Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

[OmCheeto]

Time dilation wouldn't make a message delayed and then suddenly appear decades later. It would make the message redshifted and slowed down. Even with a factor of 60,000, you could still receive about 1.4 seconds of message per day.

Yes, if anyone were listening for such a dilated message. But didn't Cooper wake up way in the future? My apologies for not being an autistic savant, and not being able to remember every detail in the movie. (I think this was a Hollywood plot also. Us nerds are going to go see it several times, until we figure this out.)

24 hours on the planet equates to 164 Earth years. Now the questions are, how long does that guy's life support hold out, how much time transpired while Cooper was gone, and when does the sequel come out?

 

[DaveC426913]

Lol, 600 billion miles is well outside of our solar system (I think Neptune is ~1-2 billion miles away from the Sun?)...in what way is that called an "orbit" on the planet? In addition it took Endurance 2 years to reach Saturn, if Endurance was 600 billion miles from the planet, either the shuttle is orders of magnitude faster (then, why not just use the shuttle?) or it would have taken them ~300 years to get to the planet from Endurance, and then 300 years to get back (not counting all of that gravitational potential and time dilation they have to go through).

Exactly. This is one "cheat" that can't be handwaved away.

 

[stevebd1]

Parts of 'The Science of Interstellar' are available on Google books. Properties regarding the black hole and Millers planet start about half way down.

 

[hankaaron]

I read a little bit that was made available on Google Books. I'm probably wrong in my assessment but it sounds like Thorne is suggesting that the supermassive swirling black hole is the result of 5th dimensional beings, or constructs, passing through our 3 dimensional universe; and that Prof Brandt realizes it. If not, that would have been a very interesting premise.

 

[dragoneyes001]

has anyone been able to figure out how Cooper learned the trick to overcome gravity while spending his entire time trying to message in the 5th dimension to the third? having all the time he wants doesn't miraculously educate him in new theories.

the other issue is if he can actually manipulate things from the third dimension just how much destruction would the ship he was in cause to it when he let it go off on its own?

 

[DaveC426913]

has anyone been able to figure out how Cooper learned the trick to overcome gravity while spending his entire time trying to message in the 5th dimension to the third? having all the time he wants doesn't miraculously educate him in new theories.

He didn't. TARS did. He had TARS transmit the information to him in binary (presumably, an equation fragment that reconciles relativity with QM).

the other issue is if he can actually manipulate things from the third dimension just how much destruction would the ship he was in cause to it when he let it go off on its own?

There are a thousand ways bad things could have happened on this mission. Lucky they didn't.

 

[dragoneyes001]

[SPOILER ALERT}
it was cooper sending binary to his daughter which if i was following the movie correctly (making the second hand move) which then solved the issue of gravity. prior to the watch she was just as stuck on the equation as the professor

 

[DaveC426913]

[SPOILER ALERT}
it was cooper sending binary to his daughter which if i was following the movie correctly (making the second hand move) which then solved the issue of gravity. prior to the watch she was just as stuck on the equation as the professor

Yes. What is your point?

The question you asked is 'how did Coop learn this?'
The answer is: Coop didn't. TARS did. And sent it to Coop "in binary", as Coop explicitly asked him to.

(My contribution was to presume that the critical information was quite small and relatively simple, possibly an equation fragment.)

 

[dragoneyes001]

I must have missed something along the way.

 

[DaveC426913]

I must have missed something along the way.

A lot of the film's plot happened in very brief moments - like 1 line of dialogue. Very easy to miss. This is part of the film's problem with a lot of its detractors.

 

[dragoneyes001]

yet i still keep thinking the ship careening through the 5th dimension space would do far worse than knock a few books out of line in infinite timelines.

 

[DaveC426913]

yet i still keep thinking the ship careening through the 5th dimension space would do far worse than knock a few books out of line in infinite timelines.

Why do you think that's what happened?

You do recall that the 5 dimensional tesseract was a construct, put there by our future selves. So, not just random events happening there.

Frankly, I don't recall how he actually exited the ship. Did it just go careening off?

 

[DaveC426913]

Cool.

 

[dragoneyes001]

Why do you think that's what happened?

You do recall that the 5 dimensional tesseract was a construct, put there by our future selves. So, not just random events happening there.

