Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, is one of my favorite movies and was incredibly intelligently made. Its vision of the future, somehow pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, grabbed me from the moment I saw the trailer. The movie begins on an Earth that seems to be in the middle of a slow sort of apocalypse, as crop blights and droughts humble the planet, seeming to put the human race on the brink of extinction; meanwhile, NASA detects a wormhole floating in the far reaches of the solar system, and finds several habitable planets on the other side. The movie details the attempts of several astronauts to find a suitable planet for the species to relocate to during the decay of Earth. Personally, I just love the movie’s take on several scientific and futuristic concepts, and I’ll detail two of them here.
Black Holes: Interstellar explores the idea of black holes as a method of faster-than-light travel that’s not technically faster than light, which I like a lot. The movie, aside from the obligatory and oversimplified punching-a-hole-in-paper explanation of wormholes, seems to imply that black holes, or certain black holes, can enable travel through a higher spatial dimension, referred to in the movie as “The Bulk.” I think this is a really interesting concept that merits scientific exploration; if humanity is ever to colonize the stars in real life, we need a quick and effective way to get from system to system without spending thousands of years in transit. I would caution the viewer to accept all of Interstellar’s conclusions about black holes, however, because Matthew McConaughey is able to manipulate past events through one – this is pure science fiction, never to be science fact.
Humanity’s Future in Space: The end of the movie finds some of the characters in a truly massive space station, containing plentiful farms and full towns. This is a very real concept; a large spinning cylinder could mimic the effect of gravity for those inside of it utilizing the centrifugal force. I’m a huge proponent of humankind figuring out ways to live outside of Earth, and that mission is the crux of Interstellar’s plot. NASA sending astronauts to explore faraway planets and test their potential for colonization is, in fact, most likely the long-term goals of the organization. Simply put, it’s never smart to keep all your eggs in one basket – if all of humanity is concentrated on a single planet, orbiting a single star, then we’re vastly more likely to go extinct, due to either a cataclysmic event like a large asteroid, or simple destabilization and famine from various ecological disasters, as is depicted in the movie. These challenges future Earthlings will face are real. A dangerous lack of biodiversity in modern-day crops does make them more vulnerable to the type of blights depicted in the movie, and drastic environmental change is not a future threat – it’s affecting many people right now.
Overall, I think Interstellar paints a fantastic image of humanity’s future and the role astrophysics plays in it. Movies like these are a part of why I decided to become an astrophysics major; helping our species expand into outer space has always been a dream of mine, and the more we understand space, the easier it is to spread our wings.