Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

[Evo]

Please do not start any new threads on this movie. All posts about the movie need to be in one thread.

 

[AngelLestat]

The movie does not give much details about distances, black hole mass, etc.
But this is not an excuse to criticize the movie searching the worst parameters where this would not be possible. That is an easy task, but if we know about physsics; we will try to find a case were this may happen as we see it in the movie.

Or when you have an equation in front of you, you just search the values where the equation is false instead solve it?

I came here to see if I could have some explanations about hard physsics from the movie which I don't understand, but it seems some of you (gold members) are a lot more confused than me.

The movie has a good science base with some artistics and action flow disparities as any movie should have.

Millers planets moves at 0,55c at 1,5 Au from event horizon because is a very fast spinning black hole of 100 million sun mass (event horizon radius 1Au).
It has a time dilation of 1 hour equals to 7 years at earth.

This explain the waves, there is also the fact that the planet is almost tidal locked to gargantua with a small wobbling, to give 1 hour difference between waves but avoiding extreme heat due tidal friction. The shape may not be accurate, but again.. artistics/plot purpose.

 

[Pete Cortez]

The movie does not give much details about distances, black hole mass, etc.

The companion piece does (Chapter 6), and there are some problems with Gargantua's depicted scale in certain scenes. Thorne places' Endurance's initial parking orbit at around 5 radii, at which Thorne says Gargantua should subtend 50 degrees of the local sky (while the movie depicts 2.5). By the time we get to MIller's, Gargantua only consumes about 20-30 degrees.

But this is not an excuse to criticize the movie searching the worst parameters where this would not be possible.

Agreed. And it's always a good sign when you actually have to do some work to confirm what the movie got right (or didn't).[/quote]

 

[tionis]

It's my opinion that if a movie lacks memorable quotables, then it wasn't that much of a good film.

 

[Higgs Boson]

The Slate article was written by Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy, by the way.

Some of the points he mentions are:
-habitable planets around a black hole, with sunlight!
-a planet orbiting the black hole near the event horizon(way past the Roche limit)
-said planet having tidal waves(i.e., not being tidally locked)
-vastly egaggerated gravitational time dilation
-accretion disk being cold
-no spaghettification

But more importantly, he makes a point that the characters don't talk or act like people. This coupled with the general clumsiness of the plot and hamfistedly telegraphed messages makes it impossible to overlook the dodgy science.

He is correct, (as any hobby astrophysicist knows), on all of those points, but his spelling is heinous ... or was that you? "egaggerated gravitational time dilation?" You meant "eggsaggerated" gravitational time dilation, did you not?

 

[Bandersnatch]

his spelling is heinous ... or was that you?

It was me, you cheeky bastard. Looking at it now, and at the distance between the letters on my keyboard, I realize I simply must like g's much more than I like x's.

 

[tzimie]

BTW isn't the planet so close to the event horizon, that it is below the photon sphere?
There are no stable orbits below the photon sphere...

 

[stevebd1]

BTW isn't the planet so close to the event horizon, that it is below the photon sphere?
There are no stable orbits below the photon sphere...

Like the marginally stable orbit, the photon sphere also reduces with increase in spin, staying within the MSO, see equation 22 in http://www.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/~kokkotas/Teaching/Relativistic_Astrophysics_files/GTR2009_4.pdf (the equations to calculate the MSO are 26 to 28). Technically there would be two photon spheres (and MSO's), one prograde (rotating with the frame dragging) and another retrograde (rotating against the frame dragging).

 

[Pete Cortez]

He is correct, (as any hobby astrophysicist knows)

Plait is not (as apparently he knows himself on the most salient points, and as Kip Thorne knows on https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393351378/?tag=pfamazon01-20). Basically, Phil started with the same basic mistake most critics do--he assumes we're talking about a stellar mass black hole in a dead binary system. By the time he issues his partial retraction, he apparently hasn't had enough time to contemplate how much richer a stellar system can be around the now acknowledged supermassive black hole--in fact, how rich it has to be in order to explain how you even approach Miller's planet in the first place.

 

[John M. Carr]

No, I don't think the film relies on visuals as much as Gravity did.

Yeah, but the visuals they used for Interstellar took a staggering amount of time to render and data storage. As someone who's dabbled in 3-D modeling and animation from time to time, my mouth literally dropped open when I heard the figures.

 

[Drakkith]

Yeah, but the visuals they used for Interstellar took a staggering amount of time to render and data storage. As someone who's dabbled in 3-D modeling and animation from time to time, my mouth literally dropped open when I heard the figures.

Now that I can believe!

 

[John M. Carr]

The most expensive modelling in astrophysics performed in recent years were Big Bang simulations, supernova explosion simulations, modelling of mergers of neutron stars and BHs. *These* simulations required large CPU clusters and months of run time, and development of complex software which takes into account multiple branches pf physics - GR, nuclear reactions, hydrodynamics, electromagnetism... *That* is expensive.

