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Interstellar – The story behind the story!

I have to admit, when I came out of this movie, I was confused, and thinking hard to find a logical sense to the story. One thought which came to my mind was that my thinking ability is of 3 dimensions and that’s the reason I am not able to logically conclude this 5 dimension story. But few hours later, and few brainstorming sessions with myself, I came up with a somewhat logical explanation on what could have happened in the background, not shown to us, but may have leads to this story-line. 

Here, in this story behind the story of Interstellar, I am presenting the story which may have happened in the normal timeline, without the event shown in the movie. These timelines will lead to a situation where the movie would have started. Read on, to check what has happened in the actual timeline. 


This point onward, I must warn everyone about spoilers. If you have not seen the movie, and want to see it, I strongly suggest that you should not read further. Reading this article further will reduce the impact of this movie. Please don’t say that you have not been warned. 

The normal timeline – 


People on earth faced a major shortage of food, as the earth is ravaged by blight destroying their agriculture. One by one, we lost all food grains and reduced to corn only. [This is where the movie begins. But we are not going into what movie has shown. This is a different timeline, different from what was shown in movie. Don’t worry, it will be explained later. So, let’s continue with this timeline.] 

Soon, corn also was destroyed and with no food grain, we were left to starve. Remember, there were no wormhole near Saturn, and no gravity waves since last 50 years in this timeline. These were in the movie timeline, which we will visit later. 

Major governments already knew that such situation may come. They were trying their best to fight back and survive, but also had a plan B for this situation. That plan B was to leave the planet with selected few in search for new habitat planet. They knew that it is a very long shot and they may not survive the journey, but this was the best they could do with limited resources they had. Again, due to limited supply of food, they could only arrange for few to take on this mission. 

Once the space station left, and earth was doomed, there were two major factions of human left on earth. One were the savages, searching for food, animals, some of them even attacked other humans for their flash. The others were elite, who has stocked food into their fortress. But the elite knew that it is a temporary solution, as soon they will either be taken over by the savaged or they will run out of food themselves. And that’s what exactly happened. The human race, as we know it, was going into extinction. The only hope was select few who were in space, searching for other planets. But chances are that they will end up dying in space, with nowhere to go.  The spaceship did not have enough food for them to survive long enough. 

Here, back on earth, human race almost got extinct. When we say almost, they evolved, or mutated, to adopt themselves to the new environment. The ones, who could not evolve, died of starvation or violence. Another round of evolution started, with new species surviving on nitrogen, rather than oxygen. In the future earth, the new species were not at all like humans. They did not think or live, they just exist on the atmosphere of earth. Another few millennia and the evolution may not have been on the progressive side, but on survival side. Now, if you look at the current state of these species, it would be more like Amoeba. 

So, we now learnt that earth human did not survive, and got mutated to Amoeba like status. Let’s check out what has happened to the ones who were in space. They somehow got lucky, and got their station attached to a passing by asteroid with its gravitational force. Soon they built a colony on the asteroid. It was not easy, but they also started to evolve based on their environment, to adopt and survive. With the evolution process, on that asteroid, floating with high gravitational forces of various planets and stars on its path, they transformed into 5 dimensional being. Don’t worry; it’s a long and boring timeline of evolution history on how they become 5 dimensional being. I will not bore you with that. Just understand that in distance future, the humans who left earth are on an asteroid and become 5 dimensional being. 

Now that they have access to timelines, they can actually see the past and understand what has happened to them, or humans who were left on earth. So, they decided to help. But the only way they could have accessed is using Gravity, as they cannot become 3 dimensional again, and the communication channel may not have worked between 3 dimensional and 5 dimensional beings. 

So, in order to save the human race of 3 dimensions, they picked a timeline when the crisis was just started, (50 years before the time shown in movie) which could get attention from governments to devote resources into such activities. They started the gravity waves at different places to draw attention. They spotted a place in another galaxy with multiple habitable planets (12 to be precise) to give humans a chance of survival. Then they created a wormhole near Saturn for humans to travel to these planets. NASA and other agencies picked up these, and started working on their plans for rescue of human race. 

This is where the normal timeline ends and the movie timeline begins. 

The movie timeline – 


We all know the movie timeline, that is, if you have seen the movie. There is not much to explain here. The 5 dimensional beings setup wormhole, gave gravity waves, and NASA sends out missions to these planets. Cooper reached NASA, become part of one of the missions, gets himself to the Tesseract, and sends the details of data captured inside Black hole, which allows humans to exploit the gravity for their rescue. Simple, isn't it? 

The only fact which creates confusion in this timeline is that Cooper gave himself the co-ordinates of NASA from future. If he was the one who gave himself the co-ordinates from future, how did he end up in future in the first place to be able to send the co-ordinates back? 

It’s simple, if you understand the bootstrap paradox. Here is the definition from Wikipedia – “The bootstrap paradox, or ontological paradox, is a paradox of time travel that refers to scenarios whereby items or information are passed from the future to the past, which in turn become the same items or information that are subsequently passed from the past to the future - this creates a circularity of cause-effect such that the items or information have no discernible origin. Thus, the paradox raises the ontological questions of where, when and by whom the items were created or the information derived.”

So, it is safe to assume, that the plan for future 5 dimensional humans could have worked even without the events as they appear in the movie. NASA was planning to send probes and missions. They may not have been able to send everyone on new planets, but the human race in its current form may have survived with help of Plan B. Along the way, Cooper got himself involved because of his future self, helping him with co-ordinates and other data. This has helped a major population of earth to get rescued. 

Here, we also have to understand one thing. What has happen will happen. So, even if future Cooper decides to not give the co-ordinates to his past self, the past Cooper may have got the co-ordinates from somewhere else. Or maybe NASA would have found him and requested him to pilot. Still, the story-line may not have changed. But yes, that way, the future Cooper has to give NASA co-ordinates to Murph, so that she can communicate with NASA about him being there, and use the other data given by him. So, in a way, by providing the co-ordinates to Murph, he actually helped himself in taking that path and travel to space, and land in that situation to be able to provide the co-ordinates. It’s a loop, but closed loop, and not an infinite one. 

This has given me some closer to move on, after watching Interstellar. I hope this gives you something more to think, and provide a logical closer of the complexities of this movie. But this is just one story-line, imagined by me. You can have another story-line, ending at the exact same conclusion or the place where the movie starts. This is just like different path to same destination. Let your imagination run wild, think of another story-line and share it here, in comment section for me and others to read! 

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