47. Describe the content of the videotext ‘Interstellar’ and formulate your conclusion on it.

Interstellar ends with our pilot, Cooper, falling into a black hole. He doesn’t die, however. Instead, he arrives in a complex built for him to see all of time at once in a fixed place – his daughter’s bedroom. It is built specifically for Cooper to be able to influence the time line of his daughter Murphy. He even says this out loud.

Critics have derided this as scientifically inaccurate because a black hole would tear your body apart before you got to any interior complex built inside of it. I hadn’t known critics were experts on building complexes inside of black holes that allow you to change time itself.

It stands to reason that, if you can build such a complex specifically for Cooper to use, you can remember to flip the “Don’t tear Cooper apart on the way in” switch.

It’s said time and again in Interstellar that the wormhole is a tool sent from aliens. It turns out to be from future humans, but for the purposes of this next explanation, it doesn’t matter. Point is, it’s a tool. One criticism insists that the wormhole, like the black hole, would tear Cooper’s spaceship apart.

So the wormhole and black hole are both tools. If both are tools, then it’s safe to assume they’re user friendly. We don’t make hammers and screwdrivers that tear the user into shreds when he hits a nail or turns a screw. It stands to reason that if the black hole is a tool built for Cooper, and it’s on the other side of a wormhole, then the wormhole is a tool put there for Cooper, too.

If both the wormhole and black hole are tools designed to one day be used by Cooper, let’s assume they BOTH have “Don’t tear Cooper apart on the way in” switches. Future humans? Big on toggle settings.

Why build this time-hopping facility inside a black hole? Because, in astrophysics, black holes are the only things that are theoretically capable of inverting time and space. Supposedly, future humans might wander through time as they please, but Cooper’s a modern human. He still can’t – he needs a bit of help.

We see a black hole the same way an ant might see a car – as something that can’t be fully understood with the knowledge at hand. Ants get crushed if they get rolled over by the tire of a car. That doesn’t mean we humans don’t use the car as a tool to get somewhere, and if the ant climbs into the car and hitches a ride elsewhere, it doesn’t mean his journey is scientifically inaccurate.

The whole idea of the ending is that, if time is a dimension, causality can be designed. Just as Cooper floats through time to create the causalities that get him there – knocking books off his daughter’s shelf, writing coordinates in falling dust – the future humans create these tools (wormholes and black holes) as causalities intended for Cooper’s use.

In essence, future humans create causalities that allow Cooper to create causalities.

It’s a bit complicated, but if A leads to B leads to C, and time is as easy to walk through as your living room, then C can lead to B can lead to A without breaking a sweat.

Cooper doesn’t beat the universe with the power of love, as many critics have misunderstood. He is briefly given the tools to create new causes and effects in time itself. These tools are supplied him by a future human race.