Neil deGrasse Tyson Discusses Time Dilation in the Movie, "Contact"
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- čas přidán 22. 10. 2013
- Did the movie "Contact" get time dilation right? To answer a fan's Cosmic Query, Neil deGrasse Tyson gives his interpretation of what happens in the movie when Jodie Foster's character experiences an 18-hour journey across the Universe during which only seconds pass on Earth. Neil and co-host Eugene Mirman discuss relativity, time travel, time warps, wormholes and the potential capabilities of advanced aliens.
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I think what actually happened was that she traveled back in time when she returned to Earth so to us it seemed instantaneous, but in reality, it was the future ship and passenger coming out on the other end. If wormhole technology was being implemented then traveling back in time is an inevitable consequence if you reach a destination faster than C.
I've always thought about it this way...
The space and time she entered as the ball descended was separate from the space and time outside the sphere. Technically she didn't go to another world, she went to this pocket universe where she saw a lot of familiar things, like a beach, an alien that took the shape of her father, etc.
The alien was inside a machine the same way, both linked in this pocket universe, waiting for a person to come through and have a chat with it.
Wouldn't time-dilation occur only if she was traveling at close to the speed of light?
She was entering an artificial wormhole which instantly transported her across space-time, and then when she returned, she emerged through the wormhole again at the same point of entry, the same point in space-time.
I always thought it operated exactly like an einstein-rosen bridge is theorised to, and didn't involve any time dilation or near-light-speed travel at all
Yeah, that's pretty much the way I took it as well.
this is 4 years late to your question but the answer is: gravity.
time dilation doesnt only occur at the speed of light, it also occurs when there are MASSIVE amounts of gravitational force, a wormhole (which she travelled through) has a large amount of gravity causing time dilation :) p.s the same occurs with a blackhole, ALOT of gravity so time dilation. hope you still get this after 4 yrs lol
Jack David went into the wormhole and just returned to read your reply, so 4 years was only a few seconds for him.
time dilation occurs at any speed not just light speed or close to light speed. let's say I get on a plane and fly 6 hrs from NY to LA . my watch would have slowed down 0.000000007 of a second relative to yours. an amount of time that is so small it is imperceptible. but the closer you get to light speed the more aperant time dilation becomes.
also, she could have just gone to a place where there is no time affect, maybe she entered the 4th dimension, just took off the fabric of space and time completely to another place. there isn't time there in the 4th dimension like we think of it, maybe the time she experienced is just an artificial construct of that the aliens created for her like we can change speed and acceleration of things, they can change time, it's just an engine away.
New Video: Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss time dilation and time travel in the movie “Contact” in this StarTalk Radio Cosmic Query with comic co-host Eugene Mirman: Neil deGrasse Tyson Discusses Time Dilation in the Movie, "Contact"
Oh... this will be a treat!
Love Contact, such a beautiful, inspiring film. I clearly chose the wrong major back in college.
while the ship she was inside was falling it passed through a wormhole which took her to a distant region of space in a different time, when done from there she passed through another wormhole that took her back to the same space time position from where she left. so in essence she was teleported to another point in time and space and after 18 hours came back to the same time and space where she left so to the observer on earth it looks like nothing happened. How is this explanation? I think this explanation does not need to talk about time dilation right?
Imran Suhail
Thanks. Makes sense. Also if she just "fell" through that seat she was anchored to would not have busted apart like that. I'm assuming the Japanese made those bolts out of titanium probably and for them to shake & shear apart hard enough to unbolt that seat would have been immense vibration. She would not have lived.
Woah, please ask NdGT: Doesn't relativity allow for closed-time-like-loops? That is, the wormhole exit could be at the same place as the entrance. Such that, you elapse time in traveling within the wormhole, but return when you began. In this way, Dr. Arroway could spend 18hrs in the elongated spacetime of the wormhole, interacting with whatever is in there, yet return instantaneously (relative to Earth observers)? Hawking has proposed chronological protection against this, but without an understanding of quantum gravity, it is an open question. This also allows for the type of time-travel seen in interstellar, also aided by the event-horizon (which may defeat the protection conjecture by hiding aspects of causal violation).
i always figured in the movie, she went through time by means of the alien type craft they built. it opened a wormhole to another part of the universe at a different time, and she went there, did whatever, and when she came back it was only seconds on earth, but for her it was hours. i mean, if you go "faster than the speed of light," you effectively time travel to the past. so wherever she went, took her X amount of time into the past and then back again, allowing her whatever "time" to record.
