Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,“ the smart sentimentalism which opened in theatres across the United States, delves into black holes, wormholes, and space travel, apparently taking scientific concepts seriously. Most renowned theoretical physicist Kip Thorne acting as an adviser and executive producer on “Interstellar” has brought to light a story that has not been experienced cinematically before.
“Interstellar,” being about spacemen traveling to the other end of the galaxy to find a new home to replace humanity’s vanishing homeworld come up with the idea that space exploration seems to be the only choice to save humans. Opening with Earth on its last breath we meet Cooper, a former NASA pilot, now turned engineer and agricultural farmer. He is soon persuaded by Professor Brand to join team members Brand, Doyle, Romilly, and the two robots TARS and CASE on a strange journey into space. Expectations high on saving mankind from extinction and launch a gigantic mission, passing through a nearby wormhole, and exploring a sustainable planet on the other side, the movie starts kicking into high gear.
The NASA scientists believe Cooper’s story about a strange gravity ghost in his daughter’s bedroom as they suppose that they have indirectly discovered a new alien race. NASA scientists believe that those beings are communicating with humanity in two ways: by opening a wormhole nearby Saturn, and by pushing books off a bookshelf in the bedroom of Cooper’s daughter.
Here is a look at some of the space-science concepts that play key roles in the movie. However, once viewers digest the quantum mechanics and move the enigmatic narrative holes in the story, Interstellar becomes more enjoyable.
Journey Through a Wormhole
Wormhole travel across the universe and gigantic black holes are just some of the wonders seen in the film “Interstellar”.
According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, wormholes are a sort of tunnel that allows relatively quick travel between widely separated parts of the universe. These had mysteriously appeared near Saturn some years before within the movie, but in reality, no sign of them has ever been spotted or nobody knows whether they actually exist. However, this was the foremost time the depiction began with Einstein’s general relativity equations. Cooper steers the spaceship, called “Endurance”, through the wormhole into a planet-rich portion of a faraway galaxy. Intriguingly, the end of the movie determined that creatures in our solar system have not crossed the wormhole yet.
Space Travel
In the movie, astronauts use a variety of spacecraft to cross the universe and explore the alien world. Nolan has done his study, applying realistic ingredients to a thrilling and reflective upshot.
Imagine that there is a fifth-dimensional being who floats above everything that happens in Interstellar. From that being’s perspective, everything that happens is happening all at once. Certainly, everything that has ever happened from our three-dimensional perspective is happening simultaneously. The fifth-dimensional beings are not aliens; they are humans from the distant future, who have evolved beyond the limits of the third dimension. These far future beings are now helping to create themselves by giving humanity the wormhole to a new galaxy.
Interstellar gilds its version of time travel with gravity and relativity, but on a pure plot level, this is time travel by way of Terminator. In the first Terminator, John Connor sends his father back in time, so that he can meet his wife and thus give birth to John Connor. Cooper uses his new powers of bookshelf-based intergalactic telecommunication to explain to Murph how to solve an unsolvable equation. The fifth-dimensional beings shut down the tesseract and send Cooper back through the wormhole; we know this because, along the way, he meets up with his past self when the Endurance was coming through the wormhole and shakes Anne Hathaway’s hand.
Those fifth-dimensional beings are nice enough to bend the rules of space and time for Cooper and deposit Cooper back in our solar system and want Cooper to see his daughter again.
A Gorgeous Black Hole
Most of the actions in “Interstellar” revolve around a giant black hole named “Gargantua.” “Interstellar” eventually finds Cooper and his crewmates in a distant solar system on the edge of a black hole, which means that time gets funky. Visiting one planet, they lose decades of Earth time over the course of a disastrous three-hour trip; which means that, once back on the ship, Cooper must get caught up on years of messages from his family back home.
The astronauts would likely be killed by the energetic radiation thrown off by the superhot disk of material circling Gargantua or they would be “spaghettified” by the intense gravitational pull, which would be much stronger at one end of their bodies than the other. In fact, a planet so close to a black hole could not even exist, as the tidal forces generated by the black hole’s immense gravity would destroy it.
A Visual Spectacle
Anyone who goes through “Interstellar” will probably agree that it is a striking visual spectacle.
One of the alien planets depicted in the film is an aquatic world featuring mysterious gigantic waves, while another is a frigid empire whose clouds are frozen solid. These worlds are elegantly brought out throughout the movie. The spaceships which the crew uses for planetary exploration in “Interstellar” are also nicely designed. Endurance is a ring-shaped vehicle that can be shuttled to the surface of an exoplanet to set up a base.
Love; the Fifth Element
Love is the one thing that transcends time and space.
Anne Hathaway in Interstellar
This is the thing that enlightens everything that happens in Interstellar. Hathaway gives her “love” monologue when she is explaining why the Endurance should go to Edmunds’ world instead of Mann’s world. Hathaway’s character, Brand, happens to be in love with Wolf Edmunds, and her gut tells her that the mission should follow her heart and go to his world.
And love appears to be the focal reason why, when Cooper falls into the black hole, the fifth-dimensional beings put him directly in contact with the person he loves most in the universe: his daughter. As far as Interstellar is concerned, love is a literal potent physical concept; strong enough to bend the elaborate cosmic architecture of wormholes and black holes and far-flung star systems.
Solving Gravity
While Cooper is on space exploration, his daughter grows up into brilliant astrophysicist Jessica Chastain and spends her entire life attempting to solve an apparently unsolvable equation. If NASA can solve this equation, then they will be able to launch awesome space stations into space and save all mankind on Earth or the Endurance carries a flock of human embryos, creating a whole new human race on a new Earth led by Anne Hathaway.
There is a lot of physics involved in this mysterious equation—most of which gets reduced, in the movie, to the notion that they must “solve gravity.” At this point, brilliant astrophysicist Jessica Chastain tells her boyfriend Topher Grace that the only way to solve this equation is to return to the bookshelf in her old family home and wait for the gravity ghost from the fifth dimension to communicate with her. Miraculously, this happens. Jessica Chastain is able to solve gravity with the information recorded from the black hole.
Intellectual, thought-provoking, and sentimental, Interstellar presents an interesting theme in its narration. While the fate of humanity is at stake, the story in the movie is outlined by the dilemma of family and work. The strenuous relationship of love and anger between a parent and child (Cooper and his daughter in the movie), something that is common in our world, is another highlight. This way, the sci-fi epic “Interstellar” throws a lot of science on the screen for space geeks to sink their teeth into while delivering a beautifully crafted cinematic experience. Nolan has excelled at a complicated approach to filmmaking in which seemingly every narrative ingredient form one piece of a tantalizing puzzle. Even as the story barrels ahead into extrasolar environments made of ice, giant waves, the pratfalls of wormholes, and gravitational singularities, “Interstellar” bolsters its plot to genuine character motivation and the continuing impression.
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References
01. https://ew.com/article/2014/11/07/interstellar-plot-explained/
02. https://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/review-christopher-nolans-interstellar-is-smart-sentimentalism-as-weve-never-seen-it-before-68695/
03. https://www.space.com/27701-interstellar-movie-science-black-holes.html
04. https://youtu.be/nBeb5OAEwos
