Interstellar -the movie, planet with slower time

[Pete Cortez]

The companion book is very revealing. Director Nolan was pretty much in charge of everything with a major case of 'My way or the highway' attitude. Kip stood no chance of realizing his true vision for the movie.

You must have read the wrong book.

 

[tionis]

I beg to disagree, Pete Cortez. Kip's discontentment and frustration with Nolan and how he handled the science of Interstellar is palpable throughout the book * (I'm on page 163). You just have to read between the lines. Kip soon realized what he was getting into when Chris took over, but being the humble man that he is, preferred to collaborate rather than bicker with Nolan. Either way, I'm glad Kip is setting the record straight.

*
'' That shook me up a bit'' (page 9)
''Chris backed off'' (page 9)
''I was shocked" (page 59)
''It is non-negotiable,'' Chris insisted.'' (page 59)
''Christopher Nolan knew that Brand's argument was wrong'' (page 100)
''For me, Chris's decision was painful'' (page 151)

 

[Matterwave]

OK, that helps, though it's a bit distressing-- seems to me the great feature of that movie was avoiding "dumbing down the physics" just so that audiences would not be confused. I liked that it treated them like they could handle the truth! After all, it is the first movie to ever include time dilation, but simple Doppler shifting would confuse the audience?

There are a few other instances of "we don't want to confuse the audience" or artistic license as discussed in the companion book. Gargantua looks far too small from Miller's planet as well as far too small from Endurance in it's parking orbit, it should have taken up roughly half the sky of Miller's planet (or the entire sky if you were on the face of the planet facing it), and about 50 degrees arc from Endurance, but having such a dramatic visual effect so early on in the movie would have spoiled the climax, so Nolan reduced the size of Gargantua in both cases. The accretion disk should have been farther out than Miller's planet, because Miller's planet occupies basically the inner most stable orbit possible. The only orbits possible below Miller's planet are unstable, critical orbits, or photon orbits. But it would look weird to be "inside the accretion disk", so it was not shown as such. Lastly, they slowed down the spin of Gargantua significantly, from something like 99.999999999999% maximum to 60% maximum because the spinning would have made the black hole appear too lopsided - the lensing effects would have been too different between the two sides of Gargantua and they feared that would have also confused the audience.

Disclaimer: I agree with all of the dramatic changes that Nolan made, e.g. the shrinking of Gargantua. If the climax of your movie is falling into the black hole, you can't have them basically fall in halfway through the beginning of the movie lol. I think they should have kept the Doppler shifting and the lopsided black hole though.

 

[Ken G]

I agree-- I never mind artistic and dramatic license, this is a movie after all. But let the reason be that there is some effect they are shooting for, or some dramatic episode, not simply that they didn't think the audience would get it. These kinds of things set the bar-- the next time we see a black hole, it will have to look like Gargantua, so let's get what we can right! Until eventually a movie comes along with the courage to show a Doppler shift, and who knows when that will be.

 

[Pete Cortez]

I beg to disagree, Pete Cortez. Kip's discontentment and frustration with Nolan and how he handled the science of Interstellar is palpable throughout the book * (I'm on page 163).

Again, we must have read different books.

You just have to read between the lines.

No, I don't. I don't have an inexplicable axe to grind that would require me to do so.

Kip soon realized what he was getting into when Chris took over, but being the humble man that he is, preferred to collaborate rather than bicker with Nolan. Either way, I'm glad Kip is setting the record straight.

Considering Kip and Nolan bickered over several points, and won every single one except one, you're wrong on both points. In any case:

You:

That shook me up a bit'' (page 9)

Thorne:

"In that first meeting, I laid on Chris my proposed science guidelines: Nothing will violate firmly established laws of physics; speculations will all spring from science. He seemed positively inclined, but told me that if I didn’t like what he did with the science, I didn’t have to defend him in public. That shook me up a bit. But with the movie now in postproduction, I’m impressed how well he followed those guidelines, while making sure they didn’t get in the way of making a great movie.”