Frankly, I don't recall how he actually exited the ship. Did it just go careening off?

he ejected out of it like a jet fighter.

 

[Matterwave]

I just had a thought...the gravitational time dilation of a Schwarzschild black hole (I know Gargantua was a Kerr black hole, but it was said to be rotating very slowly, so I'll use the Schwarzschild approximation) is $t_o=t_f\sqrt{1-r_s/r}$ where $t_o$ is the time as ticked by clocks at radius $r$ from the black hole (i.e. Cooper and Brandt), and $t_f$ is the time as ticked by clocks far away (e.g. Earth), so if you want $t_f/t_o\approx 60,000$ you better have $r \approx r_s$. Actually, doing the calculation gives $r\approx 1.00000000028 r_s$. However, there are no orbits there as the photon orbit (the last place a freely falling object, a photon, can still orbit the black hole) is at a radius $r_p=\frac{3}{2}r_s$.

To get a time dilation factor of 60,000, you have to be well within the photon sphere, where there are no more orbits available...

 

[OmCheeto]

Parts of 'The Science of Interstellar' are available on Google books. Properties regarding the black hole and Millers planet start about half way down.

Yay!

I'm buying that book tomorrow morning.
Some . Only one bad one. (Neb. I checked out his other reviews. I think someone chronically "messes" with his Cheerios.)

I've been reading a lot of reviews of the movie since I've seen it.
One person said the entire thing was a rehash of 2001.
One of the Amazon reviewers said it was a rehash of Contact, and would have been better if it had been more like 2001.

Apparently, we've all witnessed a car crash of a movie. :D

 

[OmCheeto]

Cool.

[monster picture deleted]

Well that was helpful. So Doyle was killed 81 years before Cooper went looking for Amelia. Which by my calculations, means Doyle's body has only been in the water for 12 hours.

Ha!

Back to the real world.
According to wiki; "The longest EVA as of 2007, was 8 hours and 56 minutes, performed by Susan J. Helms and James S. Voss on March 11, 2001."

Let's see. The major complaint about the sequel will be; "Totally predictable."

 

[Rive]

... it was said to be rotating very slowly...

As I recall, it was said to rotate very fast - fast enough to a stable orbit could be so close to the event horizon. Or, at least Phil Plait had to correct his view because of the difference between Schwarzschild/Kerr BHs.

Actually, I think the 'big things' in the movie would be according to the code (general relativity, two body model). Kip Thorne might be a bit carried away with his five-dimension whatever, but even so he is a talented scientist. We can trust him that he did his best with those calculations.

I think we can only hope to catch the movie when it's not a two body model anymore (for example I'm not sure that any stable orbit can exist if there is an accreation disk - the presence of the disk would cause some perturbation, along with some assymetrical radiation pressure: not to mention the radiation itself) or when they had to skip some details in order to go on with the plot (the Δv budget of the shuttle vs. the 60k time dilation factor, discussed previously).

 

[DaveC426913]

he ejected out of it like a jet fighter.

Ah. I see your point.

 

[Matterwave]

As I recall, it was said to rotate very fast - fast enough to a stable orbit could be so close to the event horizon. Or, at least Phil Plait had to correct his view because of the difference between Schwarzschild/Kerr BHs.

Actually, I think the 'big things' in the movie would be according to the code (general relativity, two body model). Kip Thorne might be a bit carried away with his five-dimension whatever, but even so he is a talented scientist. We can trust him that he did his best with those calculations.

I think we can only hope to catch the movie when it's not a two body model anymore (for example I'm not sure that any stable orbit can exist if there is an accreation disk - the presence of the disk would cause some perturbation, along with some assymetrical radiation pressure: not to mention the radiation itself) or when they had to skip some details in order to go on with the plot (the Δv budget of the shuttle vs. the 60k time dilation factor, discussed previously).

If the massive black hole was rotating very fast, then you would have an ergosphere to go along with the event horizon right...wouldn't the planet be inside the ergosphere at that point?

Also, how would a very rapidly rotating supermassive black hole be a "gentle giant" as they say? It seems the frame dragging effects alone would preclude any "gentleness" to this scenario...

