The Spark Science hosts finally watch the film Interstellar. In our fourth episode, Dr. Kevin Covey – fellow WWU Astrophysicist, talks with us about the Science of Interstellar, Gravity and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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? And they hit the ground
Dr. Regina DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff, astrophysicist, educator, Washingtonian, and naturally curious person.
Jordan Baker: And I’m Jordan Baker, human and large, scuba diver, professional comedian, and also a naturally curious person. Joining us today is Dr. Kevin Covey, an astronomy from Western Washington University.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah and he is also my colleague at Western and has an office down the hall. And we’ve decided to watch the movie, Interstellar. I teach Astronomy 103, and in the last two quarters I’ve been asked if I’ve seen the movie Interstellar I don’t even know how many times. How many times have you been asked, Kevin?
Kevin Covey: Probably like four or five.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. Well that’s —
Kevin Covey: It’s common.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah, it’s —
Jordan Baker: It’s a lot lower.
Regina DeGraaff: You’re right. [laughing] It might — exaggerated. It might’ve been five. No, I’m sure it was more than that. So I’d never seen it and we decided to watch it yesterday, actually — Jordan and I. How did you like it, Jordan?
Jordan Baker: I put myself through it, you know?
Regina DeGraaff: [laughing]
Jordan Baker: I made it all the way through the predictable storyline.
Regina DeGraaff: Yes. Well I think what Jordan’s referring to is that the one scene where —
Jordan Baker: Just because I predicted the little girl was gonna jump out of the blanket.
Regina DeGraaff: Right and that — that got big laughs.
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: It wasn’t a comedic movie, though, so there wasn’t a lot of jokes.
Jordan Baker: Besides the robot, the sarcastic robots.
Regina DeGraaff: Oh my lord, yes. So we’ll get to all these things. And before we do, I’d like to welcome Kevin. Thank you for taking your time to come talk to us. He’s laughing at me.
Kevin Covey: No problem. Thanks for having me.
Regina DeGraaff: But I wanted to talk to you about like just some backstory. Why did you become an astronomer? Why do you study astronomy?
Kevin Covey: I study astronomy because — I guess if you go all the way back — because I was on the high school newspaper?
Regina DeGraaff: Were you really?
Kevin Covey: I was.
Regina DeGraaff: Journalism.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah. I was doing journalism and I enjoyed particularly like the photo editing part of being on the school paper. And so when I went to college, I was starting to get interested in — I was majoring in physics and taking a bunch of physics classes. And the department kind of published a list of research projects that they were looking for students to participate in.
And there was an astronomer who published a project that said, well we’re gonna look at images of galaxies and identify the regions where stars are forming, and I was like, “Oh I know Photoshop.” Like, “I am all over this.”
And so I went to visit the professor and she was very kind. And she was like, “Oh that’s great. You’re not going to use Photoshop at all. But you know, you’re gonna look at a lot of pictures so I’m sure that that’s gonna translate. And so let’s get started.”
Regina DeGraaff: Wow.
Kevin Covey: And so very quickly she deflected from like this — why I thought I was gonna be a good astronomer in to just getting into the work. And the more and more I’ve done the work, the more I’ve just enjoyed it. It’s a really fun, really interesting kind of thing to do.
Regina DeGraaff: So what year in college was this?
Kevin Covey: This must be when I was a sophomore. I wanna say sophomore.
Regina DeGraaff: And you still do research with star forming regions, right?
Kevin Covey: I do. I do. In our own galaxy. At this point, we can’t — though where I study star formation, we can’t actually look at the entire galaxy and pick out individual star form regions, cause I study it closer to home.
But yeah. No, I’m interested in how stars like the sun form in their earliest, earliest precocious years.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. No, I think it’s — your story of like your advisor kind of taking what you’re interested in science and then kind of guiding you into what science actually is, is basically what we’re gonna talk about today, right? People love astronomy, people love these science movies, and not everything in the movies is accurate or scientific. But at least they have that spark of interest and we can guide them to actual science. At least, that’s — I don’t know — my goal.
What’s your goal Jordan?
Jordan Baker: Oh yeah. Well you said “star formation.” Just to be clear, it’s actually how they were formed, not the — what are those things called? The Scorpion, Orion —
Regina DeGraaff: Right. Not constellations.
Jordan Baker: Not constellations.
Regina DeGraaff: Absolutely.
Kevin Covey: No. Right, right, right.
Regina DeGraaff: That is a very good clarification. Yes.
Kevin Covey: Right, right. No, so I’m interested in their — how the stars, each individual star, how they came to be as like an object — not the formations they make in the sky.
Jordan Baker: Cool.
Regina DeGraaff: Which I’m glad you brought up constellations, though.
Jordan Baker: Tell me why.
Regina DeGraaff: Tell me why. [laughing] Yeah. I had like prompted Jordan. I was like talking about misconceptions about astronomers. And as an astronomer — I guess I’m an astronomer too — so I always get questions about constellations and, you know, meteor showers and stuff like that, and a giant misconception is that we know everything about that stuff.
Kevin Covey: Mmhm. Mmhm.
Regina DeGraaff: I can’t think of any other misconceptions though about astronomers, other than that we know everything about constellations. And the zodiac — we can tell horoscopes.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Jordan Baker: Yeah. I would say the zodiac and mercury retrograde or whatever that is.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: And also that we actually look through a telescope.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: That’s also a big one — that, you know, that used to be an important way of which astronomers would actually study the universe.
Jordan Baker: What, you guys don’t actually have telescopes?
Regina DeGraaff: No.
Kevin Covey: We have — well we have telescopes. We just don’t actually put our eye to ’em very often.
Regina DeGraaff: So we’ll be talking about the Hubble space telescope later.
Jordan Baker: Deception!
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. We’re just giant liars. So yeah, the Hubble space telescope is in space, right? So us, as astronomers, we don’t physically go up there and look through it. But there is data that is sent to us directly from the Hubble space telescope and maybe analyzed and modified before we get the data, but yeah.
I’ve only actually been to two observatories in my life, so yeah. I don’t know. Do you go observing a lot? Do you have like — do you actually physically go to the observatories that much to get your data?
Kevin Covey: Not too much. More often — yeah — right now, I have not been to — when was the last time — before I came to Western, I worked at an observatory. And there I did actually go to the telescope kind of like once every month or two. So when I was at Lowell, I was going to use the telescope physically fairly often.
