I thought causality was valid in general relativity if not quantum mechanics. I know in quantum there are experiments which seem to violate causality. It would be interesting if they could figure out how to bring general relativity and quantum together, but then we'd probably become 5th dimensional creatures. I just find the concept of time so interesting. Because time is an abstraction in that all it is...is a measure of motion relative to other motion. Time began when motion began. And ends when motion stops. But that's the thing, you can have 2 dimensional space without the 3rd dimension. You can have one dimensional space without any other. But time makes no sense without any other dimension. So is time even a real dimension?
You guys can of course think what you want, and I get where you're coming from, but the basic production value of this vs M Night doesn't compare. And the actual subject matter doesn't really compare either (i.e. future of the human race with failing Earth combined with the theory of general relativity versus oh-twist-there-is-no-monster-you-dummies-hahaha). To me, just no... doesn't compute. I was ready to hate Interstellar, but I loved it and will see it again. Did a lot of things right, IMHO.
Visuals and scientific accuracy aside, frankly, it was refreshing to see something new like this rather than the same old, hashed-up reboot, sequel, or comic adaption.
This is a misconception and we've all been taught incorrectly. 4 Dimensional Spacetime != 3D + T Spacetime is 4D but it is not derived as 3D+T. T is just movement of/in the 3D. If the 3D universe were static, there would be no T. So yes, space time is not a traditional dimension they we understand dimensions. It's a shame we use the word dimension to mean 2 different things in this case because it's not intuitive and that's why everyone doesn't understand it.
Ok, I do have a question. When they went down onto the 'knee-deep water planet'.. They WENT to the 'KDWP' because it was one of the locations which had been transmitting a 'positive' signal of some sort, as I understood it. That's correct, yes? I'm going to assume that's accurate. So, they went down there, knowing there was a 'time dilation effect' in play, so um they had to HURRY. And they left the black guy up in the ship in orbit/far-away/whatever. (On a side note, once again the black guy gets the worst shaft in movie history) Anyway, ok so, they went down there and discovered the wreckage of the previously-landed craft. AND the 'transmitter' which had been sending them the apparently-false 'positive' signal. Accurate so far? Because of the disaster with the wave, one guy dies and the ship is disabled 'temporarily', to the point of making them have to wait around down there way longer than they planned, 'approximately 45 minutes' to them, which translated roughly to 23 years for the poor guy left behind on the ship. So, 45 minutes equals 23 years in 'real time'.. They sent the mission out originally, what did they say, like 11 years in the past, so Hathaway says (possibly accurately enough) that the ship probably only crashed maybe 20 minutes ago in 'local time', which was why the debris was all still in one spot. Ok, so far so good. But here's where it loses me: the 'transmitter'.. having sent back over a decade of 'positive signals' of some sort. But, by the time they arrived, because the transmitter existed in 'local time' on the planet's surface, it could only have possibly transmitted maybe 20 minutes worth of data. So HOW had NASA been receiving 'years worth of positive signal data'? How would that work at all anyway? The time dilation on the planet's surface would have slowed-down the outgoing signal to almost nothing, correct? Certainly so slow as to be nothing more than random background noise, and there shouldn't be any way of receiving such signals, right? I mean, it wold end up being something like, if you took a 5-minute long song and slowed it down to where it would be stretched out and played over a, say, 3-year span. That wouldn't sound like anything at all. It wouldn't even register. And the poor guy on the ship.. using the same logic as the mission in the first place, one would assume he was receiving a 'steady stream of data' from his own crew's ship which just headed down to the planet.. but he saw nothing, and just waited. And waited. And slept. And waited. Pretty calmly, all things considered. So anyway, not being an astro-physicist and all, I'm sure there's some sort of logical explanation.. anyone? Also, on a side note.. does the 'time dilation' actually slow light down? I know *subjectively* it would not appear to have slowed down, but *objectively*, in 'real time', away from the time dilation effect, the light would have necessarily have slowed down in order for any of this to make sense, right? But then, how would you even be able to SEE such a planet from a distance? The light would be reflected off of it at such a low frequency as to appear totally black, wouldn't it? And frankly, that begs the question of what exactly is happening in a black hole - the assumption is always that the GRAVITY is so strong as to prevent even light from escaping at ALL.. but what if it not that, but that time is slowed down to essentially nothing, so that light simply stops moving, rather than having to try to escape the intense gravitational pull? Which would explain why they APPEAR black.. And did Moore's Law simply stop working on Earth once the 'blight' happened? Technology should have been advancing at an astronomical rate by that point.. Oh well.. you can tell my brain isn't ready to go back to work yet, and is instead trying to goof off after the holiday week.. :grin:
Well, I guess the only possible explanation then is that your tastes and standards are at a higher level than the rest of us. For this you are a better human being than all of us. You win.
Nero; Because my brain isn't fully ready to go back to work either I will try to answer some of your questions. Regarding time dilation if you witness from outside an area where time moves slower it wouldn't appear black just very slow. Consider that how we tell time is through motion and we experience relative motion all the time. If I'm tossing a ball on an airplane the relative motion of the ball might seem faster to an observer on the ground then to me. So the relative passage of time to an observer outside of the time dilation might be still observable just would be adjusted to the relative time of the observer. As far as the signal from the original landing I think you are right that NASA wouldn't have gotten a repeated signal giving positive info since the transmission would've been so drawn out. NASA would've anyway been able to tell by the doppler shift of the signal that time was horrendously dilated on the planet that they probably couldn't have gotten any useful info. I think that is one area where they slipped up on the science just to get the story going. Also the black guy got the shaft but the guy who died on the planet probably would've traded places with the black guy at that moment.
