Florida 2: Does anybody really know what time it is?

We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.

Cooper, Interstellar

I'm just starting the first leg of my Florida vacation - I'm en route to Toronto where I'll be joined by my friend Colin, aka Cloin of the Campbell Brothers, and we'll fly down to Miami together before heading for Key West in the morning.

It's a big full plane, which would make the Civilization Game quite playable, but I'm more intrigued to see that Interstellar is on the list of options for in flight viewing.

I ended up just not getting to Interstellar in commercial release, but it's been on my list of catch-up movies.  It generated a lot of geek buzz when it debuted, with physics luminary Neil deGrasse Tyson publicly weighing in regarding the accuracy - or lack thereof - of the wormhole and black hole science involved in the plot.

Interstellar presents us with an Earth which is no longer on the edge of starvation but past it, with a reduced population living in a global dust bowl à la The Grapes of Wrath. Widowed spaceship pilot manqué Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey*, grows corn and drinks beer while mourning the loss of the pioneer spirit in favour of survival.

Enigmatic messages from an unknown force point Cooper and his daughter Murphy toward a hidden NASA base which is covertly planning a trip through a mysterious wormhole in hopes of finding a habitable planet.  Cooper decides to abandon his family and pilot the mission, even though time dilation makes it impossible for him to tell his family when he will return.  Elderly physicist Michael Caine promises to have solved the mysteries of gravity manipulation before Cooper's return so that mankind can emigrate to their new home in space - once Cooper finds it.

The other side of the wormhole is a sort of physics playground, with a black hole causing all sorts of peculiar problems for the explorers. 

Even as an amateur physicist**, there were aspects of those problems that I found to be questionable.  For example, at one point the crew visits a planet which is orbiting a black hole closely enough that time dilation has slowed time to a crawl: seven years pass on Earth for every hour spent on the planet's surface.  They leave one crew member in orbit and take a lander for a hit and run visit to the planet in order to determine the fate of previous explorers.  Of course problems ensue, and when they make it back to the ship 23 years have come and gone for the solitary crew member***, and Cooper's distant daughter is now the same age that he is.

But...if the ship is in orbit, it would have to be orbiting in line with the plane of the planet's orbit so that it wouldn't get any closer to the black hole at any time, or else it would suffer from fluctuating time dilation effects.  Actually, why not get the ship into a position so that exactly the same amount of time passes on the ship as on the planet? Or less time?

Similar moments of fuzzy logic continue throughout Interstellar, and the climax is a confusing mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey and arbitrary, illogical deus ex machina intervention by future versions of humanity.  A little advice to our distant descendants:  if you need to twist time and manipulate space so that information crucial to the survival of humanity is transmitted, maybe do your twisting and manipulating so that the information goes to a scientist instead of a pre-teen girl's bedroom?

- Sid

* It used to be that if you wanted to cast someone as an archetypal American, you picked Kevin Costner.  In the fullness of time, Mr. McConaughey has taken over the job.

**  Reading science fiction is like getting a really strange education in the sciences.  With aliens on the side.

*** Who is a little quiet for the rest of the movie, not a huge surprise after more than two decades of solitary confinement.

Florida 1: "We choose to go".

I've actually been back from my trip to Florida for a week now, but I'm going to exercise my prerogative as a science fiction fan (and the owner of a time machine) and do a bit of time travel. I'm just catching up on the blog postings from the trip now on May 2nd, but I'm going to post them for the dates in April when the events discussed took place.

Overall, the trip was fabulous - my friend Colin and I had a great time hanging out and photographing cemeteries in Key West, alligators in the Everglades, beaches in Cocoa Beach, and all things NASA at the Kennedy Space Centre. My thanks to Colin for continuing to provide tireless and uncomplaining* transit services for a single passenger even though he was on vacation - as a non-driver, I would never have been able to cover that kind of territory on my own.

I have to admit that the last destination was really the focus of the trip for me, and it completely lived up to all my expectations. But we'll get to that in due time.  For now, let's turn back the clock and sit down on Air Canada Flight 142, going from Vancouver to Toronto...

- Sid

* Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, he was getting a bit little worn out by the time we were got back to Miami for our return flight.  But only a little.

Spock's Beard.

Dr. McCoy:  Jim, I think I liked him with a beard better. It gave him character. Of course almost any change would be a distinct improvement.  

Mirror, Mirror:  Star Trek, The Original Series

I've mentioned several times that our HR department doesn't seem to be asking enough questions about Star Trek when hiring people, and this fundamental lack of due diligence has reared its ugly head again.

One of my co-workers is optimistically working away at a beard, and it changes his appearance substantially.  I suggested that if he just trimmed it down to a goatee, he would look very much like the evil mirror version of himself.  He frowned at me, and I said, "You know, evil alternate mirror dimension Spock?  With the beard?"  He gave this some consideration and finally said, "Sorry, no, I don't get it."

A sad conversation, but one which clearly illustrates the fleeting nature of pop culture fame. It's interesting to think that there's a point in the future when no one will understand why it's necessary to wave your arms up and down when saying, "Danger, Will Robinson!", when the significance of "No, I am your father!" will be lost, and if you Google™ "Spock's beard", the only results will say, "Los Angeles based band formed in 1992..."

- Sid