re: The official Interstellar thread (spoilers)

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It was. The imagery in the film clearly showed that the tesseract was spatially linked with the wormhole, and when the tesseract closed, so did the wormhole. Cooper Station was orbiting Saturn for a reason...it had no specified destination. Jonathan Nolan also confirms this in an interview...

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That sucks... So what's their plan, to orbit saturn in a giant space station eternally?

How could he plan to travel to another galaxy in a tiny ship probably millions of lightyears away?

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By the end of Cooper's journey, the wormhole is gone. It's up to us now to undertake the massive journey of spreading out across the face of our galaxy. Brand is still somewhere out there on the far side of the wormhole. The wormhole has disappeared entirely. It's gone.

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I think he's referring to the end of his journey after Cooper goes through one last time. He's talking about the general idea that the wormhole is temporary and that Murphy's group would have to find a way to get there. Either that or Cooper goes to his death for absolutely no reason. In which case there's no reason to even reference Brand at all at the end. It makes no sense.

Or, Jonathan Nolan is out of the loop.

Have you ever read Albert Einstein's theory of relativity? One of the theories is that black holes cause wormholes. The movie states wormholes aren't naturally occurring phenomenon. But if black holes are related to wormholes then that is not the case. Humans had not been through the event horizon of a black hole prior to Cooper doing so. Therefore NASA could not understand that the black hole was the other side of the wormhole.

The movie has a flaw either way. If it were 5th deminsional beings that evolved reaching back, how did they evolve with humans going extinct? Humans could not have evolved without being assisted by them and would have gone extinct but for there help. Therefore they never had a chance to evolve in the first place.

Same goes for Cooper. If he is the ghost then how does he warn himself in the first place?

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. Therefore NASA could not understand that the black hole was the other side of the wormhole.

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It's not that cut and dry. There was a tesseract near the gravitational singularity, into which Cooper entered shortly after crossing the event horizon. This dimensional portal was linked to the wormhole, not the black hole itself.

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The movie has a flaw either way. If it were 5th deminsional beings that evolved reaching back, how did they evolve with humans going extinct? Humans could not have evolved without being assisted by them and would have gone extinct but for there help. Therefore they never had a chance to evolve in the first place.

Same goes for Cooper. If he is the ghost then how does he warn himself in the first place?

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You're thinking of time in a linear fashion. There aren't any ontological paradoxes in the film, as the third act reveals quite explicitly that time functions as a physical, spatial dimension in which all points in the "t" plane exist concurrently. This is what the tesseract attempted to convey to Cooper.

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So, his goal is to find or create another wormhole using the "love" connection he has with Brand?

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His goal is to explore, and if he can manage to one day find Brand, great. Just like the explorers in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of them would leave land to cross the oceans without knowing what they would find, or if they would ever return.

I thought the "love" aspect wasn't nearly as saccharine as some viewers think. In fact, aside from Brand's hokey monologue, it wasn't really a major aspect of the film. The film showed that gravity is actually the one thing that transcends time and space. Love in the film was shown as a battery for our actions - it's what drove Cooper to save his children, and it's what helped him communicate with Murph. It wasn't presented as some magical, trans-dimensional force, but rather as an innate human emotion that could simply be used as a primer for our actions and motivations.

Okay you are taking the time continuum out of context. Linear time travel mean that the closest distance betwixt two objects is a straight line. But in fact if you were to warp time then it may be possible to curve the distance. The movie uses a piece of paper to illustrate the warp. But space doesn't literally fold, time warps. Time is effected by speed and gravity. You can't use the movie as your source of knowledge for metaphysics because while they seem like they know what they're talking about they don't. Case in point: if you were on a planet where time was so warped by a black hole that it was a 1 to 7 ratio you would so close to the event horizon that the planet would be destroyed. I remind you that no one has ever worked out the math of a black holes singularity because no one has entered or been inside a black hole as the movie portrays. But one theory is that a black hole is a portal. Hence the connection to the worm hole.

Now as to the connection to the 5th deminsional beings and Cooper's interaction with his former self: it is a flaw. The fact that time warps doesn't allow for traveling back in time. Time is relative but it is bound by laws of physics. You can speed time up or slow it down but you can't reverse time. Space can't be manipulated in such a way that an otherwise extinct species is assisted to survive by its future self. That breaks the law of cause and effect. In order for a future self to be in existence you correlate it to a past self. Now let's say that a 5th deminsional being could use gravity to go back in time. It could send a message back that says it is necessary for this to happen in order to avoid that. Those are future events. But it is not possible for a 5th deminsional being to cross boundaries if they never existed in the first place.

