Spoilers Interstellar

[Clint_L]

I kind of feel that setting out to do “hard” SF is like handing everyone in the audience a baseball bat and asking them to hit you with it.

Hmmmm...that comment made me search my brain for hard sci-fi movies that are still very entertaining. And I didn't have to search too hard: Alien and Aliens, two of my favourite films! And the science is pretty plausible in both.

Or what about The Martian - the initial dust storm and the final "Iron Man" scenes aside, it's pretty much hard science.

What are some others?

Note: for me, a lot of what gets called "science fiction" is really fantasy in science drag: Star Wars franchise, Dune, etc.

 

[Clint_L]

The important thing about Frankenstein isn't that you can't revivify a corpse via some chemically induced process...

Challenge accepted!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Does the movie say “inside the black hole” or are those just your words? (Genuine question—I don’t remember). Or do they just refer to crossing the event horizon?

IDK, but does it matter? We all agree that you aren't likely to wind up consciously able to control space-time so you can return to your house and talk to your kid, or whatever, right?

I probably need to add: I have not seen this movie since it was first in the cinema. If I say things that are inaccurate, you can blame my faulty memory of it. (Like spelling Murph with a V).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You are a tiny, tiny bit of mass added to the whole back at the event horizon. At that point you are inside what the universe sees as the black hole.

And nobody knows what happens at the singularity - I mean that pretty literally, that's a "dividing by cosmic zero" level of undefined. We don't know the rules - general relativity still doesn't cooperate with quantum mechanics, so suggesting you continue in some way is just as plausible as not.

If you say so. I don't find it plausible at all. "We don't know what happens" isn't really the same thing as "We can totally make up anything and it's all just as likely as anything else".

Ultimately, it doesn't matter - I may have said that I didn't like the "science" of the film, or more correctly, I didn't like the particular ways in which the story was told where the science wasn't part of it. But it's not like I care if something has accurate science. I just didn't like the particular blend. I also didn't like the parts that tugged at your heart-strings - and I like movies that move you. I just felt that this film didn't do any of that particularly well. It tugged too hard at times. It jumped from sensible stuff to insensible stuff too readily.

Everyone else is absolutely and completely free to like it! I know that a lot of people do!

 

[Ryujin]

You are a tiny, tiny bit of mass added to the whole back at the event horizon. At that point you are inside what the universe sees as the black hole.

And nobody knows what happens at the singularity - I mean that pretty literally, that's a "dividing by cosmic zero" level of undefined. We don't know the rules - general relativity still doesn't cooperate with quantum mechanics, so suggesting you continue in some way is just as plausible as not.

In a universe with "The Observer Effect", who knows?

 

[dragoner]

I watched a version of Gravity with commentary by astronaut women, and it was humorous to see their comments such as Sandra Bullock not wearing a diaper, I don't think it destroyed the film for anyone. Fiction is what it is, I like to see the genres separated, because I have seen them mashed together in library sections all under fiction, and it's annoying, and difficult to just browse for unread books. When I watched Interstellar, I could first cite the fact of having to burn their crops, or the lander that can take off again as a SSTO, versus the later things like time travel, which is likely a violation of conservation of energy.

 

[Morrus]

IDK, but does it matter?

I dunno, does it? I mean it doesn’t matter to me; you brought it up. You were talking about being part of the singularity a minute ago. That’s a different thing to being just over the event horizon.

As Umbran said, you can function just fine inside the event horizon. You won’t cross back out, of course (without sci-fi stuff) but if the black hole is large enough it could still take you decades to reach the singularity as you orbit inwards. You might not even notice you’d crossed the event horizon (well other then that you would never cross back over it).

How he got out is magic, of course. But him functioning within the event horizon is fine if the black hole is big enough.

 

[trappedslider]

Interstellar is one of my favorite movies.

People often critique the hard sci-fi bits of it. But I actually don't think it's a hard sci-fi movie. One of my critique of science-fiction (not all of it of course) is that it often focuses on such grand questions, or on technical/scientific premises that it becomes cold and not about humans anymore. What I loved about Interstellar is that it was very much about individuals, human feelings. It's a great piece of drama wrapped in a different cloth.

I know that the development team looked up in a ton of scientific papers and worked with scientists, but in the end, it doesn't matter to me. It makes some bold (impossible?) suggestions that allows the movie to tell a beautiful story. I cry twice every time I watch it.

So In an attempt to create a visually-astounding black hole, Kip Thorne (producer, and theoretical physicist) used the most accurate, currently-known equations to simulate it. What came out was unlike anything any previous depiction has shown, and was initially thought to be a rendering error. Instead, it was so accurate Dr. Thorne thinks he can get a research paper published from the results

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I dunno, does it? I mean it doesn’t matter to me; you brought it up. You were talking about being part of the singularity a minute ago. That’s a different thing to being just over the event horizon.

Yes, I get that it is a different thing - I just didn't remember which part was relevant to the film, and I'm not sure it mattered which one the film was talking about, as it immediately went into fantasy.

As Umbran said, you can function just fine inside the event horizon. You won’t cross back out, of course (without sci-fi stuff) but if the black hole is large enough it could still take you decades to reach the singularity as you orbit inwards. You might not even notice you’d crossed the event horizon (well other then that you would never cross back over it).

How he got out is magic, of course. But him functioning within the event horizon is fine if the black hole is big enough.

Sure, sure, I get it. You and Umbran are nit-picking details of my admittedly poorly worded part of what I didn't like about that scene. It's fine. I get what you both are getting at, and you're right, maybe you would be alive in there. Maybe.

But you don't then get to control where you go in space-time and who you get to talk to, right?

And yes, I'm aware that "We don't know that you can't". We don't know that you're not going to find Cthulhu at the bottom of the ocean. It's just very very unlikely.

 

[Morrus]

But you don't then get to control where you go in space-time and who you get to talk to, right?

Why not? As long as you don’t cross back over that event horizon, why can’t you wander round and talk to people? (I mean aside from the floating in space so no air thing). The event horizon isn’t like an energy barrier within which everything is different, it’s just the mathematical point at which c isn’t fast enough to escape.

If the black hole is big enough that singularity is years in your future. While it’s inevitable, that far out things would seem perfectly normal for a very long time. Like I said, you might not even know you’d crossed the event horizon.

This all being my layman’s understanding of physics. Umbria has physics background so may well correct me.