Arrival

If someone were to ask me what I thought of the movie Interstellar, I would enthusiastically speak of some of my favourite parts and tell them how much I had enjoyed the movie. I would give a few outstanding quotes and finish off with the spiritual meaning of those quotes.

Recently, a friend asked me what I thought of the movie Arrival and my immediate answer was, “It was pretty good.” I guess if I was limited to a one sentence answer, that would be it. It is easy to see why no one is rushing to my blog to get my latest movie critique. To say the least, it would be rather uneven.

Arrival is, in many ways, a great movie much like Signs (14 years earlier). In both Arrival and Signs, the directors learned that the best moments of a Sci-Fi movie are those before the aliens are revealed. However, in Arrival, the director realized that one should not reveal too much about the aliens by the end of the movie. Leaving aliens mysterious and shadowy without totally resolving their appearance, behaviour, or motivation makes for a much better movie. Are you listening M. Night Shyamalan?!

However, creating a confusing ending that does not hold up to scientific investigation and covering it with brave and convoluted dialogue does not lend itself to anyone saying, “That was a great movie!” Arrival tries just a little too hard to be clever. Yes, the ending of Interstellar was about time tripping and seeing beyond the constraints of time and space, but it made sense in the movie. There was a natural progression of the characters grasping more and more of this dimension of the universe. It was not a surprise when they got to the point of omni-chronology. You cannot say the same for Arrival. Arrival flows along as an interesting revelation about sociology, war, history, and the nature of espionage and violence before suddenly plunging us into the world of “the future is now” and “yesterday I heard you speak those words that you will say for the first time tomorrow.” It is just too much to take in, in the last few moments of the film.

So, I would still highly recommend Interstellar, Oblivion, and even Signs (mostly for the scare factor) ahead of Arrival. It seems odd that Arrival is getting so much Oscar attention. Perhaps the Academy saw something I didn’t.

Proxima b

 

There has been much speculation in recent days about the possible discovery of a habitable planet in the Proxima Centauri solar system. Just as our star, called the Sun, has a collection of planets in orbit around it, the closest star to our Sun may have planets in orbit around it. In the August 25, 2016 edition of Nature, a team of researchers presents evidence suggesting that a planet with mass slightly larger than Earth (1.3 times the mass of earth) is cozied up to the Proxima Centauri star in a tight 11.2 day orbit. Think about how fast a year would go by on that planet. (Personally, I am glad that I was born on Earth rather than this planet since an orbit like that would make me more than 1,800 years old.) The new planet has been given the uninspiring name “Proxima b.”

Now, of course, many other planets, have been discovered around other stars in our universe and so Proxima b is not novel in that sense. What makes this planet particularly notable is the fact that it might exist within a narrow window of conditions known as the habitable zone. Initial evidence suggests that the temperature on the planet might be suitable for liquid water on the surface. It may have an atmosphere and there may be portions of the planet on which it may be a reasonable temperature for life (as we know it) to survive. The tight orbit suggests that it may be tidally locked[1] (meaning that it always shows the same face to the sun – as our moon always shows the same face to the earth) and so one side of the planet is in perpetual day and one side perpetual night. This is certainly a strike against it being a habitable world.

Of course news like this caused quite a stir and led to a lot of conjecture about how we might visit or colonize Proxima b. But, let’s make a few things clear, in astronomical distances, this potential planet is very close: only 4 light years away. This means that a photon of light traveling from Proxima Centauri takes only 4 years to get here. Some stars are so far away that they take thousands or billions of years to get to us. But, using todays propulsion methods which can achieve speeds of 0.005% of the speed of light, if you launched a very fast ship toward Proxima b, it would get there in about 80,000 years[2]. So, don’t let anyone fool you into booking your next vacation on an exotic planet in the Proxima Centauri system. You won’t live long enough to get there and your rocket would not have sufficient fuel to make the trip. Other, faster, modes of transportation have been proposed but those are still in development and right now are closer to science fiction than true science.

