Three questions about interstellar travel

1. The question of science

Nolan's "interstellar space" has two details that move me very much. One is that when the Endurance space station arrives at Jupiter, it is ready to enter the wormhole, a theoretical high-dimensional space that is visually displayed on the screen as a sphere rather than a flattened tunnel hole. In the "enter" lens series, Endurance does not abstract "whoosh" into the sphere, but slowly approaches the wormhole, watching the ball get bigger and bigger, and the spherical surface reflects the beautiful projections of countless distant galaxies in the universe. As the space station approaches, the surface of the sphere expands and becomes huge, filled with Vmax screens, before Cooper's deathly "We're in". Compared to the vast unknowns of the universe and the infinite details of wormholes, man's most advanced space station is so small, especially after Endurance reaches the unknown galaxy and flies to the giant black hole\ & quot; Gargantua\ & quot is just a small black spot that can be almost ignored by the contrast of bright black hole radiation. The grandeur of the universe, the weakness of human beings but their ignorance and fearlessness are extremely shocking both visually and psychologically, full of sorrowful poetry.

the second is that Cooper and Dr. Brand docked the spacecraft and the space station on Rapid Spin after the Endurance accident. The speed of the evolution of the event, the compactness of editing, the tension of the soundtrack rhythm, and the tiresome display of details are all fascinating. I particularly appreciate the repeated splicing of the environmental shots and docking details as well as the expressions of the astronauts in this section. There is hardly a single second waste of the camera, and there is no moment without people's shortness of breath and heartbeat.

Liu Cixin, the author of the science fiction "three-body", said in an interview that after reading Clark's science fiction 2001: a Space Odyssey, he "suddenly felt that everything around him had disappeared" and "faced alone with this great mystery beyond the grasp of the human mind." "the real science fiction should be that people feel the greatness of the universe and should finally let them stop one day on the way off the night shift and look up at the stars for a long time."

such a look-up is the ultimate charm of science fiction.

but science fiction cannot stand up only by "fantasy". Without enough solid scientific details to support and present imagination, the works can only be "suspense" and "Hu Fantasy". The more solid the scientific details in science fiction, the stronger the charm of the fantasy part. I think the most fundamental benchmark for evaluating the charm of a sci-fi film must be scientific details and the visual expression of science. The plot is in the second place, serving the derivation of science and the promotion of imagination.

if compared with other science fiction works in 2014, the photography of "Interstellar" is not as good as Alfonso Karon's "Gravity" in terms of visual effects alone. But the uniqueness of Interstellar is that it visually shows the uncharted territory that has never been explored by human beings. When the performance is unknown, lack of frame of reference or evaluation criteria, the elaborate degree of scientific details reflects the sincerity of the creator. Although not all the details stand up to scrutiny, the following elements in Interstellar lay a solid foundation for its hard sci-fi status:

. The setting of human extinction-- the realism of environmental degradation

the design of the space station and rotation produce artificial gravity

the projection form of high-dimensional space in low-dimensional space

Relativistic conjectures about space-time distortions (including great exaggerations, such as an alien hour,

the external visual form of a black hole

the illusion of space-time singularities inside a black hole

in which the display of wormhole spheres is a milestone in science fiction movies and will last forever in history. Even the robot that pays homage to the black square stone in Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey, which represents the ultimate secret of the universe, will become a classic because of its ingenious and novel design.

of course, the interstellar system does not completely solve the scientific problems it raises. Among them, what I can't let go of is the causal cycle of events ("mother-son circle"). Of course, this is a fundamental problem that all-time travel science fiction works face, and Interstellar is not a strictly time travel theme. But since the film raises the ultimate question (who put the wormhole there), it does not try to settle for "changing history" and "creating the future". In my opinion, this is always a great pity.

2. The question of values

Nolan shows two attitudes towards preserving the fire of civilization in the face of death in "Interstellar". He made mankind experience high-dimensional space, time warps, black holes, and after the rapid development of science and technology, he finally returned to the only measure of value-love. Such a setting is hard not to remind a Chinese sci-fi fan of "trisomy".

like the biggest criticism of "three-body" for this final choice, "Interstellar" has also received polarized comments for its near-romantic film setting. David Edelstein, a film critic for New York magazine and NPR, praised the visual effects of Interstellar and said that the last 1 and 3 of the film was "vulgar", downgrading a great science fiction story to a vulgar love drama. "sensational" is the most common criticism of Interstellar.