You:

''Chris backed off'' (page 9)

Thorne:

“Chris’s ideas occasionally seemed to violate my guidelines but, amazingly, I almost always found a way to make them work, scientifically. Only once did I fail miserably. In response, after several discussions over a two-week period, Chris backed off and took that bit of the film in another direction.”

This, by the way, is in reference to Nolan and Thorne's two week argument on faster-than-light travel. Nolan conceded.You:

'I was shocked" (page 59)
''It is non-negotiable,'' Chris insisted.'' (page 59)

Thorne:

“When Christopher Nolan told me how much slowing of time he wanted on Miller’s planet, one hour there is seven years back on Earth, I was shocked. I didn’t think that possible and I told Chris so. “It’s non-negotiable,” Chris insisted. So, not for the first time and also not the last, I went home, thought about it, did some calculations with Einstein’s relativistic equations, and found a way.”

And let's face it. Nolan was right. The diversion to MIller's planet is a critical component for pacing the plot.

You:

'Christopher Nolan knew that Brand's argument was wrong'' (page 100)

Thorne:

“This is one of the few spots in Interstellar where the characters get the science wrong. Christopher Nolan knew that Brand’s argument was wrong, but he chose to retain these lines from Jonah’s draft of the screenplay. No scientist has perfect judgment.”

Nolan's job isn't to give you characters who are unerring in dialogue. And given the direction the story is taking at this point, the less reliability the better.

You:

''For me, Chris's decision was painful'' (page 151)

Thorne:

“For me, personally, Chris’s decision was painful. I cofounded the LIGO Project in 1983 (together with Rainer Weiss at MIT and Ronald Drever at Caltech). I formulated LIGO’s scientific vision, and I spent two decades working hard to help make it a reality. And LIGO today is nearing maturity, with the first detection of gravitational waves expected in this decade.
But Chris’s reasons to jettison gravitational waves were compelling, so I didn’t utter even a whisper of protest.”

Personally, I don't understand this need to imagine "discontentment and frustration" where none exists. Thorne doesn't need your help defending his point of view.

 

[tionis]

No axe to grind at all, Pete Cortez. I call it like I see it. I understand how it might annoy some people who are, for some dubious reason, pushing a rose-tinted view of the film, but it shouldn't offend anyone - since it's no different than disagreeing on any other subject. And quite frankly, it is you who seem a little too invested in trying to change peoples opinions about the movie, including mine, which simply isn't going to happen.

 

[Pete Cortez]

No axe to grind at all, Pete Cortez. I call it like I see it.

But apparently not as Kip Thorne sees it.

I understand how it might annoy some people who are, for some dubious reason, pushing a rose-tinted view of the film, but it shouldn't offend anyone - since it's no different than disagreeing on any other subject.

On the contrary. It's about (mis)representing the views of others, in this case Kip Thorne. The Science of Interstellar is, first and foremost, a robust defense of the depiction of science in the film by the guy who started it all a decade ago.

And quite frankly, it is you who seem a little too invested in trying to change peoples opinions about the movie, including mine, which simply isn't going to happen.

I didn't harvest a bunch of quotes out of context in order to pretend Kip Thorne pooh poohs his own baby. Think whatever you want about the film, but don't expect misrepresentations of the production process and uninformed objections to the depiction of the science to go unchallenged.

 

[Pete Cortez]

But an observer that is falling into the black hole, not orbiting it, will be moving at a very large speed relative to you, so they will see a rather different CMB than you will. In other words, if all your motion is due to frame dragging, you would fall into the black hole. To be orbiting, you need an additional relativistic motion to keep you from falling in, and that will blueshift the CMB seen over some narrow patch of the sky.

If by "different" you mean you'll see a different universe due to lensing, yes. However, with regards to Doppler shifts of infalling light measured by a free falling observer, things are not as simple as taking the reciprocal of what a another observer sees at, say, an infinite distance away. Once you've fixed a coordinate system, you'll notice two things. One, there isn't a symmetry in motion between your distant observer and your infalling one--your distant observer is effectively standing still. He'll observe redshift from light emitted by infalling objects, but infalling observers will not see a corresponding blueshift because that light travels along geodesics also warped by curvature near the black hole.

