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Interstellar Movie 2014 (SPOILERS)

bobob said:
Sure, Interstellar had a story, but that was it's weakest feature - - the screenplay was just awful.



Quoting another sci-fi movie with a terrible screenplay? You must be a strictly visual person.
Click to expand...

I am not. You're just pickier than I am. :p Prometheus was valid. :D
 
Spoiler!

We just streamed Interstellar, second time seeing it. I am happy with this movie, it's epic, beautiful, and to some extent spiritual. The music is a bit oppressive during the gee-whiz part and I'll acknowledge that I have no insistence everyone love or like it. ;)

Mostly it all makes sense, however, regarding time paradoxes, the blatant one is getting the coordinates for the secret NASA facility through the bookshelf. I can live with that, but I don't see that part as important to the story. There could have been other better ways for the story teller to have them discover the NASA facility. Like the drone they capture, instead it could have easily led them there. :)

The other part of the info transferred by way of the bookshelf and the wristwatch is not so much a time paradox as it is communication over long distances and some time discontinuity allowed by relativity. This process allows Coop to send the quantum data needed to allow Cooper's daughter to complete Dr. Brand's equation to defy gravity, allowing large ships to launch off Earth taking, I assume, most survivors with them. And the message that love transmits across the universe. This was easy for me to buy. :D I'm still deciding if I want to purchase the disk.
 
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First of all, I loved this movie.

But now for some criticisms and a question:

1. The music was indeed oppressive. I am aware this was on purpose, but I still don't like it.

2. I felt like Michael Caine yelled about raging against the dying light about 1000 times. Okay, maybe it was just 2-3 times. But I feel like once would have been enough, and that it would have been more meaningful.

3. I'm no a scientist, but just as a sci-fi fiction reader I'm well aware of the powerful tidal effects upon a planetary body near the event horizon of a black hole. So in the scene where they are deciding between first visiting Miller's Planet or Edmund's Planet, I don't understand how any of these scientists/astronauts would think Miller's Planet was the better choice. I feel like the "report of life" for Miller's Planet would be heavily outweighed if not outright vetoed by the fact that the planet would be constantly wracked with epic level earthquakes and tsunamis, something you should know would be happening from seeing the location of the planet. If anyone would understand planetary physics, it's going to be this crew. How could they possibly be aware of the insane time dilation affects without also knowing about the insane tidal effects?
 
impulse462 said:
Rotten Tomatoes doesn't do much anyway, it tells you how many critics gave it a + review vs how many gave it a - review, but not the individual ratings. So 50 critics could rate a film 6/10 (and since 6 is defined as a positive score), and rotten tomatoes would show a 100%.



This film was nothing like Gravity. Filming my **** flushing down the toilet would be a better movie experience than Gravity was for me personally.
Click to expand...

Best comparison i have read yet.

<my interpretation of the film, TL;DR - it was amazing>

I only came to know of this film, as Kip authored two peer-reviewed academic papers on the computer simulated modelling on how light would be dragged into the black hole Gargantua.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-true-black-hole-too-confusing.html

This film blew me away, not only is it the best film i have seen this millenium, but, probably one of my all time favourites (i am an eighties child)

I ended up watching this film several times over a week end. Stopping to brush up on my physics, such as special relativity, quantum mechanics, and black holes of course.

My interpretation was that Nolan epitomised and conceptualised... dare I say an epistemological interpretation of two rather fascinating constructs: Murphy's law, and the boot-strap paradox. Furthermore, as an academic, a scientist, i was mesmerised by the way he depicted an abstract / conceptual paradigm of depicting a 5D world in 3d, and using gravity as an inter-dimensional vector was genius, and certainly plausible. Furthermore, the movie narrative for me was a journey, on so many level,s and had a profound emotional core, wrapped-up with a complex and intellectually captivating matrix of ideas and constructs, which for the most part remained faithful towards the current understanding of astrophysics and quantum mechanics. The fact the film used actual mathematical modelling grounded on astrophysical paradigms to render a realistic as possible visualisation of black holes were commendable. I can not emphasise the beauty and unprecedented accuracy of the way Nolan and Thorne depicted the black hole - truly astounding.

