Interstellar movie notes
No cuts whatever. Lots of spoilers. Be warned.
Interstellar
Things that made me go Mrr?
1. The beginning in the dustbowl farm community dragged forever.
2. If you have a nitrogen-breathing plant-killing pathogen, wouldn’t it be very difficult to make sure you didn’t bring any with you to a new planet.
3. Out of potentially billions of planets in our galaxy, the most promising new planets candidates that They choose to present to humanity are in close proximity to a black hole in a whole other galaxy?
4. Something seemed off about the rotation of the spacecraft to produce artificial gravity. My estimate of the rotation period was 6 seconds (yes, as soon as it was spun up I counted), which means the spacecraft radius would need to be 10 meters to produce 1g. The spacecraft looked about 40 meters in radius, which would need a rotation period of 12 seconds to produce 1g, quite longer than the period shown on film. A 10 meter radius spacecraft and 2 meter tall crew would mean the crew would experience a 20% difference in the acceleration experienced by their head and feet simultaneously, a rather unpleasant sensation. A 40 meter spacecraft reduces the head-feet acceleration difference to a less vomit-inducing 5%. Dramamine, anyone?
5. The tides on Miller’s world were appropriately tall, but were an order of magnitude too fast, and thousands of times too steep. The tidal bulges would be shallow, and move as fast as the planet’s rotation. I doubt the planet rotated in two hours, as we saw no day-night variation.
6. Gravitational time dilation is real, but its depiction on film is kind of ridiculous. To achieve the time dilation observed in the story, Caltech physicist Kip Thorne had to do calculations envisioning a 100-million-solar-mass black hole spinning at 99.8 percent the speed of light. These supermassive black holes are known to only exist in the hearts of galaxies. While it’s possible for planets to be orbiting in the accretion disk of such a beast, you wouldn’t want to live there. The more massive the black hole, the higher energy the radiation from the accretion disk. The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is relatively quiet, and still emits cancer-causing X-rays and gamma rays.
7. The variables in the equations on the blackboard were unrecognizable and had nothing to do with general relativity or quantum mechanics. They were meaningless gobbledygook. Ten minutes on Wikipedia could have netted the design department more convincing pseudo-equations.
8. The scientist Dr. Brand staking the future of humanity on a love-based hunch, so she can find out if her boyfriend is still alive? Watch me puke.
9. The ending. A daughter who has been aching for her father her whole life sends him away in her dying days so he can get the girl? Watch me puke more.
Things I actually liked:
• The discussion about a wormhole as a 3-D event horizon: If a sketch of 3-D space on paper produces a 2-D hole, a real hole in 3-D space will be a sphere.
• The visual portrayal of the 5th dimension as layers of 3-D space, and he can float around freely in time.
• The technical attention to the spacecraft. They felt real in the design and mostly real in their behavior. Rockets were used appropriately. But see bullet 4 above.
• I was less annoyed by the focus on Cooper vs. Dr. Brand, until about two-thirds of the way through the film. See bullets 8 and 9 above.
• Murf was awesome, and my favorite character. Nuff said.
Overall verdict: The science concepts had potential to be intriguing and the effects were beautiful, but there was too much romantic tension and science that just didn’t make enough sense to make it mindblowingly groundbreaking sci-fi.
Interstellar
Things that made me go Mrr?
1. The beginning in the dustbowl farm community dragged forever.
2. If you have a nitrogen-breathing plant-killing pathogen, wouldn’t it be very difficult to make sure you didn’t bring any with you to a new planet.
3. Out of potentially billions of planets in our galaxy, the most promising new planets candidates that They choose to present to humanity are in close proximity to a black hole in a whole other galaxy?
4. Something seemed off about the rotation of the spacecraft to produce artificial gravity. My estimate of the rotation period was 6 seconds (yes, as soon as it was spun up I counted), which means the spacecraft radius would need to be 10 meters to produce 1g. The spacecraft looked about 40 meters in radius, which would need a rotation period of 12 seconds to produce 1g, quite longer than the period shown on film. A 10 meter radius spacecraft and 2 meter tall crew would mean the crew would experience a 20% difference in the acceleration experienced by their head and feet simultaneously, a rather unpleasant sensation. A 40 meter spacecraft reduces the head-feet acceleration difference to a less vomit-inducing 5%. Dramamine, anyone?
5. The tides on Miller’s world were appropriately tall, but were an order of magnitude too fast, and thousands of times too steep. The tidal bulges would be shallow, and move as fast as the planet’s rotation. I doubt the planet rotated in two hours, as we saw no day-night variation.
6. Gravitational time dilation is real, but its depiction on film is kind of ridiculous. To achieve the time dilation observed in the story, Caltech physicist Kip Thorne had to do calculations envisioning a 100-million-solar-mass black hole spinning at 99.8 percent the speed of light. These supermassive black holes are known to only exist in the hearts of galaxies. While it’s possible for planets to be orbiting in the accretion disk of such a beast, you wouldn’t want to live there. The more massive the black hole, the higher energy the radiation from the accretion disk. The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is relatively quiet, and still emits cancer-causing X-rays and gamma rays.
7. The variables in the equations on the blackboard were unrecognizable and had nothing to do with general relativity or quantum mechanics. They were meaningless gobbledygook. Ten minutes on Wikipedia could have netted the design department more convincing pseudo-equations.
8. The scientist Dr. Brand staking the future of humanity on a love-based hunch, so she can find out if her boyfriend is still alive? Watch me puke.
9. The ending. A daughter who has been aching for her father her whole life sends him away in her dying days so he can get the girl? Watch me puke more.
Things I actually liked:
• The discussion about a wormhole as a 3-D event horizon: If a sketch of 3-D space on paper produces a 2-D hole, a real hole in 3-D space will be a sphere.
• The visual portrayal of the 5th dimension as layers of 3-D space, and he can float around freely in time.
• The technical attention to the spacecraft. They felt real in the design and mostly real in their behavior. Rockets were used appropriately. But see bullet 4 above.
• I was less annoyed by the focus on Cooper vs. Dr. Brand, until about two-thirds of the way through the film. See bullets 8 and 9 above.
• Murf was awesome, and my favorite character. Nuff said.
Overall verdict: The science concepts had potential to be intriguing and the effects were beautiful, but there was too much romantic tension and science that just didn’t make enough sense to make it mindblowingly groundbreaking sci-fi.