That reminds me...
I had a screensaver a bit like that on Windows 95...It simulated a system where all information was lost without the possibility to transmit that information back into the universe....and neither does a black hole (chortle)
Youtube Video Ahead of the release of Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated space movie Interstellar, the film-makers reveal how theoretical physicist Kip Thorne helped them to create scientifically accurate special effects for a black hole. It’s a pretty clever piece of marketing for the movie, which has relied on the …
Horrifying. A basket ball team will be in the next row in front.
The Asthmatic and Phlegm Society will be in the row behind.
James P. Ebola will be on the right and Martha Pox on the left.
The seat will be contaminated with some mysterious bodily secretion.
The obese lady down the row will have a 20mL bladder that has a 15m cycle.
But her colon is 17L and will pass gas as she squeezes past for the tenth time.
Enjoy the movie.
"Horrifying."
I have wondered in recent years if a big launch event for a Hollywood "blockbuster" could be carried out on cable/satellite Pay Per View. It might be an interesting experiment for one of the big studios to try out. After all, many people have large screen TVs at home now and I think a lot of people would pay £20-30 for an "event" that they'd pay similar for at the cinema but without the dross that comes with a trip out.
Two options spring to mind. A "simulcast" with the cinema launch, ie a pay-per-view like a sports event so every one watches at the same time and also try out a one weekend only On Demand event. Either with different films on different launch days or even on the same launch but in different areas/countries/territories.
While living in Hong Kong I discovered the joy of <20 seat cinemas with big lay-z-boy electric reclining chairs, waitress service and beer. It's the only way I'll drag myself to a cinema instead of waiting to watch it on my nice comfy home cinema setup.
Do these exist in the UK yet?
That's not necessarily a good thing. There is nothing worse for destroying the immersive feeling of something than, just after arriving at an alien planet they wander into a city and your first reaction is "Hey that's Edmonton!". Simon Fraser University next door in BC is a particularly common location and has been in Stargate SG1 and Battlestar Galactica: apparently 1960's concrete looks 'alien'.
1) Movie about a Black Hole?
2) Get the guy on the phone who co-wrote the telephone-directory sized book on Gravitation
3) ???
4) All those feels and Rousing Magic Spielburg Music!
Definitely more impressive than Greg Egan's Applet efforts.
A smaller version of the book "Gravitation" is A. Zee's (get it?) Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell. That nutshell is the size of a coconut though.
I gather the movie is about a wormhole, at least in terms of the travel. My copy of Gravitation is stuck at the bottom of a cardboard box somewhere in the sleepout, but as I recall - over a span of decades - Kip Thorne discussed and calculated the creation of a wormhole using exotic matter (Z=0). He observed that not only were the energy requirements huge, but the wormhole would be initially the sign of a pinhead (and vast quantities of exotic matter would also be needed to enlarge it).
But for him the important point was that the rules of relativistic physics did not actually rule wormholes out.
If it's not a rehash of a series or prior film, that'll be surprise enough! I get invited to go see a film, on someone else's dime no less, and don't bother. Another non-optimal use of my time. (I really do think that way.) So, bring it on.
When the creation of a movie, game, etc. ends up discovering something overlooked in day-to-day science or engineering. An example would be the 1983 Atari 2600 game "Space Shuttle" by Activision. Apparently they actually worked with NASA peeps to make the simulation as realistic as possible. In the course of doing so, they discovered from the game that it was possible to land the shuttle successfully in an unexpected way--which was verified on NASA's simulator.
Looking forward to the movie :)
Interesting.
I did some theoretical physics calculations on whether condensed matter could be used to simulate exotic matter thereby enabling NASA's "IXS Enterprise" to work with only a few slight modifications.
The upshot is that in principle if certain extrapolations hold such as the Cooper pairs within the lattice being induced via pulsed RF off axis to oscillate faster than light then yes in principle a rotating pair of superconducting disks spinning in opposite directions would behave very much like exotic matter is predicted to do, and actually create something approximating an event horizon.