This was thanks to having an actual scientist as an executive producer - Professor Kip Thorne, a monumental authority on his subject (Theoretical/ astro physics) in particular gravity, specifically the astrophysical implications of Einsteins theory of relativity, conceivably kept the script grounded in scientific rigour and accuracy. Moreover, Thorne also quite literally wrote the book on worm holes, even advising the illustrious Carl Sagan on the theory of worm hoes for his book.

The score was also a masterpiece, so well synchronised to the events of the movie, the waves scene and the docking scenes for me were two of the most monumental movie events of recent memory.

I found the scene where Cooper met his dying, senile daughter to be an epic, emotional milestone, and was well engineered, masterfully acted, and left the viewer feeling rather emotional, tearful, and able to connect with the daughter's naive, and chid like disposition - that she held onto the belief her father would return after almost 90 yrs of being away.

The closing scene with Brand setting up a new colony, not knowing if she her attempts to establish a new human colony on Edmond's planet, plan A would be fruitful, and whether the sacrifice of all those people that had died for her to get to that point was in vain? Furthermore, would anybody come rescue her, would she simply enter the long nap to simply be forgetten and eventually decompose from neglect?


For me, the ending was certainly profoundly emotional, more so than inception. Only after a few watches, and a brush up on the quantum mechanical principles, can one truly appreciate the masterpiece this movie is.

As for the bootstrap paradox, well, yes this would be valid if the paradox occurred in our, 4-dimensional spacetime. In 5D, time is not an abstract reference point we simply experience, but a tangible dimension that we can navigate, like walking up and down a road. I do agree that if the future beings, the evolved 5D humans, had no need really to save the old 4d humans if they had transcended to 5d, i think this is where compassion fits. If they had achieved transcendence beyond 4d, time is no longer a linear measure for them, for them, they will have always existed, events such as being born, getting married, or dying would no longer e arbitrary points in ones life, as one could choose to navigate to which point in spacetime they wanted to visit. I think the main issues people have with comprehend the construct of 5d, spacetime, and the tesseract, is that we are trying to conceptualise 5d into 3/4d. This would be like trying to draw a cube onto a 2d, flat surface. Although one can draw a projection or shadow of a cube, the proportions and sizing will be off and certainly not accurate, the tesseract is a similar concept.

Finally, why did the 5d humans need cooper and murph, why choose them - well it's simple, they were unable to communicate with us directly, like me trying to interact with an amoeba or an ant. They may appreciate my presence, but would intrinsically be unable to comprehend us, or conceptualise what we are trying to tell them. One could bait an ant with crumbs or sugar, and get it to move or behave in a certain way, a similar analogy in the future humans creating the worm hole - which is simply a fold in time-space connecting two points via a higher dimension.

If one scrapes the outer veneer of the more recent quantum theories, beyond the standard model of particle physics, some eminent theoretical physicists have postulated the existence of a number sub-atomic dimensions, 6 in addition to the 5 mentioned. The superstring theory postulates that all the matter in existence, whether they are fermions, bosons, or the 4 fundamental interaction or forces, are actually themselves derived of these tiny little strings. When i mean tiny, they are the size of a planc length: 1.61619926 × 10-35 metres! To out this into perspective, if an atom was the size of our solar system, then one of these strings would be the size of a tree! It is thought they are the tinniest things in our multiverse, and the fundamental building blocks of pretty much everything, matter, energy; they formulate the very fabric of our and many other universes. The theory goes that these tiny little string are constantly in a state of vibrations, and it is the frequency and harmonic of these vibrations that cause them to exhibit their apparent properties, ie whether they become a top quark, an electron, a or a photon.