While I’ve been at Western, more often I’ve been using — I think I’ve used kind of like twice, maybe three times telescopes elsewhere. But telescopes in Hawaii, telescopes in New Mexico I can use from my office here in Bellingham just by —
Regina DeGraaff: Remotely.
Kevin Covey: Essentially using the power of the internet to control the telescope to tell it exactly what stars I want to point at, and go, and then I get a digital camera image — very much like the camera in our phones these days. And so, yeah. So I can use those telescopes without going to them. So I still do conduct observations
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: but it’s not nearly as interesting or romantic in being —
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah sadly.
Kevin Covey: It’s like being in your office at 3am in Bellingham.
Regina DeGraaff: Well yeah. And I think a lot of people don’t understand that when you actually go to the observatory, you aren’t looking through the telescope. Like it’s all automated and it’s all digital. And it’s, you know, you’re sitting in front of a screen — of a computer screen.
So, the only two times that I’ve done this, that’s what it was like. [laughing]
Kevin Covey: Right, right.
Regina DeGraaff: I don’t know. When you think of astronomers, Jordan, other than that we all look through telescopes and we know constellations, is there anything else that kinda comes to mind?
Jordan Baker: Nah.
Regina DeGraaff: No? I guess you know me so it’s kinda like it’s a loaded question, right? I don’t know. But yeah. I mean, I never owned a telescope as a kid. I don’t own a telescope now. I am not an amateur astronomer. I think there’s a difference between people that, you know, are astrophysicists that go through it, that take data with these large telescopes versus star parties and amateur astronomers.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Which, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that’s not what I’ve done.
Kevin Covey: Right. And when I was growing up, I think Halley’s Comet came by when I was 10 or 12 or something. And so, my mom got me a small telescope, glass lenses like two inches across. And, I mean, I was growing up in Portland, Oregon to very Pacific Northwest kind of weather, so a clear night is also pretty rare to come by.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: So I think the number of times I used that telescope to actually look, you know, at anything particularly in the sky I can probably count on one hand.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. That’s a really really good point. Like, I mean, Jordan and I also grew up in Whatcom County, right? I mean when do we have time to actually see stars and not have it be super cloud and not being horribly cold or wet, or like, yeah? So it’s — no wonder I didn’t like telescopes! It’s all coming back now.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Alright. So, aside from that — aside from these misconceptions. So, there were these — in the movie — let’s get to the movie. Let’s get to Interstellar.
Jordan Baker: Let’s.
Regina DeGraaff: Let’s.
Kevin Covey: Let’s.
Regina DeGraaff: Let’s. First of all, the very beginning of the movie, she’s talking about this — spoiler alert — let’s stop this right now. I mean, we’re gonna go through the movie. We’re gonna be talking about the plot and the ending. So if anyone’s listening and has not heard this movie —
Jordan Baker: Sorry.
Regina DeGraaff: Sorry.
Kevin Covey: Here’s your opportunity to turn the radio down.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, yeah. Turn it off, watch the movie, come back.
Regina DeGraaff: Or just listen to us and then watch the movie and have it spoiled for you. It’s fine.
But so the very beginning when she’s like, “You know, there’s this ghost in my room,” I don’t know if you remember this. Yeah, it’s like the main plot, right? My husband was like, “This better not be an M. Night Shyamalan movie.” That was like his, “Is everyone gonna be a ghost and is everyone gonna be dead?”
But other than that, there’s the misconception at the very very beginning that there wasn’t a lunar landing. Like, this girl gets in this fight with these other kids that, you know, of course it’s not only crazies that don’t believe in — that we didn’t land on the moon — it’s like the administration. Like the education system now no longer believes in NASA and that we actually went to the moon.
Kevin Covey: Right. Well, in the world of that movie there’s clearly this way in which the — and this is all embedded within this post-apocalyptic kind of scenario in which like crops are failing. And so a lot of what we think of as modern technology and science has kind of failed this civilization and society.
Regina DeGraaff: Like the giant chunky laptop.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah. And like this drone in the early part of the movie, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: They chase this drone that has apparently just been flying kind of unmanned for five or tens of years.
Regina DeGraaff: Right and that was crazy. Yeah. Like how did it not run into anything while it was unmanned forever? Like, ugh.
Kevin Covey: Right. [laughter] And so I think that this moon — the official kind of story or the widespread belief that the moon landings were faked is part of this larger sense of all of the society having kind of lost faith in science and technology.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: As something that is actually beneficial and useful.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. But I did wanna bring up something about the moon though. Cause I really find that interesting. Cause like the whole — their civilization not believing in the moon landing anymore kind of makes me think of like — that seems ridiculous to a lot of people, but even understanding the phases of the moon or seasons, which we were talking about at work, and like the dark side of the moon, and all these things that can be viewed, can actually be observed every night, people still don’t understand that right now, so.
And there are people that still don’t believe we went to the moon. So I wanted to take a second and talk about those moon misconceptions before we continue with Interstellar.
Jordan Baker: Please do.
Regina DeGraaff: Please do. Okay. [laughter] So what is the biggest moon misconception that you’ve encountered as an educator or as an astronomer? I think I’ve alluded to a few, I guess.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. I think the biggest — I don’t know if I’d call it a misconception — is it a misconception? Maybe. I mean, there’s the misconception that there is a dark side of the moon, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: That there is a part of the moon that is permanently encased in darkness. And that’s —
Regina DeGraaff: I blame Pink Floyd for that.
Kevin Covey: And that’s — yeah.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, it’s not just an album.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah. Right.
Regina DeGraaff: But yeah, so to explain — there isn’t a dark side.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: There is a side of the moon that does face Earth all the time, but that doesn’t mean that there is one side that’s always dark all the time.
Kevin Covey: Right. So it’s one of these things where they’re just like — it’s mixing, you know, something that is true which is there’s a side of the moon that we can’t see, and it’s also the case that during a certain time of the month, right, the moon becomes dark. So half of the moon is always dark, but it kind of —
Regina DeGraaff: It’s a different half.
Kevin Covey: So it’s built off of these two things that are kind of true in isolation, and then it mixes them together to make this misunderstanding that there’s a half of the moon that we can’t see and that which is always dark.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: And that combination never happens. And that’s mixed in with kind of broader lack of clarity about what’s actually causing the phases of the moon, right? Thinking that it’s the shadow of the Earth falling on the moon that causes the phases.
Regina DeGraaff: Which it is not.
Kevin Covey: Which it is not.
Regina DeGraaff: Okay.
Jordan Baker: Tell us what it is!
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: I don’t know. I don’t know this.
Kevin Covey: Right. So the part of the moon that we can’t see at any given phase is the dark side of the moon at that point, right? And so the fact that we sometimes see a very narrow crescent moon — so we’re seeing a large part of the moon that’s dark —
Regina DeGraaff: Which means the other side is lit.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, it is part of why it means the other side is lit up and so not permanently in dark.
Jordan Baker: Alright then.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Did not know that.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: That’s exciting.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. It is exciting! At Western, we have a lab that you have these Styrofoam balls and you have this big bright light kind of like the ones we have in the studio here. And you have these students and they walk around the light and you can see that it’s the sun that’s making the moon be lit, and it’s the shadow where the sun isn’t hitting where you get this dark parts of the moon.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
So it’s not the Earth’s shadow that’s making the phases of the moon. It’s whichever area is lit by the sun is making the phases of the moon as it’s like going —
Jordan Baker: I have some teachers that I have to write some notes to.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. [laughing]
? Ground Control to Major Tom
? Ground Control to Major Tom
? Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Jordan Baker: This is Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. If you’re just joining us, you’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham, broadcasting from the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention on Bay Street.
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? Check ignition and God’s love be with you (two, one, liftoff)
Regina DeGraaff: What was your overall rating of this movie, Kevin? And then I’ll talk about mine. [laughter]
Kevin Covey: My overall rating of Interstellar?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: Um, I don’t know. I mean on a scale — thumbs up, thumbs down?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah, I don’t know. Should we —
Kevin Covey: I give it a full on “meh.”
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: I like Christopher Nolan’s movies a lot, and so I — so I find that often my impression of a movie is very strongly related to what I expected going in, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Oh, absolutely.
Kevin Covey: So if I go in and see a movie that’s kind of middling, but I thought it was gonna be horrible, I might come out and I’m like, “That’s amazing!” And so with Christopher Nolan, like, I loved Memento. I thought the beginning, Batman Begins was like amazing.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. That’s one of my favorite movies.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: So I’ve always — he’s always started really high for me. And so his more recent movies have tended to disappoint me because I’m hoping he’ll recapture that initial magic. And so this one where I think, you know, he did not live up to his previous movies for me. And I found that was because it partially was this — it was very ambitious, both in terms of the way in which it was trying to incorporate science and also I think what he wanted to kind of communicate something about humanity and —
Regina DeGraaff: Exploration.
Kevin Covey: Individuals. Yeah. Like the motivation that motivates us as individuals and species, and the role that love plays in that. So it was a very big movie with lots of things it was trying to make happen. And so I think it struggled to pull off all of them.
Regina DeGraaff: It’s kind of like this show, where we’re trying to do so many things. [laughter]
Jordan Baker: A struggle to pull it off!
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. No, it is. No, I totally agree with you. I mean like, my expectations of movies totally kind of frame how I’m gonna leave the movie, how I’m gonna feel. A terrible example of that is that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated movie that came out — what was that, like eight years ago? Ten years ago? I don’t know, I’m old so —
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: I don’t know. I went in to that thinking it was gonna be horrible and it wasn’t! [laughing]
Kevin Covey: Huh.
Regina DeGraaff: So. But yeah, I have very low expectations and I’ve been trying to do that from now on. I just thought that the whole movie was very slow. It was just a very slow kind of running movie. And I think me just personally, I need more comic relief than the robots could give.
Kevin Covey: Mm.
Regina DeGraaff: You know?
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: And they tried. I mean, they — God love ’em. They’re like — they look like handcrafted Transformers that people made for Halloween and then made silver. It was — oh man. I love robots too.
Kevin Covey: I mean, they weren’t even Transformers. They were like four chopsticks tied together.
Regina DeGraaff: Right, right, right. [laughing] I was so disappointed.
Kevin Covey: I didn’t understand at all why — like who would design —
Jordan Baker: They could run with a human in their arms though!
Regina DeGraaff: Right, yeah.
Jordan Baker: And all of a sudden they’d turn into like wheel things.
Regina DeGraaff: Right? They were like not cool for 90% of the time.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: And then like 10% they were like amazing, right?
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: I was so disappointed. Our next show is going to be talking to computer scientists. So, I mean, this for our listeners — me talking about how disappointed about these robots I was, is going to continue probably for a week.
I think to myself like, why do I avoid astronomy-related movies? Because as a kid, I really liked Contact, but looking back on it as an adult, you know — we as astronomers don’t listen to radio. We don’t do radio astronomy with headphones, I guess is — which was in Contact, you know?
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: And the reason a lot of astronomers don’t watch these astronomy-related movies is cause it’s painful. It’s painful sometimes to see the science you love kind of altered and twisted into something that it is not. But somebody just asked me, what did you think about Space Odyssey, 2001?
Kevin Covey: I haven’t watched that in a really really long time.
Regina DeGraaff: Me neither.
Kevin Covey: It’s funny, actually. The one thing that does sort of come to mind in thinking about the robots is I do remember there was some scene where they were like in that kind of like very rectangular shape and it reminded me of the Monolith from 2001.
Regina DeGraaff: It did! It was very —
Kevin Covey: I thought that was part of — I wonder if it was an homage somewhere in there —
Regina DeGraaff: That makes complete sense now why those robots looked so lame.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: But I haven’t watched actually 2001 in quite some time.
Regina DeGraaff: I remember watching it — my boyfriend at the time when I was 14, which is now my husband — Jordan knows him.
Jordan Baker: I do.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. “I do.” [laughing] He had me watch that cause he was like, “You like astronomy, let’s watch 2001.” And I remember that I’d watched a lot of movies before that. I’m a movie kid. And I had predicted most of the scenes that were gonna happen. And he was like, “How do you know this?” And I was like, “I’ve seen a lot of movies.”
But what I didn’t realize as a kid is that so many movies had referenced that movie, you know? Like you just pointed out basically — paid an homage to it. So like, the reason I knew what was gonna happen is because I’d seen so many parodies or so many movies that kind of referenced that.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: And I didn’t realize that until maybe my adulthood. I don’t know, have you seen 2001, Jordan?
Jordan Baker: I think your husband tried to get me to watch it one time.
Regina DeGraaff: [laughing] When you were also a kid!
Jordan Baker: And I was just like, “Eh, I’m done.”
Regina DeGraaff: “I’m done.” Yeah, cause it also was slow. It was very Interstellar-like. It’s all coming back to me. Like, it kinda followed the same progression of like you were talking about, like reflecting on human connections, reflection on human emotions, and family, and love, and also science.
