Trust me: Sooner or later you will reach the point where this sort of thing enthralls you less and less. Which is to suggest this: That, as you get closer and closer to the abyss, it finally dawns on you how you will almost certainly go to the grave not really having a clue as to what it all means to inhabit this particular planet in this particular solar system in this particular galaxy in this particular universe.
Indeed, how of us will still be around on the day we make it to Mars? Ah, but the young among us can still dream…dream about actually being around to embrace the “interstellar” exploits that will fuel the imagination of the next Star Trek generation.
But here of course “space, final frontier” succumbs to a script. Much as it did when they made the movie out of Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact.
That’s right: Another wormhole saga.
But some things never change: “Our world is dying and only one man can save it”. Well, not exactly the planet itself, but he can find us another world to call home. With “their” help anyway. Though, oddly enough, “them” seem to be “us”.
So, how plausible is all of this. If only “in the future”:
Early in pre-production, Dr. Kip Thorne laid down two guidelines to strictly follow: nothing would violate established physical laws, and that all the wild speculations would spring from science and not from the creative mind of a screenwriter. Christopher Nolan accepted these terms as long as they did not get in the way of the making of the movie. That did not prevent clashes, though; at one point Thorne spent two weeks talking Nolan out of an idea about travelling faster than light. IMDb
Still, what are the odds of something like this actually happening? Well, let’s be optimistic and say about one in a hundred billion trillion.
So, everything you always wanted to know [but probably still don’t understand] about space, time and relativity. Oh, and love.
And then [inevitably] the part about morality and human nature and coming up with The Right Thing To Do. “I” vs. “we” vs. “humanity” itself.
I mean, talk about “conflicting goods”!
HAL meet TARS.
IMDb
[b]For a cornfield scene, Christopher Nolan sought to grow 500 acres of corn, which he learned was feasible from his producing of Man of Steel (2013). The corn was then sold and actually made a profit.
The method of space travel in this film was based on physicist Kip Thorne’s works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact”, and the resulting film adaptation, Contact (1997). Matthew McConaughey stars in both films.
Kip Thorne won a scientific bet against Stephen Hawking upon the astrophysics theory that underlies Interstellar (2014). As a consequence, Hawking had to subscribe Penthouse magazine for a year. This famous bet is depicted in The Theory of Everything (2014) which was released in the same year as Interstellar.
The film parodies the story that the moon landings were faked by the government. It’s used in the movie as an attempt to quell future generations’ enthusiasm for space travel. Amazingly, real-life conspiracy theorists claim that Stanley Kubrick directed the TV footage of the landings using leftover props from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which itself is one of the inspirations for this film.
According to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, it would take an infinite amount of time to cross the threshold of a black hole’s event horizon, as seen by a distant observer. The person crossing the threshold, however, would notice no change in the flow of time.
The visual effects that portray the wormhole with stars stretching out on its horizon is known in astrophysics as “Gravitional Lensing”. That is, in fact, how astronomers have identified black holes (an intense gravitational field bending space so much that light coming from stars behind it is stretched out around the sphere of the black hole’s “event horizon”). Considering the high-degree of scientific accuracy of this film, it’s not inconceivable that a wormhole would look much in real life as it is portrayed on this movie.[/b]
FAQ at IMDb imdb.com/title/tt0816692/faq?ref_=tt_faq_sm
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film
trailer: youtu.be/3WzHXI5HizQ
INTERSTELLAR [2014]
Written in part and directed by Christopher Nolan
[b]Cooper: What the heck did you do to my lander?
Murph: It wasn’t me.
Cooper: Let me guess. It was your ghost.
Murph: It knocked it off my shelf. It also knocks the books off.
Tom: There’s no such thing as ghosts dumbass.
Murph: I looked it up, it’s called a poltergeist.
Tom: Dad, tell her.
Cooper: Well, that’s not very scientific Murph.
Murph: You said that science was about admitting what we don’t know.
…
Murph: Why did you and mom name me after something that’s bad?
Cooper: Well, we didn’t.
Murph: Murphy’s law?
Cooper: Murphy’s law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen, will happen. And that sounded just fine to us.
…
Miss Hanley: Murph is a great kid, she’s really bright. But she’s been having a little trouble lately. She brought this in to show the other students. The section on the lunar landings.
Cooper: Yeah, it’s one of my old textbooks. She always loved the pictures.
Miss Hanley: It’s an old federal textbook. We’ve replaced them with the corrected versions.
Cooper: Corrected?
Miss Hanley: Explaining how the Apollo missions were faked to bankrupt the Soviet Union.
Cooper: You don’t believe we went to the Moon?
Miss Hanley: I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines.
Cooper: Useless machines?
…
Cooper [to his father]: We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.
…
Cooper: It’s not a ghost…it’s gravity. It’s not Morse, Murph, it’s binary. Thick is 1, thin is 0. Coordinates.
…
Professor Brand: Blight. Wheat, seven years ago. Okra, this year. Now, there’s just corn.
Cooper: And we’re growing more than we ever had.
Brand: Yeah, but like the potatoes in Ireland and the wheat in the dust bowl the corn will die. Soon.
Cooper: We’ll find a way, Professor, we always have.
Brand: Driven by the unshakeable faith that the Earth is ours?
Cooper: Well not just ours, no. But it is our home.