Finally this film certainly resonated on my fundamental frequency. As a non physicist {i am a humble medic) i spent almost a week afterwards infatuated with the quantum theories and the superstring theories, which i felt i need to conceptualise before reading about black holes and worm holes, which i feel i need to understand before i can watch this film again.

----------
ActionableMango said:
I feel like the "report of life" for Miller's Planet would be heavily outweighed if not outright vetoed by the fact that the planet would be constantly wracked with epic level earthquakes and tsunamis, something you should know would be happening from seeing the location of the planet. If anyone would understand planetary physics, it's going to be this crew. How could they possibly be aware of the insane time dilation affects without also knowing about the insane tidal effects?
Click to expand...

I believe they only were able to receive very limited information from the planets, before they set off that is. IMO, Miller could have landed, and though yp planet looks habitable, albeit, a bit wet, went to set-up camp, then one of them 4000 feet waves came at her. However, the signal was still broadcasting. Furthermore, it may of been difficult to carry out planetary analysis in context of tidal/wave behaviour, I mean look at our ability to predict the atmosphere of other planets, we can predict (at best) the atmospheric composition, and whether it is a gas giant, or solid rock, but to be able to predict complex behaviour like wave actions would be rather difficult. Also, they planet was supposed to be so close to the black hole that time dilation was extremely sever, thus one should of predicted thus colossal waves.
 
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ActionableMango said:
First of all, I loved this movie.

But now for some criticisms and a question:

1. The music was indeed oppressive. I am aware this was on purpose, but I still don't like it.

2. I felt like Michael Caine yelled about raging against the dying light about 1000 times. Okay, maybe it was just 2-3 times. But I feel like once would have been enough, and that it would have been more meaningful.

3. I'm no a scientist, but just as a sci-fi fiction reader I'm well aware of the powerful tidal effects upon a planetary body near the event horizon of a black hole. So in the scene where they are deciding between first visiting Miller's Planet or Edmund's Planet, I don't understand how any of these scientists/astronauts would think Miller's Planet was the better choice. I feel like the "report of life" for Miller's Planet would be heavily outweighed if not outright vetoed by the fact that the planet would be constantly wracked with epic level earthquakes and tsunamis, something you should know would be happening from seeing the location of the planet. If anyone would understand planetary physics, it's going to be this crew. How could they possibly be aware of the insane time dilation affects without also knowing about the insane tidal effects?
Click to expand...

There was a discussion about fuel consumption. As I understand, it would be better to visit the water planet (Miller's) near the black hole because it was closest. Then go to the other two. Instead of going to the others and if things went well, come back to Miller's planet, which would use more total fuel, than the other way around. After they used a lot of fuel on the water planet, Coop overruled Brand (who was in love with Edmund) and decided based on the reports and the info they had they would go to Mann's planet. Then as you know Mann is revealed to be a lying sack... ;) my understanding is that the only option left is to do the sling shot maneuver sending Brand on her way, and I guess execute Plan B, with Coop falling into the black hole,

----------
johnnyturbouk said:
Best comparison i have read yet.

<my interpretation of the film, TL;DR - it was amazing>

I only came to know of this film, as Kip authored two peer-reviewed academic papers on the computer simulated modelling on how light would be dragged into the black hole Gargantua.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-true-black-hole-too-confusing.html

This film blew me away, not only is it the best film i have seen this millenium, but, probably one of my all time favourites (i am an eighties child)

I ended up watching this film several times over a week end. Stopping to brush up on my physics, such as special relativity, quantum mechanics, and black holes of course.

