation it is possible, if we ignore all the other side effects". For example, I'm sure his calculations will be correct regarding the planet orbiting a black hole close enough for relativistic effects. What it also means is that the planet would pass through the extremely hot accretion disk twice every orbit, killing everything and evaporating all the water. And considering the speed that a stable orbit would require, that would be a very common occurrence. The point is: don't claim that you're scientifically accurate. Usually, a good sci-fi movie will set up rules for itself, and follow those rules appropriately. If you make your ruleset "real world physics", you have to be extremely accurate if you still want to make it believable. The rules set up expectations, and breaking your own rules is an instant turn-off for science fiction fans. The movie shows other cases where it doesn't follow its own rules: they have spaceplanes that can get to orbit from a planet with 1.8 times earth gravity, but not from earth without huge boosters? For the record: I like Interstellar a lot. It was a great film, and I'll definitely be buying it when it comes out on DVD. I just have my gripes with the lofty claims of accuracy that Hollywood films so love to make.

gglon 12y ago
The movie shows other cases where it doesn't follow its own rules: they have spaceplanes that can get to orbit from a planet with 1.8 times earth gravity, but not from earth without huge boosters? Normal fuel is just less expensive.
- chton 12y ago
  That's a possibility, but the special fuel they have would have to have been extremely expensive then. That would have been a fine explanation, and if they had mentioned it in the movie that would be one less point I could make. But here's another one: They set up this nice system with pings to know what planets might be suitable, but they can't detect when a ping is being repeated instead of actually sent by a person? They couldn't put a timestamp in it, or some minor variation? They couldn't figure out that it's impossible to receive a ping every hour if the relativistic effects mean an hour takes 7 years? There are other issues like this, I'm sure I could come up with a load more if I had the time :)
  - xxxyy 12y ago
    Ping issues were especially bugging me. Take those pings from the relativistic planet. First it is believed that the person has been sending data for many years, yet only after landing do they recall relativistic effects, and that in fact that person has spend only a couple of hours at the surface.
  - gglon 12y ago
    But they could. That is exactly why they did know about nice atmosphere and water on the planet, but didn't know about the waves since the first wave that killed first astronaut happened during the landing. They also left one of the team member to do gravitation research and planned to spend as little time as possible on the planet.
    - chton 12y ago
      Yes, they knew about the relativistic effects. And they could obviously send some data. But somehow they can't figure out that they've been getting a repeat of the same ping for the last 10 years? And even if they couldn't figure that out, how could the person on the planet possibly send a ping every year, if she only spent an hour and half on it according to her frame of reference?
      - gglon 12y ago
        I don't remember how many pings they received in the movie. I've understood that they had received just one ping from that planet.
xxxyy 12y ago
I believe it is possible to set the rules at the real physics level, take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example. But not if you are forced by Hollywood producers to put all the little pieces that follow inner feelings of the masses. This is what I believe happened to Matrix movies, progressively keeping worse and worse grip on their own rules.
- chton 12y ago
  Absolutely, it is possible to claim accuracy, but then you have the hard task of making that actually true. 2001 was better because of that accuracy, but for many movies it's not a good way of doing it. Interstellar could have worked with complete scientific accuracy, or they could simply not have claimed that it was scientific. Either would have been fine. I agree on the Matrix movies, but they had much more of a free pass already, because the core concepts are so flexible.
- nilkn 12y ago
  To be fair, though, 2001: A Space Odyssey didn't explore nearly as many exotic phenomena as Interstellar did. It was a lot easier for that movie to remain mostly accurate.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    2001 explored some pretty darn exotic phenomena, it just didn't both to try to explain them scientifically.
    - nilkn 12y ago
      Admittedly it's been some time since I watched the full movie, but I don't recall anything in it, other than the highly abstract ending, that would be considered exotic by today's standards. Maybe they were exotic at the time, but they were still quite well understood at the time of the film's production, whereas the interactions near the singularity of a black hole, say, are very much not understood even at the present day. Did you have some specific examples in mind? I still feel as though 2001, excluding its ending, stayed much further away from speculative topics of theoretical physics than did Interstellar (which in fact has explicit references, in its dialogue, to "the bulk" -- a term from brane cosmology; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology).
harshreality 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. I don't understand why Kip Thorne is so desperate to declare that the movie doesn't violate known physics, when it clearly does, just not in the areas he's most concerned with. Planetary dynamics, propulsion systems... but as long as there aren't Na'vi or dragons on the planets, I suppose they consider it realistic enough. On second thought, Na'vi or dragons might be more realistic than some of what's shown. FTL travel is "possible" too, if quantum gravity provides some loophole for violating GR on scales where GR is currently assumed. It seems like there's a reasonable basis for excluding it from the plot without declaring it impossible: if Earth technology was that advanced, they wouldn't need to travel to Gargantua's system. I think Nolan's insistence on the extreme time dilation for the first planet in the plot is a mistake, because if they thought about what time dilation would mean for the readings sent back, they never would have investigated that risky planet first. What's great about Interstellar, though, is that it gets viewers talking and thinking about physics. On that point, it's far better than Gravity.
