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Uhh... where did you read this?

With the release of a certain sci-fi film, there's bound to be a lot of buzz about this sort of thing.

Factoring Inception into it, I think it's pretty obvious that the power of a relationship between parents and children is one of Nolan's favorite plot hooks. However... <<<incoming spoilers>>> There may be clues (intentional or unintentional) in the script, that this story goes even deeper into metaphysics and spirituality than it appears to. It's interesting that the first "question" presented to us in the film isn't, "Will we survive?" but is actually, "Do ghosts exist?" Yes, the film makes it quite obvious that Cooper became a 'ghost,' but I'm starting to think the term isn't just being used 'tongue-in-cheek.' I've seen discussions about ghosts before that touched upon the idea of entities that exist in higher dimensions, that death could be such a form of transcendence, that they might be from the future or the past, etc. I believe there's a clever fusion of science and myth at work here, presented in a very technical way. Let's look at the build-up to it. Murph tries to tell Cooper that ghosts exist, which he skeptically ignores. Amelia tries to tell Cooper to trust that love transcends dimensions and even death, which he also skeptically ignores. Dr. Mann tells Cooper that the last thing you see before you die is your kids. At the climax, Cooper experiences all of these things. He discovers he is Murph's ghost. He uses love to navigate the tesseract. Upon crossing the event horizon, he immediately finds himself at the threshhold of Murph's bedroom. In popular myth, can ghosts move things? Sure, but it takes a LOT of effort. In spite of Cooper's "God-like ability" to walk through time, he has to pound away repeatedly like someone with a battering ram, just to knock a book on the floor. Furthermore, ghosts are often believed to be trapped in places that have some history of great emotional or physical trauma, and at no point in his life did Cooper have more regret than when he walked out that door. Is he actually dead in the tesseract? It's quite possible. Would we expect anything less of someone who entered a black hole? The last thing that happened was Cooper screaming from the pain of the supergravity. It's not much of a stretch to assume that the black hole actually killed him. So wait, if he died then why isn't he still dead? The answer to that is in the name of the mission. Lazarus. I'm probably way off, but dayum, this is exactly what a good sci-fi movie SHOULD do. Get people to actually think, analyze, and hypothesize. In having Cooper give Murph a summarized rundown of the scientific method, Nolan was practically inviting the audience to do that very thing. And now maybe someone can answer something that I might've overlooked. Was it ever directly implied that Gargantua was an artificial black hole? Or that falling into Gargantua merely led to the tesseract?

Just go see Interstellar. And tell everyone you know to go see it too. This film is probably doomed to wind up under-rated by critics, but it's marvelous. IMDB is giving it 9.2/10 right now though.

Greg, I don't think you need politics to figure out that wants become trivial when basic needs cannot be met. And if you want to put a label on it, the kind of system being hinted at was neither conservative nor liberal. It was a form of communism, built out of necessity to ensure humanity's survival. Nothing to do with politics. It's simple logic. Everyone can't be a painter if nobody has anything to eat.

What a difference an atmosphere makes, eh? You think your worst enemy as a rocket is gravity, when in fact, it's air.

This. Anything else is secondary IMO. It's time to dip our feet in the 'water.'

There was one that irked me but it's more than forgivable for everything else this movie had going for it. And even the cliche was handled in a way I never saw before. (I won't say what it is until the sparks have had time to die out and we start talking without risk of spoiling it for others) If anyone is still having doubts, don't. Just go. I am incredibly nitpicky about sci-fi movies, after how much action and steamy drama we've had forced down our throats in recent years that just pretends to be sci-fi. Interstellar is NOT one of those movies. It stayed interesting the entire time, even though it left ample time for introspection and reflection between the intense scenes. And I don't just mean for the crew, but for the audience. I haven't been this pleased with a old-fashioned semi-realistic space adventure since 2001: A Space Odyssey. An hour later my brain was still running at 200% trying to analyze everything that happened. It's been forever since a movie has been able to do that for me. Are there some science mistakes in it? Sure. But they're nowhere near as obviously chalkboard-scratching as what Hollywood usually gives us. Don't even worry about them. Just enjoy it. The things this film got wrong are far and few between. Everything it got right is jaw-dropping. And major kudos to Nolan for not just creating entertainment, but also trying to give humanity a wake-up-call. The film kept on saying what us Kerbs are typically trying to tell everyone we meet. Our future is OUT THERE. To those of you who went, what were the theaters like? Mine was only 1/3rd full at best, but it was also a 4:30 screening. I hope that just means lots of folks were still at work. It'll be tragic if this doesn't get some good numbers. I'm even mildly concerned that the loss of Spaceship Two might have taken some of the wind out of the sails for this movie.

