Interstellar: LeCosPA Perspective

By: Yao-Yu Lin, Yu-Hsiang Lin, Yen Chin Ong

 

“We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we’ve barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.” – Cooper, Interstellar.

 

The movie Interstellar has recently put theoretical physics and astrophysics into the limelight. The public is no doubt mesmerized by the fact that most ideas depicted in this science fiction, including the visual effects, are rooted in real theoretical physics. In fact, a real physicist [Kip Thorne] was involved as the scientific consultant. He has also written a popular science level book “The Science of Interstellar” for audiences who wish to learn more about the scientific concepts used in the movie. The movie has since received various reviews from the scientific community, including one by Richard Price in the prestigious journal CQG [Classical and Quantum Gravity], and one from the PLUS magazine, an online magazine which introduces readers to the beauty and the practical applications of mathematics.

擷取

Perhaps it’s a coincidence that we have Interstellar and The Theory of Everything [a movie on the love life of Stephen Hawking] now, just as the physics community is having a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

 

Here in LeCosPA, we decided to gather some reviews or reflections regarding Interstellar. As usual when it comes to movie review, spoiler alert!

 

Yao-Yu Lin [NTU, LeCosPA]

林曜宇個人照原檔

As a budding cosmologist and also a big fan of science fiction, I personally enjoyed the movie Interstellar very much. In fact, so much so that I went to the theater to watch this movie twice.

 

True to the Time magazine’s comment “Interstellar, Where No Movie Has Gone Before”, this movie has not only brought film-making to a new level, but also pushes real scientific development [Kip Thorne managed to find new results during the consultation for the film]. For me, this is the kind of movie that I can actually appreciate some of the science mentioned. For example, the film demonstrated the effect of general relativity in many aspects quite well. Firstly, there is the time dilation—in general relativity, time is treated as a dimension just like space. Space and time mixed together in such a way that it is possible for your time to go faster or slower than other people. Your time is slowed down if you are in the vicinity of a black hole or traveling close to the speed of light. The movie illustrated the consequences so well that it actually touched me. It is often said that space travel at near light speed is not possible. This is not quite true. However, the adventurers would have to have no baggage back home – everyone he or she knows would age at remarkably fast rate and would be long dead after they return, if they ever manage to return. The universe is a cruel place – there are prices to be paid if you want to glimpse its secrets…

 

The second aspect of the movie that impressed me is the visualization of the warping of spacetime, i.e. gravitational lensing. The most vivid example is the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole called Gargantua. When I saw the accretion disk around that huge black hole, I feel so shocked. It’s just like what Kip Thorne said, “Knowing the equation is one thing, but to really see it is another thing.” Yet another part of the science that I have enjoyed in the movie is the gravitational slingshot. Gravitational slingshot has been utilized to boost the speed of spacecrafts, such as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to explore our Solar System. In the movie, when Cooper tried to push the spacecraft out of the black hole’s immense gravitational pull, it is the power-slingshot that helped the spacecraft to escape from Gargantua. As someone who has worked on slingshot in the context of dark matter [arXiv:1412.2258 [astro-ph.GA]], I am actually quite thrilled by this part of the move. In conclusion, I think Interstellar is a great movie. If you are interested in space science, cosmology or astronomy, you better watch it!

 

Yu-Hsiang Lin [NTU, LeCosPA]

2013Profile

When I watched the movie Interstellar, one thing that made me ponder was the betrayal of Mann, the lead scientist and astronaut who explored one of the worlds behind the wormhole. Engaging in any investing activity [that is, you pay something significant with the anticipation of return], making proper decision and handle whatever the outcome turns out to be is always a challenge. Deep self-understanding is often discovered during such process.

 

I regard life as an opportunity to explore various things. In order to keep exploring and experience life to the fullest, I have some “tweets to live by”: (1) Be honest to your true desire;

(2) Know and believe in your ability;

(3) The quality of your decision making has nothing to do with your value as a human being.

I don’t know what I would do if I was put into the situation of Mann, but I know that “oneself” is the only person one needs to face at the end of one’s life — we are often  just too desensitized by our mundane daily routines to really sit down quietly and face our own thoughts. We don’t – and probably should not – have to wait till the end of our life to face ourselves. This attitude is more manifested in another recent movie Gravity.

Outer space tends to stimulate people to reflect on themselves and their relationships with each other. If we are self-aware enough, this world on earth is not far from the interstellar space.

擷取

 

 

Yen Chin Ong [NORDITA, KTH Royal Institute of Technology & Stockholm University]

 

Interstellar was a special kind of movie. I have always been interested in black holes and wormholes. I am especially fond of the TV series Stargate SG-1 and the later spin-off such as Stargate Atlantis. However, even in these wonderful science fiction shows the depiction of wormholes are inaccurate. The wormhole visualized in Interstellar is, as far as I know, the first accurate one – the wormhole mouth is spherical, not flat! As a general relativist I really like this!

 擷取

 The scene where the main character floated around an infinitude of bookshelves after he plunged into the black hole is quite a stretch of an imagination [also, that “love is the only thing that transcends space and time” is such a cliché!], but I otherwise enjoyed the movie. I especially appreciate that the movie deals with self-consistent time travel and avoids all the usual paradoxes that come with traveling backward in time.

 

The black hole scene with its immense gravitational field that bends light around it is also extremely well done, and is based on solid simulation of Einstein equations. To be able to see a rotating black hole visualized like this on the big screen is quite an experience. The rotating black hole solution to the Einstein equations is discovered in 1963 by the New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr. I have the honor to meet Roy a couple of times since, and he has always been somewhat of an inspiration for me.

 

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of general relativity this year, I am happy that the movie brought the marvel of gravity to the general public. There are still a lot more to understand about properties of black holes in general relativity, even after all these years [for an example, see my recent work with Michael Good on the “springy” properties of Kerr black hole, arXiv:1412.5432 [gr-qc]]. The subject of wormhole is also becoming active again with the recent idea that quantum entanglement may be related to wormhole [the ER=EPR conjecture], and the information loss paradox continues to intrigue everyone in the field.

 

As Pedro Ferreira wrote in the prologue of his book “The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle Over General Relativity”,

 

One thing about general relativity that has always puzzled me is how, despite being around for almost a century, it continues to yield new results. I would have thought that, given the phenomenal brain power that has been devoted to it, the theory would have been done and dusted decades ago. The theory might be difficult, but surely there is a limit to how much it can give us? Aren’t black holes and an expanding universe more than enough? But as I’ve continued to grapple with the ideas that come out of Einstein’s theory and met many of the brilliant minds that have worked on it, it has dawned on me that the story of general relativity is a fascinating and magnificent narrative […]”

 

 擷取

I think it is worth mentioning that Interstellar also has a somewhat interesting portrayal of NASA as a secret organization in a world in which people stopped believing that humans had ever been to the Moon. Indeed science denial is a real danger in today’s society. Climate change is but one of the many threats we should seriously tackle for the survival of the human race. Unlike the movie, we cannot hope for any help from beyond the wormhole.