100 hours rendering time for some frames on top-of-the line equipment is rather expensive.

 

[nikkkom]

100 hours rendering time for some frames on top-of-the line equipment is rather expensive.

Complexity of accurate depiction of accretion disk and BH in the movie is nowhere near to the complexity of, say, this large cosmological simulation of galaxy formation:

http://www.illustris-project.org/

For one, movie makers needed to only take GR into account: they needed to raytrace the image of accretion disk, in curved spacetime. They did not model the disk itself: they just inserted its image as a starting condition. Real disk would look differently.

Illustris had to account for GR + nuclear reactions + hydrodynamics + electromagnetism.

Producing a decent image of curved spacetime is not that hard. Google "realistic black hole" image:

https://www.google.com/search?q=realistic black hole&tbm=isch

I see at least a dozen of images which look accurate. Following them, I find videos, such as these:

http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/schw.html
http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/rn.html[/PLAIN]
http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/lensearth_640x480.gif[/URL]

 

[Pete Cortez]

Complexity of accurate depiction of accretion disk and BH in the movie is nowhere near to the complexity of, say, this large cosmological simulation of galaxy formation:

http://www.illustris-project.org/

On the contrary. Illustris produced only 250 TB of output. Double Negative produced 800 TB of Gargantua related data. I'm not mathematician, but I recall that 250 < 800.

For one, movie makers needed to only take GR into account: they needed to raytrace the image of accretion disk, in curved spacetime. They did not model the disk itself: they just inserted its image as a starting condition. Real disk would look differently.

Illustris had to account for GR + nuclear reactions + hydrodynamics + electromagnetism.

Nonsense. An accretion disk is undergoing fusion and is an hydrodynamically rich target of study.

Producing a decent image of curved spacetime is not that hard. Google "realistic black hole" image:

And yet 800 TB. And please explain to us why you think this:

looks as realistic as this:

 

[AngelLestat]

But that disk in not in fussion process, is an remainder of a accretion disk in cooling process.
It has temperatures close to the sun surface, for that reason its in the visible spectrum without radiation danger.

 

[nikkkom]

On the contrary. Illustris produced only 250 TB of output. Double Negative produced 800 TB of Gargantua related data. I'm not mathematician, but I recall that 250 < 800.

You are measuring correctness of simulations in gigabytes? LOL

Nonsense. An accretion disk is undergoing fusion and is an hydrodynamically rich target of study.

The real accretion disk - maybe.
The "accretion disk" _in the movie_ is just several stacked images of an artist drawn gloving ring fed into GR-aware raytracer.

From your previous posts I know that you are a demagogue, but replacing my _animated_ gif with one _static_ frame from it is beyond demagoguery. You are knowingly distorting what I said. Stop doing that.

 

[Pete Cortez]

You are measuring correctness of simulations in gigabytes? LOL

I'm measuring complexity in terms of output.

The real accretion disk - maybe.
The "accretion disk" _in the movie_ is just several stacked images of an artist drawn gloving ring fed into GR-aware raytracer.

Says you.

From your previous posts I know that you are a demagogue...

Aw, that's precious. I'm not the amateur pooh-poohing the fantastic work of others by presenting other fantastic work by others with barely a notion of how either work was created.

...but replacing my _animated_ gif with one _static_ frame from it is beyond demagoguery. You are knowingly distorting what I said. Stop doing that.

Blame the forum software. The image is precisely the one you posted. And I don't think anyone cares whether or not your gif was animated or not.

 

[Pete Cortez]

But that disk in not in fussion process, is an remainder of a accretion disk in cooling process.

A disk with length exceeding the circumference of Earth's orbit and radiating such that it delivers sufficient power to warm an hospitable planet almost 7 AU certainly fuses, whether it's cooling or not. Again, recall the scale of this monster.

 

[nikkkom]

I'm measuring complexity in terms of output.

Then the output of "dd bs=1G count=1G </dev/urandom" is the most complex and wonderful simulation, ever. It's exabyte long, you know. LOOOOL.

> The "accretion disk" _in the movie_ is just several stacked images of an artist drawn gloving ring fed into GR-aware raytracer.

Says you.

Yep. Because a real high-quality simulation of accretion disk would show differential rotation.
It would show Doppler red- and blueshifting of disk's light (one side of the disk moves towards us, another recedes from us).
It would show relativistic beaming of the disk's light.
None of this is shown.

 

[Pete Cortez]

Then the output of "dd bs=1G count=1G </dev/urandom" is the most complex and wonderful simulation, ever. It's exabyte long, you know. LOOOOL.

Good point. The Illustris output represents north of 10^33 times more volume than the Interstellar output in a third of the space, with all the attendant loss of resolution.