Who needs a Nuke? There are plenty of other kinds of "WMD's" that wouldn't give themselves away as easily as a nuclear weapon. And as a deterrent, it doesn't need to be capable of wiping everything out. It could be something as simple as, "You blow us up, we release this mega-virus into Earth's atmosphere, and EVERYONE dies." Practical? Not much more than space-based missiles. But if you can hide it well enough that nobody will know WHICH of your sats have the things, it would probably make everyone plenty nervous.

With China's current economic situation, if they DON'T do something, it doesn't say much for the future of humanity as a spacefaring species. China has every advantage right now. It will be very sad if they don't take advantage of it. Buy less U.S. sports stadiums. Build more rockets, pls.

At last, we get to see what became of those "rocket cities" seen in certain oldschool Maxis games. So, gameplay mechanics... strictly a strategic space game with a Sim City-esque spin? Or will selecting planets for specific resources, temperature, safety, etc, and planning the construction process (all the way down to building and launching the parts) be a factor in a more developed version? Will stations compete with each other economically?

As much as I'd love to see it happen, I don't think China rocketing out towards space is going to get the U.S. going anywhere. Americans simply know too much now, to have any hope of getting the people excited about it. This sadly is one of the reasons that science in general probably isn't as popular as it could be. We could land humans on Europa tomorrow, send a manned sub into the ocean, and then bring the entire crew back safely. And all most people would be thinking is, "Yeah, we can do that, but we still can't create jobs." Russia might get involved, but the U.S. Meh... doubt it. Unless they manage to sell it like China reaching (wherever) first spells doom for the future of the economy.

Yes, it's not a GOOD reason, but it has become a reason in numerous circumstances. At least in the USA, "Once bitten, twice shy," has been taken to the extreme in recent years. And keep in mind when I say this... I am not a tyrant, nor do I lack compassion. I simply know that deaths WILL happen, no matter how careful we try to be. Prime example, look at what terrorism has done to security. The kind of paranoia in airports and the like is now way out of hand, and we haven't even seen what the Ebola scare will do to that yet. Shoe bomb? Now everyone has to take off their shoes. Underwear bomb? Now everyone needs a full-body-scan. After ONE incident of a bus being hit by a train (because the warning gates failed to inform the driver of an approaching train), ALL school buses now have to stop at railroad tracks. You know that whole "get your Halloween candy checked before eating it" thing? There has never been ONE reported case of poisoning by people who give candy to Trick-or-Treaters. Every such incident involved candy that was poisoned AFTER it had been brought home. And on a similar note. Outdoor play is seen as too dangerous for children. Pedophiles MIGHT be lurking around every tree, so keep those kids in the back yard and never let them venture further, or better yet, just keep them locked inside to play on iPhones all day. And now I'm really dating myself, but people were crying foul during the first Gulf war in the 90's after somewhere around 1000 U.S. soldiers had been killed. Now, from any soldier's perspective, that was an unbelievably successful campaign. That's a lower casualty rate than any sane General would ever expect. But many were touting those deaths as enough of a reason to call the whole thing off. Compare that to the number of deaths in World War 2, even though it had practically unanimous support in the U.S. America has been slipping into this mindset where they think that with enough security, safeguards, and rules, they can completely put a stop to accidents and danger. The goal seems to be to create a completely sterile environment where there are absolutely no risks and no surprises. A world where nothing happens that isn't supposed to. Even scraped knees are too much of a risk now, because of liability lawsuits. I think the only way you could stuff more paranoia into this country, would be by mandating that all porches have steel awnings, to deflect any meteors above that might be waiting to kill the unlucky fool who dares walk out his front door. So, yes, this disaster has tremendous potential to lead to commercial space travel being over-regulated. And not just by politicians, but by rival companies. Sensing an opportunity to prevent any new fledgling competitors from getting their projects off the ground, they aggressively lobby for regulations that make it too expensive for anyone but businesses that are already established in the industry, under the false banner of public safety. This has already happened countless times. I see no reason to think that the same thing won't happen with space travel.

What I really hope to see is a space version of what we're seeing now with crowd-sourced research expeditions to remote regions on Earth. Shell out a heavy sum to bum a ride on a ship, and support scientific research in the process.