This is different, of course, if you're accelerating, say, radially away from a black hole (i.e., if you were to pretend the distantly observed horizon is a surface on which an object could stand).

 

[Pete Cortez]

Yes, the issue is whether the huge spin of the black hole is changing everything. Certainly there is frame dragging, but it still seems to me that gas, to be in orbit, must have a very significant Doppler shift, relative to something that is falling in, or relative to something that is in orbit farther out.

The huge spin changes things by permitting tighter, faster stable orbits.

But the disk is never depicted as Doppler shifted, so perhaps Kip Thorne knows something about spinning black holes that I do not, which was alluded to by Pete Cortez. It also seems like it would be very hot when you got into its frame, so the light from the accretion disk should fry anyone falling into the black hole, if it can keep Miller's planet warm.

The obvious answer is that relative motion observed from, say, Miller's planet, of the significant portion of the anemic disk is not very high.

It's hard to tell if these are science mistakes that were left in because the story required it, or if Kip Thorne would have some answer to them. He certainly could be forgiven for saying that there were just some things the director wanted to happen, so he had to fit the science in around that the best he could.

It's not clear that these are mistakes.

 

[Ken G]

If by "different" you mean you'll see a different universe due to lensing, yes. However, with regards to Doppler shifts of infalling light measured by a free falling observer, things are not as simple as taking the reciprocal of what a another observer sees at, say, an infinite distance away.

Yes I agree, I reached the same conclusion above. I was merely saying that frame dragging does not remove Doppler shifting, so the CMB over some (probably small) fraction of the sky should be blueshifted, probably quite dramatically (which might produce ionizing radiation). But as I said above, I can't tell what flux this would imply, and whether or not it would be a problem for life on those planets. It's pretty clear that there are many reasons why it is unlikely any of those planets would be even remotely habitable (and certainly not more than one of them!), even if they could exist in the first place, but I will easily forgive the movie for not putting the planets somewhere else altogether-- multiple wormholes would have added complexity and taken away some of the dramatic momentum of putting it all right there near the black hole.

And incidentally, I for one am glad you explained the fuller context of Kip Thorne's attitudes about scientific decisions around the movie. It's not surprising that anyone involved in putting real science in a movie is going to run afoul of plot choices at some point, it seems that in the case of Interstellar, those inevitable struggles were navigated in a way that Kip Thorne was eventually content with. Although there are many places that require suspension of disbelief, in most cases they were deliberate choices to infuse drama into the film, not just bad science (and many of the objections people raised, including Phil Plait, were simply misinformed-- I imagine Kip Thorne pulled out more of his own hair over reading half-baked criticisms after he had put so much work into it, than he did battling with the director to keep the science plausible). The main counterexample I can think here is the absence of Doppler shifting of the appearance of Gargantua (and the CMB)-- I don't see any good reason to leave that out, it almost seems like a travesty to me to invest so much computational effort into depicting what Gargantua might look like, but tell the computer wrong physics so that it wouldn't actually look like that at all. If I were that computer, after all those flops, I'd be mad-- if my anger setting was above 0%.

 

[AngelLestat]

Thanks KenG and Pete Cortez to answer about red/blue shifting an the accretion disk.

Relativity is so diferent from our all day experiences that it seems very hard to understand the relation of many physsics aspect as energy conservation, ref/blue shift, flow of time for each observed (also photons who has their own relativity effects), space time drag, etc.

About Thorne´s thoughts working with Nolan, I already read more than half book, but I did not find any aspect of Thorne being mad, I guess Thorne was agree with more than 90% of the movie choices.
When Thorne was calculating the waves from miller´s planet, the previows script it said that they need to come each hour with a height of 1000 mts.
Then thorne thinking about all elements which may be needed so the planets did not destroy due to tidal forces, he plan to be tidal locking to gargantua but with a small wobbling, then he realize which their first calculations about the height and time between the waves, was almost exactly as the script ask.