Yep. Because a real high-quality simulation of accretion disk would show differential rotation.

It would show Doppler red- and -blueshifting of disk's light (one side of the disk moves towards us, another recedes from us).

It would show relativistic beaming of the disk's light.

You confuse photorealistic, realtime models with simplified, pedagogical ones. That's your problem, not Double Negative's.

I do congratulate you on at least attempting to dig up a project on the scale of what Double Negative achieved, even if what you picked one that was considerably less expensive ($750,000 from NSF, $685,000 http://www.research.gov/research-portal/appmanager/base/desktop;jsessionid=XlvXJGLW9L7WgQBspTk1bCYLJkClFmKLNWC6YNnVhZJB3SLqwDsm!-1928657939!1097029825?_nfpb=true&_windowLabel=T31400570011264188753337&wsrp-urlType=blockingAction&wsrp-url=&wsrp-requiresRewrite=&wsrp-navigationalState=eJyLL07OL0i1Tc-JT0rMUYNQtgBZ6Af8&wsrp-interactionState=wlpT31400570011264188753337_action%3DviewRsrDetail%26wlpT31400570011264188753337_fedAwrdId%3DNNX12AC67G&wsrp-mode=wsrp%3Aview&wsrp-windowState=) and by first glance far less complicated.

 

[AngelLestat]

I dint said that it cant, just mention that is not triggering fussion as I read.

But about that. Somebody really knows how much energy is radiated depending the distance and time dilation?

Or how the process would work? I know that the disk has a lot of area, and radiation depends on the Area. But how energy radiated from the disk reach the planets depending their time dilation with respect the disk?

Someone knows the math equations to see energy lost due to red shift, or how much the frequency change by this effect.

Not sure if the black hole rotation change this effect in other way.

 

[Pete Cortez]

I dint said that it cant, just mention that is not triggering fussion as I read.

But about that. Somebody really knows how much energy is radiated depending the distance and time dilation?

We know Miller's planet was warm enough for liquid water at something approaching standard temperature and pressure. That implies 1 kW/m^2 incidence at Miller's distance from its radiating source(s).

Or how the process would work? I know that the disk has a lot of area, and radiation depends on the Area. But how energy radiated from the disk reach the planets depending their time dilation with respect the disk?

Fairly similar to how stellar thermonuclear processes work, considering the disk is radiating at that scale.

Also, it is not clear what the disk's rotation is wrt to Miller's planet, or the rotational contribution to Doppler shifts for the updraft. I suspect we'll know more when Thorne releases his preprints.

Someone knows the math equations to see energy lost due to red shift, or how much the frequency change by this effect.

Not sure if the black hole rotation change this effect in other way.

As you've guessed, it's not that simple. We're dealing with free falling rather than stationary observers and a rapidly rotating black hole; most redshift calculations you're thinking about concern a "hovering" observer--one stationary with respect to the field.

 

[John M. Carr]

The real accretion disk - maybe.
The "accretion disk" _in the movie_ is just several stacked images of an artist drawn gloving ring fed into GR-aware raytracer.

Okay, then. You do know they had to customize their rendering engine before they could render anything, right? As in go into the API and rework things by hand. Why do you think Kip Thorne sent them the raw equations? Raytracers do not come with "GR-awareness" on their own--you have to specify the physics if there's something to account for that's not in the default settings. You have to do this, even for out-of-the-box consumer-grade software. And for something as unique and computationally intensive as a realistic wormhole or a realistic black hole...? If I tried to render even one frame of that stuff, my computer would lock up so fast, I'd have no choice but to do a hard-reset.

Also, the fact that it took 100+ hours on certain frames suggests strongly to me that it's all CGI. If the computer had premade drawings/illustrations to work on, instead of rendering individual "particles" (the word CGI artists use for, well, the most basic units that make up something like an accretion disc or cloud or smoke or the like,) that rendering process would have taken much less time per frame. It is true that's a shortcut used pretty often in that business, but I don't think it was used in this case. (Note: I could be wrong about this second point, but it does bear considering.)

 

[nikkkom]

Okay, then. You do know they had to customize their rendering engine before they could render anything, right? As in go into the API and rework things by hand. Why do you think Kip Thorne sent them the raw equations? Raytracers do not come with "GR-awareness" on their own--you have to specify the physics if there's something to account for that's not in the default settings. You have to do this, even for out-of-the-box consumer-grade software. And for something as unique and computationally intensive as a realistic wormhole or a realistic black hole...? If I tried to render even one frame of that stuff, my computer would lock up so fast, I'd have no choice but to do a hard-reset.

"unique and computationally intensive as a realistic wormhole or a realistic black hole"? PHLEASE. Yes, the objects in question are unique, but by now, thousands of astrophysicists spent decades studying them.

