Jump to content

What's Edmund's Planet (from Interstellar) Like?


KAL 9000

Recommended Posts

There were a lot of liberties taken with Miller's planet. For one thing, Miller's "all clear" signal was supposed to have been transmitting continuously...yet it only transmit once before the tidal wave hit it...and the continuous transmission was blamed on time dilation? I could be wrong, but I don't really think that works.

Plus, if Miller's planet was so far into Gargantua's gravity well that there is a Lorentz factor of a mind-boggling 61,000 then the blueshifting of incoming radiation should be extreme. The CMB alone would be blueshifted firmly into the ultraviolet spectrum, not to mention radiation from any other nearby sources.

The tsunami on Miller's planet is depicted as one big tide that sweeps around the planet as it rotates, but I find it very unlikely that it would be a single massive peaking wave like that.

I suppose you could calculate the necessary mass of Gargantua in order to have those kinds of tidal effects at that redshift level.

Plus, how could the lander possibly carry enough propellant to descend into that gravity well and then lift itself out again?

The notion that the rotation of the Endurance would somehow provide gravity at the center was another annoying gaffe....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea is that they spent longer than just the 20 minutes there I believe. The time they spent entering into and ascending out of the gravity well should be included as well as any time omitted through editing (the fade to black after the 'goodbye Ranger' line indicates to me that quite a bit of time was spent taking the ranger down to the planet which we didn't see) and time waiting for the water to drain from the engines which was obviously cut out (CASE says it will take forty minutes or so and the dialogue only takes around 3-4 minutes, so something is obviously omitted intentionally here)

Also there are definitely meant to be multiple waves, not just one. Cooper sees the wave in the distance and says 'that one's moving away from us,' and then looks out of the back of the Ranger to see a second wave moving towards the ship. 

The Endurance's rotation also definitely doesn't provide gravity at the centre - they were quite meticulous with regards to that. I think you're misinterpreting some of the footage. Cooper is still in zero-G in the Ranger when he spins it up and asks 'how's gravity treating you up there?' or words to that effect. 

The whole transmission thing makes no sense however. Time dilation would definitely have dopplered the signal into oblivion, not made it look like the status was 'echoing endlessly.' Plus the ridiculous physics of the Ranger craft which have been discussed in previous threads (probably a throwback to when the script was more fi and less sci, and at the point where they decided to focus on the physics side of it the SSTO crazy lander functionality was pretty intrinsic to the plot working) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

51 minutes ago, benjee10 said:

The idea is that they spent longer than just the 20 minutes there I believe. The time they spent entering into and ascending out of the gravity well should be included as well as any time omitted through editing (the fade to black after the 'goodbye Ranger' line indicates to me that quite a bit of time was spent taking the ranger down to the planet which we didn't see) and time waiting for the water to drain from the engines which was obviously cut out (CASE says it will take forty minutes or so and the dialogue only takes around 3-4 minutes, so something is obviously omitted intentionally here)

Also there are definitely meant to be multiple waves, not just one. Cooper sees the wave in the distance and says 'that one's moving away from us,' and then looks out of the back of the Ranger to see a second wave moving towards the ship. 

The Endurance's rotation also definitely doesn't provide gravity at the centre - they were quite meticulous with regards to that. I think you're misinterpreting some of the footage. Cooper is still in zero-G in the Ranger when he spins it up and asks 'how's gravity treating you up there?' or words to that effect. 

The whole transmission thing makes no sense however. Time dilation would definitely have dopplered the signal into oblivion, not made it look like the status was 'echoing endlessly.' Plus the ridiculous physics of the Ranger craft which have been discussed in previous threads (probably a throwback to when the script was more fi and less sci, and at the point where they decided to focus on the physics side of it the SSTO crazy lander functionality was pretty intrinsic to the plot working) 

The Endurance Artif-G makes little sense though- the ring is too small,so the Coreolis effect would be pretty bad.

22 hours ago, vger said:

Mann was lying anyway just to get rescued, and made up the story about a habitable biome beneath the surface. Can't remember offhand if anything was said about the composition of the atmosphere while they were down there. In the grand scope of all things in the universe, there's probably a way it could happen. But even then, the frozen clouds in the film don't sit right with me. If the clouds are made of something lighter than the air around them, then why do fragments of them begin to fall after the ship collides with it? They should simply drift away and remain buoyant. That makes it even more complicated. It implies that the clouds are actually NOT lighter than air, but the molecules are clinging to something at the core which IS light enough to counter the weight. It could've been done better.

I don't really think we could have a underground cave large enough for a habitable ecosystem in the interior of a planet- oceans work, but a empty cave would not be able to support itself from the weight of the rock/ice above it. It would probably have to be pretty deep in too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

The Endurance Artif-G makes little sense though- the ring is too small,so the Coreolis effect would be pretty bad.

Coriolis is proportional to rotation speed, not size of the thing rotating, and Endurance would only need to spin at 5rpm to generate 1G assuming a diameter of 70m which seems fairly reasonable. Coriolis isn't noticeable at all at 2rpm, but humans can adapt to up to 23rpm apparently (though I imagine it would still be pretty disconcerting). Heck, even if you only span the ship at 3rpm you'd still get 0.35G in the ring which would probably mitigate most of the zero-G related illnesses. Also don't forget that the crew spend much of their time in cryosleep, at which point they are both a) horizontal and b) not conscious so Coriolis probably isn't going to bother them much ;) 

Romilly also gets dizzy when they initially spin up the ship and him taking medication to mitigate it is mentioned several times throughout the film. So no, I'd say it does make quite a great deal of sense. The asymmetric 'stalk' on the other hand is pretty much the stupidest design decision you could make on a ship which spins and holds a lot of mass in the middle. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...