Nero's suspicions are basically correct. Strong gravity distorts the frequency of outgoing signals. This has even been tested on Earth eek in a multi-story tower. Light is "red-shifted" as it ascends from the Earth's surface. This isn't necessarily a game-breaker for the movie's plot though, (especially if the mission had planned ahead). The temporal shift was about 5 orders of magnitude (about 3000 seconds on the planet corresponded to 700 million seconds of mother-ship time). Five orders of magnitude wouldn't necessarily move a frequency beyond what the mother-ship could detect. The EM spectrum is just ridiculously vast. You could just send a compressed microwave signal from the planet, and the ship would get a (much longer, yes) radio signal, but the information should be intact. (I'm not doing the exact calculation of how the frequency shift is manifest versus a time-shift; assuming it's vaguely similar). Anyway, the mother ship would have known, though, that "we only have 20 minutes of good data, but the first 20 minutes look okay." As for gravity changing the speed of light, no. That does not happen. * MILD SPOILER * PS -- one of my gripes with the movie relates to time dilation as the people/robots go into the black hole. My understanding is that time dilation becomes so incredible that things falling into the event horizon eventually just look like flies trapped in amber. The last fraction of a second as they fall in would take millennia on the outside. So according Hathaway, M.M. would just look stuck on the event horizon and she'd be all like "well that was stupid" before flying to her boyfriend's planet. But whatever.
Good thoughts on the doppler effect.. BUT, wouldn't that same doppler effect also affect the visible light spectrum? In other words, we already know that 'slower' light turns red, and 'faster' light shifts into the blue. So, rather than the planet simply 'looking slower', it seemed to me it would also have down-shifted into the doppler effect so far below the 'red' as to be essentially blackness - ie no visible light (at least none detectable by the human eye for sure).. I guess I just find the whole 'localized time dilation' thing highly questionable, as it relates to the movie. I am guessing the amount of distance necessary to be between the 'mothership' and the landing ship would have to have been so great that it would likely have been further than the distance from Earth to the wormhole, which took them YEARS in suspended animation sleep just to GET to.. at least in regards to the mothership staying behind in 'real time' and the landing ship going 'into dilated time/space'. It just doesn't seem to me to be a feasible concept that the mothership was essentially just 'up in orbit' and 'down on the planet, well, time was different'. The gravitational pull from 'gargantua' would have been so massive (especially if it was expected to be believed as responsible for creating a time dilation effect all on its own) that one would likely have had to have been several light-years from it in order to be out of that dilation effect. But then again, I ain't no sciencey feller, so..
Did I hurt your feelings by not liking a movie? Are you Chris Nolan's dad or something? I thought the movie was ridiculously cheesy, completely predictable and amateurishly shot. I give it a 4/10. The Matt Damon sequence was dreadful. When they see water Ann Hathaway says "the stuff of life." I laughed out loud. I watched Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. I found that to be a much more enjoyable movie and not nearly as cheesy as Interstellar, and there's a talking raccoon in Guardians... To each his own, though. If you enjoyed Interstellar, more power to you. I thought it sucked.
Saw it. Wasn't expecting much despite being a Nolan and McCaughney fanboy. Pleasantly surprised. Might be one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever. No joke. Not sure what all the theories are about. I guess I'll read through the posts now. But the story actually seemed pretty straightforward to me. No need for theories or fleshing out any of the missing backstory. It works for me as-is. Probably already discussed... but I don't see a need for part 2 and do not think there will ever be another film based on this universe. I can definitely see why some critics aren't on board with it. Nolan throws you into this universe that feels real. Logical. Standard... then out of nowhere you're pulled into something different. Into the sci-fi aspect of it all. If you cant embrace classic sci-fi, you probably cant enjoy this movie. It's not for you. This is the kind of movie that becomes a cult classic over years and years, not the instantaneous surefire hit. Special movie. No doubt it. I also had the fortune of going in with very little information. All I knew going in is that I love Nolan, I wanted to see it in IMAX, that the reviews were bad, and that the cast was strong. Except for Damon, didn't even know he was in it. Genuinely surprised to see him. I really didn't know what the story was about and that definitely made the experience better.
I was complementing you bro. Your taste is just a class above everyone else's. I loved Guardians of the Galaxy though I couldn't find a cheesier scene in Interstellar that matched the cheese that was Chris Pratt saying "I found something inside myself incredibly heroic." Of course my taste is not as matured as yours. Seriously to state that this movie was "one of the wort movies of all time" just conveys the level of disconnect that your superior mind has over our weak minds. Did I think there was some cheese in Interstellar. Ya, but the ride was still amazing.
If anyone's interested, see my points above. While it's a similar form as a Doppler shift, it's not technically a Doppler shift (which deals with motion -- not gravity). The information content of the signal would be intact. They could send a 10 microsecond burst of high-frequency information that would be slowed down by a factor of 100,000 or so. Then the main ship would get the info packet over a period of 1 second. The info itself wouldn't be distorted or ruined, just drawn out. More info on gravity changing the frequency of signals: https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Gravitational_redshift.html Given the interviews I've read between the director and his main astrophysicist, I wonder if they talked about such things being in the movie but just decided it would take too long to explain, with no real benefit! The movie was so long as it was... Interesting to see how polarizing it seems to be in our forum, and I suspect viewers in general. I guess you can't have a "meh" reaction these days if you spend 3 hours of your life on something.
Haven't read all the pages but did anybody answer why they used 60's space tech to launch and leave Earth but had some bad ass spaceships that left planets without the aid from the 60s rocket boosters?
First of all, stop making up quotes and attributing them to me. Secondly, I don't understand why you are personally attacking me because I disliked a film. You are really being a prick. It doesn't make much sense... Third...you're right. The movie is not subjective at all. It's is undeniably great. Anyone who doesn't like Interstellar must be a complete moron.
