Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

[DaveC426913]

Does scientifically accurate and within the realm of reality mean something else as soon as Christopher Nolan takes the reins?

That is not what your complaint was. Your complaint was that love specifically, as portrayed in the film, did not live up to your expectation of scientific accuracy.

By what objective criteria do you measure love, such that the film violated it in a scientifically quantifiable way?

It's a rhetorical question. It merely demonstrates the absurdity of a complaint that the human-interest storyline can (let alone must) somehow be "scientifically accurate".

 

[PeroK]

As an alternative to this movie, you could check out:

http://www.queens-theatre.co.uk/show/558/return-to-the-forbidden-planet-25th-anniversary-tour

It may be slightly more accurate scientifically, as well!

 

[QuantumPion]

Aliens, but instead of Aliens, use really angry grizzly bears.

I'd pay to see that.

 

[OmCheeto]

I'd pay to see that.

Somebody get George Lucas on the phone!
We need to remake "Interstellar" with angry grizzly bears.

Or, Bruno Ganz*! He can be inserted throughout the film, ranting about the "bad physics".
Hmmmm... But then, people would start comparing it to Dr. Strangelove.

"They used someone with a German accent! Cliche!"

*Bruno Ganz played Hitler.

 

[HomogenousCow]

That is not what your complaint was. Your complaint was that love specifically, as portrayed in the film, did not live up to your expectation of scientific accuracy.

By what objective criteria do you measure love, such that the film violated it in a scientifically quantifiable way?

It's a rhetorical question. It merely demonstrates the absurdity of a complaint that the human-interest storyline can (let alone must) somehow be "scientifically accurate".

In the movie they use love as a genuine mode of communication across "time and space".

 

[OmCheeto]

In the movie they use love as a genuine mode of communication across "time and space".

I'll wait for the script to be published before I agree, or disagree with you. Or do you have the entire thing memorized?

Or are you misquoting the NY Times article?

Love and Physics
The Nolans take us into the farthest mysteries of space-time, where, they assure us, love joins gravity as a force that operates across interstellar distances.

force ≠ communication

I think they have different units of measurement.

Oh dear. Another can of worms...

 

[DaveC426913]

In the movie they use love as a genuine mode of communication across "time and space".

No, they say that's what they're doing. They're philosophizing. They're framing events in the context of human meaning. (That's kind of the point of telling a story in the first place. The characters just happened to state their beliefs about the meaning of it all - explicitly in the story.)

It is tantamount to a character proclaiming "I knew we'd make it. God was watching us." That is their explanation. It's not inaccurate just because a character's belief is fanciful. A film can't be said to be inaccurate about the characters finding their own meaning in cosmic events.

There were no actual lovions transmitted through time.
The events, on the other hand, which are the only viable target of scientific accuracy in this case, were to fall into a black hole, where our future selves built a tesseract so Coop could send the message.

The tesseract construct itself is something you can examine on the lab table of science.

 

[atyy]

Are the 5 dimensional beings 4+1 or 5+1? I think it is 4+1, since I am a 3+1 dimensional being and I can close a 3 dimesional cube. So they must be 4+1 in order to close a 4 dimensional cube? However, since our 4 dimensions which they can manipulate is already Lorentzian 3+1, could they be 3+2?

 

[dragoneyes001]

will you be writing a paper on the existence of "Lovions" and could they actually travel in time space?

 

[atyy]

No, they say that's what they're doing. They're philosophizing. They're framing events in the context of human meaning. (That's kind of the point of telling a story in the first place. The characters just happened to state their beliefs about the meaning of it all - explicitly in the story.)

The events, on the other hand, which are the only viable target of scientific accuracy in this case, were to fall into a black hole, where our future selves built a tesseract so Coop could send the message.

"Our future selves built a tesseract" is more in the first category - it's Cooper's belief about the meaning. I was at this point wondering whether the film-maker intended an allusion to another very famous use of the tesseract in art by Dali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_(Corpus_Hypercubus).

 

[atyy]

will you be writing a paper on the existence of "Lovions" and could they actually travel in time space?

I think it has already been written http://physics.usc.edu/~bars/twoTph.htm

 

[HomogenousCow]

No, they say that's what they're doing. They're philosophizing. They're framing events in the context of human meaning. (That's kind of the point of telling a story in the first place. The characters just happened to state their beliefs about the meaning of it all - explicitly in the story.)