My interpretation was that Nolan epitomised and conceptualised... dare I say an epistemological interpretation of two rather fascinating constructs: Murphy's law, and the boot-strap paradox. Furthermore, as an academic, a scientist, i was mesmerised by the way he depicted an abstract / conceptual paradigm of depicting a 5D world in 3d, and using gravity as an inter-dimensional vector was genius, and certainly plausible. Furthermore, the movie narrative for me was a journey, on so many level,s and had a profound emotional core, wrapped-up with a complex and intellectually captivating matrix of ideas and constructs, which for the most part remained faithful towards the current understanding of astrophysics and quantum mechanics. The fact the film used actual mathematical modelling grounded on astrophysical paradigms to render a realistic as possible visualisation of black holes were commendable. I can not emphasise the beauty and unprecedented accuracy of the way Nolan and Thorne depicted the black hole - truly astounding.

This was thanks to having an actual scientist as an executive producer - Professor Kip Thorne, a monumental authority on his subject (Theoretical/ astro physics) in particular gravity, specifically the astrophysical implications of Einsteins theory of relativity, conceivably kept the script grounded in scientific rigour and accuracy. Moreover, Thorne also quite literally wrote the book on worm holes, even advising the illustrious Carl Sagan on the theory of worm hoes for his book.

The score was also a masterpiece, so well synchronised to the events of the movie, the waves scene and the docking scenes for me were two of the most monumental movie events of recent memory.

I found the scene where Cooper met his dying, senile daughter to be an epic, emotional milestone, and was well engineered, masterfully acted, and left the viewer feeling rather emotional, tearful, and able to connect with the daughter's naive, and chid like disposition - that she held onto the belief her father would return after almost 90 yrs of being away.

The closing scene with Brand setting up a new colony, not knowing if she her attempts to establish a new human colony on Edmond's planet, plan A would be fruitful, and whether the sacrifice of all those people that had died for her to get to that point was in vain? Furthermore, would anybody come rescue her, would she simply enter the long nap to simply be forgetten and eventually decompose from neglect?


For me, the ending was certainly profoundly emotional, more so than inception. Only after a few watches, and a brush up on the quantum mechanical principles, can one truly appreciate the masterpiece this movie is.

As for the bootstrap paradox, well, yes this would be valid if the paradox occurred in our, 4-dimensional spacetime. In 5D, time is not an abstract reference point we simply experience, but a tangible dimension that we can navigate, like walking up and down a road. I do agree that if the future beings, the evolved 5D humans, had no need really to save the old 4d humans if they had transcended to 5d, i think this is where compassion fits. If they had achieved transcendence beyond 4d, time is no longer a linear measure for them, for them, they will have always existed, events such as being born, getting married, or dying would no longer e arbitrary points in ones life, as one could choose to navigate to which point in spacetime they wanted to visit. I think the main issues people have with comprehend the construct of 5d, spacetime, and the tesseract, is that we are trying to conceptualise 5d into 3/4d. This would be like trying to draw a cube onto a 2d, flat surface. Although one can draw a projection or shadow of a cube, the proportions and sizing will be off and certainly not accurate, the tesseract is a similar concept.

Finally, why did the 5d humans need cooper and murph, why choose them - well it's simple, they were unable to communicate with us directly, like me trying to interact with an amoeba or an ant. They may appreciate my presence, but would intrinsically be unable to comprehend us, or conceptualise what we are trying to tell them. One could bait an ant with crumbs or sugar, and get it to move or behave in a certain way, a similar analogy in the future humans creating the worm hole - which is simply a fold in time-space connecting two points via a higher dimension.

If one scrapes the outer veneer of the more recent quantum theories, beyond the standard model of particle physics, some eminent theoretical physicists have postulated the existence of a number sub-atomic dimensions, 6 in addition to the 5 mentioned. The superstring theory postulates that all the matter in existence, whether they are fermions, bosons, or the 4 fundamental interaction or forces, are actually themselves derived of these tiny little strings. When i mean tiny, they are the size of a planc length: 1.61619926 × 10-35 metres! To out this into perspective, if an atom was the size of our solar system, then one of these strings would be the size of a tree! It is thought they are the tinniest things in our multiverse, and the fundamental building blocks of pretty much everything, matter, energy; they formulate the very fabric of our and many other universes. The theory goes that these tiny little string are constantly in a state of vibrations, and it is the frequency and harmonic of these vibrations that cause them to exhibit their apparent properties, ie whether they become a top quark, an electron, a or a photon.