I think it was the other way around: she didn't go anywhere but the aliens created a pocket of their part of the Universe inside the sphere. Remember how she "touched" the "air" and it wiggled? Maybe she was actualy touching the wall of the capsule (or whatever is the limit of that pocket). And since they controll the space-time of the pocket they can make it run at whatever speed they want.
Isn't there a theoretical possibility of time travel for example if one end of a wormhole moves at a high speed relative to the other? Jodie Foster's character actually goes through several wormholes in the movie ("I'm in another wormhole now... a series of them... it's like some... some kind of a transit system. A subway..."), so I think the possibility is there for an arrangement which exploits time travel as well. Also note that when Matthew McConaughey meets her before the selection interview where he asks her about religion, they actually talk about time dilation - this is why he doesn't want her to go, because he's afraid that while she's away for a few years in her time, decades or more would pass on Earth so they would never meet again. (Ironically, this is exactly what happens to Matthew McConaughey's character in Interstellar. :-D)
I think that in a general sense the explanation Dr. T gives is correct however if my understanding of the current theory of wormhole travel could work the machine could return Jodie Foster's character back in time a micro second after it left so that to the naked eye it never left.
Up late... and I get the urge to go looking for the oldest Startalk video that I can find again. One that I haven't watched before....
Can't seem to choose. 💔
So just select play all.❤😩
There is a stargate episode where they open the stargate wormhole to another planet which is being consumed by a black hole. The time dilation effects in that episode are hilarious.
Well, given that a wormhole only connects to points of space-time I just assumed that the location she was sent to experienced time a lot faster than on earth. That would only require a difference in speed or gravitational differences between the two locations.
Adrian Veidt: How do you do it (teleportation)? Disassemble molecular components and reassemble them elsewhere?
Manhattan: No, that would be very inefficient. I stand still, while i warp space around me.
Adrian Veidt: So you find it easier to move the universe than just yourself.
last time i checked vega was 25 light years away. you can't reach vega in 18hours while traveling the speed of light, so time dilation doesn't seem to apply to whatever mode of transportation she used, at least not how we understand it.
that was the assumption in the movie as well. Mathew M mentions it just before the second kiss.
Good job, Danny!
The "Twin Paradox" is just SR (except if the spaceship accelerates - turns around). Wormholes - as seen in Contact - are GR. Tyson was closest to the mark when he said 'Danny knows just enough Relativity to get angry' - ie: just SR. Its as if Tyson forgot everything he knows about GR in his further reply. No, Danny is quite wrong in attempting to apply SR (looking to the Twin Paradox for a model) for a case that clearly requires GR (closed or nearly closed timelike curves). Note, by the way, that Arroway might have sent a signal in the form of a lightray back to earth that arrived before she left.
I remember doing the Time Warp.
I remember it too. I mean I will have had remembered the Time Warp because it has have had and will have happened in two years from now. And I do mean this actual now.
Time and space in a wormhole do not necessarily make the traveler experience less time. A wormhole traverser can be brought from location X at time Y, to location X' at time Y' spend 18 hours there and then be brought back by a different wormhole to location X at time Y+ 1 microsecond..
Just watched contact just had same question.
Neil cuts through confusion so well.
If the earth is moving and stops suddenly, you could also be smashed into it if you are on the "back side" relative to the motion.
Since there is no explanation of how the technology works, it could even be that she actually traveled to an dimension where the rate of time moves a hell of alot faster than ours, and then placed back into our dimension. Or maybe The device also warped time, and was a time travel as well as space travel device, and she arrived only seconds or nanoseconds after she left.
What if 2 bodies are moving in opposite directions?
We know Earth, the Sun and even our Galaxy is hurtling away from some point in the Universe
wouldn't that mean there are also Stars gong the other direction? so further and further from us?
If she instantaneously stepped through onto a planet going the exact opposite direction from Earth would that have a Time Dilation effect similar to the one in the Movie?
I honestly don't know
yes, but you can assume that this is still taking place in our galaxy though.
I think one criticism of Dr. Tyson's answer is that if you moved everything on the earth, including the people, then it should work fine, but another thing is that the galaxy she visited would have had to be moved too, and I don't think there's enough energy anywhere, especially not on earth, that can do that.
I saw an old documentary where tyson was building a time machine which can send particles into the future? so what ever happened with that experiment?