I have a neutral view of "emotion" on the issue of "sensation"-after all, a work has to strive to arouse people's hearts, and I even quite appreciate the conclusion that "love" is the ultimate key to solving the problem of human survival. The key to the sensational result is not the emotion itself, but the way the "emotion" is expressed, especially in a serious hard science fiction movie, "how to fan" is the key. A good science fiction work is very similar to our modeling in scientific research: the Department of "Fantasy".The main point lies in the establishment of hypotheses-scientific and technological development that is not up to the current level of technology has become a reality, and conjectures that cannot be proved have been proved, and so on; the part of "Ke" is the evolution of all events and the trend of the plot after the hypothesis. everything strictly follows the logical relationship based on the hypothesis, showing reasonable evidence and argumentation process. Science fiction can go wild in setting up premise assumptions, but then it can't be deduced randomly, and it can't drop the chain of logical relevance. Even if the result points to the emotional belief that transcends logic, the derivation process must strictly abide by the logic of thinking, occasionally but inevitably show the relevance of a series of events, and push step by step to the ultimate truth that is finally inevitable.

before analyzing Interstellar, let's briefly review how Liu Cixin made the fate of the universe lead to love in the three-body.

there are two key characters in the three-body, one is the collection of the Man facing the Wall, and the other is the Virgin Cheng Xin. The former is finally out of the personal world by a cynical thug until he takes on the fate of all mankind, and its opportunity is to save his wife and children in the "Armageddon War". Although the final foothold of love is Luoji, the contest between emotion-driven human civilization and pure logic-driven three-body civilization runs through the "three-body" series as a whole. In other words, the appearance of "love" is well laid in the whole story. From the very beginning, it has been designed and closely infiltrated into the behavior choice of the characters and the final trend of the story, especially at the end of "three-body II". Liu Cixin even specially arranged three-body civilization observers to emphasize the great significance of love to the development of human civilization. From the beginning to the end, the choice of love is reasonable and unified, and there is no need to transcend the belief of logical thinking. The generalization of love at this level is not sensational.

Let's take a look at Cheng Xin. In three-body III, this intellectual is outstanding, and the character who laid the opportunity for the whole cosmic epic because of the "ladder Project" is a very poor "savior." contrary to Luo's initial cynicism, she is almost addicted to the quagmire of compassion and universal love. She is unwilling to extricate herself and has no leadership, and often drops the chain and makes mistakes before the major choices involving the life and death of all mankind. However, Liu Cixin pushed such a character to the crossroads of fate, again and again, allowing her to speak on behalf of all mankind. In the face of this huge irrationality, the end of the story points to faith, because no matter who is the leader, in the dark forest of the universe, no matter how human civilization explodes, no matter how it chooses to adopt the most correct path of scientific and technological progress, in the face of the ultimate truth of the universe, death is only a matter of time. Nothing but sacrificial love is worth mentioning.

on the level of Cheng Xin, there is always a logical fault in the return of love in the "three-body". It needs a leap in values, which is sensational. However, this sensation is finally realized through a series of processes of scientific and technological evolution, historical derivation, and the fate of the universe, which is rigorous, slow, and permeated step by step, until it finally becomes a philosophical sublimation. Even if readers have different views and do not buy the ultimate conclusion that "love is eternal", they still have to admire the narrative process in which Da Liu guided the whole universe to love.

so contrast, how is Nolan sentimental in Interstellar?

he has laid the groundwork, whether it is the long seemingly irrelevant family life on Earth or the video calls in which Cooper watches the children grow up in the space station, paving the way for the return of love later. With intuition, Dr. Brand, the character of Ann Hathaway, asks to explore another planet and names that love may be a real cosmic force that humans don't understand yet, and it is, even more, a key to the plot, seemingly inadvertently, but the key to the whole movie puzzle.

but the biggest problem with Interstellar is: how did Cooper's daughter Murphy, as the savior of human fate, infer that the "ghost" in the family belonged to Cooper when she was a child?

the only argument given in the movie is the watch Cooper gave Murphy before leaving, but there is no process of derivation. In other words, humans could still be saved if the message was not transmitted by Cooper, or if Murphy did not think it was Cooper's transmission but some other high-dimensional creature they understood. Murphy's love for Cooper thus interprets the section of data and information, which requires viewers to jump away from logical reasoning and choose "letter".