It is tantamount to a character proclaiming "I knew we'd make it. God was watching us." That is their explanation. It's not inaccurate just because a character's belief is fanciful. A film can't be said to be inaccurate about the characters finding their own meaning in cosmic events.

There were no actual lovions transmitted through time.
The events, on the other hand, which are the only viable target of scientific accuracy in this case, were to fall into a black hole, where our future selves built a tesseract so Coop could send the message.

The tesseract construct itself is something you can examine on the lab table of science.

So what, you consider that ending plausible and well thought out?
Interpereting the dialogue in a non literal sense does not change how poor and unoriginal it was.
As i stated my problem isn't even with the science, it's how lame and convoluted the story and characters were in general. For the many reasons i have stated.

 

[DaveC426913]

So what, you consider that ending plausible and well thought out?

Well it was certainly better thought out than your "scientifically-accurate love" complaint that started this sideline. :D

 

[OmCheeto]

So what, you consider that ending plausible and well thought out?
...

Hot chick stranded on a faraway planet, with the hero getting in his sports car/ship to save her = Sequel

Plausible, and brilliant!

 

[dragoneyes001]

mix two threads together: this one and the dark mater one and make "lovions" able to travel by dark mater transmission so two people in love can send their love across the universe in a form of FTL communications. the governments start a program of collecting people with a deep love bond and sending each in opposite directions across space to create an interstellar communications network...etc...

 

[OmCheeto]

mix two threads together: this one and the dark mater one and make "lovions" able to travel by dark mater transmission so two people in love can send their love across the universe in a form of FTL communications. the governments start a program of collecting people with a deep love bond and sending each in opposite directions across space to create an interstellar communications network...etc...

Bah! You've not listed an antagonist. Throw in Brad Pitt, and we've got the sequel to Thelma and Louise.

script to follow, after my nap... zzzz...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

 

[Matterwave]

I was most confused how there could be a 7year to 1 hour time dilation factor between being on the surface of a planet, and orbiting the planet...anyone have any indications on how that happened? I mean the surface of the planet is what a few hundred km away from the orbit? A few thousand? How can they travel through such a huge gravitational potential difference in such a short distance?

Unless the planet itself was a black-hole, I don't see how this could possibly work...

 

[DaveC426913]

The whole planet was in a high grav potential.

In a nutshell, getting to the planet required them to get nearer the BH.

They had a quick diagram showing this.

 

[nikkkom]

The whole planet was in a high grav potential.

In a nutshell, getting to the planet required them to get nearer the BH.

They had a quick diagram showing this.

View attachment 75767

You do realize that this requires delta-V in the neighborhood of 0.5c?

 

[DaveC426913]

Yeah. The more I think about this particular maneuver, the more I see the egregious inaccuracy in it.

It's a dilation factor in excess of 60,000.

That's equivalent to 0.9999999999c or approaching the speed of light to within one part in 10 billion.

 

[hankaaron]

You do realize that this requires delta-V in the neighborhood of 0.5c?

And I thought the shuttle craft escaping 1.3G was far-feteched. Geez.

 

[hankaaron]

The whole planet was in a high grav potential.

In a nutshell, getting to the planet required them to get nearer the BH.

They had a quick diagram showing this.

View attachment 75767

A couple of questions.

1. If the Endurance is in orbit around the planet wouldn't it eventually end up in the high gravity well too.
2. So 23 years passes for Romily (who remained in Endurance) and seven hours passed for Cooper and Brand on the planet. Let's say in that seven hours Cooper and Brand measure the planet rotate one-quarter spin on it's axis. Does Romily measure the planet making a one-quarter spin in 23 years?

 

[Fredrik]

That's equivalent to 0.9999999999c or approaching the speed of light to within one part in 10 billion.

But they're near a supermassive black hole, so it's probably not about speed at all. I'm more concerned that the engines would burn up all the fuel rather than produce anywhere near enough thrust, and even if the necessary thrust was obtained, it would crush the astronauts against the floor. Meanwhile, the mothership would probably have used up all its fuel trying to keep up with the planet. (If it's in orbit around the black hole at a higher altitude, then its speed should be slower than that of the planet). Of course, I haven't actually tried to figure out what's going on near a rotating black hole. I'm just naively applying what I remember about Schwarzschild black holes. We would really need to look at the Kerr solution to understand this.