Chichang Wu
It elected Donald Trump. Now you know...
Neil needs a line up asap!
Yay Albuquerque
does this make sense? X hours for her since shes going faster than light, which would leave earth presumably frozen in time, for her. than when she came back, it pretty much put her back into this time by launching her back through the worm hole of time, thus making it seem as if it was seconds for them, when she went faster than light, thus time is longer for her than them. it made perfect sense to me.
she's not going the speed of light, she's traveling through a wormhole
IMO I assume 2 things with this movie. 1) The Vega aliens are so advanced that they can time travel. 2) They are also socially advanced (good aliens).
In the movie it wasn't just Elie that contacted the aliens, but also other aliens from other parts of the galaxy. It is highly likely that different alien species have different life spans. 18 earth hours may be equivalent to 18 alien centuries.
Hence since it was the Vega alien's intention to return each specie they studied back to their home, and have being doing so for a long time, they would have factored in lifespans, and social impacts of sending an alien back after a prolonged duration of time. Somewhere along the line Vega aliens decided it would be best to just return the specie back at the same location and time of departure.
+Ed C sounds a lot like that Disney movie from the 80's, "Flight of the Navigator", where a young boy was abducted by an alien and when he brought him home several years had passed but he remained the same age. At the end of the movie, the alien was able to drop him off exactly at the place and time that he picked him up. He remembered all the events but the family back home hadn't experienced it yet, and obviously wouldn't since the boy was back home.
I believe that the INACCURACY of "Time dilation" in the movie "CONTACT" was about/to illustrate the DIFFERENCE(S) IN TIME AND DISTANCE ...NOT the accuracy of time shrinkage "OF" the traveler.
Like all sci-fi movies SOMETHING HAS TO BE WRONG, OR A CONTINUANCE PROBLEM; the has NEVER been a sci-fi movie with an absolute 100% accuracy throughout the entire movie.
I STILL LOVE THIS MOVIE, AND I "KNOW (!!!!)" DR SAGAN WOULD BE PROUD. i MET HIM SPORADICALLY AT CORNELL AND HE WAS EXACTLY THE WAY HIS OFTEN PORTRAITED; I GET MISTY WHENEVER I SEE SOMETHING ABOUT HIM ON VIDEOS.
2:30 is that an Alien in the back behind that window ? lol
Still, it is the coolest machine that I've ever seen in a sci-fi movies.
Someone did the math out and he has moved at thousands of times the speed of light.
Is this a new book and movie coming out?
You've never heard of the book from the 80s,or the movie from the 90s!?
As Cubert Farnsworth said: That's especially impossible.
Whoah, what's with Neil deGrasse Tyson's Venus Flytrap velour shirt?
😂😂😂
I thought she went through a worm hole. Could it have not simply returned her to the same point of space time that she left from and so explain the time difference?
Why do you use a micro for to get SUCH a bad sound? My Smartphone is getting better sounds than this!
This was Before chuck nice?
i think that's called the dunning-kruger effect (but i could proving it right now with that statement!)
We don't know how precisely how wormholes operate. If a wormhole is where spacetime itself is bent, then the distance through the wormhole is much shorter than the distance between the two points of space, meaning that its *possible* that the person is essentially "stationary" with respect to the universe [comparably speaking]. If that is the case, then absolutely it is the "earth" that is moving away from the occupant, and the movie is correct.
I love Tyson's Brain.
Can't wait for Cosmos =)
One thing I've always wondered about time dilation is if you somehow manage to reach the speed of life and time cease to exist, what would theoretically happen to time dilation if you were to somehow miraculously exceed pass the speed of light?
The formula for time dilation is:
T at speed V = (T at speed 0)/(sqrt(1 - (V^2/C^2))) Where C is the speed of light and T is of course the amount of time that has passed.
If V is greater than C you get a math error, it's mathematically impossible. So... make what you will of that, lol.
TheTUDOR91 Backwards time travel aka mathematical error lol.
bigk9000 We're all moving at the speed of life maaan. (*smokes more reefer*)
But seriously going FTL is completely impossible, it makes no sense physically or mathematically, and if you somehow managed to do it you would have much bigger problems then time travel, (anything going FTL would have an infinite energy density, meaning that if you ever collided with a speck of space dust you would explode in an infinite ball of radiation and energy, which would spread out through the universe at the speed of light destroying anything in it's path. that is assuming that you can even touch anything, (particles can only interact at the speed of light, so imagine that you are moving faster than light and you hit, say, an asteroid, at t:1 your spaceship approaches the asteroid, at t:2 your ship passes through the asteroid, due to your speed you should be on the other side of the asteroid and the particles can't interact quickly enough for you to collide with them, but logically they should still be there, so what happens? do you collide with the particles that you have already passed through and are behind you, or do you simply pass through solid matter (which is more likely, do to quantum tunneling and the like, plus most particle interactions are just the strong nuclear force anyway.)