2142 never struck me as a particularly 'hopeful' scenario. No sign of "escaping Earth" in the cards for that universe. It's just everyone scrambling to gather whatever resources are left because there's not enough heat/food on the planet to keep everyone alive. Doesn't mean there "couldn't" be fighting in orbit, but it's not likely. And any fighting that happens up there is just going to further guarantee that we get stuck here, because of the debris field becoming a blockade. Sort of the universe's way of saying, Nuh uh, warmongers. You're staying right there where you are." Anyway, I really want to see a new version of this game. It was my favorite of the whole series, and felt more balanced than the others (though air superiority as with all of them was still a bit ridiculous). I dunno, there was something about the charm of that one that just had the right balance between realism, fantasy, and game mechanics, that really appealed to me. I would like to see it possible for Titans to fight in the air though, classic "broadside" style. I don't know where that would leave us for the capture/control objectives of launching missiles though. Still more maneuverability would be nice. They should be able to go anywhere on the map, and also rotate. I think I'm in the minority there though. Seems that most servers late in the game's life kept their Titans locked to the starting location, so I guess maneuverable Titans weren't very popular.

Wouldn't care whether or not I used the game element. This has a lot of potential uses. You could turn the wall of your house into a control panel for whatever you want. Personally I think the best thing about it would be screen savers. The ability to change your wallpaper without actually having to change your wallpaper. The tech does seem kind of trivial with augmented reality so close to becoming a reality. Who needs all those projectors? Just put on some goggles after the room has been mapped, and let it populate the room with monsters.

I think one of the Everquest games has had something like this for a while now. With a webcam, your character's facial expressions match your own.

Gliding could, if done right. It'd at least be as worthy as the downhill. Most of that run is only visible to us through TV cameras. There are only a couple of spots on the where spectators can stand. Everyone else is just waiting at the bottom. I like the idea of the diving down a mountain as shown in one of the earlier videos. Another thing you could do with it is has a competition based around landing, trying to get as close to the center of a target as possible. Points can be awarded for both accuracy and the quality of the landing. You could do this with hang gliding and also parachuting. Another thing to keep in mind about a hang gliding race. With the kind of financial resources they have available to them, would it be possible to design a course with artificially-generated thermal currents? Perhaps enabling gliders to maintain a stable flight near the ground without fear of losing altitude? It would give the spectators a show more comparable to classic air racing. Who knows if it's possible or not though. And KerikBalm... that Riding down the Eiger video... that just scares the heck out of me. Even more than it would just using skis.

This isn't the first time I've heard that black holes may be falling out of favor. For some odd reason though there was little splash when 'Hawking stopped believing in them.' But, you know how these news articles are. How many times have we been told now that "Earth 2" has been discovered... complete with a big confirmed population of bat people? http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116442/stephen-hawking-thinks-black-holes-dont-exist

If we can't interact with them then it's a pretty good assumption that their existence can't be confirmed.

That's exactly what I figured. While the paths of some stars 'might' create a pattern that looks like a vortex or helix, not all of them would, because the 'planes' that their planets rest on are not all the same. In some solar systems, it wouldn't look like a vortex at all. Also, if one wants to make a case for the universe being 'alive,' there are much better examples to use.

It doesn't hurt the heliocentric model at all, really. All it's doing is changing the point of reference to look at the motion in a different way. I still doubt it's accurate though. The axis of revolution for the planets in that video is perpendicular to the direction in which the sun is moving, and I highly doubt that is really the case. Maybe somebody can confirm this, as I wasn't able to find any info on it. Aren't the 'axes' of solar systems in the galaxy more or less parallel to the spin of the galaxy itself? It would also help to know the orientation of our galaxy relative to the center of the universe.

They'll probably abandon the PC version completely in a sick attempt to further boost X-box sales.

It's irrelevant. These days, "offensive" often is just a blanket term for anything that doesn't coincide with social justice dogma. If slavery proved to be better in ONE specific issue even though it fails miserable on all the rest, it doesn't mean slavery is better. If you're saying THAT is offensive, that's just mindless carpet-bombing. I never said slaves had it better. I never compared modern wages to whips, chains, sales, etc (though the trade of workers still happens in the sports world ). But if the amount of money spent on a modern worker in our allegedly more "civilized" society is at all comparable to, or is even less than what was spent on people who at the time, were not even granted the decency of being called humans, then we have a very serious problem. No matter what kind of a society we venture into in the future, family size WILL have to be addressed. There is no way around it. Earth is not going to magically get bigger and provide more land for growing food and building cities. You're right though. There is NOTHING people are more selfish about, than spawning. A woman who doesn't want kids will actually be called selfish by her peers. Given the kind of dire situation we're already in due to population issues (like available jobs vs. # of people) I can't even fathom what their logic is. I daresay the horrid workforce situation will only make the urge to reproduce even worse. People generally want to contribute to society. I imagine there are even some criminals out there who would LOVE to be doing something good, if only somebody gave them half the chance. But that just isn't reality. And when you're denied the option to contribute anything else, you can still 'grow' a life. What's sad about it though is, by the concept of supply and demand, all reproduction does is eat away at the value of future workers, in addition to automation/robotization.

Leave my sig alone, you