- vacri 12y ago
  The point of the time dilation is 'plot'. It's to age the daughter to a point where she's now a prominent scientist and can interpret the main character's weird sendings, while not being dismissed as a weird kid. In terms of the literal events of the film, it's the last planet they should have visited, given the urgency they have to find a place for the people back home - a few months round trip to come back and check it is only a few months back home, but a couple of hours at the known 'time dilation' is decades back home. Doesn't make internal sense... except for 'plot'.
  - harshreality 12y ago
    I understand that time dilation was necessary for the plot. They should have found another way to age the crew, though, that didn't violate common sense. The crew knew about the time dilation before deciding to try that first planet. They should have realized the data they were getting was only about an hour old. Didn't they say something about not getting any communication from the scientist, just automated transmission of probe data? Only an hour's worth of data and no communication from the scientist should have easily put that planet in the last resort category.
vacri 12y ago
I liked Intersteller a lot as well, but its plot was horribly contrived in places and the science isn't as good as it was purported to be - even moreso if you include the behaviour of the scientists involved :). The science was certainly better than most other serious sci-fi films though. The real problem with the film is the needlessly long hour of character establishment. (SPOILER) Rather interestingly, I've seen very little discussion about the christ story in the film - the 33-year-old man, who is also the 'father', who is also the 'ghost'; who disappears presumed dead, only to return; who has the only information that can save humanity (the 'quantum data') and also sacrificed himself to save humanity; and who was helped along by 12 others - one being the questionable [Dr] Man[n] who is weak of spirit. There's a few more other parallels, but the gist is there.
- hessenwolf 12y ago
  My wife, ordinarily interested in more economic, financial, and fashion-related literature, has been gorging on tesseracts since the movie. She'll adore this. Thank you for the brownie points.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Very interesting observations about the christ story, I didn't pick up on any of them.
- lobster_johnson 12y ago
  Not to mention the use of organ music — easily reminiscent of Christian hymns — in Hans Zimmer's soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5m5GXF9Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo5m5GXF9Ec. The parallels between "quantum data" and the Logos of Gnostic Christianity are also apparent.
nilkn 12y ago
I think Thorne is approaching this from a different perspective than you are. Thorne is aiming this at people who've never even heard of time dilation. He's aiming this at people who, when they hear about the time dilation on Miller's planet due to its presence in a gravitational field, will say that this is all just made up for the plot, having no idea that this has been known since Einstein's general theory was published nearly 100 years ago in 1915. I also think that the writing of the movie consisted of the following process: - Nolan proposes something completely outlandish. - Thorne explains why it won't work. - Nolan says it's "non-negotiable" for plot purposes. - Thorne insists it's not possible. - Nolan says to make it possible. - Thorne either figures out a set of exotic circumstances in which it's possible (e.g., a time dilation factor of 1 hour = 7 years), or continues to insist that it's just too far fetched (astronauts traveling faster than light -- something that Nolan originally had told Thorne was non-negotiable but eventually agreed to scrap). Overall, I think this quote from Thorne really sums up the goal behind the movie's science: > To a great extent, my motivation here was to try to use the movie as a lure to get people who might otherwise not have much interest in science curious about it, by exposing them to strange, exotic phenomena like wormholes. The film is the bait, and the book is the hook I want to use to draw them in even further, to get them to dig in and learn something new. If they are young, maybe they will consider careers in science rather than in finance or law. If they are older, I still think it’s tremendously important that larger fractions of our citizenry possess enough understanding of science to appreciate its powers and its limitations. It reminds me of something Feynman said before he delivered his famous lectures at Caltech. The students there at the time were getting bored with the curriculum, and Feynman had observed that it's because none of the new and exciting ideas of modern physics were being presented to them. So he designed his lectures to cover relativity and quantum mechanics, even if it meant leaving out a lot of details to fit it into an undergraduate level. I feel like Thorne and Nolan wanted to present a few of the more exciting ideas of modern physics to viewers who otherwise might think they're made up, and when they insist the science is realistic, that's the perspective they're coming from.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
I am actually just happy that they are making movies involving space exploration. We really need to bring back space exploration into the minds of the public so we can get support for awesome missions in the future.
delinka 12y ago
"in this precise, extremely rare situation it is possible, if we ignore all the other side effects" Isn't that storytelling? The impossibly ridiculous plot works only when all the pieces fall exactly as the author wants. Depending on your point of view, all the circumstances that brought intelligent beings into existence on our planet are themselves an extremely rare situation.