Kevin Covey: And killer robot computers.
Regina DeGraaff: And killer robots. Hal was great.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: But I mean these robots in Interstellar were amazing. They were very dedicated to helping their people.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, they were at least helpful.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Covey: They didn’t try to lock anyone in —
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah, I liked them as their personalities. I just didn’t like the way they looked. I’m just shallow. I think that’s what it is.
Do you ever avoid astronomy-related movies or like science-related movies just for the fear that it might turn out crappy?
Kevin Covey: No. But I mean, I also don’t — the corollary to that is that I don’t actually go to them very often because I’m like, “Oh this is gonna be” — like I understand that — 2001 was not about astronomy. It was about, you know, a killer robot that was set in space.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: And being set in space and being about either astronomy as a science or conducting astronomy as an astronomer, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: Which actually, there are parts in Contact. So the headphones is pretty bad.
Regina DeGraaff: So bad.
Kevin Covey: But there are parts where they actually show the control room of the radio telescope they were using for that scene. And it’s like, the monitor is totally covered with sticky notes. And —
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: And there’s a lot of other things where it was like, oh no, that actually looks and feels a lot like, you know, how we actually end up doing our science where it’s like four in the morning and you’re like, “Oh I need to remember something,” and so you put a sticky note right on front of the computer.
So yeah. That was nice to see in Contact. So my desire to see Contact was neither like — I was not turned off by it.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: But it’s because I know that usually the science is not the motivating part of a lot of the movies that are set in space.
Regina DeGraaff: I think maybe the reason I avoid them is just because I like comedy movies. I think that’s why it is. [laughing] And it was not a comedy.
Alright. So I tried to watch — I tried to rent Gravity and I could not find it on the Red Box. I tried so many things. I tried one thing, I went to the Red Box, and I couldn’t find Gravity.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: And I gave up.
Jordan Baker: Right. Well you tried two things. There was two Red Boxes next to each other.
Regina DeGraaff: That’s true. That’s very true, Jordan.
Jordan Baker: But you tried!
Regina DeGraaff: I tried so hard!
Kevin Covey: Right. And I realize — I tried to look it up last night on Netflix and it’s not on Netflix.
Regina DeGraaff: No.
Kevin Covey: But it is on HBO Go.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. I don’t have the cables anymore. It was so hard. I gave up cable for grad school and it helped me not fail out of grad school, so —
Jordan Baker: Such a sacrifice. [laughing]
Regina DeGraaff: It was a sacrifice! You have no idea, Jordan. As a child —
Jordan Baker: I don’t.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. I love my cable.
But so I wanted to talk about this kind of relationship Interstellar versus Gravity cause those are the last two kind of major astronomy-related movies that came out recently. And they got a lot of buzz. A lot of people have seen them. Jordan’s seen Gravity, you’ve seen Gravity, and I saw a synopsis, so I think we can talk about this.
First of all, which one did you guys like better? Cause you guys saw both of them and I didn’t, so.
Jordan Baker: I liked Gravity just for the storyline, based on the storyline alone.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. I liked Gravity better. And also, based on the storyline which is partially just — it’s a really simple story, right? Like, the narrative message there is like, “I’m in space and I’m screwed and I don’t wanna die.” Like, it’s a pretty simple concept!
Jordan Baker: It felt like the last minute where somebody can grab the edge of a cliff. They like perfected that in that movie. You were like gripping the armrest in the theater.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. I had watched somebody basically recap it on YouTube and talk about the scientific inaccuracies. And he was talking about how Sandra Bullock almost dies like eight different times. Like why do they keep on doing this to her? Why does she have like a King Kong grip in some scenes and like butterfingers in another scene?
Kevin Covey: Mm. Right.
Regina DeGraaff: So yeah. That suspense. It’s a very suspenseful movie. And unlike Interstellar, it was like really action packed, right? Stuff happened like right after.
Jordan Baker: Yeah yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: So, and I think — Kevin you said that like Interstellar was this really complex — they’re trying to get this big idea across. And Gravity was not.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. I mean I think there were some big ideas, but it was like one. It was much simpler and more focused, whereas Interstellar just felt a lot more scattered.
Jordan Baker: Right. Broad.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: So let’s talk about the science in either one of those. Cause us talking about 2001 and its similarities with Interstellar made me think about the artificial gravity that was created. Because in 2001, you have that rotating kind of space station and they’re trying to use, basically inertia as people are basically hitting the wall over and over and over again. It’s like replicating acceleration due to gravity.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: But I get questions all the time, like, “Why doesn’t NASA do that? Why doesn’t NASA do that?” And I don’t have a really good answer. My only answer is like, “It would have to be really really big,” because to have something rotate to simulate that kind of gravity — you’d either have something that was small going really really fast or you’d having something very big going at a reasonable speed. And making big things is expensive. But there was some other reason too. I don’t know. Do you know of any engineering reasons why we don’t do that?
Kevin Covey: I don’t know of any engineering reasons. I mean, part of the — the other reason I would say is that one of the justifications for the space station is it allows you to do experiments in microgravity. So it allows you to take advantage of the fact that it seems like a gravity-free environment up there. And so actually creating a part of the space station that has gravity then will kind of remove your ability to do those experiments.
Regina DeGraaff: That’s true.
Kevin Covey: So, I’m not sure there’s been a strong motivation to do it.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
? This is Major Tom to Ground control
? I’m stopping through the door
? And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
Jordan Baker: This is Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. If you’re just joining us, you’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham, broadcasting from the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention on Bay Street.
? For here am I sitting in a tin can
? Far above the world
? Planet Earth is blue
Regina DeGraaff: We had an astronaut on a previous show and she had talked about exercising in space and stuff like that. So they have ways to kind of counteract any bone deterioration that results from being in zero gravity. So, “Why would you need gravity,” is what you’re saying.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. And I think in like 2001, right, they’re doing it in the context of this — I guess the ship’s going to Jupiter? Is that where they find —
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: Oh which is also where they go in Interstellar. That’s where the wormhole is.
Regina DeGraaff: No that’s Saturn.
Jordan Baker: Saturn.
Kevin Covey: Oh sorry, sorry.
Jordan Baker: Come on!
Regina DeGraaff: It’s close. It’s close.
Kevin Covey: Yeah, they’re both gas giants. It’s easy to get ’em confused.
Regina DeGraaff: It is, actually. Yes.