Still, a science nerd can dream. Such discoveries do spur the imagination. Imagine if we could find a way to travel at 20 percent of the speed of light and get there in a few decades. Could this be a place where humans might extend our reach and colonize another planet? What might we find on such a planet? Or, are the distances just too great to ever get a good look at Proxima b?

Works Cited

Crockett, Christopher. "Signs of planet detected around sun’s nearest neighbor star." Science News. 08 24, 2016. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planet-detected-nearest-neighbor-star-proxima-centauri?tgt=nr (accessed 08 29, 2016).

Siefried, Tom. "Visits to Proxima Centauri’s planet are probably millennia away." Science News. 08 25, 2016. https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/visits-proxima-centauri-planet-probably-millennia-away?tgt=nr (accessed 08 29, 2016).

Wall, Mike. "Found! Potentially Earth-Like Planet at Proxima Centauri Is Closest Ever." Space.com. 08 24, 2016. http://www.space.com/33834-discovery-of-planet-proxima-b.html (accessed 08 31, 2016).

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[1] Wall, Mike. "Found! Potentially Earth-Like Planet at Proxima Centauri Is Closest Ever." Space.com. 08 24, 2016. http://www.space.com/33834-discovery-of-planet-proxima-b.html (accessed 08 31, 2016)

[2] “Visits to Proxima Centauri’s planet are probably millennia away;” Science News, August 25, 2016, http://bit.ly/2bx1uyX; accessed 2016-08-29.

We're Just Here To . . .

Previously I have recommended the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar (here and here) and I will continue to sing its praises even while encouraging us to see it for all it is and look discerningly at its message. As the main character, Cooper, says his good-byes to his family and prepares to leave the galaxy, he makes a statement that suggests depth but perhaps simply reveals the not so deep philosophy of the Nolan brothers who wrote the screenplay for this film.

"We're just here to be memories for our kids." Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) in Interstellar.[1]

On the one hand, this is not a bad concept. If we are here to be memories for our kids, we will want to make certain that the memories we leave behind are good memories and we will likely live good lives. But as a true philosophy of life, it falls far short. Our lives have an existence apart from the lives of our children. I will not get on a soap-box and preach a message that defines my own perspective on the purpose of life. Anyone who reads a few pages of this blog will soon discern what my view on this would be. Instead, I encourage you to think further about why we are here. It must be more than just to be memories for our kids. As we consider the joys and horrors of this life, we must at least admit that our purpose is to contribute to the joys and diminish the horrors. What more would you add to this? How would you answer the question of why we are here?

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[1] Interstellar. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan. Performed by Matthew McConaughey. 2014.

Exploring Life

New Horizons, Rosetta, Mars Curiosity, The International Space Station, Cassini, Hubble, and Mars Express, many of these missions, spacecraft, and satellites have become well-known to us over the last few years. NASA, ESA, and the international space community have accomplished magnificent feats of exploration and the news media has shown us the significance of these events. We live in the heyday of local solar system exploration: all eight planets in our solar system have been visited and dwarf planets like Pluto and others in the Kuiper Belt have been explored and catalogued. Furthermore, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, and other far-reaching imaging systems, we have a much greater awareness of our place in the universe. I am one person who is excited to live in this time and I observe with great joy the new advances in space exploration.

Some would argue that this obsession with worlds beyond our world is unhealthy. They would say that we should be investing in solving the problems on this planet before we explore others. Certainly, we must heed the voices which call us to end poverty, suffering, and violence on Planet Earth, but I would suggest that we also need to give heed to the message of the planets and stars around us. In Christopher Nolan's excellent movie Interstellar, Matthew McConaughey plays an engineer and astronaut who has retired to farming on a planet that desperately needs farmers. Yet, even as he settles into his new role, he laments the days of pioneering and exploration that came to an end as he was beginning his career. In a scene where he is front porch reminiscing and philosophizing with his father-in-law he says,

"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt."[1]

In one sentence the Nolan brothers capture the angst of our generation. We worry, we wonder, we focus upon our ability to scratch out a living in this dirt, on this earth on which we live. Yet, at the same time, we wonder if there isn't something more beyond this place, beyond this subsistence, and beyond this life.