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ThePhysicist 12y ago

Accuracy aside, from a scientific point of view Interstellar was one of the most interesting movies in a long time, and it really made me think about Physics a lot again. It's really cool to see how much you can actually learn about the universe of Interstellar by making use of some Physics knowledge and the information given to you in the movie. An example: The first planet they visit orbits Gargantua (the supermassive black hole mentioned in the movie - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole) at a distance very close to its Schwarzschild radius (or event horizon). In the movie, they say that the time dilation there is such that one hour passed at the surface of the planet corresponds to 7 years (!) on Earth. Interestingly, with that information alone we are already able to calculate how close the planet is to the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole by using a really simple formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius (here we have to assume that the black hole is not rotating very fast). Making some assumptions about the mass of the black hole then allows us to see how large the actual Schwarzschild radius is in fact, and if the time dilation shown in the movie is possible (it is). Similarly, if we use the information they give us about the gravity constant on the planet (about 1.3 times Earth gravity if I remember correctly) as well as an estimate of the height of the tidal waves they find there (maybe 200 meters?), we could even estimate the rotation period of the planet. There are many more examples of clues like this in the movie, which offer great 'Fermi problems' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem) and allow us to learn many things about the universe presented to us in Interstellar. Of course I also have to mention the absolutely stunning rendering of the black hole, which incorporated the gravitational lensing effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens) that make the accretion disk of the black hole appear like a halo surrounding it. Also, the rendering of the wormhole as a four-dimensional "hole" embedded in three-dimensional space was absolutely gorgeous. Amazing movie, amazing science, amazing universe.

TorKlingberg 12y ago
I also love the movie, but there one thing with the time dilation I suspect does not add up. If the first planet is so deep into Gargantua's gravity well that it has such time dilation, would the energy required to get a spaceship out of the gravity well not be ridiculously huge? Given that they had limited energy, did it make sense to visit that planet first?

nsxwolf 12y ago

Why was the Ranger launched from Earth on a giant rocket, but was single stage to orbit on all the other Earth-like worlds? The only thing I've been able to think of was that they used some kind of exotic propulsion, like antimatter, therefore there was no sense wasting such a precious commodity to leave Earth if you had a rocket available. But nothing in the movie seemed to explain it.

magicalist 12y ago
There is the one-off about this being the last of its kind space vehicle, and the booster pack in orbit had been there for quite some time. You can somewhat fanwank that into meaning they had to use older, simpler technology to get the capsule itself into orbit, but then could take advantage of the pre-Blight technology already in orbit for the rest of the movie. That's about the same as your explanation, though. Pretty weak, so it would be nice if they had at least given us a throwaway sentence or two to wave it away like they did with spaghettification, as the rocket orbital mechanics, at least, were distracting. I imagine the real reason was Nolan wanted to invoke a parallel to the Apollo missions in the liftoff from earth, but didn't want to waste time with the very hard problem of getting off other worlds once you get there.

Tycho 12y ago

Does he explain the glaring paradox of the time travel storyline? Someone said it is permissible as a 'closed timelike curve' but smells like BS to me.

chton 12y ago
I'll just link you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_princ... It's by far my favorite way to explain time travel system like the one we see in Interstellar, and it's rooted in real science rather than Paradox Philosophy.
ceejayoz 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve > in a CTC, causality breaks down, because an event can be "simultaneous" with its cause—in some sense an event may be able to cause itself.
mindcrime 12y ago
The thing is, you don't really have to explain that, exactly because we don't know what the "rules" of time-travel are, IF it were even possible. We talk about "grandfather paradoxes" and "ontological paradox" in sci-fi, and speculate about what would happen in "real life" if some of these things happened, but the paradox might be completely irrelevant for all we know. Anyway, for my money, this issue falls well into the "willful suspension of disbelief" category - and didn't affect my appreciation of the movie at all. I mean, yeah, it was billed as a "scientifically accurate' movie, but it's still science fiction at the end of the day, with the emphasis on "fiction".
- Tycho 12y ago
  I think you do if it comes across as a fundamental breach of logic.
hansjorg 12y ago
One resolution I've seen mentioned is that if Brand succeeded with Plan B then maybe "they" are the ancestors of the Edmunds-planet. That would resolve the paradox at least.