The speed of light is the maximum speed limit of the universe, at light speed you are (from your perspective) arriving at your destination instantly, (as you approach C time slows from your perspective, if you are at C time would seem to have stopped) saying what is 'faster' than the speed of light is asking what is faster than instant, (the only way would be to time travel, but that violates causality)
realivity and thoery is all hard to get my mind around?
hi nil sir🙂
if earth suddenly stopped in its orbit, the people (and all other stuff) on one side would fly off with about 3 times escape velocity, but the ones on the other side would get splattered on the ground.
How the heck do we know ??
I understand the subject better by reading the comments. I wish they ask this question to Michio Kaku instead of Niel deGrasse Tyson.
Is time is discusses
The superhero Flash runs near or at the speed of light, but the world around him slows down. If the theory of relativity is correct, then the world around him should have sped up.
" At "A hair's breadth short of the speed of light", Flash saves a population of 532,000 from a nuclear explosion by carrying them one or two at a time to a hill 35 miles away and does this all in 0.00001 microseconds. If you do the math, the result is much faster than the speed of light. Thirteen trillion times, to be precise."
She should have brought an old 8mm film movie camera instead of a digital video camera
He also planted a message in PI in the book. A messge of the creator of the universe. But Sagan was an atheist! The message of the book was simply: If there are mysteries in nature, science will solve them not politicians , the military or the church.
Gene?
What if it was just Jodie foster's mind or consciousness that traveled?
then explain the 18 hours recorded.
I didn't know that space and time could be manipulated independently of each other.
At our current theoretical understandings, I don't believe they can be independent of each other either. I think that is why NgT is explaining that in the context of the movie, the aliens sent the blueprints of the device. This would lend to the possibility that the aliens probably designed the device from a higher dimensional understanding of space and time.
But where is the problem? The camera accompanies her and runs as long as she is in the different system. In our reality it only takes the moment the viewers can see. This is all beyond the question wether something like this machine would work at all. But the instrument camera makes the whole trip with her - 18 hours ...
ɷɷɷɷ I Haveeee Watcheddd This Moviee Leakedd Versionn Heree : - t.co/NdLgwVlw7a
people dont get the concept of this kind of space travel as she did not travelled with her body only her essence, it is like near death experience you are gone for minutes which feels like a life time, that was the concept of this kind of space travel, only mistake was to build such machine on earth instead of space as a result earth would have shuttered...
There's a contradiction though. Her body did travel as a physical recording device on her person recorded approximately 18 hours of static.
But if it is a wormhole that cuts through time as well as space then the aliens could have sent her back through it at the same exact moment that she left.
Double wormhole. One that takes her to her destination and one that puts her back at the same moment she left both in space and time. Not that hard. come on!
well thats the most possible explanation keeping in mind that special relativity in the movie got wrong..
"if you're the one that goes away you live for a shorter amount of time than Earth that you've left behind" NO wrong it's the other way round.
The last part is completely untrue. Gravity is not dependent on rotation. If that was the case, we wouldn't have gravity on the moon. The moon's gravity is proportional to it's mass, not its locked spin around the earth.
He didn't say it was. He just said we aren't attached to the Earth, so if the Earth stopped spinning suddenly we would all fly east at 800 mph due to inertia.
Again, not true. The moon has gravity and it doesn't spin. Astronauts never fell off the moon when they set foot on it.
You misunderstand.
It is like a car crash and you don't wear a seatbelt. The car suddenly stops or changes direction, you go flying the direction you were heading.
If the moon or earth isn't spinning and you are on it then fine, no big deal. If either is spinning and abruptly stops spinning, since we are not attached to either the moon or earth, we would continue on in the direction the earth or moon was previously spinning. He is simply stating Newton's first law of motion.
You wouldn't "fly off into outer space". But you would go "flying off" where ever you were at about 800 mph through the building, or whatever else, you were in at the time.