Kevin Covey: So I think in order to do long-term space travel, if you want human beings to be able to walk around on the planet whenever they get where they’re going, that does mean you wanna simulate gravity. But in the context where all we’re doing right now is going back and forth to a space station — and you want people to be able to walk, but they’re not staying there for more than a year at a time generally. You don’t have that need.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Jordan Baker: And it’s definitely a perk to go out into space and just float around.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: I don’t wanna walk when I’m in space!
Regina DeGraaff: No.
Jordan Baker: I mean, I just wanna float around and push buttons.
Kevin Covey: And it allows you to make really cool cover songs of Major Tom.
Jordan Baker: Yep.
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: That’s right. That was a recent video, right?
Kevin Covey: Yeah. Colonel Hadfield, I think. He is a Canadian astronaut in the International Space Station — made this pretty awesome cover of the David Bowie song.
Regina DeGraaff: Yes, I’ve watched that. Yeah. I didn’t know he was a Canadian astronaut.
Kevin Covey: And he gets a lot of mileage out of being able to take the guitar —
Regina DeGraaff: And spin it.
Kevin Covey: And spin it and actually have it just float in front of him.
Regina DeGraaff: So I mean, this is a total aside, but have you read anything about how they did those floating scenes? Did they go up in the vomit comet? Was it all CG? Was it like wires? Do you know?
Kevin Covey: Um, what are we — we’re not talking — I mean —
Jordan Baker: Interstellar.
Regina DeGraaff: Oh, in either. In either Interstellar or Gravity.
Kevin Covey: Okay. But not the YouTube —
Regina DeGraaff: Not the — no, the YouTube, they’re actually in space.
Kevin Covey: That was actually in space, yeah. That’s the coolest. They actually went to space and stuff was actually floating. [laughter]
Regina DeGraaff: “How did they do that?” No, no, no. In the movies, in the movies. Sorry.
Kevin Covey: In the movies. So I know that in Gravity — so Gravity was actually, it took about four years from start to finish to make that movie. And a large part of it was that they’d built some pretty elaborate rigs and had to like block out shots so that people would appear weightless and would appear to be floating. So I think a lot of work went into suspending them either with wires or with mechanical struts that were very carefully placed where the camera wouldn’t see them.
Regina DeGraaff: Okay.
Kevin Covey: I don’t know as much about Interstellar. But in Interstellar, there’s not actually that many scenes where they’re weightless, right? Like, they’re on planets —
Regina DeGraaff: They’re going through the ship. In the very beginning, they’re moving around a lot.
Jordan Baker: Yeah. Yeah on the — right when they get to the space station.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: Before they turn on the gravity.
Kevin Covey: Right, right. But then they do turn on the gravity and then they’re on planets, and so yeah.
Jordan Baker: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. So yeah, that’s what I was wondering. I know that when they were doing — I don’t know, what movie was that — this was with Tom Hanks, the Apollo missions.
Jordan Baker: Apollo 13.
Regina DeGraaff: Apollo 13?
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Thank you, Jordan. Yeah, I mean I know that they — or at least I read somewhere that they’d gone up in the vomit comet, you know, so they could actually film some of that stuff. Or I could be totally wrong.
Because there wasn’t that many scenes in Interstellar that they had to move around looking like they’re weightless, I wonder if they did go up in the vomit comet. I don’t know. But if you had to, you would do those scenes over and over and over again. You’d get so sick. I mean that’s why it’s called the vomit comet.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. My guess is that they faked them from the ground.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: If I had to guess.
Jordan Baker: A little rig, a little CGI, clean it up.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah, probably. Alright, so back to science. Let’s go back to science here. I wanted to talk about the Hubble space telescope and servicing missions to the Hubble space telescope. Cause like you said, simple idea for gravity, she has to go up there and put her instrument that she designed as a medical doctor —
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: Makes no sense.
Kevin Covey: No, that part didn’t make much sense. Yeah, yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: And go up and service the Hubble space telescope. So I wanted to take this time to actually inform our listeners of like, what is that? Does NASA actually go up, service the Hubble space telescope? How long has it been up there? You know, like, do other things need servicing? So let’s talk about that.
Kevin Covey: Okay. So yes.
Regina DeGraaff: Yes. [laughing]
Jordan Baker: Oh okay!
Kevin Covey: NASA does service HST. And so that’s one of those areas where I thought Gravity actually did a decent job of kind of creating the look and feel of the modern space program, and building an action movie around it, but otherwise being fairly true to the big picture of what it’s like and why we’re going to space and what it’s like when we get there.
And so there have been, I think, five servicing missions to the Hubble space telescope. It’s in what’s called a “low Earth orbit.” And so at one point in Gravity — what’s his name?
Jordan Baker: Clooney.
Kevin Covey: Clooney, exactly. Clooney’s like, “Okay well we’ve got 90 minutes to get to safety,” which is very convenient, like that’s exactly the time of a movie. [laughter] It’s like, “We’ve got enough time to make one movie to get to safety!”
But part of that is because the space shuttle and the space telescope are in one of these low Earth orbits that takes 90 minutes to orbit the Earth. And so the debris that had kind of clobbered the satellite and the shuttle was now gonna spend the next 90 minutes wrapping around the Earth, but then it would be back. So, that was actually also kind of nice.
Regina DeGraaff: And it would fit a movie.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. Yeah and it’s the perfect running time for a modern movie.
So we do go with the shuttle, or we have gone. There are currently no more plans in the last servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope was intended to be the last servicing mission. Although that’s not — I don’t think that’s the first time that’s happened.
Regina DeGraaff: Right, that’s happened before.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. And so the first servicing mission was for the very old listeners who are as old as I am. You know, we can actually remember —
Regina DeGraaff: We’re all the same age, Kevin.
Kevin Covey: The listeners may not be.
Regina DeGraaff: Okay. Sorry, I thought we were talking about us here.
Kevin Covey: No, no, no. I’m talking about our kind listeners who are much more youthful than some of us.
Regina DeGraaff: Maybe.
Kevin Covey: [laughing] But so those of us who are older can remember like in the early 90s when the Hubble space telescope was launched, the mirror was ground to the wrong shape. It was essentially put on — they cut one of the tests in order to make the launch happen on time, and that test ended up being a bad thing to cut because it would’ve shown the mirror had the wrong shape and so it didn’t bring all the light to focus in the correct way.
And so the first servicing mission put in, basically gave Hubble glasses to correct for this misshapen mirror that it had. That was in the early 90s. And since then, there have been a variety of other servicing mission to replace things like gyroscopes, right?
