I've got a weird feeling clinging to me after watching that.
Interstellar | SPOILERS! | Keep out unless you've seen it
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Probably just gas.
Worst film I've seen in a long time...
If Nolan wasn't overrated before he surely didn't disappoint...
If Nolan wasn't overrated before he surely didn't disappoint...
Reading Kip Thorne's book about this at the moment, he's fairly adamant that all science in the film is at least based on legitimate scientific theories, including the end part.
As an aside, extremely glad Spielberg didn't end up directing it.
As an aside, extremely glad Spielberg didn't end up directing it.
The Spielberg script, from the snippets I've seen and the articles on it, reads like a completely cliched Sci-Fi version of a space movie.
What was the general plot?
Aliens, Evil Robots, One Planet and none of the Earth stuff.
You are joking, right?
Nope, he calls it speculation but possible based on legitimate theory.
I should have been more specific, but it's hard to believe what happens in the movie when Cooper enters the black hole is actually what could happen in real life, let alone surviving the whole thing.
It's not necessarily likely but not ruled out by physics either, according to Thorne (unlike faster-than-light travel, which would be and he therefore prevented from being in the film). Black holes are mental, especially ones that massive (50 times (edit - scratch that, it's 20 times) the mass of the one at the centre of our galaxy) and spinning. Even the much discussed time paradox isn't ruled out.
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How does he explain the fact that the film shows the time dilation effects of a Black Hole but ignores the physical effects of such an intense gravitational pull? I mean anything that goes that close to a Black Hole ought to be torn to shreds right?
Haven't gone into the detail yet, but from what I understand the tidal forces are weaker when the black hole is spinning very quickly, as this particular one is, meaning they wouldn't have been torn apart despite being very deep inside the gravity well. As for when Cooper goes inside it - all bets are off past the event horizon (black holes are even weirder than I thought, according to Thorne they're purely made of warped space and essentially are created in what amounts to their very own time paradox).
Sounds interesting! Any link to this book?
Also, great username. I'm Only just beginning to read Philip K. Dick and I like his storytelling.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Int...7&sr=1-1&keywords=the+science+of+interstellar - Pretty well laid out for the layman (like me), takes it from the basic principles onward. With pictures
And cheers! Definitely keep up with him, mind-bending in the extreme.
Thanks very much. I shall check this out. Apparently Mr Dick was far into his mental illness when he wrote Ubik. Should be quite a read.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Int...7&sr=1-1&keywords=the+science+of+interstellar - Pretty well laid out for the layman (like me), takes it from the basic principles onward. With pictures
And cheers! Definitely keep up with him, mind-bending in the extreme.
Just watched this, though it was pretty interesting:
Finally saw this. Pretty sure I've benefited from significantly lowered expectations 'cos after months of being told this was disappointing with a batshit twist, I ended up not minding it remotely. Probably because I'd naturally already assumed the worst (Aliens or God) I found the rather straighforward ontological paradox the lesser of my imagined evils. I also guessed it about an hour in. It's daft, yeah, but it's clearly no less daft, or any less po-faced about it's daftness than Sunshine or 2001. For the first 2 hours or so it's pretty well put together, and probably more emotionaly involving than either of those films (it's not better, but you can't flame it for it's serious high mindedness without doing the same for them) The epilogue's the only serious stumbling block for me.
Still full of plenty of lesser nonsense though:
I like picking holes though. I enjoyed it mostly. Especially the sarcastic robot.
Still full of plenty of lesser nonsense though:
- Anne Hathaway's 'love conquers all' speech was Days of our Lives bad. In fact Hathaway's character seems straight from the Prometheus school of ill-suited over emotional professionals.
- Casey Affleck's character serves almost no purpose at all.
- Matt Damon's character serves a purpose, but it's a really forced one - Once he's got them on the planet, he surely doesn't need to kill them? They aren't going to leave him there!
- Murph's 25 year strop at her dad for saving the world seems really fecking churlish.
- NASA's Thunderbirds boardroom has some stellar soundproofing for no one to notice them building a FECKING ROCKET next door.
