8 ms·

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 situati

by 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.
        chton 12y ago
        They expected a ping every year, if it ever stopped pinging they would write off that planet. It was up to the scientists to keep the ping going, if they considered the planet still a suitable candidate for humanity. The signal they received from the time dilation planet was supposedly "looped around the black hole" and repeated yearly.
        12y ago
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.

by chton 12y ago

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.
      - chton 12y ago
        They expected a ping every year, if it ever stopped pinging they would write off that planet. It was up to the scientists to keep the ping going, if they considered the planet still a suitable candidate for humanity. The signal they received from the time dilation planet was supposedly "looped around the black hole" and repeated yearly.
      - 12y ago

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.