Finally this film certainly resonated on my fundamental frequency. As a physicist {i am a humber medic) i spent almost a week afterwards infatuated with the quantum theories and the superstring theories, which i felt i need to conceptualise before reading about black holes and worm holes, which i feel i need to understand before i can watch this film again.

----------



I believe they only were able to receive very limited information from the planets, before they set off that is. IMO, Miller could have landed, and though yp planet looks habitable, albeit, a bit wet, went to set-up camp, then one of them 4000 feet waves came at her. However, the signal was still broadcasting. Furthermore, it may of been difficult to carry out planetary analysis in context of tidal/wave behaviour, I mean look at our ability to predict the atmosphere of other planets, we can predict (at best) the atmospheric composition, and whether it is a gas giant, or solid rock, but to be able to predict complex behaviour like wave actions would be rather difficult. Also, they planet was supposed to be so close to the black hole that time dilation was extremely sever, thus one should of predicted thus colossal waves.
Click to expand...

Impressive post! :) I was wondering when he met Old Murph and her family, that he was their Grandfather come back from the dead, and he had no interaction on camera with them. It seemed very strange that he would enter this room and not be the center of attention, which maybe he was, but the director decided not to show that...
 
Huntn said:
There was a discussion about fuel consumption. As I understand, it would be better to visit the water planet (Miller's) near the black hole because it was closest. Then go to the other two. Instead of going to the others and if things went well, come back to Miller's planet, which would use more total fuel, than the other way around. After they used a lot of fuel on the water planet, Coop overruled Brand (who was in love with Edmund) and decided based on the reports and the info they had they would go to Mann's planet. Then as you know Mann is revealed to be a lying sack... ;) my understanding is that the only option left is to do the sling shot maneuver sending Brand on her way, and I guess execute Plan B, with Coop falling into the black hole,

----------



Impressive post! :) I was wondering when he met Old Murph and her family, that he was their Grandfather come back from the dead, and he had no interaction on camera with them. It seemed very strange that he would enter this room and not be the center of attention, which maybe he was, but the director decided not to show that...
Click to expand...

Yes i thought this also, especially since one of his grand kids, was one not named after him?
Another <minor> complaint for me was that Casey Affleck was really under-utilised and a rather bland and mono-dimensional :p, the kids version of Tom got better lines.

I think this film will always hold a special memory for me, as it re-ignited my interest in quantum mechanics and brought me to the superstring theory. Furthermore, i really rolled my eyes when i first heard of this, via proxy of the new scientist article i linked, i thought here we go another tripe movie playing the same old cliche- boy was i wrong. I think the cynic in me died a million times during that film. I am normally the kind of person to very quickly criticise pseudo-science and pseudo medical films. As a medic we are taught to search for the evidence, to critically appraise (aka trash) papers and finally relate it to our own phenomenal experience.

I think the film worked on many different levels for many different people. I think if you want guns, action, and explosions, watch bay[trans]formers - which i do enjoy, but can only watch it once or twice. If you want a film with a tad more subtly that captivates one's intellectual faculties, Nolan really does this for me, i think the last film to blow me away like this was memento, and i was only a teen back then. Now i have not seen memento since then, but i can bet i will see interstellar again. One of the first non-documentary films i have seen were the science is woven into the very fabric, or cellulose of the film.

Finally, i was in a really good mood as i had had just ordered my apple watch, think that helped.

PS. if like me, you loved the science, Kip Thorne has released a book:
The Science of Interstellar
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/1494559390
 
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ActionableMango said:
1. The music was indeed oppressive. I am aware this was on purpose, but I still don't like it.
Click to expand...