I mean, if you think about, Hubble’s as big as a bus. So it’d be kind of amazing if you never had to take a school bus into the shop and fix it. So there have been four or five missions to go up and replace various parts that have worn out.
Regina DeGraaff: And they also replace and change out cameras on the Hubble space telescope.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. Right.
Jordan Baker: I’m sure there’s lots of updating, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Sometimes when you have money to update.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. But there are certainly — that part of Gravity too right? There have been several cameras that have — we are now on like the third or fourth generation of camera in the Hubble space telescope. So there are definitely astronauts who have to go up and who do very — and it is very dangerous work. Thankfully we haven’t actually lost any astronauts doing a spacewalk or anything on a Hubble mission.
Regina DeGraaff: The kind of disaster that is depicted in Gravity has not happened.
Kevin Covey: No, no.
Regina DeGraaff: But I think listeners don’t know about the other space telescopes, the other space-recording, data-collection devices that are up there that aren’t serviced.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: So give me some examples, because I don’t have them.
Kevin Covey: Oh. Well basically every other space telescope we’ve got up there. But let’s see, what are ones that are near and dear to my heart… So there’s the Chandra x-ray telescope, which is actually in a relatively — it’s in a fairly close orbit too, but we’ve never sent a servicing mission up to Chandra.
Regina DeGraaff: And how long has that been up?
Kevin Covey: It’s been up since the mid-90s, so I think it’s been up around 20 years. Hubble recently went through I think its 25th anniversary. I think it was launched in 89. And Chandra went up in the kind of early mid-1990s.
The Spitzer space telescope went up in the early 2000s and it’s in what’s called an “Earth trailing orbit,” which a lot of the other space telescopes go up in orbits that don’t have their orbits centered on the Earth, like the moon, and the Hubble space telescope, and the space shuttle. But they instead get put into these orbits where they’re kind of orbiting the sun, just like the Earth is.
And so, Spitzer’s in this what’s called an Earth trailing orbit. So it’s slightly behind us and it’s orbiting the sun once every year, but in such a way that it’s actually slowly drifting away from us. So its orbit around the sun is slowly lagging ours, so it’s getting farther.
Jordan Baker: And then eventually, we’ll run into it.
Kevin Covey: Eventually it’ll wrap around. But no, that won’t actually happen thankfully. It won’t crash into us. There’s a weird dynamical interaction where once it starts to approach us from the other end — so once we’ve basically almost lapped it, we will start to give it energy gravitationally and it’ll start to move away from us again. It’ll start to basically catch up with us again.
Regina DeGraaff: Hm.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
Jordan Baker: This is Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. And if you’re just joining us, you’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham, broadcasting from the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention on Bay Street.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
? Though I’m past 100,000 miles
? I’m feeling very still
Regina DeGraaff: What about Kepler? Right?
Kevin Covey: Yeah, so Kepler’s also in an Earth trailing orbit. So it’s very similar.
Regina DeGraaff: We probably need to explain Kepler is. I’ll let you do that, Kevin.
Kevin Covey: Oh right. Sorry. So Kepler is a satellite that was sent up. I believe it’s about six years old now. I think it was launched in 2008. And it was a mission to identify other planets in our galaxy. And it did that by taking very, very detailed measurements of the brightness of stars, and noticing when a star got fainter because a planet passed in between us and a star.
Regina DeGraaff: Like a solar eclipse.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. So like a solar eclipse in our solar system, but we were seeing solar eclipses in these other solar systems. So it also was in a similar kind of Earth trailing orbit to Spitzer.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. Which totally brings me to another thing that I was kind of perturbed by in Interstellar. And it was, why would they go to planets around a black hole? Like, that was crazy, right? I mean, you talked about planet findings. So yes, in astronomy we do — astronomers spend time looking for planets in other solar systems and other — within our galaxy, not outside of our galaxy, which is what Interstellar.
And there’s multiple ways, like you said. These light curves, we can look at these eclipsing. There’s other ways like the wobble of a star. Like our own sun feels forces from the planets around it. So if there’s planets around these extrasolar — I don’t know what are they called? Extrasolar? I don’t know.
Kevin Covey: Extrasolar planets?
Regina DeGraaff: Extrasolar planets. Okay. I’m right.
That these stars will like move just a little bit — wobble — and it’s because there’s something else pulling on them that we can’t see. But anyway, my point is, why would be going outside of our galaxy to find these habitable planets like in the movie? Why did we have to leave our galaxy for that? And two, why are the best options around a black hole? Did that not bother you or is that just me?
Kevin Covey: Well didn’t they end up going there because that’s where the wormhole took them?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah, yeah. But like —
Kevin Covey: So they didn’t have a chance —
Regina DeGraaff: No, no, no. No. I’m talking about the writers. I’m not talking about the —
Kevin Covey: Okay. Yeah. I have no idea why the writers chose to do that. Other than — well, I take that back. So my guess is that the writers chose to do it because they wanted to set up this kind of scenario in which —
Regina DeGraaff: They had to go inside a black hole. I mean —
Kevin Covey: Well and also that like his daughter aged and lived her life and —
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: You know, the power of love for him — him to demonstrate his love for his daughter in a very odd way.
Regina DeGraaff: We’ll talk about time dilation and all that stuff in a second. But before we do that — if we’re talking about a black hole that’s maybe created by a supernova, let’s say, then why would there still be planets just hanging out, you know? How would they have not been like totally blown out? That bothered me a lot. I don’t know.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. And I don’t have a very good answer for you.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. And there’s so many stars out there, right? There’s so many stars that are like our sun that probably have planets and, yeah.
I’ll believe wormholes and I’ll believe that, you know, gravity waves — actually I won’t. But that really bothered. Like why? Why would planets be around black holes? But anyway. I’ll stop. My hate for the robots in that too.
I think a lot of people ask me about, you know, time dilation when we’re talking about black holes and all that stuff. So, do you ever talk about that in your astronomy classes?
Kevin Covey: Yeah, I talk about it. [laughter] I talk more about black holes. I don’t get as much into like time dilation and special relativity time of stuff. Black holes are like a nice bridge where you can use some of what you understand about how gravity works, and you can kind of like push it to the limit.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Kevin Covey: Whereas, I think the more extreme effects like how different people perceive time takes away that kind of connection to your intuition.
