Christopher Nolans "Interstellar" movie shines new light on black holes.

[Noobton]

Came here for Rosetta news, got sidetracked by this post.

I loved the movie, in part because the science, in part because the special effects, but most of all because it made me think, I never got bored during the three hours, yes, it required me to suspend disbelief and a few parts but it wasn't too bad, yes it reminded me a lot of Contact, and it reminded me a lot of 2001 Space Odyssey but I can't really think of any higher praise.

Btw, Phil Plait came up with a follow up where he admits most of his assumptions were wrong (not all of them though) http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/11/09/interstellar_followup_movie_science_mistake_was_mine.html

Also, remember Clarke guys "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

[Kulebron]

I have very mixed feelings about the movie. TLDR: first half was epic, second half was ........, so clumsy I couldn't but laugh at moments.

All the story in the first half was very humane, compelling and touching, even made some guys drop a tear. I was positively shocked and almost had tears when the guy was leaving for the space center to fly.

The exploration part was at Jebediah level with quite stock physics. Land first, then learn about the waves, waves of early alpha release. But let's admit it wasn't a big deal. The suspense when they rushed back to the ship was very well done. All the story up to that point was excellent.

Right after that CGE started to be mixed with sugary vely slow paced melodrama. What made it look clumsy was the very slow pace and big leaps in time in between. They were quite disconnected, and looked like history chronicals, you couldn't build enough compassion for all the things and people there.

I was in a small city cinema, mostly with lower middle class people, who don't care of astrophysics. Those were not impressed by CGE enough to swallow the cheesy second part. Instead of having tears of happines in the end, the audience laughed and doh'ed.

Overall, far beyond expectations. Good plausible graphics and decent physics, good story in the beginning but leaves poor aftertaste. It looked like if a cheaper director was hired in the middle of the movie.

I think it is quite watcheable. Historically it may take place in top 10s of Sci-fi but with some "if"s. Probably, like Blade Runner, it'll see directors cut with all the crappy sugary parts removed.

I think if in the mid-late XXI century people managed to settle in Saturn orbit, they'd have done liquid polymers and have this guy as helper robot around:

Edited November 12, 2014 by Kulebron

[SpaceXray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c_CW3Iv6j4

[MajorThomas]

I had issues with Interstellar throughout, but it's stayed with me.

Overall I'd say it's a winner because of all the things it attempted to do, and never before seen on the big screen. It was fine SF by movie standards, though a bit short of 2001 (my benchmark).

[Mr Shifty]

**SPOILERS IN THIS POST THROUGHOUT, though I've spoiler-tagged the very most spoilery bits**

OK, now that many folks have seen the movie, I'll concede that frame-dragging around a rotating black hole does (I guess, since I'm not an astrophysicist) alleviate some of the seemingly ludicrous issues with the water planet. (Though I suspect escape velocity from that planet was still near light speed.) But, I simply cannot imagine that the extreme Doppler shift of the transmissions from the water planet (or a little logic) wouldn't have clued them in, ahead of time, to the possible fate of that expedition. Weren't those transmissions time-stamped at origin? I thought of it instantly when Romilly told them about the extreme time dilation: "That expedition would have just landed, subjectively."

Also, the scene inside the black hole was ridiculous. I gather that the solution to Einstein's field equations for a rotating black hole include trajectories inside the event horizon that are closed time-like loops, so some sort of time travel is possible, but the kind the movie showed is indistinguishable from religious woo. Why wouldn't any civilization with sufficiently magical technology to effect Coop's "behind the bookcase" sojourn just send the message directly back to Murph, rather than rely on her time-locked father and his magical watch as an intermediary? And I can just imagine how setting that whole apparatus up would play out. Some far-future post-graduate student gets a note from their PI: "Hey, it's long past the time we set up that little time loop that let us jump start our gravity-harnessing technological civilization. Why don't you head out to the ancestral Gargantua binary and get that done? I don't know why we have to do this indirectly, with all that silly nonsense regarding Dr. Cooper and her father, but that's the way it happened historically and we don't want to violate causality, so make it so." The whole thing is just too pat. Signs was another movie with a single father living in a cornfield confronting questions of destiny. I've always loathed Signs because I thought that it provided trite, nauseating, quasi-religious answers to difficult questions about suffering and tragedy. I don't think that the woo in Interstellar is all that different except that it waves its hands in the direction of science: a daughter getting a message from her father through some 5-dimensional mumbo-jumbo using magical future technology (we can bend space-time to our will but must communicate with the past using Morse code), rather than a father getting a message from a deity through his wife's fatal head injury.