I'm not on any science forums, but I can see how that would be irritating.
No! Don't tell Danny good job.
Neil.
Gimme that shirt
I'm looking to get Neil to Africa, please pm me some form of contact.
DC has the magic of the "speed force" to explain away anything that doesn't make sense. flash did it with speed force, end of story.
the aliens could have moved the universe relative to the ship and thus we wouldn't feel the accel/decel...
If that were the case he should be able to travel through time.. can he?
The solution is actually very simple. The ship created a wormhole, the inside of the ship went through the wormhole. Time on Earth kept ticking as normal. However, on the other side of the wormhole time lasted longer.
just saw the movie, came straight here looking for some roasting :/
I mean it was a good movie given that it had to be within the boundaries of mild entertainment and target audience but the movie not only goes over the laws of physics and science of the universe it does contain a lot of logical flaws. I know the writer desperately tried to tie the end of the story line with the sub-plot that was given to us in the beginning under the name of 'faith' but really? couldn't they just review the static footage? it is a trillion dollar project after all, couldn't they put another scientist through the machine for a second point of view? couldn't they have all that maximum security in the first place so trillions of dollars wouldn't be spent as decoy? If aliens from vega can instruct other life forms many light years away to build an advanced machine that could open wormholes wouldn't it be easier to build a machine on its own system and visit others via the easier option? Yes yes it is a movie, it's entertainment these things happen but it takes away from the immersion a lot. I thought it was a great movie up to the point where it got a little bit hollywood on us at towards the end.
+hendrixexperiencedig You should read the book, it explains things a lot more, first, it wasn't Vegans at all, the signal came from vega, but from a sentinel listening station( you can actually see it in the movie, when she arrives at her first stop, Vega, and looks up you can see the station and antennae), that was put there eons ago just to listen for signals from emerging civilizations in this area of the galaxy. The actual ' Aliens' were closer to the center of the galaxy, and their space station or hub was where all species that decoded the message and made the machine and successfully launched it would arrive to. So it makes a lot more sense to have listening/ repeater stations located all across the galaxy to listen for emerging civilizations. The aliens would pick and choose who they would send the message to. The book was a lot more thought provoking, actually the Aliens were working with many other species for billions of years in Galactic engineering, transferring matter to sparse areas of the universe as the universe expands, there's less stars and planets developed, and less new species. It's a great read, with a much better ending, and much better proof that she went on the trip than what they used in the movie.
Did Contact,,,, get, dialation, Neil? Wait... I'm kinda high, did I just read that Neil Degrasse Tyson got a contact high and has dialated pupils? hehe, I"m totally a dialated pupil of his. hehehehehehe
Carl Sagan took the freedom to bend the laws of nature here. Normaly he did not. ;)
It's better to be somewhat scientifically literate than not at all.
Hi Neil,
I know you are a very busy man, but I have a mission.
My girlfriend is studying a lot, she is studying law, and took all 10 in all classes this semester, I told her I could choose a gift, she is a great fan of you and wished you appoint an asteroid with her name (Priscila) .
I know this is almost impossible, but if it happened it would be extremely amazing, I await your return.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Att,
Paulo Henrique dos santos.
I know this is almost impossible ✅
every 1 talking about the speed of light ! speed of light is nothing u would never get any where with speed of light . it will take millions of years , on this lvl u need to talk faster than light where u gain speeds million time faster than light . or just over the speed of light when time stops .and become relativ . light speed alone wont get u anything .
also i think while she was falling the teleporting it self took fraction of a second. but i also have to admit the way she travled thorw the warmhole was too waird . and too much feelings and beliveings . so i think eaither the writers know very little about space and warmholes . or she did not realy go anywhere . maybe the machine is telecmoncation not transport . they used it to talk with hier mind .
or maybe its deal with multibale universes or simulated universe where she used the machine to escpae the real world .
in the end the movie is great not becaus its well made . its badly acted and to much relgious and feelings in it more like dramra than a SCI fi movie . but the Cirousity and the open qeutions that it gives the viewers are on the top lvl - makes up for every thing els . watched it 5 times still on my top 10 of all time .
First?
That discussion was stupid (as are most of Neil's arguments) and completely ignored the explanation that is perfectly clear in the book... the aliens did that on purpose and made the dodecahedron travel back in time, it's not a side-effect nor is it a violation of special relativity. An Einstein-Rosen bridge is perfectly capable of doing that.
It's science fiction so who cares.