this kind of emotional deduction, which requires a break in logic, I think is the key reason for what David Edelstein calls "vulgar drama". The weakness of Murphy's line (which is limited by space on the one hand) is the biggest problem with Interstellar and the key to the sensational result. On this line, "interstellar travel" is far inferior to "three-body" in the expression of love.

but on the other hand, Cooper's love for Murphy conveys a key data message, but the line is consistent, and his sci-fi expression of "love" even transcends the "trisomy".

in the black hole, Cooper finally realized and explained to the robot Tars why the three-dimensional projection of his existence in this small high-dimensional space was exactly the day before he left the earth, and he said that love, as a force, led him to this position-- as if gravity determines the position of objects in space in the three-dimensional world, love, as a high-dimensional "quantum force." It can determine the position of the person in the high-dimensional space, that is, when and where the person will appear in the projection of the low-dimensional space. Later, before Cooper lost consciousness, he saw Dr. Brand on the Endurance space station as they passed through the wormhole. With that mysterious handshake, it was also the power of love.

in the three-body (and most science fiction works), love, as a belief beyond the laws of physics, is the power of the human spiritual world separated from the physical space, and the return of human love is the coordinate to confirm the value of its existence. This return is abstract and philosophical; but in interstellar penetration Yue, love is no longer an abstract spiritual force, but is described as a concrete and actual force of the quantum state in high-dimensional space, which is similar to gravity, electromagnetic force, strong interaction, and weak interaction force. it participates in the material composition of the universe and may even be some basic force form in high-dimensional space. Interstellar attempts to explain this specific, physical state of love in a mechanical way, which is very groundbreaking and amazing.

I'm not sure if Interstellar's mechanical interpretation of love is unique in the history of science fiction, but whether you accept his conjecture or not, I think it's the key to the value that ultimately distinguishes it from other science fiction.

3. The question of philosophy

after talking about the question of "love", let's talk about the problem of a black hole.

the most famous screen black hole in movie history is Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. In the movie, astronaut David enters a magical tunnel-like space after a series of wits battles with the spacecraft's computer. This shot into the space is nearly ten minutes long, without dialogue or any plot development, just that the light and shadow are constantly changing on the screen. The tunnel-like space through which David passed is widely thought of as entering a black hole. At the end of the long visual tunnel, David came to a room where he found himself aging rapidly, the Blackstone that represented the ultimate mystery of the universe reappeared, and a Star Child.

compared with the 2001 Space Odyssey, Nolan's display of black holes is specific, from boundless flying sand to high-dimensional space-time with three-dimensional projection, which can be logically analyzed one by one. Inside the warped space-time of the black hole, Cooper's behavior is still closely related to the previous great setting to save the fate of mankind. The story outside the black hole continues and develops within the black hole, and finally closes completely. Kubrick, on the other hand, ended the film with a collection of super-logical visual symbols after astronaut David passed through the black hole. David's aging, the appearance of Blackstone, and the birth of Star Child have no narrative logic connection to each other, and even any attempt to make a narrative logic connection between the content behind the boundary of the black hole and the previous one will fail. To put it another way, Nolan's journey to the black hole is known to speculate the unknown, is to answer, is closed, while Kubrick's is to express the unknown in the unknown, to ask questions, and to be open.

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in my opinion, with the development of technology and the change of dimensions, any method of trying to answer an affirmative state may be falsified, while asking a question is honest (or cunning, depending on your perspective of judgment). It is also more difficult to accurately represent all the unknown in visual symbols than to come up with some form of an answer. Kubrick uses figurative visual symbols to express an abstract philosophical concept and makes the same abstract visual conjecture about the unknown of the universe. This is why I think the 2001 Space Odyssey can finally rise from science fiction to philosophy. It is still the greatest sci-fi film that cannot be surpassed.

by contrast, the visual display of black holes in Interstellar is magnificent, and since none of us now understand black holes, we are all guessing and uncertain, so is Nolan's conjecture of "love" in the film. However, once the explanation is put forward, it will inevitably fall into the nest mortar, especially this explanation only appears hastily as the end of the complete story and will not be further studied by logical disassembly analysis. At this point, "Interstellar" is indeed more similar to "super-space-time contact", full of science fiction passion and enthusiasm, but has not yet been able to stand to the height of philosophy, from science fiction to serious belief.

so Interstellar doesn't solve the ultimate philosophical problem of science fiction, it solves the problem of Hollywood.