As Christopher Nolan鈥檚 epic new film opens, it鈥檚 not quite apocalypse now, but it will be soon. Crops are failing all over the planet. Humanity鈥檚 final generation has already been born. We鈥檝e got to get off the planet. And not just off to a nice moon in our solar system: we鈥檝e got to go Interstellar.
This is going to require some serious science.
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The film鈥檚 hard-science pedigree is guaranteed by its science advisor and executive producer, Kip Thorne, one of the world鈥檚 leading experts on Einstein鈥檚 theory of general relativity. 鈥淭he things he was able to open up for me were far more exotic and exciting than anything I could鈥檝e come up with as a screenwriter,鈥� Nolan told 快猫短视频.
Some critics have said before seeing the film 鈥� so here鈥檚 our spoiler-free guide to everything you need to know before you see Interstellar.
What is this 鈥渄ust鈥� that threatens the Earth鈥檚 food supply?
The agent of destruction is a blight fungus. In the film, set on an Earth of the near future, the blight is sweeping across the world, and has already destroyed wheat and okra as a crop. In the real world, blight is indeed a serious threat 鈥� responsible for the Irish potato famine 鈥� and a different blight fungus, Ug99, now threatens wheat. Norman Borlaug, dubbed the father of the Green Revolution, said Ug99 鈥�has immense potential for social and human destruction鈥�.
Nolan was influenced by the real-life ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl in 1930s North America, when the rich top soil essential to farming dried out and blew away, desolating vast areas and causing famine and mass human displacement 鈥� a situation that could yet happen again with the severe, ongoing US drought in the US.
But chin up people. Consider the movie鈥檚 tagline: the end of Earth will not be the end of us.
How can we ensure the survival of the human race?
Colonising our neighbouring planets and their moons will be the first step. Once we鈥檝e arrived at our new home we need to grow crops and establish a viable population.
Poor old Anne Hathaway, playing 滨苍迟别谤蝉迟别濒濒补谤鈥檚 only female astronaut, Amelia Brand, isn鈥檛 expected to do all this herself 鈥� she is taking a whole load of frozen human embryos with her. Presumably some artificial wombs, too.
But as Stephen Hawking has argued, the long-term survival of our species depends on us developing interstellar travel.
Even if we don鈥檛 render our planet uninhabitable, the sun will eventually swell up and engulf Earth. This won鈥檛 happen for 5 billion years, but nevertheless, Michael Caine鈥檚 character in the film 鈥� based on Thorne 鈥� insists we have to travel through a wormhole to another galaxy. 鈥淲e must confront the reality that nothing in our solar system can help us,鈥� he says.
(Image: Paramount Pictures)
How could we travel to planets beyond our solar system?
It鈥檚 a long way to the nearest exoplanets. To get there without spending thousands of years on the journey, the options are limited. Physics won鈥檛 let us go faster than the speed of light, but it will allow for radical shortcuts. There are efforts to devise Star Trek-inspired warp drives, but even if they were possible, they could be deadly. That leaves the main contender: wormholes.
Wormholes are hypothetical tunnels through space-time 鈥� predicted by Einstein鈥檚 general theory of relativity 鈥� that can connect distant parts of the universe.
Until recently, wormholes have been seen as unworkable curiosities. That鈥檚 now changed. Physicists have described how you could make a one big enough to send a message or a spaceship through 鈥� or even reunite star-crossed lovers.
We can even visualise what it would look like to travel through one 鈥� rendered here with slightly cheaper graphics software than in Interstellar.
We won鈥檛 manage to make a wormhole for a while 鈥� that will take a highly advanced civilisation. If we do ever get to go through one, who knows what we鈥檒l find when we get out. The crew on the Interstellar spaceship, the Endurance, discover an unwelcome beast at the other side of theirs: a supermassive black hole.
(Image: Paramount Pictures)
What are the real dangers of approaching a black hole?
The beautiful black hole in Interstellar is not just visually stunning, it is scientifically accurate. At the heart of a black hole is a singularity, a point of effectively infinite density. This exerts a lot of gravity, which drags matter towards it, spiralling into the hole in a vast swirl called an accretion disc.
Kip Thorne of what happens to the accretion disc, and found that the intense gravity warps the disc around the black hole, . It鈥檚 a phenomenal achievement.
If you fall into a black hole, or get too close to its intense gravity (and somehow survive), you鈥檒l notice weird things happening to time. This is a favourite Nolan trope, also used in his mind-bending hit Inception, in which time moved at different speeds depending on the dream state his characters were in.
(Image: Paramount Pictures)
Gravity鈥檚 time-warping effect intensifies the heart-wrenching separation between Matthew McConaughey鈥檚 character, Cooper, and his 10-year-old daughter, left back on Earth. Astronaut twins Mark and Scott Kelly鈥檚 ages diverged by roughly 10 milliseconds when one of the brothers was on the International Space Station, but Cooper can鈥檛 know how old his daughter will be if he ever gets back to Earth.
McConaughey said being away from his own daughter brought this feeling home. 鈥淚t happens all the time, whether you鈥檙e dropping your kids off at school or going on a vacation. This is the most extreme nature of that. This is a father going off for a long time. There鈥檚 no guaranteed return ticket.鈥�
