tom aaron said:
What scientists scoffed at the idea of a Higgs Boson? Nobody scoffed at anything because the concept was presented within the framework of know physics...not out of a magic book. I'm sure some physicists were skeptical because of known physics...not because they thought the idea magic.
What this movie does is have actual physicists tearing their hair out when it is put on some pedestal as representing anything other than entertainment. It further dumbs down the public's knowledge of basic fundamental physics. Vampire movies don't do this because there is no misdirection that they are anything other than fantasy. In contrast when some move full of anti science devices to move the plot along claims to be more 'scientific' then the very essence of science is undermined.
Peter Higgs himself said that former colleagues laughed at many of his theoretical proposals, and not just regarding the god particle. Thomas Hobbes convinced himself that he had squared a circle and went to his grave believing he did so. In his life he drafted a series of inconclusive "proofs" using the frame work of real geometry and was still wrong every time. This is because the task was impossible, and it wouldn't be until Ferdinand Von Lindemann introduced the world to transcendentals, that people would accept the impossibility of something that we all learn about now in junior high school. My point is known physics is certainly subject to change and to take such a definitive stance about what we think we know can lead to disgraced legacies such as Hobbes, so again the magic book metaphor is a bit much because I am sure the concept of pi seemed like magic to the leading minds of the 1600s.
To say that Interstellar is misleading is a pretty strong statement. First of all it is of the genre "Science Fiction" which automatically is a disclaimer that it is fantasy and entertainment, and as the meaning of fiction suggests, not real. No one pedaled this movie off as a textbook and all suggestions of its scientific accuracy stem from movie reviews from critics that read the opinions of real scientists that gave their academic opinion about it. You have the Neil DeGrasse Tysons and Michio Kakus who think its a fun movie that have some relative accuracies as well as the Lawrence Krauss that absolutely detest the movie.
Speaking of relativity, I would say that relative to other movies in its genre, Interstellar uses more real science than others. No one is going to tell me that
Gravity is less problematic than Interstellar. I saw both
Gravity and
Interstellar in theaters close to their release dates and unfortunately more people clapped at the end of
Gravity than
Interstellar. Do you think that the two movies are comparable in terms of accuracy? I don't and
Gravity offered little depth outside of its science or lack of science rather. I think we are spending too much time here trying to consider how
Interstellar harms science and not understanding the good it does. First of all anyone intelligent to have an appreciate for science is intelligent enough to understand that you don't watch a movie and take it literally, you take it as allegory. Allegorically speaking, as I said before,
Interstellar raises relevant social questions, regardless of the science in the movie it emphasizes that the key to our future is an education in science. It demonstrated that the real heroes aren't the pop artists and celebutantes that our generation is obsessed with, it is the people who sometimes stay in on a saturday studying, doing research, theorizing ways to make the world a better place, and maybe even save it one day. The movie says that you don't have to look like a supermodel or a steroid junkie to make a difference, you can do it by thinking. I think that is a great message to send, and while the science may be inaccurate and wacky it tells people to keep wondering beyond the scope of possibility, which is an attitude that any good scientist should have.
Interstellar does not undermine the essence of science.