I did really like the scenes on the future dystopian Earth (and especially every scene with John Lithgow or Jessica Chastain.) And I liked the space travel sequences, though I wish the black hole had been revealed with a bit more awe, and the characteristics of the binary system more fully fleshed out. I wish we'd learned something about the other 9 planets. I thought the scenes on the planets were kind of lame, and the fistfight with Matt Damon was just ugh. (Matt Damon being in the movie was dumb. He simply doesn't have enough charisma to be believable as a scientist who could've convinced people to undertake the project they did.) I thought the O'Neill cylinder was really cool and I wish we could've seen more of that project.

Interstellar would have worked wonderfully if Coop and team gone down to Miller's world, been able to gather the necessary black hole data from there (inside the black hole's ergosphere), but realized they were trapped on the planet by its enormous escape velocity. The data (doled out over years by Doppler stretching) enables the solution of the gravity equations by grown-up Murph, which enables the further exploration of the other 11 worlds and the eventually colonization of one or more of them, barely in time as the Earth becomes uninhabitable. And then for the film's coda, you could show 1000 years later, an expedition reaching Coop and Brand and the rest on Miller's world (only a week would have passed for them) where he learns what his daughter accomplished. Just show all that sequentially and that would have been a great movie.

Edited November 12, 2014 by Mr Shifty

[Nertea]

I saw this last night in IMAX and quite enjoyed it.

The Good:

• The entire first act (on Earth) was very solid.
  
• Beautiful space vistas and general effects work. Loved the bit when they were spinning around the wormhole, and approaching the black hole.
  
• The sound work. Very great, loved the rocket launch vs space contrast.
  
• Surprise Matt Daemon! Totally unexpected, and he carried out his role really quite well!
  
• The third act, with its slowly building dissonant organ music, had me on the edge of my seat
  

The Bad:

• The pacing of the second act was all over the place, essentially from the entrance into the wormhole until Surprise Matt Daemon showed up.
  
• Some questionable dialogue in places that was cringe-worthy, particularly the two sections about love conquering all, which seemed quite forced from the actors involved.
  

The Ugly:

• How motion sick it made my wife
  

I think it falls short of Inception and Memento in terms of Nolan movies, but it was certainly very enjoyable, and probably the best thing I've seen this year (not saying much considering the quality of this year's films)...

[Kulebron]

Also, the scene inside the black hole was ridiculous. ... I don't know why we have to do this indirectly, with all that silly nonsense regarding Dr. Cooper and her father, but that's the way it happened historically and we don't want to violate causality, so make it so." The whole thing is just too pat. ... its hands in the direction of science: a daughter getting a message from her father through some 5-dimensional mumbo-jumbo using magical future technology (we can bend space-time to our will but must communicate with the past using Morse code), rather than a father getting a message from a deity through his wife's fatal head injury.

Interstellar would have worked wonderfully if Coop and team gone down to Miller's world, been able to gather the necessary black hole data from there (inside the black hole's ergosphere), but realized they were trapped on the planet by its enormous escape velocity. The data (doled out over years by Doppler stretching) enables the solution of the gravity equations by grown-up Murph, which enables the further exploration of the other 11 worlds and the eventually colonization of one or more of them, barely in time as the Earth becomes uninhabitable. And then for the film's coda, you could show 1000 years later, an expedition reaching Coop and Brand and the rest on Miller's world (only a week would have passed for them) where he learns what his daughter accomplished. Just show all that sequentially and that would have been a great movie.

Just a perfect idea. Realistic and still touching.

[nli2work]

I suppose the real back story on Interstellar.

http://youtu.be/D6fXiW3oEws?t=13m23s

[SpaceXray]

Went a 2nd time. Mindblown again. People clapped once again.

[problemecium]

Interstellar's black hole is neat, yes. Credit where it's due. Same with the wormhole. They're both by far the most realistic I've seen in any movie (or anywhere short of Eve Online and a few documentaries).

That said, has anyone in here been keeping up with Space Engine's development? It's going to do basically what Interstellar did 60 times a second.

http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/21-2070-44730-16-1414231544

P.S. BLAST. This is what I get for reading a thread about a movie I hadn't seen yet. Apparently Matt Damon is in it. I have been spoilaged :C

Then again, I don't really care. But still! xP

Edited November 15, 2014 by parameciumkid