Morgawr 12y ago

One thing I cannot understand is... Sure, this movie was very "accurate", all these explanations can make sense, the calculations fit but.. why is nobody talking about the major obviously impossible/inconsistent problems in the plot? INTERSTELLAR SPOILER BELOW For example, how did he survive inside a black hole, how did he pass through the Schwarzschild radius with his simple spaceship, why was there no time dilation as he approached the black hole, why did his spaceship break down inside the black hole but he was able to eject with his simple spacesuit and survive, how did he realistically survive out in cold space (at the end, yes okay I know this is technically possible but still..)? When I watched this movie, I saw a lot of problems that made me think "has a physicist ACTUALLY worked on this and said 'yes, this is accurate'?". And those certainly weren't the minor details like the time dilation on the planet, the structure of the black hole and the icy clouds on that one other planet. Disclaimer: I enjoyed Interstellar a lot, it was a pretty good movie, although I felt that at times the director was pretty much screaming in my face: "SEE? WE ARE SO REALISTIC! LOOK THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE, AREN'T WE REALISTIC?" (sorry for caps lock but it's to provide emphasis)

m_mueller 12y ago
from my layman physics knowledge * how did he survive inside a black hole possible for supermassive black holes up to a certain distance from the singularity. To my knowledge there's still the possibility of ring shaped singularities that could be passed through and we don't really know yet what would happen there. Unified quantum gravity theory needed first, so remains in the artistic freedom of the director. * how did he pass through the Schwarzschild radius with his simple spaceship Again the only question is whether the tidal forces would be too strong and a supermassive black hole does not have extremely strong forces at its event horizon. * why was there no time dilation as he approached the black hole I think there was. After returning from the closely orbiting planet they had a few decades such that he now was a bit younger than his daughter, after coming out of the black hole another 50-60 years have passed for the outside world. Granted though, as far as I understand GRT, actually entering a black hole takes literally forever from the point of view of the outside world (i.e. time breaks down completely), but again, we don't know what would happen with quantum gravity, so maybe the infinity would cancel out somehow if our theories were better. * why did his spaceship break down inside the black hole but he was able to eject with his simple spacesuit and survive Tidal forces act the stronger the more vertical distance from the gravitational center an object has in itself (i.e. the height of the object from the singularity's point of view). A spaceship is much larger than a human, so it will break down earlier. * how did he realistically survive out in cold space (at the end, yes okay I know this is technically possible but still..) You do have a few minutes in space - the coldness isn't actually a problem since nothing can transport heat in a vacuum. It's rather the pressure difference that will give you trouble, but there are some measures such as emptying your lungs that will give you more time.

tambourine_man 12y ago

spoilers I liked the film, and it bothers me a bit that they can launch from a planet with stronger gravity using tiny rockets, or that we would consider a planet orbiting the event horizon of a huge black hole as good candidate for our new home. But my biggest gripe is with the premisse of the film. We have a catastrophic ecological disaster, which is unconvincingly explained in a single sentence by Michael Caine, and our solution is to take the entire species on an intergalactic travel through a worm hole. Instead of, you know, digging a big hole right here and creating an artificial biosphere underground. Or maybe check out Mars or Europa, which are right around the corner.