I'm usually not a fan of Honest Trailers, finding them a bit too precious in their satirical nitpicking, but I found their one on Interstellar surprisingly accurate.

Honest Trailers - Interstellar

My favorite line is just after 2:30 "It assaults your ears with emotional swells that sound like Hans Zimmer fell asleep on his organ."
 
bobob said:
I'm usually not a fan of Honest Trailers, finding them a bit too precious in their satirical nitpicking, but I found their one on Interstellar surprisingly accurate.

Honest Trailers - Interstellar

My favorite line is just after 2:30 "It assaults your ears with emotional swells that sound like Hans Zimmer fell asleep on his organ."
Click to expand...

twietee said:
It's not just accurate but also extremely funny! :D

Thanks for posting
Click to expand...

I think that the the honest trailer was a little crass, flat and silly tbh, one can say, it was rather one-dimensional - well if it floats your boat ;)

As for the best spoofs, i personally like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3IC5mG_h1o

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TkSkptsyuY
 
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Huntn said:
The first video is excellent and creative! :)
Click to expand...

Lol i know.

Also, I started reading Kip's book, this is not only a book explaining the scientific principles behind the film, but he breaks the movie down into a number of different stratum: established facts, theoretical, and finally speculative.

What i found really interestingly was that Kip affirmed that when he began the project with Spielberg, it was with the condition that NO established scientific laws would be violated, and the fantasy and speculative bits of the film will be based on established (where possible) and valid opinions - within the physics / scientific community.

After reading the first chapter, i am only more infatuated with the film.
 
johnnyturbouk said:
I think that the the honest trailer was a little crass, flat and silly tbh, one can say, it was rather one-dimensional
Click to expand...

Yes it was! And that's exactly how I would describe the movie. :D

I had to look up "infatuated", couldn't tell if you were serious or not before..:p
 
twietee said:
Yes it was! And that's exactly how I would describe the movie. :D

I had to look up "infatuated", couldn't tell if you were serious or not before..:p
Click to expand...

Films, like music, poetry, or any form of art effects us all different ways.

For me when i read about great works of philosophy, or more recently, things like the superstring theory, and sub-atomic particles, i do get a little emotional, and this is coming from a non physicist. My friends think :eek: and :rolleyes:, likewise, i do not get how certain grown men can like my little ponies, or adults crying listening to 1D.

I recognise we are all individuals, and may have fundamentally different likes and dislikes. Maybe i analysed the film a little too much, and interpreted things differently from you, but i think that is the power of the medium, it can mean different things to different people. For example, one only need to see how many different ways the bible is interpreted, this had even led to wars and blood-shed over who had the superior POV.

Personally, i found the movie enveloped a number of constituents that i found grossly appealing, the fact that science was woven into the very fabric of the film is something seldom seem within the genre. Furthermore, i think that the film masterfully juxtaposed simple constructs within the narrative along with emotional aspects (father leaving his daughter, world about to end, doom and blight) to the rather splendid (and may i add, mathematically rigorous visual feast that was the) special effects. How many films, or even works of fiction, produce academic, peer-reviewed papers. The hours they spent to craft that black hole from complex mathematical modelling based on current theories and observations was commendable - it would of been a lot easier to make it up like most other films do.

Furthermore, in true Nolan intellectual mind-fuc$ fashion, he skilfully crafted a masterpiece: a fluid mosaic of emotions, science, amazing special effects and overall a great narrative, quite an achievement; imho.
 
johnnyturbouk said:
Furthermore, it may of been difficult to carry out planetary analysis in context of tidal/wave behaviour
...
to be able to predict complex behaviour like wave actions would be rather difficult.
Click to expand...

I think you are under the impression that tidal force is all about the tides. Predicting tidal force has nothing to do with complex behavior like wave actions, or even water at all.