Regina DeGraaff: So you’re saying intuition of like this bending of space that black holes are doing. I guess we could say that. This idea of gravity as a concept with space time and orbits are really mapping out the bending of space. That is more interesting, you’re saying, and more intuitive than talking about time dilation is what you’re saying.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. I think, particularly in the context of an introductory astronomy class where you end up usually talking about like planets and orbits and whatnot. It’s a lot easier to kind of help people think about what happens now if you take the central object in that system and just turn its mass up to 11, you know? And how does that behave?
It allows people to start with something they’ve practice and then — yeah, use the intuition that they’ve developed for how gravity works, and see how works in an extreme scenario. Whereas, it’s very hard to get to the same place with a lot of the time dilation effects that happen when you bend space-time.
Regina DeGraaff: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I have not had a adequate astronomy course as an astronomer talking about time dilation related to bending of space. I mean, I’ve had a class that talks about like as you’re traveling near the speed of light, then time is dilated — feels like it slows down. Talking about physically traveling at those speeds, I think, is somewhat easier than talking about how time is warped when space is warped as well. I would not be able to do that.
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: But that seems to be the questions I get.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. And it’s understanding because — and as human beings — and this is why I think they did enjoy having a black hole to play with in Interstellar, right, is because it allows you to kind of think about what it would be like if you could avoid or work around what, you know, seems like in our usual day to day experience, the inevitable progression of time. And so, you can create lots of interesting narrative possibilities if you’re able to invoke these very extreme effects that work in very extreme, very particular environments that may or may not be actually conducive to humans surviving when they pass through a wormhole.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: Although it’s mathematically possible to have these kind of time temporal effects happen, that makes it very tempting for creating a narrative.
Regina DeGraaff: Right.
Jordan Baker: Yeah. It’s easy to add a whole lot of stuff a big unknown of like, what’s on the other end of a wormhole or black hole or whatever? Are they the same thing? Wormhole, black hole, or —
Regina DeGraaff: So. Go ahead, Kevin.
Kevin Covey: Oh. Well I was gonna say — so, this not an area of my direct expertise. But I believe — so a black hole does not have to be a wormhole. So all wormholes have to involve black holes. But a wormhole is a special kind of black hole where the way in which the curvature of space happens means that, effectively, the two ends of the black hole are separated in our space time.
Regina DeGraaff: But are connected to each other.
Kevin Covey: But are connected to each other, yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. So they’re not necessarily the same.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. Every wormhole has a black hole, but not every black hole is a wormhole.
Regina DeGraaff: Like all oranges are fruit, but not all fruit are oranges.
Jordan Baker: Mm. Tasty.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
This is Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. If you’re just joining us, you’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham, broadcasting from the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention on Bay Street.
Regina DeGraaff: It was very pretty though.
Kevin Covey: It was.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: It was. And it was actually — so that’s one where it’s not my area of expertise professionally, but I got curious enough that I read up a little about the way in which they actually made those images of the black hole. Gargantua is what they call it in Interstellar.
Regina DeGraaff: Well. Yeah that slightly annoyed me too. I don’t know, like, “We’re just gonna name this specifically.”
Kevin Covey: [laughing] Well they’re going to it, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. That’s true, that’s true.
Kevin Covey: You wanna say like, “Oh I’m going to Fred Meyer’s.” Like you wanna have a name for you are going. So “Gargantua.” You know, it’s big.
Regina DeGraaff: Okay. I’m going to that big store. Sorry, sorry. Continue.
Kevin Covey: That’s okay. Yeah, but the visualization of that black hole is based off a pretty detailed and pretty accurate calculation of what you would actually expect to see near a black hole. And it was done with enough detail and enough accuracy that where it’s actually wrong, it was often — at least as they explain in the paper about this calculation of these images — they did it for artistic reasons.
Essentially they said, “Well we’re gonna make this black hole which we need to have certain properties to explain the time dilation they wanted the astronauts to experience on,” I can’t remember the name of the world, but like that little ocean —
Regina DeGraaff: Hoth. [laughter]
Kevin Covey: It was not Hoth. I didn’t see any Tauntauns?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah yeah.
Kevin Covey: Do they live on Hoth?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Covey: Anyway so they wanted time dilation to work in such a way that one hour was one year, right? And so that dictated certain properties of the black hole that that world needed to be orbiting.
Regina DeGraaff: Right, and where the event horizon was and all that kinda stuff.
Kevin Covey: Right. And so then they started a simulation of that and they said, “Oh that looks too funky.” And so they actually like dialed back its properties from what was totally necessary to explain the time dilation that happens on that world in the movie so that, visually, the people watching the movie would still think of like, “That’s kind of what I would expect a black hole to look like.”
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: So areas where that black hole is wrong — so for instance, the black hole actually has to be spinning.
Regina DeGraaff: Well yeah.
Kevin Covey: And they reduced its rotation rate because if it were spinning as fast as it would need to be to explain time dilation properly, then half of it would be approaching us so quickly that the light — the effective wavelength of light communicating from us — would change. So half of it would be bluer and half of it would be redder.
Regina DeGraaff: Awesome.
Kevin Covey: And they thought — and it would actually turn out that the blue half would be bright and the red half would be fainter. And so then, you get this really strong kind of like shading across the black hole, and the colors change. And so it would make it look really psychedelic.
Regina DeGraaff: So they just made it look yellow light.
Kevin Covey: They consciously said, “We’re gonna make it spin as fast as we can without making that color effect too –”
Regina DeGraaff: I agree with you that black holes are amazing. Like the density of neutron stars and white dwarfs — I mean all of that is awesome and I totally understand why people like it. I just, yeah.
Kevin Covey: But that’s a really good example, I think, of the difference between — that I found very very fascinating. How much screen time did that thing get?
Regina DeGraaff: A lot.
Jordan Baker: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: Really? No. I thought — when I saw it, I thought that — the black hole?
Regina DeGraaff: I think it got a lot.
Jordan Baker: About 10 minutes maybe? The whole thing?
Kevin Covey: There was not 10 minutes of screen time on the black hole.
Jordan Baker: Oh 10 minutes. Oh that’s gotta be 10 minutes.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah. Please somebody look this up.
Jordan Baker: I will battle you for 10 minutes!
Kevin Covey: Arm wrestle. We’re arm wrestling!
Regina DeGraaff: Maybe that’s just what we remember. Maybe it didn’t have that much screen time, I don’t know. This is all like human —
Kevin Covey: Cause I thought when I actually ended up watching it — cause I read all this stuff about how they calculated it, and then I watched it and I was like — I mean, they show the spaceship orbiting a little bit, but I would’ve been surprised if that thing got more than a minute of actual screen time.