patrickk 12y ago
Or the idea of abandoning Earth because it's too hostile to grow crops with some dust storms, yet the idea of colonising a distant, extremely harsh-for-human-life planet is a more realistic idea. Surely building massive "vertical farms" or other artificial environments here on Earth would be more cost effective and realistic. Overall I think we may be thinking too deeply about the plot ;-)

drivingmenuts 12y ago

It's not a science movie. It's fiction. Science is a passenger, not the vehicle. You want science - go watch a Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan (and don't get too wound up about how they gloss things over - the kind of science they're doing is too complicated for an hour long show). The science used in sci-fi movies is not about the science - it's about the myth of science; the things we wish science could do or lead us to do. But more than that, it's about telling a story. We are not relating facts here, we're off into Joseph Campbell territory. Even the most scientifically accurate movie is going to do some jazz hands once in a while just to keep things interesting/heroic/funny/whatever because: failure is not an option - the movie has to make money.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
All that I could swallow, if only. If only it made any attempt to even fake it well. If only it didn't ignore plot holes the size of a truck. If I could only figure out what the plot was, or who the characters were (from moment to moment), or what they meant by the words that came out of their mouths. If only it was a real movie, and not just a bunch of images on a screen to give teenagers the impression they're watching a movie.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  All of the problems you mention are problems created by the writer, director, producers, etc., and have nothing to do with bad science. They can, and frequently do, show up in every genre of film. One of my favorite films is Big Trouble in Little China (as an example) and I'm sure there are all kinds of issues about the film itself, but I still love the film. Ditto Blade Runner, Brazil, Contact, etc. Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist by profession.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Its an interesting question: who failed this movie? The director is easy to blame - why are characters changing without motivation? Who is connected to whom, emotionally? What is that grandfather doing there anyhow? How can a father care deeply about his daughter, but ignore his son (and grandson)? If there're reasons, let us know! As for science: its more than technical details. Its why they are so dumb. Why can a 12-year-old out-guess the plans made by the scientists? (We're in a terrible hurry; lets set down on a time-dilated planet for a few hours and let the masses on Earth rot for a decade or two). Once decided, why park your interstellar ship outside the time-dilation zone, so you can take your shuttle to the surface? Makes no difference to Earth - they wait either way. But the ship burns half their fuel, just station-keeping for 20 years. If it had been time-dilated too, that wouldn't have happened! Not even to mention the poor sap on the ship, stuck waiting for half his life. Oh I can go on (have, for hours, to my family's dismay)

stillsut 12y ago

What was the deal with "the blight"? At one point, they mentioned it had to do with the ability to fix nitrogen? Also, wouldn't any pestilence as widespread as that be transported on the cargo ships with the people and their plants to the new planet?

mcguire 12y ago
In hard science fiction, "science" is physics. Maybe chemistry, maybe. But biology is all squishy and such and doesn't carry the mathematical gravitas needed to be taken seriously.

arikrak 12y ago

It sounds like he's just discussing certain aspects of the film, while ignoring much more glaring issues. It's not ice clouds that are the issue, it's the entire story. [Spoiler alert] Here's the whole plot of the movie, does any aspect of it make sense? Earth is dusty so the simplest solution is to transport all of humanity through a wormhole to another planet. The main characters go through a wormhole and walk around on a planet where 1 hour = 7 years of Earth. Later, to help the mission succeed, the main character detaches from their main spaceship into a blackhole and he ends up in a multi-dimensional space where he sends Morse code messages to his daughter in the past by moving her books and watch. How does he do that? Because love. And gravity. She understands the message which contains gravity data from the blackhole that lets them get everyone off earth. The main character then pops out of the blackhole thing near Saturn and is re-united with his daughter just before she dies.

timdiggerm 12y ago
>he ends up in a multi-dimensional space where he sends Morse code messages to his daughter in the past by moving her books and watch. How does he do that? Because the multi-dimensional space was set up by higher-dimensional creatures, who also created the wormhole, specifically so he could accomplish all this (right down to preventing him from going on the earlier missions by causing his craft to crash with a gravitational anomaly at the beginning of the film).
- debacle 12y ago
  That seems like a rather roundabout way to save the human race, no? A love-powered hyper-dimensional gateway used to transmit Morse code sounds like something straight out of h2g2.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    (spoilers, obviously) It's a predestination paradox -- so, as with all predestination paradoxes in fiction, the story is a little too in love with the use of it -- but the movie sets the ground rule that the only way to communicate backwards is to manipulate gravity, therefore that's how they're going to have to accomplish it. As for the love-powered part, everyone's a little too hung up on that set of dialog. There's nothing in the plot that relies on it. Sufficiently advanced magic gravity technology is more than enough. Is any advancement of the plot motivated by more than the fact that he wants to see his daughter again? Sure, if they had listened to Brand's feelings they wouldn't have ended up with crazy guy and would have ended up on a (seemingly) habitable planet, but the human race also would have died on earth and lived on entirely from the test tube embryos. The whole tesseract section doesn't entirely fit with the tone of the rest of the movie but it's not powered by love.