 

[hankaaron]

I just remembered something early on in the film that to me is another ridiculous point in the film. There were autonomous farm equipment working in the corn fields. The suddenly left the fields and headed to the farmhouse. Knowing what we know, are we supposed to believe that Cooper manipulated the tractors as well? Or was a consequence of Cooper's manipulation of gravity? If so, why wouldn't the tractors keep going straight through the house (since the source was in Murphy's room)? How could gravity waves affect the electronics of the farm equipment, but not anything in the house outside of Murphy's room?

 

[Pete Cortez]

Yes I agree, I reached the same conclusion above. I was merely saying that frame dragging does not remove Doppler shifting, so the CMB over some (probably small) fraction of the sky should be blueshifted, probably quite dramatically (which might produce ionizing radiation).

That's the thing. It does remove the Doppler shift (or more precisely it doesn't give rise to one). Apparently this effect is exact (neglecting tidal forces) and holds for all freely falling observers (including those in stable orbits). The blueshift you're considering is for a static observer (stationary with respect to the gravitational field) in the interior position. There's a lengthy discussion about it here.

But as I said above, I can't tell what flux this would imply, and whether or not it would be a problem for life on those planets. It's pretty clear that there are many reasons why it is unlikely any of those planets would be even remotely habitable (and certainly not more than one of them!), even if they could exist in the first place, but I will easily forgive the movie for not putting the planets somewhere else altogether-- multiple wormholes would have added complexity and taken away some of the dramatic momentum of putting it all right there near the black hole.

I'd also point out that the movie dialogue and even some of the visuals are sufficiently ambiguous that at the very least your suspension of disbelief doesn't require jettisoning other massive bodies. Ultimately, we're talking about a supermassive black hole with a horizon circumference of well over a billion kilometers, with the plot acting over similarly scaled distances. Plenty of room for other objects we don't see (or see only dimly or unclearly) on screen (i.e., IMBHs, nearby stars, etc.).

Although there are many places that require suspension of disbelief...

So far, I've only uncovered clear contradiction--that is the different sizes of Gargantua depicted near Miller's planet. It's maybe about 5 to 10 seconds worth of footage all in all.

in most cases they were deliberate choices to infuse drama into the film, not just bad science (and many of the objections people raised, including Phil Plait, were simply misinformed-- I imagine Kip Thorne pulled out more of his own hair over reading half-baked criticisms after he had put so much work into it, than he did battling with the director to keep the science plausible).

I think Thorne enjoys it more than you think. He certainly had a grand old time with it during production, and while writing his book. I think if people like Thorne minded making missteps (or misplaced criticism from others), then forums like this one would have a hard time staying active.

 

[Pete Cortez]

I just remembered something early on in the film that to me is another ridiculous point in the film. There were autonomous farm equipment working in the corn fields. The suddenly left the fields and headed to the farmhouse. Knowing what we know, are we supposed to believe that Cooper manipulated the tractors as well? Or was a consequence of Cooper's manipulation of gravity? If so, why wouldn't the tractors keep going straight through the house (since the source was in Murphy's room)? How could gravity waves affect the electronics of the farm equipment, but not anything in the house outside of Murphy's room?

What makes you think the wave front that hit Murphy's room is the same one that hit the tractors (I think that's what you're saying happened in the movie--I kinda tuned out Iowa).

 

[DaveC426913]

I just remembered something early on in the film that to me is another ridiculous point in the film. There were autonomous farm equipment working in the corn fields. The suddenly left the fields and headed to the farmhouse. Knowing what we know, are we supposed to believe that Cooper manipulated the tractors as well? Or was a consequence of Cooper's manipulation of gravity? If so, why wouldn't the tractors keep going straight through the house (since the source was in Murphy's room)? How could gravity waves affect the electronics of the farm equipment, but not anything in the house outside of Murphy's room?

The anomaly (they didn't know what kind at the time) disrupted the equipment enough that they reverted to their 'crippled' mode, which is to head home for repair.

What makes you think nothing else in or around the house was disrupted? In a movie this fast-paced, they can't show any of the most relevant plot points.