Could it be that our calling is to keep our eyes on both the dirt at our feet and the stars in the sky? Can we invest in both earth-dust and star-dust? Can we seek right relationships here on earth while looking to the heavens beyond? A life lived in this way will not be easy. It will require continual assessment of our goals, our consumption, and our contributions. It will require us to ask difficult questions about ultimate purposes of lives lived here on earth and of our own life in particular. It will cause us to consider the source of our existence and the gratitude with which we live. Personally, I am up for exploring that kind of life!

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[1] Interstellar. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan. Performed by Matthew McConaughey. 2014.

Interstellar 2014

Once again Christopher Nolan (writer and director) and Jonathan Nolan (writer) have succeeded in changing our perceptions with the visually stunning, Interstellar (2014). If you have not seen the movie, you may want to see it before you continue to read this blog which contains elements of the plot (in other words: spoiler alert). From the dust-bowl farmers of the "not-too-distant" future, to scenes of communication across time, I could almost taste the dirt, feel the pull of acceleration and gravity, sense the disorientation of astronauts facing challenges never before experienced, and share the suffering of the families as their lives were torn apart by time and circumstance.

The brothers have collaborated before (Memento (2000) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012); see my analysis of that Batman movie here), but their story-telling gets better each time. Interstellar is subtle; the audience is never subjected to preaching dialogue or pedantic scenes; and even the plot moves along largely through visual and musical elements. Hans Zimmer's score is perfectly suited to their method. There are times when the dialogue is nearly drowned out by the score and flood of potent images; but one soon learns to wait for the resolution of the scene to understand its implications. Many times the film reminded me of the story-telling methodology developed in the Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke collaboration, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Many other contemporary writers and directors seem to believe that the audience will not understand a story told through images and so they clutter the story with explanations. The Nolan brothers have recovered an art-form as old as cave-drawings and stained-glass windows and only a few times did they stray from this style. They did choose to explain wormholes and multi-dimensional travel and I could hardly fault them in that choice.

Then there is their visual depiction of a wormhole which is one of their great innovations and one which I am sure other film creators will imitate. Any fan of science fiction will be familiar with the standard depiction of wormholes seen in the Star Trek or Stargate franchises (to mention two of many). The usual images are of a two dimensional hole or lens which opens into a multi-coloured tunnel of stretched light. The creative development in Interstellar is that the wormhole is depicted as a three dimensional sphere and the approach of the Endurance space-craft is shown in a way that resembles an object being drawn into the orbit of a planet. This imagery lends itself to several subtle variations on the theme of wormholes, black-holes, and rapid space travel. At one point the crew of the Endurance skips through the "event horizon" of a black hole to slingshot themselves across a galaxy. I look forward to seeing what other writers and directors might do with such innovations and plot possibilities.

The cast is full of big names in the movie industry and it is somewhat surprising that actors who had smaller roles seemed to be the ones most likely to fail to convince me of their character. I expect that one or two of them will look back on this movie and realize the creative opportunities that were missed.

Near the end of the movie we see a rich interpretation of communication across time and space. The imagery is somewhat reminiscent of the layering of time and space in Christopher Nolan's movie, Inception (2010); but here the key to communication is gravity and not dreams. The Nolans have rightly recognized that one of the last great mysteries of physics is gravity and that the resolution of this mystery will bring about a truly massive revolution in scientific development. They also realistically depict that mankind may never solve this mystery. Here, their art imitates life with an image that reflects perfectly back on their art. The brothers purposely and intelligently refrain from tying-up all of the loose ends and one is left with a sense of wonder and trepidation at the next years of life we may experience on this planet. In life and art, may we continue to encourage and celebrate the risk-takers and pioneers.