- #1
DaveC426913
Gold Member
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One of the nitpicks about Interstellar the film is the tidal wave on Miller's Planet. Miller's Planet is deep in the gravity well of a monster black hole.
Lot's to unpack there but the upshot is that there's a tidal wave that sweeps around the planet shaped like a tall, very steep mountain (ostensibly 4,000 feeet tall, if the infographic is to be trusted):
The nitpick is that this should not be so. The black hole's effect on the ocean planet should be distributed across the planet's surface, like this:
Critics of the science of movie have drawn attention to this "flaw".
But in a conversation today I suddenly realized that it doesn't have to be that way. That idealized sweep of the tidal bulges in that example diagram assume an ocean deep enough that bottom friction plays no part in the surface behavior.
But we know that Miller's Planet does not have miles deep oceans - they're standing in two feet of water. What I say we're seeing here is a wave much like any wave approaching a beach on Earth - a state of almost cresting and breaking.
In Miller's Planet's case, the tide is sweeping around the planet under the pull of the BH and I say it just happens to be the right depth that fricton with the bottom is slowing it down enough to keep it on the verge of breaking. (We have no reason to believe the wave is perpetually in this state - for all we know, it broke immediately beyond the landing site in the story.)
No?
Lot's to unpack there but the upshot is that there's a tidal wave that sweeps around the planet shaped like a tall, very steep mountain (ostensibly 4,000 feeet tall, if the infographic is to be trusted):
The nitpick is that this should not be so. The black hole's effect on the ocean planet should be distributed across the planet's surface, like this:
Critics of the science of movie have drawn attention to this "flaw".
But in a conversation today I suddenly realized that it doesn't have to be that way. That idealized sweep of the tidal bulges in that example diagram assume an ocean deep enough that bottom friction plays no part in the surface behavior.
But we know that Miller's Planet does not have miles deep oceans - they're standing in two feet of water. What I say we're seeing here is a wave much like any wave approaching a beach on Earth - a state of almost cresting and breaking.
In Miller's Planet's case, the tide is sweeping around the planet under the pull of the BH and I say it just happens to be the right depth that fricton with the bottom is slowing it down enough to keep it on the verge of breaking. (We have no reason to believe the wave is perpetually in this state - for all we know, it broke immediately beyond the landing site in the story.)
No?