Now if you want to suggest that by 5th deminsional you mean that an alternate universe exists and the future humans in that universe wanted to change reality in our universe then okay. Now we have gone from metaphysics to science fiction.

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The fact that time warps doesn't allow for traveling back in time. Time is relative but it is bound by laws of physics. You can speed time up or slow it down but you can't reverse time. Space can't be manipulated in such a way that an otherwise extinct species is assisted to survive by its future self. That breaks the law of cause and effect. In order for a future self to be in existence you correlate it to a past self. Now let's say that a 5th deminsional being could use gravity to go back in time. It could send a message back that says it is necessary for this to happen in order to avoid that. Those are future events. But it is not possible for a 5th deminsional being to cross boundaries if they never existed in the first place.

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There is no time travel in the film. There is no "beginning" of time. There isn't a casual chain of temporal events.

All points in time exist concurrently, just as all points in an X,Y, or Z plane exist concurrently.

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Case in point: if you were on a planet where time was so warped by a black hole that it was a 1 to 7 ratio you would so close to the event horizon that the planet would be destroyed.

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The relativistic factor of the water planet to Earth was approximately 61,320 to 1, not 7 to 1.

The point was that a portion of the black hole was modified by the fifth dimensional beings. This wasn't a standard black hole. They constructed a tesseract within the black hole to convey time as a spatial dimension to Cooper. It was the tesseract that was linked to the wormhole, which was shown when Cooper was deposited at the entrance to the wormhole when the tesseract was closed.

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And there is no other way he'll be able to get to where she is without a wormhole. So he basically goes to his death. Changes things quite a bit. I don't buy it and I think Jonathan Nolans words are being taken out of context. Also, he's not the final word when it comes to his brother's films, so again, I'm not buying it in that context.

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Even without Jonathan's input, that was my interpretation when the film concluded. Humanity's technology had vastly improved in the 90 years since he left, so who knows what kind of velocities he could have reached.

The wormhole remaining open just seems like too easy of a conclusion for me. It's basically a short trip for Cooper, as well as the space stations, down to Edmunds' planet. The wormhole had served its purpose.

There was also a scene at the end where the gateway to the station opened as Cooper was leaving, and showed nothing on the screen but a vast canvas of stars. Then, we saw a close up of Cooper's face in his ship - you could see the reflection of the stars on his helmet, and then you seem him just smile, as if he was finally able to just head out on his own and explore, and to be a pioneer for humanity. It also makes Brand's situation much more desperate and hopeless, which is just the general vibe the film gave me.

With Brand on a distant planet, and Cooper hopping between star systems, humanity had finally spread its wings and was beginning to once again transition into an exploratory race. Having everyone cruise through the wormhole (which, again, had already served its purpose) down to Edmunds' planet just seems too easy.

Edit - Also, I think Murph's monologue at the end lends credence to the notion of the wormhole being closed, as she mentions Brand under the light of "her" new sun in "her" new home (not "our"). I think the choice of words there is important, as highlights her distant separation from humanity.

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Also, I think Murph's monologue at the end lends credence to the notion of the wormhole being closed, as she mentions Brand under the light of "her" new sun in "her" new home (not "our"). I think the choice of words there is important, as highlights her distant separation from humanity.

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Which is exactly why Cooper has to find her. But he can't do it without a wormhole.

Okay, but that is science fiction and not metaphysics. So now that we have established you are debating theatrical science and not theory based on actual theories within the scientific community, I'll let you return to your fun.

For those who want to discuss the theory of relativity then know that while rules can be bent they can't be broken. Past present and future are relative to one another. As long as future is correlated to the present it has connection. Exinction means no future. As long as humans survive then you have the ability to have material interplay.

Now the ratio of water is absolutely irrelevant. Seriously that is not the point. Time is a thing, unlike temperature. Heat is a thing. Cold is not a thing. Cold is the absence of heat. Light is a thing. Darkness is not a thing. It is the absence of light.

So, the ratio of earth years to large planet near large black hole is something to discuss and therefore a thing. Water in planet has nothing to with the price of eggs in China nor the theory of relativity. If time were so warped as to have a ratio of 7:1 to earth years it would require the planet to be close enough to the event horizon of the said blackhole to warp the thing called time. If that were the case the aforementioned planet would be destroyed.

Now in terms of science fiction: you are way out there to suggest that the 5th deminsional beings are altering space time properties. Even science fiction tries to pretend it is based on properties in science. One of the key properties of science is that laws apply consistently under similar conditions. If your 5th deminsional beings can change the laws of physics why not change the law where gravity is the only thing that can travel back in time? The reason is because they can't change the laws of physics.