When a science fiction movie involves space travel you can already prepare for two things: the first is obviously being fascinated by this space thing; The second is that no matter how much you pay attention to the movie or watch it over and over, you will always have that unexplained subject. That's why the Curious Mega exists, dear space traveler, to make things clearer to you.

The movie of the moment is Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar". The film involves some controversial and complex themes: space travel, the end of the world and the frightening wormhole. Before continuing, a warning: this text contains spoilers. Then it's not worth complaining about.

If in "The Origin" Nolan plunged headlong into the dream world, in "Interstellar" the thing went even further and the immersion was in a crazy universe known as astrophysics. To bring the complex narrative to life, Nolan turned to physics, that area of ​​science that gives us the creeps. “Interstellar” is proof that physics can be a really cool thing after all.

summing up

Among the main characters in the plot are farmer Coop, played by Matthew McConaughey; Murph, Coop's daughter, played by Mackenzie Fox in childhood and Ellen Burstyn in the sequel. Also in the cast is Anne Hathaway, who gives life to Amelia Brand.

The movie shows the planet Earth collapsing in the near future, when not even all existing technology can save humanity. Chaos sets in all over the world: sandstorms, lack of food, collapse of universities and so on. NASA is hoping to find a way to help the planet, which hopes to colonize other places. It is at about this point in the plot that your head begins to knot several consecutive knots.

Coop, the farmer who is actually a non-active astronaut, agrees to join a crazy project and try to travel to another galaxy. For this gigantic feat, only managing to pass through the wormhole, which is nothing more than a kind of portal that, in the movie, is open near Saturn. Leaving the story of the film aside, the question is: would this kind of thing really be possible?

Some questions of astrophysics

Here you can get a good feel for how things flow during the movie - with spoilers, of course.

Come on: If you haven't seen the movie yet, it's good to be aware of some terms that will end up leaving you with a slightly stunned movie theater. It doesn't take a great genius to know that there is no gravity in space, so astronauts keep floating, right?

The point is that being in a non-gravity environment for a long time - years in the case of the film - is extremely harmful to the human body, so we talk about a concept called " artificial gravity " that was created by scientists to deal with the problem. This artificial gravity is produced by a rotating motion of the ship, causing a "normal" sense of gravity.

Another subject addressed in the film is the issue of revolving black holes, whose existence has been scientifically proven by astrophysicist Kip Thorne, who advised Nolan at the time of writing the script. These holes can change the shape of the space around them in a process called frame dragging . This deformation of space ends up affecting other factors as well, such as the notion of spacetime in nearby regions.

In the case of the movie, where the character can make the transition through the black hole, physically speaking, he could possibly be destroyed by gravity.

Also be aware of the concepts of “ wormhole ” or “ wormhole ”, whatever the name - the complexity is the same. If you want to understand what this is, imagine a kind of magical portal, because, even if the question is not mystical, you can see better.

In fact, astrophysics has not yet proven the factual existence of wormholes, so this is the only phenomenon in the movie that could not be scientifically viable. Still, the concept is so amazing that it was brilliantly explored in the script. Another movie that talks about the phenomenon is Donnie Darko, but in a different way.

A wormhole, theoretically, is the intersection point between two distant regions of space. This region facilitates the passage from one point to another - in the case of the film, from one galaxy to another. To better understand, fold a sheet of paper in half and pass a pen through it. The leaf is the space. A point on one side of it is the earth; A point on the other side is a distant galaxy. The hole you made with the pen is the wormhole.

Another concept explored in the film is that of “ gravitational time dilation, ” which is a true phenomenon that is directly associated with the relativity of time. It works like this: In regions with a strong influence of gravity, time passes more slowly compared to regions with less gravitational attraction, such as Earth.

Since black holes have more gravity attraction, you can understand why time is slower there than on our planet. As a result, a person near a black hole ages more slowly than one on Earth. Another curious fact: each cosmic region has a unique temporal relationship.

Now, to explain the craziness surrounding such a “ five-dimensional reality, ” we need to resort to the kid's dearest physicist: Albert Einstein. He spent three decades studying the unified field theory, which blends the mathematical way of understanding gravity with the three fundamental forces of nature: the strong, the weak, and the electromagnetic.

Even though three decades of study may seem like a long time to you, we are back to the relativity of time, but in a different way: in the scientific area of ​​the thing, 30 years of study is nothing, so the genius didn't finish his research. To this day, there are many physicists and astrophysicists around the world looking for ways to come to some conclusion for Einstein's studies.

Some say that the solution to the unified field theory is a review of the dimensions of the universe: instead of thinking of it within the four dimensions proposed by Einstein - which includes spacetime - the ideal would be to imagine a space with five dimensions. This is another idea present in the film and scientifically coherent. This image is in English, and for those who need a little visual push to understand some more complicated issues, it can be very helpful.

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So, can you understand a little better? Have you watched the movie? What did you think of him? Tell us in the comments!