- Was everyone in Thunderboard room Ok with Michael Caine's executive decision to flippantly appoint Coop pilot for the world's most important mission within 5 minutes of turning up? Were they missing a pilot for this launch, and just sitting around waiting for one to turn up? Or was there another pilot who'd been prepped and trained and now has to die on earth because a guy turned up claiming to have found this rather large facility because of magic dust?
- Astronaut explaining wormholes to another astronaut, half way through a mission to reach a wormhole.
- The bit where Matt Damon tried to dock manually looked like someone with Parkinsons trying to put the lid back on a small pen.
- Everything about the post black-hole epilogue.
I like picking holes though. I enjoyed it mostly. Especially the sarcastic robot.
From what I remember Mann only actually tries to kill Cooper and that's because he can't let him leave, knowing his planet is useless and if Cooper takes the Endurance it's game over. Romily dies because he tried to access KIPP's archives which would have exposed the truth about the planet, Mann never intended to kill him.
Can't he just admit his planet is useless? They may be a bit pissed at him, but they'd still take him with. Wes Bentley's already died from the look-back of doom so it's not like they don't have the space.
Well they discover Plan A is a lie, he's been broadcasting a "my planet is great" beacon which is another lie and he's been alone for about 30 years, once Cooper decides he's off I guess he's just scrambling. I remember reading about it somewhere, but I'm pretty sure his reasoning is he thinks he can talk around Brand and Romily but felt like Cooper wouldn't ever forgive him because unlike the other two he left something behind.
I was surfing in India a few years ago. The ocean was ridiculously rough that day. After hours of being in there among reasonably sized waves, I see a huge one coming in the distance (not Interstellar huge obviously). This thing looked ominous. I was in water that was about a foot too deep to stand in, in the perfect position to catch the waves. Not this fecker though. As it got close I realised it was going to break earlier and land right on top of us. By this point I could stand in the water so decided to move towards it and jump through. By the time the wave was towering over me the water was almost knee deep. I'm sure theres a proper name for it.
Could this not be an exaggerated version of this?
Edit: The wave flattened me by the way. Ended up almost back on the beach.
Just watched it again, which confirmed my initial opinion: this is my second favourite science fiction film of all time, after Blade Runner. I just wish I could see it in imax every time I watch it.
I'm looking forward to the blu-ray, I'm hoping it gets a 4K version at some point when that all starts to happen and I'd definately watch an extended directors cut if that rumour has any truth to it.
I don't think its going to ever match up to a cinema viewing though, this film was made to be seen on the big screen.
I don't think its going to ever match up to a cinema viewing though, this film was made to be seen on the big screen.
Agreed, the distant pictures of the ship around Saturn and Gargantua were mind blowing at that scale and will have to lose something at a more ordinary size.
I finished Thorne's book a while back and it contained some really good stuff on the areas people had been scratching their heads about, one of the main ones being how Coop got back to Saturn from the other Galaxy, as he hadn't been back through the wormhole. Essentially, when he went into the black hole he didn't go into something that had been built in the form of Murph's room, it was basically a ship that transported him to Earth and then literally parked next to her room (but in the 5th dimension/bulk, ). In the bulk, space is massively warped to the extent that the several billion light years of actual space between the two galaxies was reduced to a distance equivalent to that between the Sun and the Earth (i.e., doesn't take that long to get there). So he gets picked up at Saturn because that's were the tesseract physically left him after he sent the message to Murph. It's not exactly a positive point for the film that you need a book by a theoretical physicist to explain a plot point, but there you go.
Finally managed to see this in 70mm IMAX, was phenomenal!
Seen it 5 times before but on that scale it was just amazing. Saw it at the BFI London, which is apparently the biggest screen in the country too.
Seen it 5 times before but on that scale it was just amazing. Saw it at the BFI London, which is apparently the biggest screen in the country too.
Saw this a few days ago. As far as the scientific basis of the movie goes, I wouldn't question the spinning black hole stuff since I don't know the physics. But the most glaring issue for me was the descent onto the water world where time was greatly decelerated but there was no discernible increase in the gravitational field! Why weren't they squashed flat? Or was that because of the unusual nature of the black hole once again?
I saw it on the biggest screen in the world in Sydney. It was horrendous, I didn't know where to look. Give me a normal crystal definition cinema screen any day.