 

[Ken G]

That's the thing. It does remove the Doppler shift (or more precisely it doesn't give rise to one). Apparently this effect is exact (neglecting tidal forces) and holds for all freely falling observers (including those in stable orbits). The blueshift you're considering is for a static observer (stationary with respect to the gravitational field) in the interior position. There's a lengthy discussion about it here.

But that isn't correct. It is just as wrong to claim that "freely falling" observers don't see blueshifts and redshifts as it is to take the naive answer we considered above, that the local time dilation factor is the answer to everything. I didn't read that whole thread, because I quickly encountered errors like this, by what poster it doesn't matter: "From the viewpoint of an observer at rest in the gravitational field, the freely falling frame is accelerating downward. Suppose a photon is emitted upward towards a freely falling observer some distance above, who is at rest in the gravitational field at the instant the photon is emitted. By the time the photon reaches the observer, it will have redshifted, but the observer will have picked up just enough downward velocity so that when the observer receives the photon, there will be a Doppler blueshift that exactly cancels the gravitational redshift."
Of course that is not even close to right, when the free-faller first starts to fall, there is no blueshift at all, but there is certainly redshift, and if the freely falling observer falls all the way to the place where the static emitter is emitting the light, there will obviously be a substantial blueshift that does not "cancel out" because at that point there's no gravitational redshift any more. So the real answer is, it's very hard to make generalizations in relativity, unless one does the calculations.

So far, I've only uncovered clear contradiction--that is the different sizes of Gargantua depicted near Miller's planet. It's maybe about 5 to 10 seconds worth of footage all in all.

The absence of Doppler shifts is a clear contradiction, and it is well known that a choice was made not to depict them. That is what I am disappointed by-- I think if they went to all the trouble to get the spatial appearance of the light, they should have also tried to get the color appearance right as well, even if they did choose to dodge the issue of harmful X-rays. Just as the movie provides an entry into the collective consciousness about time dilation, it could have also served as an entry into the issue of Doppler shifts in light.

I think Thorne enjoys it more than you think. He certainly had a grand old time with it during production, and while writing his book. I think if people like Thorne minded making missteps (or misplaced criticism from others), then forums like this one would have a hard time staying active.

I think you misinterpret my meaning. I was not saying Thorne didn't enjoy the science, or that he was troubled by his own mistakes, I meant that he must have been quite frustrated over all the people (such as the thread on here that characterized the science as "stupid") making incorrect criticisms of what he did because they didn't do the work he did to make it plausible. Much like a coach having to listen to criticisms of their decisions, coming from people who were not aware of the machinations of the game that actually went into that decision.

That's the thing. It does remove the Doppler shift (or more precisely it doesn't give rise to one). Apparently this effect is exact (neglecting tidal forces) and holds for all freely falling observers (including those in stable orbits).

That is clearly not right, as two free-falling observers can be at the same place and time-- and have a significant Doppler shift relative to each other. So we know they will not see the same things.

 

[hankaaron]

The anomaly (they didn't know what kind at the time) disrupted the equipment enough that they reverted to their 'crippled' mode, which is to head home for repair.

What makes you think nothing else in or around the house was disrupted? In a movie this fast-paced, they can't show any of the most relevant plot points.

Because adult Murphy said, late in the film, that answer would lie solely in her old bedroom. Nothing else in the film suggests that the characters noticed odd happenings outside of Murphy's bedroom (where the 'ghosts' were). This is a good example of why so many people found the film meandering and convoluted.

 

[DaveC426913]

Because adult Murphy said, late in the film, that answer would lie solely in her old bedroom. Nothing else in the film suggests that the characters noticed odd happenings outside of Murphy's bedroom (where the 'ghosts' were).

Except the farm equipment of course.

This is a good example of why so many people found the film meandering and convoluted.

Perhaps, as someone pointed out, we shouldn't be taking every single word of the characters as Gospel.

 

[Ken G]

The anomaly (they didn't know what kind at the time) disrupted the equipment enough that they reverted to their 'crippled' mode, which is to head home for repair.