 

[DaveC426913]

A couple of questions.

1. If the Endurance is in orbit around the planet

It isn't.

This is worth emphasizing, so people don't get the wrong idea:
The Endurance did not orbit the planet while Coop and whats-her-face made planetfall. The Endurance orbited the black hole, in a higher orbit than the planet, so less time dilation. This was shown in the film.

See diagram in post 120.

But they're near a supermassive black hole, so it's probably not about speed at all. I'm more concerned that the engines would burn up all the fuel rather than produce anywhere near enough thrust, and even if the necessary thrust was obtained, it would crush the astronauts against the floor.

Equivalence Principle. Acceleration and gravity are equivalent. It's just easier to grasp just how ridiculous the thrust would need to be when you see it as acceleration as opposed to fighting gravity.

Meanwhile, the mothership would probably have used up all its fuel trying to keep up with the planet. (If it's in orbit around the black hole at a higher altitude, then its speed should be slower than that of the planet). Of course, I haven't actually tried to figure out what's going on near a rotating black hole. I'm just naively applying what I remember about Schwarzschild black holes. We would really need to look at the Kerr solution to understand this.

No need to keep up. They'll pass each other often enough.

 

[Rive]

The Endurance did not orbit the planet while Coop and X made planetfall.

That part is the other side of this business. To fall so deep to that gravity well would mean the same speed to loose before they can enter that atmosphere.
That speed is not something to burn up with aerobrake...

 

[dragoneyes001]

lol they had a ready supply of anchors to toss out into the upper atmosphere to slow them down without the use of fuel

 

[DaveC426913]

That part is the other side of this business. To fall so deep to that gravity well would mean the same speed to loose before they can enter that atmosphere.
That speed is not something to burn up with aerobrake...

Agreed. I noticed that when I started thinking about just how far apart the two orbits must be (in distance, but more importantly in orbital delta v!) to get a factor 60,000 time dilation between them.

So, we;re not just talking about a climb out of a gravity well, we're also talking about an orbital speed-matching.I am beginning to see that this one plot point is a far more egregious scientific error than all the rest put together.

KT really should have made the dilation factor much, MUCH smaller - say 3,000 times smaller - and found some reason to strand them on the planet for months or a year. Then that 20 years could have passed with a slightly less outrageous science blunder.

 

[DaveC426913]

Though I suppose, technically, the Endurance could have sat in the L2 Lagrange point above the planet... :D

 

[QuantumPion]

Perhaps they used the BH to perform a gravity assist or somehow used the properties of the BH to extract energy from it (Penrose Process?)

 

[Rive]

KT really should have made the dilation factor much, MUCH smaller - say 3,000 times smaller - and found some reason to strand them on the planet for months or a year. Then that 20 years could have passed with a slightly less outrageous science blunder.

Practically any dilation factor with noticeable effect would be the same. At that point of the story we already had some hints about the magnitude of Δv available - two years from Earth to the wormhole! - and it's nowhere to the necessary to achieve any real dilation factor // climb in or out of any gravity well with real dilation factor.

It cannot be helped. They had to cheat.

 

[Fredrik]

I doubt that velocities are even relevant to this problem. We have to compare the proper time of the world line of an object in orbit around a rotating black hole, to the proper time of the world line of an object that starts and ends in that same orbit, but takes a detour down to a lower orbit and stays there for a while before it climbs back up. I expect the contribution from the velocity difference to be negligible compared to the contribution from the "altitude" difference.

 

[Rive]

Altitude change is velocity (usage of the Δv available for the device).

 

[Fredrik]

Altitude change is velocity (usage of the Δv available for the device).

Obviously you can't change your position without changing your velocity, but this isn't special relativity. In principle, you can get a huge time difference by descending straight down at walking speed and then coming back up just as slowly. A clock that hovers at a fixed lower altitude accumulates less time than a clock that hovers at a fixed higher altitude, because even though their coordinate velocities are zero, the clock at the lower altitude has a greater proper acceleration. (Less proper acceleration = closer to inertial motion = closer to maximizing the proper time).

 

[Rive]

You are right, we are just following a slightly different track.
It's as DaveC426913 said: it's easier to grasp it if we calculate with speed (change) instead of gravity potential. But both view is 'right'. Yours might be a bit more accurate (and also harder to discuss as in this case it's about a really special case of general relativity).