Tidal force refers to the uneven affect of gravity on one side of the planet versus the other. You don't need to know anything about the composition of the planet. The planet doesn't have to waves or water--it could be a solid ball of iron or rock. Heck, you don't even have to be a planet--you just have to be a sufficiently large enough object for gravity to affect you more strongly on one side than the other.

The problem is that the vertical stretching and horizontal compression that occurs on a planet at the event horizon of a black hole, due to strong tidal forces, would lead to earthquakes and tsunamis (the latter assumes there is water).

AFAIK, the only things you'd need to know is (1) the strength of the black hole's gravity and (2) the location of the planet relative to the black hole, which would seem to me like things they'd know, but I'm not an expert on that.
 
johnnyturbouk said:
Lol i know.

Also, I started reading Kip's book, this is not only a book explaining the scientific principles behind the film, but he breaks the movie down into a number of different stratum: established facts, theoretical, and finally speculative.

What i found really interestingly was that Kip affirmed that when he began the project with Spielberg, it was with the condition that NO established scientific laws would be violated, and the fantasy and speculative bits of the film will be based on established (where possible) and valid opinions - within the physics / scientific community.

After reading the first chapter, i am only more infatuated with the film.
Click to expand...

I appreciate a standard of relative realism. :)

ActionableMango said:
I think you are under the impression that tidal force is all about the tides. Predicting tidal force has nothing to do with complex behavior like wave actions, or even water at all.

Tidal force refers to the uneven affect of gravity on one side of the planet versus the other. You don't need to know anything about the composition of the planet. The planet doesn't have to waves or water--it could be a solid ball of iron or rock. Heck, you don't even have to be a planet--you just have to be a sufficiently large enough object for gravity to affect you more strongly on one side than the other.

The problem is that the vertical stretching and horizontal compression that occurs on a planet at the event horizon of a black hole, due to strong tidal forces, would lead to earthquakes and tsunamis (the latter assumes there is water).

AFAIK, the only things you'd need to know is (1) the strength of the black hole's gravity and (2) the location of the planet relative to the black hole, which would seem to me like things they'd know, but I'm not an expert on that.
Click to expand...

Regarding gravity or relative time (whichever is appropriated) and the relative acceleration of time associated with the water planet as compared to being on Earth or in the Space Ship (they left Romilly there for 23 frick'n years) as compared to being on the surface, I was wondering if it was gravity that caused this effect? And if gravity, would such gravity would be too much for a human to withstand?
 
ActionableMango said:
I think you are under the impression that tidal force is all about the tides. Predicting tidal force has nothing to do with complex behavior like wave actions, or even water at all.

Tidal force refers to the uneven affect of gravity on one side of the planet versus the other. You don't need to know anything about the composition of the planet. The planet doesn't have to waves or water--it could be a solid ball of iron or rock. Heck, you don't even have to be a planet--you just have to be a sufficiently large enough object for gravity to affect you more strongly on one side than the other.

The problem is that the vertical stretching and horizontal compression that occurs on a planet at the event horizon of a black hole, due to strong tidal forces, would lead to earthquakes and tsunamis (the latter assumes there is water).

AFAIK, the only things you'd need to know is (1) the strength of the black hole's gravity and (2) the location of the planet relative to the black hole, which would seem to me like things they'd know, but I'm not an expert on that.
Click to expand...

TL;DR version, i think you made a very valid point, but i feel i lack the expertise in weather, within the context of distant planetary exploration to provide an expert opinion. I can only infer from observations i have made from evidence of what was stated in the film, and what was then further explored by experts, for example on blogs or Kip's book.

As i have stated before, I am not Physicist, well, maybe an enthusiast of the theories, and I am certainly not an expert on planetary behaviour of hypothetical, distant planets, orbiting a rapidly spinning black hole. If this is you speciality, then please, educate me further ;p . I have not got onto the chapter in Kip's book when he talks about Miller's planet. However, I would like to point out that (Jonathan) Nolan, Spielberg and (Kip) Thorne had a mammoth armament of advisers, including planetary experts, even before they conceptualised vsn 1 of the draft.