Good point. I have to conclude that a significant majority of the criticisms that have been pointed at the science in the movie are coming out of being misinformed about that science, rather than being valid objections. This makes it hard to sift through and find the true objections. The absence of Doppler shift, the idea that Miller's planet could be so time dilated yet not be inside the accretion disk and not be much closer to Gargantua, the idea that the Endeavor could orbit anywhere near Miller's planet and still experience the 60,000 factor time dilation for the guy left behind (or maybe I'm guilty of the same problem, and the factor was much less than 60,000 for him-- I didn't bother to check this, it seemed like they were using that same factor), and the idea that a human in a spacesuit pushing books off a shelf would be the best way for an advanced civilization to communicate back in time to humanity, seem like the main ones that could have been replaced with something more plausible. But even these issues aren't really so bad in my view, because they are central to the drama of the story and the impact of the visuals. Basically, it's a movie, not a science textbook, but at least it is a movie that brings common people into contact with relativity in a reasonable way. The only thing that bothers me is the failure to include Doppler shifts in that relativity lesson, it just seems like a missed opportunity that could have been handled within the same overall story.

 

[hankaaron]

Except the farm equipment of course.

So we're supposed to believe that the only strange happenings were in Murphy's bedroom and with the farm equipment?

 

[Pete Cortez]

But that isn't correct. It is just as wrong to claim that "freely falling" observers don't see blueshifts and redshifts as it is to take the naive answer we considered above, that the local time dilation factor is the answer to everything. I didn't read that whole thread, because I quickly encountered errors like this, by what poster it doesn't matter: "From the viewpoint of an observer at rest in the gravitational field, the freely falling frame is accelerating downward. Suppose a photon is emitted upward towards a freely falling observer some distance above, who is at rest in the gravitational field at the instant the photon is emitted. By the time the photon reaches the observer, it will have redshifted, but the observer will have picked up just enough downward velocity so that when the observer receives the photon, there will be a Doppler blueshift that exactly cancels the gravitational redshift."

Of course that is not even close to right, when the free-faller first starts to fall, there is no blueshift at all, but there is certainly redshift, and if the freely falling observer falls all the way to the place where the static emitter is emitting the light, there will obviously be a substantial blueshift that does not "cancel out" because at that point there's no gravitational redshift any more. So the real answer is, it's very hard to make generalizations in relativity, unless one does the calculations.

The problem with your statement is static emitter. Gargantua's disk is not stationary with respect to the gravitational field. It's orbiting--free-falling--around Gargantua. Just as Miller's planet is. Just as, to an absurd degree, the Ranger is when it slingshots in and out of proximity of Miller's planet.

I think you misinterpret my meaning. I was not saying Thorne didn't enjoy the science, or that he was troubled by his own mistakes, I meant that he must have been quite frustrated over all the people (such as the thread on here that characterized the science as "stupid") making incorrect criticisms of what he did because they didn't do the work he did to make it plausible. Much like a coach having to listen to criticisms of their decisions, coming from people who were not aware of the machinations of the game that actually went into that decision.

No, didn't misinterpret your meaning. I'm saying I find it unlikely that Thorne didn't enjoy the criticism, which by all evidence he cheerfully took up in writing his book and also in interviews after the first critiques came out. Thorne knows very well that we're seeing, for the first time, depictions of these exotic objects that approach what we might see in reality. It must be exciting to be one of the first people who get to cross that uncanny valley, and I imagine he quite enjoys drawing a map for others to find their way as well.

That is clearly not right, as two free-falling observers can be at the same place and time-- and have a significant Doppler shift relative to each other. So we know they will not see the same things.

This assumes two observers have built up a massive difference in velocity with respect to one another--which means at least one of the observers was not free falling from infinity to the present.

 

[hankaaron]

Except the farm equipment of course.
Perhaps, as someone pointed out, we shouldn't be taking every single word of the characters as Gospel.

The criticism of the film isn't being driven by a few flawed plot points. The film is stacked with a load of them.

 

[DaveC426913]

The criticism of the film isn't being driven by a few flawed plot points. The film is stacked with a load of them.

Not sure what the take-away from that is: that a summary judgement has been made, and it's above scrutiny?