Regina DeGraaff: Oh I will also battle you. It definitely got more than a minute, but it didn’t —
Jordan Baker: I had a couple of beers so I don’t know. [laughter]
Kevin Covey: So I was super stoked about that.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: And seeing the black hole part. And I was like, “Oh all of this stuff,” which I like learned all this interesting science about, I was disappointed in how much time —
Regina DeGraaff: Well I mean, it does make me a little happy too that they spent that much time to try to make it as accurate as they possibly could, other than why would planets be around the black hole. Anyway. But, trying to make it look accurate, that does make me feel good.
And I mean, Interstellar isn’t the only place that does this. I mean, when we were talking about the moon and faking moon landings and, you know, if it’s real or not — I think the Big Bang Theory did an episode talking about shooting a laser to the moon to see how far it is away. And those experiments actually do happen, you know.
And the light reflects off of reflectors on the moon which is — astronauts had to put up there. So, we did go to the moon, just to clarify for everybody.
Hollywood has gotten maybe — I don’t know — better? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s gotten better or not. But there are the things that slightly don’t make sense like —
Kevin Covey: Well the whole like ending of the movie —
Regina DeGraaff: Oh my god, gravity waves. That’s where I wanted to go, that’s right.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. So that’s where like he was playing the universe like a harp to send messages to his earlier self and his daughter.
Regina DeGraaff: Right. Well what —
Kevin Covey: Yeah that part —
Regina DeGraaff: How did they know it was called the Tesseract?
Kevin Covey: They made it up, right?
Regina DeGraaff: Well no, but — so Matthew McConaughey — I feel so bad, like Matthew McConaughey is always Matthew McConaughey to me, like ugh — but as he was doing that, he was like talking about the Tesseract and I think Tars was telling him that, and I was like, “How does he know that it’s named the Tesseract and why do they keep on talking about gravity as like an entity?” They just keep being like, “Well that’s gravity.”
And I was like, as a physics professor, you know, you always say like, “The force due to gravity” or “Acceleration due to gravity,” and they just kept on saying “gravity,” which kind of really really bugged me.
But yeah, the gravity wave things — gravity waves are real though. So like, I mean I think we owe it to our listeners to explain as best we possibly can. You know, what are gravity waves and how does that tie into any sort of reality that they were trying to say?
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Kevin Covey: So, I mean a gravity wave is — it’s —
Regina DeGraaff: We haven’t detected them yet.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. We have not detected them yet. We are looking for them. There’s an experiment in Eastern Washington near the Hanford Reservation or former nuclear site where they’ve got what’s called an interferometer. So they’ve got a very precise — they’re using a laser beam to measure the distance between these two mirrors, or four mirrors actually very very precisely.
And so what they’re looking for is to see the distance between those mirrors change slightly which would indicate that the properties of space between those mirrors have actually changed because of the way in which space gets bent by mass moving through the universe. And so if we have two really really heavy or really dense objects — two black holes, two neutron stars, which are these very massive — they’re essentially atoms the size of Manhattan.
Regina DeGraaff: Manhattan. That’s always the city that astronomers use. Manhattan.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. Manhattan Island. So if you have those objects, right, each of those objects are so dense and so massive that they’re bending space around them. And so now if you take those objects and actually put them in motion, the way in which they’re bending space is going to change and that change is gonna then move away and propagate through the universe at the kind of speed of light, right? So the way in which those masses are bending the universe around them as they move, that bending will also kind of move outward through the universe, and that will start to look like a wave.
Regina DeGraaff: Like a ripple.
Kevin Covey: Like a ripple, yes. And so those ripples are what we’re trying to detect with LIGO in Eastern Washington, and in Louisiana. And there’s several other experiments across the world.
And so those waves do exist. We can try and measure from things like the distances of mirrors on Earth. We can tell when they’re really massive objects moving around in space far away from us. So those objects will create distortions in space that we could actually measure here on Earth. But —
Regina DeGraaff: [laughing]
Kevin Covey: Right? So gravity waves, very very real. Being able to create gravity waves by playing these light harpy looking things in the middle of the Tesseract and having that effect dust or like make the watch hand fluctuate in Morse code — yeah, that I’m —
Regina DeGraaff: How long did he have to be there to transmit all that data through like dot, dash, dot? I’m like, “What?” Makes no sense.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. How that works, how we actually get from the existence of gravity waves to being able to do that, to be able to say, “No I want to move something in this part of the universe, and from that, cause this little watch hand to flicker in a way that’s gonna spell out something by Morse code — that’s not really feasible.
Regina DeGraaff: At this moment, right? I mean, yeah. Well it’s not feasible at this moment to also totally measure a gravity wave, which, we’re getting close.
Kevin Covey: We are getting close.
Regina DeGraaff: Which I’ve been told like every 10 years so —
Kevin Covey: Right.
Regina DeGraaff: I don’t know.
Jordan Baker: Those ice clouds were bananas! [laughing]
Kevin Covey: Yeah.
Regina DeGraaff: They were though. They made no sense.
Kevin Covey: Right. And then there was the ocean world where the time dilation did happen. And then what was the other one? It was just kind of a Mars-y looking place.
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Really cold.
Regina DeGraaff: Hoth.
Kevin Covey: Well no —
Regina DeGraaff: No you’re talking about —
Kevin Covey: The cold place was the ice planet.
Regina DeGraaff: You’re talking about the last planet —
Kevin Covey: The last planet.
Regina DeGraaff: Where they saw her for a second. They’re like, “You gotta go to her.” That one.
Kevin Covey: Oh did she go there alone?
Regina DeGraaff: Yeah.
Jordan Baker: Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Covey: Oh that’s right, because they found Matt Damon on the other one.
Regina DeGraaff: Matt Damon. We’ve talked about Matt Damon in this podcast so much!
I wanna thank you, Kevin, for talking to us about a movie that we kind of all watched [laughter] and talked about and we’ve been asked about. But thank you for taking the time to talk to us and hopefully we can see you again maybe some time — talk about more about astronomy.
Kevin Covey: Yeah. That would be great, that’d be great. That’d be fun. Thank you.
[? David Bowie singing Space Oddity ?]
Jordan Baker: This show was recorded at Spark Museum on Bay Street in the heart of Bellingham. Our producers are Suzanne Blais and Katie Knutsen [sp?]. Theme music by “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackalicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Mona?e.
Regina DeGraaff: Our feature song today is “Space Oddity” by David Bowie.
Join us again next week at this time. If you like our show and would love to support us, please go to KMRE.org and click on the button, “Donate.”
[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]