• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Physicist Kip Thorne consulted on the movie. The physics are accurate.

    Miller’s planet (the ocean world) was spinning extremely rapidly and it was located just above the event horizon of the supermassive black hole, Gargantua. The rapid spin of the planet provides a slingshot effect when you take off in the direction of the spin. This is true on earth as well, and is most pronounced near the equator, but the extreme spin of Miller’s planet makes it much easier to achieve orbit.

    The proximity of the black hole is the cause of the extreme tidal forces which create the tidal waves on the planet, but would also help them take off for the same reason (tidal forces affect all masses moving in the gravitational field).

    The lack of spaghettification is a known and established fact with supermassive black holes. What you were expecting is what happens with stellar black holes (10x mass of the sun to 100x), not with supermassive black holes (millions to billions of times the mass of the sun) whose event horizons are much larger and therefore have less extreme gravitational gradients (the source of spaghettification).

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        They’re not space ghosts, they’re literally the main character interacting with the past from within a black hole, where the whole of spacetime has collapsed into a single point. As the other commenter said, this is the science fiction part.

        Physicists have said that physics as we know it break down in the singularity of a black hole. Kip Thorne signed off on their artistic license plot device of having spacetime collapse into the “tesseract.”

        Anyway, that isn’t what I was referring to when I said “the physics are accurate.” I was only referring to the parts involving the black hole and planets and tidal forces and time dilation, which were what they worked very hard on to get right.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Kip Thorne signed off on their artistic license plot device of having spacetime collapse into the “tesseract.”

          Well, then, I guess it’s all perfectly real and believable. Next time I see a clock rattle or a bookshelf shake, I’ll know what’s up.

    • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
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      15 hours ago

      For me it was the part about how at the center of a supermassive black hole is a hypercube that let’s you see and manipulate all time and space…

      • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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        10 hours ago

        It’s a little known fact of physics, but yes, at the center of every supermassive blackhole is a hypercube that lets you manipulate time and space. It’s just not commonly accepted since so far very few people have made it there and back.

        • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
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          9 hours ago

          it’s not always a hypercube tho! It can be other shapes too!

          Mine was a form of a hyper-dyno-shaped nuggie!:D

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        8 hours ago

        Not all time and space, just those moments and places that you have a strong connection to via power of love, duh

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Then the spin should have reduced gravitational effect, created a “lean” toward the equator of the spin, created a bulge at the equator where the water would be slung outward due to the spin…

      There’s all kinds of problems with this planet assuming a slingshot effect to help reach escape velocity based on the fuel requirement differential in this hypothetical.