You're listing flawed plot points that aren't flawed plot points. That doesn't help your case.

In general, the film was very fast-paced. The direction of events in any given scene might have been explained in just a couple of words (for example, Endurance's orbit).In a film almost 3 hours long, this must be the case.

While the movie may be tough to follow, that's not the same as plot holes.

 

[Pete Cortez]

The absence of Doppler shift, the idea that Miller's planet could be so time dilated yet not be inside the accretion disk and not be much closer to Gargantua...

See above reply. The disk is not stationary relative to the gravitational field.

...the idea that the Endeavor could orbit anywhere near Miller's planet and still experience the 60,000 factor time dilation for the guy left behind (or maybe I'm guilty of the same problem, and the factor was much less than 60,000 for him-- I didn't bother to check this, it seemed like they were using that same factor)

Endeavor occupies a parking orbit far enough out that its proper time is only modestly compressed compared to that at infinity. Not too far out, because the Ranger has to be able to reach Miller's planet in about two hours (as measured by the expedition on the Ranger).

...and the idea that a human in a spacesuit pushing books off a shelf would be the best way for an advanced civilization to communicate back in time to humanity...

worst, the question is what alternatives were available. As advanced as an ancient civilization may be, the first thing they need to deal with is the problem of a receiver.

seem like the main ones that could have been replaced with something more plausible.

One of the beautiful things about the film is that it's so terse in most of these areas you can either 1) imagine a more plausible off-screen explanation for what you see than what you might come up with on first viewing or 2) conjure up reasons why a depicted event is also an eminently plausible one.

But even these issues aren't really so bad in my view, because they are central to the drama of the story and the impact of the visuals. Basically, it's a movie, not a science textbook, but at least it is a movie that brings common people into contact with relativity in a reasonable way. The only thing that bothers me is the failure to include Doppler shifts in that relativity lesson, it just seems like a missed opportunity that could have been handled within the same overall story.

With gravitational redshift, two reasons. First, you don't want to fry the cast. Two, you can come up with a plausible configuration for Gargantua's system that allows you to avoid frying your cast. This isn't a movie about characters dying in extreme radiation environments, after all. It's a movie about how characters survive falling into a black hole.

 

[Pete Cortez]

The criticism of the film isn't being driven by a few flawed plot points. The film is stacked with a load of them.

None of which you've actually pointed out.

 

[DaveC426913]

One of the beautiful things about the film is that it's so terse in most of these areas you can either 1) imagine a more plausible off-screen explanation for what you see than what you might come up with on first viewing or 2) conjure up reasons why a depicted event is also an eminently plausible one.

Well said.

 

[AngelLestat]

About the gravity anomalies, I guess they can be caused due to the gravitational waves from gragantua crossing the wormhole which were enoght strong to be detected by ligo?
That´s how they find the wormhome after all.

What I don't know is how the size of the wormhole may reduce the gravitational waves coming from the other side.
We know that the wormhole is orbiting saturn, from the other side is orbiting gargantua (not sure how far), so this mean that there is no gravitational forces going from side to side?

Some pictures to help with our reasoning:

Extra image about gargantua disk.
http://i.space.com/images/i/000/043/505/i02/interstellar-wormhole-travel-141107c-02.jpg?1415391304

 

[Ken G]

See above reply. The disk is not stationary relative to the gravitational field.

Haven't I already demonstrated that argument is not correct? The disk will still appear with different colors on different sides. It will appear that way to a hovering observer, it will appear that way (in a different way) to an orbiting observer who is at the depicted distances, and to someone falling in. All of those different situations require detailed calculations and all will give different results, and none will look like what the movie did a detailed calculation to show us. That is the thing that disappoints me, I would have liked to see what the science says it should have looked like in these various frames. It was not an artist's conception after all, they did a very detailed calculation-- they just decided not to calculate a color. Perhaps it would have made the calculation too difficult, I wouldn't mind if they would just say "we didn't have the flops for that."

Endeavor occupies a parking orbit far enough out that its proper time is only modestly compressed compared to that at infinity. Not too far out, because the Ranger has to be able to reach Miller's planet in about two hours (as measured by the expedition on the Ranger).