What i meant by
Furthermore, it may of been difficult to carry out planetary analysis in context of tidal/wave behaviour
...
to be able to predict complex behaviour like wave actions would be rather difficult.
Click to expand...

When they landed, they seemed a little surprise that the planet was covered in shallow water. They, nor Miller [unless she was suicidal], did not predict this.


As for them knowing that the planet, due to proximity of the black hole, should of predicted planetary behaviours, in particular to the presence of 3km waves, I think the jury is out.
On Earth, when Cooper was first being briefed about the Lazarus missions (approx. 33:24 mins into the films), Doyle stated that only very limited data could be transmitted through the wormhole - “simple binary pings” to confirm that the planet was ok for exploration on a future mission or not. When they got there (1:03:35 into the film) they confirm Miller had sent prelimmary data and was transmitting the "thumbs up" beacon.
As for the waves, I take what your saying in reference to tidal forces, but as mentioned, the Earth team would not have been able to determine the planet composition accurately, and this was what they pretty much stated in the film.
Remember that Gargantua is a rapidly rotating black hole—and therefore the physics involed in rapidly spinning black holes differ from non-rotating ones. The colossal speed of Gargantua's rotation would result in a single stable orbit just outside of Gargantua's event horizon that is very stable [source: the little I have browsed from Kip’s book, and other blogs]


As for the Lazarus scientists, whether they should of know, from preliminary planetary studies when they transversed the worm hole is an interesting point. Sure they would of sent a planetary probe, or from other methods, the exact methodology employed by Mann and his team was not commented on in any great deal. However, even Mann seemed very surprised with the composition of his own planet being a barren rock. To speculate, maybe the black hole attenuated their faculty to carry out detailed preliminary data analysis, and since time and resources were limited, they simply had to go to the planet and explore.
Some have speculated that Miller must of arrived, discovering a shallow water world, activated the beacon that the planet was habitable and then was killed by those colossal waves.

Furthermore, I am not certain I saw in the film, that the waves were due to earthquakes, and therefore the waves were unlikely to be tsunamis, it was not mentioned that the planet had tectonic plates either; I could be wrong here, I have very little understanding/interest in this field. As you mentioned, it may be attributed to tidal forces of the black hole, ie gravity; as gravity and can have weird effects, case in point: the volcanic system on IO being attributed to the orbital resonance with two of its neighboring moons, Europa, and Ganymede.

However, predicting the waves, should be done in context of the planets overall weather system. I.e. the effects of tidal waves on earth is useless when a hurricane is occurring, although I accept the ‘tidal’ waves on millers planet were a little bit bigger than they are on Earth.

Now, as for weather systems, they are intrinsically complex, I recently red an excellent editorial on the complex non-linear mathematical modelling involved in predicting weather, even here on Earth, look up the Lorenz attractor, fascinating stuff: the tiniest variable can have massive and profound effects [the butterfly effect]. Now how could the scientist on earth could have predicted this from simple binary pings is unrealistic, based on current models in science. We can guess what makes up a planet by indirect measures, but to predict weather systems, waves etc is difficult. Anyway, this would be obsolete, as the planet is tidal locked and rendered essentially 'sterile'.

Kip's explanation, from one blog:
According to The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne, Miller's planet is shaped a little like a football, with one end constantly pointing at Gargantua. The waves are literally tidal waves, so it's not the waves coming toward you, it's the planet rotating under you and the fixed waves slamming into you. But because the planet doesn't rotate, the waves wouldn't slam into you. Fortunately, tidally locked planets can rock back and forth, and Thorne used this as a scientifically accurate loophole to explain tidal waves on a tidally locked planet. Also, because the water on Miller is mostly concentrated in the waves, you could have knee-high oceans, like the one shown in the film.
Click to expand...
Wow, mind-boggling.

Right, spent way too long on this post, and have work to do – I’m off!
 
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