I already gave links to videos produced by people who clearly managed to render GR-accurate images and videos of black holes without use of any fancy hardware.

Those pages carry a "© 1997, 1998 Andrew Hamilton. These pages last modified 19 Apr 2001" note. This software existed 10 years ago.

 

[nikkkom]

> Because a real high-quality simulation of accretion disk would show differential rotation.
> It would show Doppler red- and -blueshifting of disk's light (one side of the disk moves towards us, another recedes from us).
> It would show relativistic beaming of the disk's light.

You confuse photorealistic, realtime models with simplified, pedagogical ones. That's your problem, not Double Negative's.

So the disk as depicted is "simplified, pedagogical one" according to you.

Just yesterday you said the complete opposite: apparently it was "most physically accurate depiction":

Kip Thorne worked "full time" for months with Tunzelmann and James from Double Negative on all visualizations invoking GR. The result is not only the most physically accurate depiction of these exotic objects in the history of cinema, but likely most accurate--as well as the most encompassing and certainly the most expensive--modeling performed in the history of computational physics.

 

[John M. Carr]

"unique and computationally intensive as a realistic wormhole or a realistic black hole"? PHLEASE. Yes, the objects in question are unique, but by now, thousands of astrophysicists spent decades studying them.

You're missing the point, not by a little, but completely: none of their software is meant to make things look as visually real (in the artistic sense) as what the folks who did the VFX for this movie had at their disposal. I'm not speaking to the direct scientific utility of the visualizations themselves--although if the papers Kip Thorne wrote (one for the physics community and one for the CGI community, as referenced by Kip Thorne explicitly in the Discovery documentary The Science of Interstellar) are any indication, there was definitely utility to be had all around as a result of the unique process that was involved in creating said visualizations, because of discoveries that took place during that process.

That's what I'm getting at.

 

[AngelLestat]

Here it is the image of how the disk warp, but also showing a render without the disk.
This is the important discover, now they have a finger print which they can search in the sky.
We can see that one side of the black hole seems different that the other one, this is due to the fact that from one side, space is being dragged toward the camera, in the other side space is draged to the back.

 

[John M. Carr]

Is someone seriously putting forward 'the SFX is expensive' as a valid criticism of this movie?

Certainly not me. I'm taking the visuals on their own for the moment, but not the movie itself, because I've seen clips of them and I have some experience working with CGI on a hobby/amateur basis.

From what I've read so far, though, I'm going to love the movie. Of course I pretty much turn my "scientific accuracy" detector off when consuming fiction (otherwise shows like Doctor Who or Super Sentai would drive me up the wall,) unless the story is horribly inconsistent with its own rules. But I don't think that will be a problem here.

ASIDE: I'd be overjoyed if I could play around with their software/equipment, even for a short time.

 

[fedaykin]

I went into the film with high expectations, and it more than satisfied me.
The story was very well written, and the acting was quite compelling yet natural.
The visual effects were absolutely beautiful too.
I must now find a way to implement gravitational lensing into my ray tracer.

 

[Simon Bridge]

Well, it may be interesting to see how the demographics stack up over who liked it and who didn't.
A great deal of my dislike comes from having seen lots of movies - so I found it labored, and heavy-handed plotwise. Basically very very predictable.
I'm not the only one.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr..._followup_movie_science_mistake_was_mine.html
(Followup on an earlier article - also worth reading.)

I'll agree with the visual effects thing though.

 

[tionis]

? You have a scientist to back up the statement "They evolved and now travel through the bulk. Just like we are going to evolve into bulk beings. I saw it in a movie recently."

Well, OK, I guess you COULD have a scientist who could back up the fact that you have been to a movie recently. I doubt the rest.

Yes. The aliens travel to and from the bulk. But in this case, the aliens are us evolved. Get it?

 

[phinds]

Yes. The aliens travel to and from the bulk. But in this case, the aliens are us evolved. Get it?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Jesus, phinds. Where have you been these past few weeks?

Spoiler

Interstellar

 

[tionis]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

The aliens can use the bulk as a means of travel across vast distances like in the movie Interstellar. Better?

 

[tionis]

I just read this on yahoo:

''Using the university's powerful supercomputer, they created a black hole that is even more scientifically accurate than the visually stunning black hole in Christopher Nolan's latest film, "Interstellar."

"Our team of four here at the UA can produce visuals of a black hole that are more scientifically accurate in a few seconds," Feryal Ozel, also of The University of Arizona, in the statement. Some of the visuals in "Interstellar" required a special-effects team of 30 and as many as 100 hours for the computers to process.''
[PLAIN]http://finance.yahoo.com/news/astronomers-getting-ready-image-century-135900169.html[/PLAIN]
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/astronomers-getting-ready-image-century-135900169.html