 

[dragoneyes001]

Artistic License >/= Gargantuan's Physical time dilation on the surf planet+(plot line)/(editing)= pages of discussion*9

 

[DaveC426913]

A colleague just asked me a couple of questions I couldn't answer:

1] Murph received coordinates by way of the BookShelf-o-Phone, directing them to the NASA launch site. Who sent them? If it was Coop, when did he send them, and where did he get them from?

2] How did he get from the Tesseract in the BH to outside Jupiter? Presumably, OurFutureSelves arranged this - perhaps as some automatic feature of the Tesseract? Is the BH connected to the Jupiter end of the wormhole? Or was he transported directly to an orbit around Jupiter?

2b] I don't trust my memory. I recall something about
- 'OurFutureSelves' can't precisely target a specific spot in spacetime because of their 5D-ness (true),
- which is why Coop was found floating around Jupiter some months or years after the mission completed (true??).
- And it was just lucky they came across him at all, since he might have appeared almost anywhere and anywhen (true??).
Did those last two points occur in the movie, or am I confusing it with comments in post-mortem discussions?

 

[Fredrik]

1. He asked the robot to give him the coordinates, so that he could send them.

2. Yes, "they" did it. I don't think there's any connection between the black hole and the wormhole (because that should have observable effects in and near the wormhole)...but "they" seem to be able to do anything, so they could probably create a connection of they wanted to.

2b. I think he was returned almost immediately after he fell into the black hole. "They" probably just pulled him out of the black hole and then flew him through the wormhole, even though that was never confirmed and he didn't remember anything like that. They (McConaughey and Hathaway) had spent time on the planet, and then more time flying close to the horizon, so many years had passed on Earth even though it didn't seem that way to either of them.

 

[DaveC426913]

A very common theme I am discovering in this film is that, being almost 3 hours long, many plot points are ‘left as an exercise for the student’. :D

 

[Evo]

I hope this hasn't already been posted, seems to be a good review of how bad the movie is.

http://omnifeed.com/article/news.di...tellar-a-missed-opportunity-review-141108.htm

 

[Pete Cortez]

I hope this hasn't already been posted, seems to be a good review of how bad the movie is.

http://news.discovery.com/space/interstellar-a-missed-opportunity-review-141108.htm

For some reason this link is redirecting me to Discovery's store, even though it's correct.

Briefly, my take on the review.

1. Your mileage may vary on the dramatic and editing criticism. Fair enough.
2. O'Neill is completely wrong regarding Interstellar's depiction of both Gargantua and her planetary system. But then again so are several other reviewers so no surprise here.

 

[Pete Cortez]

I just had a thought...the gravitational time dilation of a Schwarzschild black hole (I know Gargantua was a Kerr black hole, but it was said to be rotating very slowly, so I'll use the Schwarzschild approximation) is $t_o=t_f\sqrt{1-r_s/r}$ where $t_o$ is the time as ticked by clocks at radius $r$ from the black hole (i.e. Cooper and Brandt), and $t_f$ is the time as ticked by clocks far away (e.g. Earth), so if you want $t_f/t_o\approx 60,000$ you better have $r \approx r_s$. Actually, doing the calculation gives $r\approx 1.00000000028 r_s$. However, there are no orbits there as the photon orbit (the last place a freely falling object, a photon, can still orbit the black hole) is at a radius $r_p=\frac{3}{2}r_s$.

To get a time dilation factor of 60,000, you have to be well within the photon sphere, where there are no more orbits available...

It's said to be rotating very quickly, just shy of 3e8 m/s.

 

[DaveC426913]

For some reason this link is redirecting me to Discovery's store, even though it's correct.

Me too. But you can Google it and take the first hit:

https://www.google.ca/search?newwin...aSsQTK4oKACw&ved=0CBsQvwUoAA&biw=1366&bih=681

 

[Evo]

For some reason this link is redirecting me to Discovery's store, even though it's correct.

Thanks, found another link.

http://omnifeed.com/article/news.di...tellar-a-missed-opportunity-review-141108.htm

 

[tzimie]

So, as I understand, the problem of inconsistency between GR and QM is solved.
Inside the BH, instead of singularity, there is a... library, right? :)

 

[dragoneyes001]

So, as I understand, the problem of inconsistency between GR and QM is solved.
Inside the BH, instead of singularity, there is a... library, right? :)

they play with emotion drives the reality: because its cooper in the BH/5th dimensional space what is there relates to coopers life.

the robot also entered the BH so what would it have seen?

