
The Science of Interstellar [video] - spark3k
https://interstellar.withgoogle.com/transmissions#/kipthorne/detail
======
Perseids
If, like me, you have wondered about the strange form of the accretion "disk"
shown around the black hole, here [1] is a video, showing that it is actually
still a disk, which is distorted by gravity though.

Btw, little of the science besides the depiction of the wormhole and black
hole is accurate. E.g. how they need massive amounts of fuel to get off from
earth, but just use their tiny craft to launch twice into orbit from the two
planets they visit, or how these "frozen clouds" just stay in the air.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNepC_zvk9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNepC_zvk9E)

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wffurr
The inconsistency introduced by the magic shuttle craft ruined the movie for
me. Using retouched Saturn V footage for the first take off is such a huge
bait and switch.

Worse, the technology implied by the shuttle craft damages the entire premise
of the movie. If they have that kind of power source and propulsion, they
could build a huge orbital infrastructure, not just the one ship. A
significant portion of Earths population could emigrate. They could build huge
arcologies on the Earth.

And that was just the first problematic thing with the movie. The level of
life support, the magic solar panel plane, and so on.

~~~
austinz
The magic shuttle craft sort of moved the movie into space opera territory for
me as well. I couldn't stop thinking about how advanced the shuttles must be
as that one waterlogged landing craft took off from a 1.3G world orbiting a
massive black hole and entered orbit without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, realistic Apollo LM ascent stage-style SSTO (as opposed to easy
magical SSTO) doesn't seem to be compatible with landing on and exploring the
sorts of uninhabited planets which would be of interest for human
colonization.

~~~
wffurr
It would have been really neat to see ISRU for the subsequent lift offs. In-
situ resource utilization. Basically you land a solar powered robotic rocket
fuel factory that converts water ice and CO2 into methane and oxygen using
electrolysis and the Sabatier process. Then, when your rocket lands, you
refuel for takeoff.

Still plenty of opportunity for drama, and not a whole lot higher CG budget.

Of course, that only fixes the first bit of magic. It doesn't fix the other
issues or the many other problems with the movie, like all of Matt Damon's
dialog.

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swframe
I think there is an 'uncanny valley' aspect to the science. The movie seems
serious in its attempts to portrait the science (the cgi is very well
rendered) but also has so many things wrong that it is upsetting (what is
rendered makes no sense). I want to suspend my disbelief so I could enjoy it
but it is so hard to accept anything about it except that it looks nice.

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rohandhruva
Can you share what things it gets wrong? I have been trying to look that up
even since I watched the movie, but can't find anything useful.

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snowwrestler
To get a time dilation of 1 hour = 7 years, the planet would have to either be
moving extremely fast or be very deep in the black hole's gravity well (or
both!). Either way, a dinky little shuttle craft is not going to have the
power and fuel to get there and back.

Supposedly the signal from this planet had just been saying OK over and over
again. We learn that is because of the time dilation--in local time, the probe
just landed there a few hours ago. But in reality the time dilation would
produce a Doppler shift on the probe signal. Instead of hearing "ok" over and
over, they'd hear one super-slow "ok" signal at a super low frequency.

What did the guy on the Endurance eat for 23 years while he was waiting for
them?

If the "frozen clouds" are dense enough to walk and land a spaceship on, how
are they staying in the air?

Etc.

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32faction
SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW SPOILERS BELOW

Some people asked me what the 5th dimension entailed and how Cooper was able
to talk to himself in the tesseract. I'll explain the dimensionality below:

The zeroth dimension is a point .

The 1st dimension is a line __________

The 2nd dimension is a plane. Imagine a piece of paper

The 3rd dimension is a cube.

The 4th dimension is time. We perceive the 4th dimension in cross sections or
frames. Imagine a movie reel. On the reel there are single images that project
a movie when played together. The 4th dimension sees the entire movie all at
once.

Now consider this, a line can connect two points. A plane can connect a line,
a cube connects planes. The 4th dimension sees the cubes from all iterations
of time. Or if the cube was a flower instead, it would see it from seed to
flowering all at once. I dont really know what the 5th dimension entails but
those beings can traverse time and space. Since a higher order being can move
around in a lower dimension. (A line, a 1D object, connects points, which are
in the zeroth dimension)

So this means that Cooper, as a 5D being in the can traverse time and space
like was shown in the Tesseract scene. So essentially 5D beings "always exist"
in time and have no birth or death.

SPOILERS ABOVE SPOILERS ABOVE SPOILERS ABOVE

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antimora
Here is an article on this

"Interstellar animators make physics breakthrough during work on Hollywood
film"

[http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/11/05/interstellar-
scienti...](http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/11/05/interstellar-scientists-
make-physics-breakthrough-during-work-on-hollywood-film/)

~~~
readerrrr
Given their motivation, which is to promote the movie and the book, I'm
skeptical that this is a real discovery and not just something visualized that
was previously in a mathematical form.

If this is a real breakthrough, then where is the paper?

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sp332
[http://www.mathnet.ru/php/archive.phtml?wshow=paper&jrnid=uf...](http://www.mathnet.ru/php/archive.phtml?wshow=paper&jrnid=ufn&paperid=4922&option_lang=eng)

~~~
readerrrr
That is nice, but I'm afraid the primary motivation was money. Which in the
perfect world shouldn't be the case.

I guess the end result is still better than most movies, a paper, and some
science promotion for the general public.

~~~
sp332
I really don't understand this comment. First, science generally is
profitable. Medicine, materials research, etc. And in a perfect world,
wouldn't it be great if science was profitable? If people would invest in
massive research projects, and scientists could bankroll themselves without
begging for grant money?

~~~
readerrrr
Science is not profitable, its application is.

 _And in a perfect world, wouldn 't it be great if science was profitable?_

No, that would make it vulnerable to abuse, look at what happened to
lawyering, college fees, private health care. Capitalizing it only makes it
worse. Science shouldn't be influenced by money. Imagine if it were, and
compare it to politics. Do you want scientists to make decisions while funded
under young earth creationists or big oil?

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wunki
The book is only 10 bucks if you buy the Kindle version on Amazon:
[http://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne-
ebook/...](http://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne-
ebook/dp/B00NUB4EVC/)

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brianmcconnell
I think people are missing the point of the story. The ship in the film is The
Endurance (see Ernest Shackleton).

Set off for Antarctica, at the time might was well have been setting off for a
black hole. Bad things happened, was presumed lost, then years later, makes it
back to civilization.

At face value, it's a sci-fi movie, and that eye candy got people into
theatres, but I think it's better compared to stories like The Life of Pi or
All Is Lost. Nitpicking on how accurate the science is in a fictional story
sort of misses the point that it's a story.

TL;DR - paid to see it in IMAX and was thoroughly entertained knowing it was a
made up story.

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hrasyid
What's
[https://interstellar.withgoogle.com/](https://interstellar.withgoogle.com/) ?

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3pt14159
Interstellar is one of the best movies ever made. If you like scify just see
it. It's up there with The Matrix, Primer, and Inception.