Brand: Our atmosphere is 80 percent nitrogen. We don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen. The last people to starve, will be the first to suffocate. And your daughter’s generation will be the last to survive on Earth.
Cooper: Now you need to tell me, what your plan is to save the world?
Brand: We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.
…
Professor Brand: The Lazarus missions.
Cooper: Sounds cheerful!
Brand: Lazarus came back from the dead.
Cooper: Sure, but he had to die in the first place. There’s not a planet in our solar system that could sustain life and the nearest star is over a 1000 years away. I mean, it doesn’t even qualify as futile. Where did you send them?
…
Cooper [to Murph]: After you kids came along, your mom, she said something to me I never quite understood. She said, “Now, we’re just here to be memories for our kids.” I think now I understand what she meant. Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.
…
TARS: I have a cue light I can use to show you when I’m joking, if you like.
Cooper: That might help.
TARS: Yeah, you can use it to find your way back to the ship after I blow you out the airlock.
[cue light flashes]
…
Cooper: Hey TARS, what’s your honesty parameter?
TARS: 90 percent.
Cooper: 90 percent?
TARS: Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.
Cooper: Okay, 90 percent it is.
…
Doyle: We have a mission.
Cooper: Yeah, and our mission is to find a planet that can habitate the people living on Earth right now. Okay? Plan A does not work if the people on Earth are dead by the time we pull it off.
…
Rom: Gravity on that planet will slow our clock compared to Earth’s drastically.
Cooper: How bad?
Rom: Well, every hour we spend on that planet will be, uhh, seven years back on Earth.
Cooper: Jesus.
…
Cooper: Those aren’t mountains…they’re waves!
…
Amelia [to Cooper]: Time is relative, okay? It can stretch and it can squeeze, but… it can’t run backwards. Just can’t. The only thing that can move across dimensions, like time, is gravity.
…
Amelia: Couldn’t you’ve told her you were going to save the world?
Cooper: No. When you become a parent, one thing becomes really clear. And that’s that you want to make sure your children feel safe. And that rules out telling a 10-year old that the world’s ending.
…
Prof. Brand [to Murph]: I’m not afraid of death. I am an old physicist. I’m afraid of time.
…
Murph [in video link]: Brand did you know? He told you right? You knew? This was all a sham. You left us here. To suffocate. To starve. Did my father know too? Dad? I just want to know, if you left me here to die? I just have to know!
…
Amelia: Cooper, my father dedicated his whole life to plan A, I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Dr. Mann: I do.
Cooper: He, he never even hoped to get the people off the Earth?
Dr. Mann: No.
Amelia: But he has been trying to solve the gravity equation for 40 years.
Dr. Mann: Amelia, your father solved his equation before I even left.
Amelia: Then why wouldn’t he use it?
Dr. Mann: The equation couldn’t reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics You need more.
Cooper: More? More what?
Dr. Mann: More data. You need to see into a black hole. The laws of nature prohibit a naked singularity.
Cooper: Romilly, is that true?
Rom: If the black hole is an oyster, then the singularity is the pearl inside. The gravity is so strong that it is always hidden in darkness, beyond the horizon. That’s why we call it a ‘black’ hole.
…
Dr. Mann: Your father had to find another way to save the human race from extinction. Plan B. A colony.
Amelia: But why not tell people? Why keep building those damn stations?
Dr. Mann: Because he knew how hard it would be to get people to work together to save the species instead of themselves.
Cooper: Bullshit.
Dr. Mann: You never would have come here unless you believed you were going to save them. Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier. We can care deeply - selflessly - about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.
Amelia: But the lie…that monstrous lie…
Dr. Mann: Unforgivable. And he knew that. He was prepared to destroy his own humanity in order to save the species. He made an incredible sacrifice…
Cooper: No. No, the incredible sacrifice is being made by the people on Earth who are gonna die! Because in his fucking arrogance he declared their case hopeless.
Dr. Mann: I’m sorry Cooper. Their case… is hopeless.
Cooper: No…
Dr. Mann: We are the future.
…
Cooper: You know why we couldn’t just send machines on these missions, don’t you Cooper?
Dr. Mann: A machine doesn’t improvise well, because you can’t programme the fear of death. Our survival instinct is our single greatest source of inspiration. Take you for example, A father, with a survival instinct that extends to your kids. What does research tell us, is the last thing you’re gonna see, before you die? Your children. Their faces. At the moment of death, your mind is going to push you a little bit harder, to survive. For them.
…
Cooper: What’s your trust setting, TARS?
TARS: Lower than yours, apparently
…
Cooper: What happens if he blows the airlock?
TARS: Nothing good…
…
Cooper: Well, this little maneuver’s gonna cost us 51 years!
Amelia: You don’t sound so bad for a man pushing 120!
…
TARS: Cooper, Cooper come in.
Cooper: TARS??
TARS: Roger that.
Cooper: You survived?
TARS: Somewhere…somewhere in their fifth dimension. They saved us!
Cooper: Yeah? Well who the hell is ‘They’? And just why would they want to help us?
TARS: I don’t know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside their five dimensional reality to allow you to understand it.
Cooper: Yeah well it ain’t working.
TARS: Yes it is. You’ve seen that time, is represented as a physical dimension. You’ve worked out that you can exert a force across spacetime.
Cooper: Gravity to send a message?
TARS: Affirmative.
Cooper: Gravity can cross the dimensions, including time?
TARS: Apparently.[/b]