 

[tzimie]

Did you have a chance to look at the formulas they write on the desk?
I will buy this movie just to make screenshots of the desk.
I've noticed weird indices in russian, something like Hяя

 

[Pete Cortez]

A very common theme I am discovering in this film is that, being almost 3 hours long, many plot points are ‘left as an exercise for the student’. :D

Which, as far as I'm concerned, is what separates good hard sf from an infodump in search of a plot.

 

[Pete Cortez]

So, as I understand, the problem of inconsistency between GR and QM is solved.
Inside the BH, instead of singularity, there is a... library, right? :)

Even better. A TARS.

 

[hankaaron]

An excerpt from Kip Thorne's "Science of Interstellar" is posted on Salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/29/our_universe_would_be_destroyed_inside_the_science_of_interstellar/

 

[DaveC426913]

Which, as far as I'm concerned, is what separates good hard sf from an infodump in search of a plot.

verboten!

http://io9.com/infodump-mary-sue-and-other-words-that-authors-are-1663345948

 

[tzimie]

Also I remember there was something like "our left wing is already below the event horizon" )))

 

[Fredrik]

Also I remember there was something like "our left wing is already below the event horizon" )))

I'm glad I didn't hear that.

 

[Pete Cortez]

I'm glad I didn't hear that.

Aside from being a (possibly) awful line of dialogue, what's the problem?

 

[Fredrik]

Aside from being a (possibly) awful line of dialogue, what's the problem?

I'm not sure. If we had been dealing with a typical black hole, then tidal forces would have ripped the ship to pieces faster than they could say that line. But Gargantua is supermassive, so the tidal forces near the horizon are negligible. If we had been dealing with a non-rotating or slowly rotating supermassive black hole, then they would still have been dead faster than they could say the line, because to hover just outside the horizon, the rocket needs to produce an impossible amount of thrust. The required thrust goes to infinity as the distance to the event horizon goes to zero. So the engines can't possibly be strong enough, and if they were, the people inside it would be crushed to the floor by the acceleration. Actually, this close to the horizon, I think the thrust would have to be so strong that it breaks the entire ship into its subatomic components.

But someone mentioned that Garguantua is rotating close to the speed of light. I'm guessing that the result is similar to what we'd get if it wasn't rotating, and the ship was flying at a speed close to the speed of light. I'm thinking that in that scenario at least, if they're extremely close to the required escape velocity, they might not have the same problem. But doesn't the rocket still have to produce enough thrust to tear off that wing? That doesn't sound survivable either.

 

[OmCheeto]

verboten!

http://io9.com/infodump-mary-sue-and-other-words-that-authors-are-1663345948

You forgot one:

Which, as far as I'm concerned, is what separates good hard sf from an infodump in search of a plot.

Good article. Reading through the list, it makes me wonder why people insistent on spewing such terms bother reading books or going to the movies.

I asked my movie going brother about the movie at Thanksgiving, and his response was, as I predicted, very old hat.
I was surprised though that he knew, within 10% accuracy, the gross of both Mindwalk and Interstellar.

I just wish you'd shared the article before I had the discussion with him. I apparently don't read enough reviews:

Infodump (Too many big words in the explanation. I will never be able to use this word in a sentence.)
Mary Sue (What? Who started this?)
Dystopian (Most all of my favorite fictional stories have been about dystopias. When did this become a bad thing?)
Head-Hopping (See "Infodump". I will have to spend hours researching what these terms mean.)
Hard Science Fiction (I'm assuming they borrowed this from "Hard Science vs. Soft Science". )
Truth is stranger than fiction (Old hat)
Old Hat (I'm assuming "cliched" had been overused, and they had to come up with a phrase that was, um, less old hat?)
Idiot Plot (Like the word "retard", this phrase needs to go away, even though this is the first time I've seen it.)
Relatable (Nice explanation.)
​

I would have so loved to have [name]-dropped all these words and phrases on my brother. We have zero* common interests. But as Kushner stated, you marry people who are relatable, and our family hasn't yet devolved to that point.