Why would they have been squashed flat? It was clearly stated the planet was 130% earths gravity.
Each to their own I guess. I loved it on the bigger scale. I do think the first time I saw it was the best though, getting deafened in my regular cinema was a great experience
Because the temporal distortion in GR is proportional to the strength of the gravitational field. There's some slight time distortion in the GPS system due to the effect of the earth's relatively weak gravity for instance.
I don't know enough about physics to answer if I'm honest. I trust that Thorne was correct though. Everyone I've seen comment on the science of the movie has said it's pretty sound.
It's no different to the reason why astronauts on the ISS are currently weightless despite being well within Earth's gravity well, just 100 miles high than those of us experiencing 1G. It would be the same around Jupiter with its far greater pull. If the planet's in orbit around the black hole, you're in orbit around it also. Relative to the planet, you're stationary. The major effect it has (aside from the time dilation) are tidal forces, hence the waves.
I don't see that.
The inspiring idea in GR is the impossibility of distinguishing between the effect of a gravitational field and accelerated motion. Hence they are assumed to be equivalent, and working out the mathematical consequences of that equivalence gives the theory of GR.
So, if accelerated motion cancels the gravitational effect of nearby mass, why, seeing as they are physically indistinguishable, should the time distortion effect remain?
But you're contradicting yourself, earlier you mentioned GPS satellites which are affected by relativity yet don't plummet towards earth. Even someone standing atop a tall tower or mountain experiences time fractionally differently to someone on the surface. You're still directly affected by the gravity of an object when in orbit, you're just falling around it rather than into it. On the surface of a planet around the black hole, yourself and the planet are falling around the black hole at the same rate, but you're still well within its gravitational sphere, so will still feel the relativistic effects. It could still rip your body apart through tidal forces, but Thorne contrived Gargantua's characteristics so that it wouldn't.
Someone standing on a tall tower or mountain and an observer on the plain below are not in relative motion. So, as far as relative time measurements for those two individuals are concerned, the effect of gravity is undiluted. A more complicated version of that logic applies to a rotating satellite under which the earth itself is rotating. The point is that the two clocks have to be accelerating with respect to each other.
This is great fun, and we could continue this arcane discussion indefinitely, but maybe we should call it a day. I'm not one of the world's leading astrophysicists and willing to admit the possibility that I missed something.
Whether its physics stands up to rigorous scrutiny or not, the movie was still pretty good.
To the second question, which answers the first question:
Yes. It's because of the unusual - in this case, 'large' - nature of the black hole.
In a super-massive-tiny nutshell, the larger the black hole, the more 'spread out' its event horizon gravitational gradient changes is theorized to be. Think of it like a gradient in photoshop if you're familiar with that sort of thing, or the difference between skiing down an eighty-degree slope vs a five degree slope. The smaller the black hole, the 'thinner' the event horizon and hence the 'steeper' the gravitational gradient change vs the electroweak force and vice versa. In the former case, the dropoff can be proportionally steep enough with respect to the electroweak active distances for gravitational forces to become enough to separate atom from atom. In the latter (like in Interstellar) case, who knows. Maybe you just feel a bit sick for the time it takes to traverse the gradient.
Also, the gigantic waves were a pretty discernible increase in the gravitational field!
And just to annoy you, they were squashed flat. Twice, even. From the black guy's (Romilly's?) perspective (if he had the right equipment). As they left, he would have seen them move slower and slower and maybe even become an 'afterimage' of sorts perhaps even in a fixed position, and then many years later another 'flat' image of them would have reappaeared in another spot - depending on the planet's orbit/rotation - and then they would have slowly 'sped up' into his real time as they approached.
I have no idea whether that makes sense or not. To find out I'd have to reread a lot of half-forgotten Physics textbooks. So I'll let it slide.
Impressive post though.
The launch scene was just so beautiful. It was really apt that the countdown started when Cooper leaves his family and daughter, as they are his real connection to Earth before going to space. Any other director would have put in a scene in which all the astronauts were training or in a simulator. And the way the camera focussed on the pick up truck kicking up dust which resembled exhaust coming out of the back of a rocket was very cinematic too.