[Physics of "Interstellar"]

Justin- I had no idea that the tidal waves on Miller's planet were fixed waves, I did not even know that fixed waves could actually be possible in that sense (as stupid as that might sound). That is really cool (and kind of freaky).

 

Jake- The idea of watching a live feed from Miller's planet is definitely something I would never have thought of, very cool! I think the idea of time dilation, as you described and applied it here, is pretty neat and a little bit scary. I can't imagine watching a live feed moving that slow!

 

Nate- I actually was wondering about how Cooper could have gotten out of the black hole, thanks for the explanation! Very interesting ideas!

[Physics of "Interstellar"]

One of the physics concepts I picked up in Interstellar was the physics was the idea of a 5th dimension. I did some research and very quickly realized that I had opened the Pandora's box that is quantum physics. Simply put: I was lost. So I asked my physicist brother for some help and ended up getting a ten minute crash course in the dimensions.

 

Here's what I got. To gain the perspective of another spacial dimension: When you hit a 2-dimensional drum set, which is in "flatland," you have to hit it from our third dimension, one in which the drum head would never perceive. Likewise, you can't smack a spherical drum unless you're smacking it from the fourth dimension; we are in the third. Matthew McConaughey (Cooper) was essentially doing the dot product between himself and the rest of space-time (everything, the universe?) when he interacted with Murphy's room  from inside the tesseract (5th dimension).

 

If anyone cares to help me out and explain this whole 5th dimension thing a little more, it would be appreciated.

 

Moving on, I was also curious about the equation that Dr. Brand and Murphy are trying to solve on Earth. The premise of this equation was to enable humans to understand and control gravity, but how could that even be possible? For the most part, since this within the realm of theoretical physics, this was left up to speculation. However, I did find it interesting to note a one of the ideas that I found, since it made the most sense to me. So the basic idea was that Murphy and Brand were trying to unify the concepts of gravity and Newton's laws with theories of quantum mechanics and the dimensions. Murphy and Brand were trying to use the fifth dimension to learn about and control gravity in the third dimension. The idea, as physicist Kip Thorne suggests in his book The Science of Interstellar, is that Murphy was able to locally reset Newton's gravitational constant (G), in effect shutting off Earth's gravity so small rockets could launch the space stations into space and toward Saturn. The Earth, obviously, would not make it. 

 

Since most of this is theoretical, as a lot quantum physics is, there are bound to be discrepancies with existing theories. It happens to be one of those concepts that is still open to discussion and frequently debated about.