* pedantic literalists; "Zero, Om? Really?"
me; "Close enough for government work".
...
"pedantic literalists": About 173 results (0.42 seconds), per google.
Drats! And there I thought I was being original...

 

[DaveC426913]

Infodump (Too many big words in the explanation. I will never be able to use this word in a sentence.)

Describes the expository parts of a story - where the author just explains stuff. The opposite of : "Don't tell us, show us!"

Mary Sue (What? Who started this?)

I'd never heard of it either, and can't think of any examples.

Dystopian (Most all of my favorite fictional stories have been about dystopias. When did this become a bad thing?)

I think the objection is more to the overuse of the word itself. A verbal crutch.

Head-Hopping (See "Infodump". I will have to spend hours researching what these terms mean.)

Jumping from one person's perspective to another too often. I'd understood this was bad too.

 

[DaveC426913]

'They' could have simply led humans to a habitable planet orbiting a medium sized star , in our own galaxy ,why find a planet orbiting a super massive black hole in some other galaxy and all the unnecessary complications with time ?

Mars and some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would be as bad or as good as any of those planets.

How? Earth was dying, its technical resources dwindling. The best they could do was get a half dozen people off the planet in what was essentially their last rocket*.

The key to survival (plan A) was to solve the mystery of gravity, so they could get a large fraction of the population to safety. They made that pretty clear (inasmuch as any aspect of Interstellar could be said to be "pretty clear". :) )
*ignore the fact that the lander on top of that last rocket had a propulsion system that could lift it out of a gravity well so steep it had a 60,000 time dilation factor...

 

[Bandersnatch]

Mary Sue (What? Who started this?)

I'd never heard of it either, and can't think of any examples.

You have lived too long out of the nerd country.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mary-sue

 

[tzimie]

Aside from being a (possibly) awful line of dialogue, what's the problem?

At first, you can't cross your Rindler or apparent horizon, they are always at some distance from you, so captain was probably talking about the absolute horizon. He could not see it (it is a mathematical abstraction). However, let's say he was able to calculate it's position (despite the fact he was so stupid that in the beginning of the flight he did not know about the wormholes at all). Then an object in free fall (in free fall, because otherwise you will be crashed by gravity) crosses the horizon at almost of speed of light. So if your left wing is below the horizon then the right wing will be there in... I leave it as an exercise
.

 

[tzimie]

Interesting, how much we can tell about the planets observing them from Earth, even without landing there, while the crew of the spaceship, flying right above these planets, was not able to do simple 2+2 and to check what was the average temperature of the planet, failed to notice huge tidal waves (so huge that definitely visible from the outside), Dr. Mann was even telling them the duration of the day and night on his planet!

I understand that it is done for the story, but this just plain stupid!

 

[tionis]

 

[jack476]

I have a pretty strong feeling that "We consulted with real scientists when making this movie" doesn't mean a whole lot more than "We emailed some scientist somewhere once or twice."

 

[Rive]

I have a pretty strong feeling that "We consulted with real scientists when making this movie" doesn't mean a whole lot more than "We emailed some scientist somewhere once or twice."

Nope. The 'big' part of the movie - the black hole and it's environment - is in match with the general relativity (or with Kip Thorne's own theories).
Or at least not many of us is rated to be able to challenge it in depth.

What's missing is:
- a year's worth of work with the plot
- a second consultant: preferably an engineer from NASA, who has some close and live knowledge about orbital mechanics...

 

[QuantumPion]

According to Kip Thorne's book, it would have been possible to do a gravity assist to reach Miller's planet and return if there was an intermediate mass black hole orbiting Gargantua. However, to avoid confusing the audience, Nolan insisted that this be replaced with a neutron star (which I seem to remember being mentioned at that point). The problem with doing a gravity assist around a neutron star is that the tidal forces would be too large to be survivable, where as a 10,000 M_S IMBH would be. He further mentions that while Miller's planet was not physically impossible, the rotation rate of Gargantua would have had to have been extremely close to the speed of light, and this is implausible because there is a equilibrium point where by black holes would lose angular momentum beyond something like 0.9 c. So the only way the angular momentum could have gotten so high is if some unusual and relatively recent event occurred such as two SMBH's merging.