I know that, that's what I was questioning. The scale of Gargantua is an AU, so for the guy left behind to have his time act like Earth, he would need to have been a very long way out, at least an AU or so. Maybe the Ranger has a whopping great engine, but g forces are still a problem there. I don't think my expectation there is wrong, and I'm sure Kip Thorne knew it too, so it's curious that was not mentioned in the companion book if indeed it was not. It was probably a problem either way-- if you want to "park" the Endeavor, you have to be a huge distance away from Miller's planet, but then the Ranger has to climb out of the black hole by itself. Probably they should have used the ergosphere to maneuver the Endeavor down close to Miller's planet. Even better, just don't go to Miller's planet at all-- that was an obvious plot device, never really made sense but it's a movie.

 

[Pete Cortez]

Haven't I already demonstrated that argument is not correct? The disk will still appear with different colors on different sides. It will appear that way to a hovering observer, it will appear that way (in a different way) to an orbiting observer who is at the depicted distances, and to someone falling in.

We agree in part. There is a difference between a hovering observer and a free falling one. However, an orbiting observer is also in free fall. He's just falling around the mass rather than into it. The question, remember, is what does the rest of the universe look like to said observer.

All of those different situations require detailed calculations and all will give different results, and none will look like what the movie did a detailed calculation to show us. That is the thing that disappoints me, I would have liked to see what the science says it should have looked like.

Can you explain what you expect an orbiting free faller to see and how it deviates from the movie?

I know that, that's what I was questioning. The scale of Gargantua is an AU, so for the guy left behind to have his time act like Earth, he would need to have been a very long way out, it makes no sense that he should be in a very different time state than those who went down to the planet. I don't think my expectation there is wrong, and I'm sure Kip Thorne knew it too, so it's curious that was not mentioned in the companion book if indeed it was not.

I have not done the calculations myself, but according to Thorne this is not a problem:

How did I come up with these locations? I use the parking orbit as an illustration here and discuss the others later. In the movie, Cooper describes the parking orbit this way: “So we track a wider orbit of Gargantua, parallel with Miller’s planet but a little further out.” And he wants it to be far enough from Gargantua to be “out of the time shift,” that is, far enough from Gargantua that the slowing of time compared to Earth is very modest. This motivated my choice of five Gargantua radii (yellow circle in Figure 6.3). The time for the Ranger to travel from this parking orbit to Miller’s planet, two and a half hours, reinforced my choice.

 

[Ken G]

We agree in part. There is a difference between a hovering observer and a free falling one. However, an orbiting observer is also in free fall. He's just falling around the mass rather than into it.

Of course, but the point is, "being in free fall" is not some magical state that automatically determines the redshift of everything you will see-- that's why I mentioned situations where two free-fallers can cross paths at relativistic relative speeds.

The question, remember, is what does the rest of the universe look like to said observer.

Yes, and the answer is, "redshifted and blueshifted like mad, depending on which direction you look." Which is exactly what the movie decided not to portray, and I wish they had not made that choice, because I think the general population could have handled Doppler shifts just as easily as time dilation effects. The problem might have been, the Doppler shifts would have made so much of it X-rays or infrared that it wouldn't be visible at all.

Can you explain what you expect an orbiting free faller to see and how it deviates from the movie?

The movie depicted no change in frequency or intensity looking at the Gargantua from any orbit around Gargantua, and even on an approach orbit. That's clearly wrong, there should have been spectacular Doppler shifts and intensity differences. Hard to calculate, but ray-tracing was no easy matter either, why not track the frequency and intensity factors along each of those rays as well? You have to assume an input spectrum, but what they chose was rather golden. A nice effect, but no spectrum is completely flat, they could have chosen something and Doppler shifted it correctly as they did their ray tracing.

I have not done the calculations myself, but according to Thorne this is not a problem:

You mean, it was not a problem because the Endeavor was not parked an AU out, or it was not a problem because they chose not to worry about how the Ranger could cover an AU in a few hours without sustaining deadly g forces?