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Totally off-topic thread
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| steeljaw354 | Date: Tuesday, 06.09.2016, 21:03 | Message # 3121 |
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| Does anyone watch elements of insanity?
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| midtskogen | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 16:36 | Message # 3122 |
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| I went to the university today for a talk on the science in Interstellar by Kip Thorne. It got pretty crowded. They had set up chairs for less than a hundred, but I think twice as many showed up. Hard to tell whether it was for the talk or the free hotdogs, though.
Besides the story about how the script evolved we got the details of the tesseract and ending explained, sort of.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 16:42 |
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| Mosfet | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 16:54 | Message # 3123 |
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| Quote midtskogen (  ) details of the tesseract and ending explained, sort of
Now it makes more sense indeed 
I'll have to buy the book in english, can't expect italian publishers will translate a title which seems to have scientific contents too soon.
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| spacer | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 17:33 | Message # 3124 |
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| me trying to understand the math in the second image:
"we began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still"
-carl sagan
-space engine photographer
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| midtskogen | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 18:22 | Message # 3125 |
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| Quote spacer ( ) me trying to understand the math in the second image
It's just the maths behind the ray tracing of light around a black hole. It probably took a bit of figuring to write down, but if the letters and parts are explained, it's likely not that bad.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| Watsisname | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 20:35 | Message # 3126 |
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| I recognize some bits of the Kerr metric in there. 
Awesome that you got to see him in person. How was his talk?
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| steeljaw354 | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 20:39 | Message # 3127 |
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| Anyone seen this video before? It has some graphic violence though... It is quality content and is very entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkNXW_DjRIU
Edited by steeljaw354 - Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 20:42 |
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| midtskogen | Date: Wednesday, 07.09.2016, 21:29 | Message # 3128 |
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| He's in Oslo for the Kavli prize, earned for the direct detection of gravitational waves, not for the work on Interstellar. :)
He talked about how the writing of Interstellar progressed and how the story was rewritten (his original story was tossed away). Though things were changed, he seemed pretty happy with the result, except for the scene where they travelled through the wormhole. How it would look scientifically was replaced with Hollywood nonsense. He showed a video of how it would have looked like, which was too unexciting for Nolan.
Much of what he said was familiar, if you've seen the extra material for the DVD/blu-ray and his book.
When I watched the film, the end was a bit confusing and it wasn't too clear what actually happened when in entered the black hole and what the tesseract was, and also what the data were that Cooper had to collect and how the tesseract worked. That became much clearer, so I think I have to watch it again. Cooper was making quite a few guesses (who "they" are, etc), but he's not necessarily correct in everything. Kip also discussed the various kinds of singularities inside a black hole.
There wasn't much time for questions after the talk. The only thing I wished he could have explained better (but I didn't ask) was the feasibility of wormholes, or rather the non-feasibility of them. He stressed that it's very unlikely that wormholes can be made because they would require huge amounts of exotic matter to keep them open. But what has always troubled me about black holes is the likelihood of being able to bend the entire universe to create the connection. In Interstellar the other galaxy was 10 billion light years away, so to create a wormhole, we would have to be able to manipulate a huge portion of the entire universe and make it bend precisely as we would want it to bend. That seems to be a bigger problem. And what if we want a network of wormholes, it would require some serious twisting of the entire universe to make that happen. I haven't seen that problem properly addressed.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 06:27 | Message # 3129 |
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NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| Watsisname | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 08:20 | Message # 3130 |
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| That is my food's food, and I don't appreciate you eating that.
They say cows are methane emitters, so to combat global warming I'm eating the cows.
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 10:47 | Message # 3131 |
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| Quote Watsisname ( ) I recognize some bits of the Kerr metric
I was going to make that comment 
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 11:30 | Message # 3132 |
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| Since we're on the topic of Interstellar here and the global warming apocalypse elsewhere, is the film's script alluding to global warming hysteria?
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Thursday, 08.09.2016, 11:32 |
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| Watsisname | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 20:29 | Message # 3133 |
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| Many works of fiction are colored by the socio-political themes of when they were written, and I'd say the same true of Interstellar with the premise of leaving a ruined planet to find a new home. I don't think it's specifically alluding to global warming though. Interstellar seems less interested in the subject of why the Earth suddenly becomes inhospitable to humans than the subject of humans not being meant to stay on the planet they evolved on. There's not even much focus on what happened besides "a terrible crop-jumping blight showed up, and oh crap it devours oxygen too".
In The Science of Interstellar Kip describes a discussion between scientists in several fields throwing some ideas around for what could serve as the basis of the disaster that befalls humanity and forces them to find a new home elsewhere. Global warming came up in a few ways -- from ecological collapse from unexpectedly severe warming, to unintended consequences from humanity trying certain geoengineering techniques to mitigate the warming. They also considered pathogens, and finally blight. Blight is an interesting one because we don't normally think about it even though it is a real thing that has killed off many species before. Of course, it's totally implausible for it to be as catastrophic as in the film. There's really not much we can think of that could be that severe, besides a sudden and massive out break of supervolcano activity (I'd think we would have seen that coming) or a giant meteor impact (possibly not).
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 21:05 | Message # 3134 |
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| I think it's a conscious choice that they went for something a bit different, and that it's not very clear how the blame should be divided between nature and humankind. I share Nolan's fascination of "why is it that humans are so obsessed with not just the idea of their own Armageddon, but their own culpability". He can safely be vague about the causes in the film, and people will readily accept it.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| DoctorOfSpace | Date: Thursday, 08.09.2016, 22:29 | Message # 3135 |
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| Quote Watsisname ( ) There's not even much focus on what happened besides "a terrible crop-jumping blight showed up, and oh crap it devours oxygen too".
My issue with this concept is even if that were the case it is not enough to make the Earth uninhabitable. While it could ruin surface dwelling and make it uninhabitable for life humans could easily make domed habitats and underground cities. The technology for protein pastes and synthetic foods already exist and a ruined Earth would still be vastly more habitable than a natural Mars.
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