All articles tagged with #interstellar
Casey Affleck revealed at the Zurich Film Festival that he once called Christopher Nolan to settle a debate about 'Tenet' with his son, a move he now finds embarrassing. Affleck admitted the question was so basic it could have been answered on Reddit, and the awkwardness has ended their casual contact.
A Seattle nonprofit’s Fermi Explorer Mission plans a 1-kg probe to Alpha Centauri by 2029, using solar-electric propulsion and a 12-year Sun-orbit to reach escape velocity, then travel interstellar distances. The 4x4x4 inch payload will include a digitized Golden Record and messages from children; the mission is expected to cost under $15 million and could take up to 80,000 years, aiming to inspire future generations rather than be completed within one lifetime.
A nonprofit team unveils the Fermi Explorer, a tiny, crowdfunded interstellar probe budgeted at under $15 million with a three-year launch plan that would reach Alpha Centauri in about 80,000 years; the mission aims to be first to launch but last to arrive, hoping to spark future tech and interest, with an 81-page plan and donation rewards like naming rights.
Starcloud, a Tampa-based orbital data-center startup, has formed a nonprofit to fund an uncrewed refrigerator-sized probe aimed at Alpha Centauri by 2029, a mission expected to take about 80,000 years and backed by a roughly $15 million budget.
A shuttle-speed trip to Alpha Centauri would take about 165,000 years, but Breakthrough Starshot envisions gram-scale nanoprobes attached to a metre-wide sail accelerated by a ground-based laser array to reach the system in roughly 21 years. The plan hinges on unbuilt, high-power lasers and a one-way, autonomous flyby, with major engineering challenges in sail materials, beam control, and interstellar hazards, and remains a design concept rather than a launch forecast.
At the Filmland festival in Little Rock, Matthew McConaughey accepted Variety’s Legend & Groundbreaker Award and discussed his career, adding praise for Christopher Nolan and his work on Interstellar; in a surprising anecdote, he recalled that his 1992 Unsolved Mysteries reenactment helped trigger the 1993 capture of Edward Harold Bell for multiple murders, a moment he joked about having helped crack, while also noting his return to the screen with The Rivals of Amziah King.
NASA has trimmed Voyager 2's power needs by shutting off nonessential systems and using lower-power equipment on its plutonium-powered RTG, allowing the probe's remaining three science instruments to operate for at least another year despite razor-thin power margins; two instruments were already disabled since 2024, and Voyager 1 will receive the same power tweak soon. The spacecraft continue to transmit interstellar data, with Voyager 2 about 142 AU and Voyager 1 about 171 AU from Earth, and signals taking roughly 24 hours to reach us.
An opinion piece ranks Christopher Nolan’s films from worst to best, placing Following at the bottom and The Prestige at the top. It lauds craft across the spectrum, calling out moments in Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer, and treats The Odyssey as Nolan’s ambitious new adaptation slipping in at mid-pack in this lineup.
A ranking of Christopher Nolan's 13 films—from Following (1998) to Inception (2010)—with the fictional The Odyssey (2026) included; the piece praises Nolan’s mix of blockbuster spectacle and cerebral puzzles, placing Inception at the top while highlighting standout entries like The Dark Knight, Interstellar and Oppenheimer, and noting occasional missteps such as Tenet.
Deadline’s guide shows where Christopher Nolan’s films are streaming or rentable today: Memento is on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, Kanopy, and Hoopla; Insomnia isn’t streaming and is for rent; The Prestige streams on Hulu; The Dark Knight trilogy is available via HBO Max/Prime Video channels and YouTube TV; Inception has limited streaming (MGM+ with a trial) and rental options on Prime Video and Spectrum; Interstellar is on Hulu and Paramount+; Dunkirk and Tenet are rentable on Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango, and Spectrum; Oppenheimer isn’t streaming but can be rented on Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango, and Spectrum; The Odyssey (2026) is upcoming, likely heading to Peacock after its theatrical run.
Even after more than four decades, Voyager 1's transmitter—powering a signal the strength of a household bulb—remains audible on Earth as an ultra-weak whisper. NASA's Deep Space Network and enhanced ground systems extract data about the heliopause and local interstellar medium from this fading signal, which travels tens of billions of kilometers and requires a round-trip of nearly two days. The probes’ aging hardware has forced engineers to repair and adapt memory and power management over the years, and while the plutonium power source will eventually silence the link, for now Voyager persists as a faint but scientifically valuable bridge to the edge of the solar system.
Scientists using the VLT measured carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios in cyanide around interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS and conclude it formed in the outer regions of an old, low-metallicity star system—likely much older than the Sun—making it one of the Galaxy’s oldest known objects; future observations with the ELT will study more interstellar visitors.
New isotope measurements from JWST and the VLT corroborate that interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS formed billions of years ago far from its parent star, likely in the outer regions of a protoplanetary disk (akin to a Kuiper belt) and was later ejected into interstellar space. Its carbon-12 to carbon-13 and nitrogen-14 to nitrogen-15 ratios differ markedly from solar-system comets, suggesting a birth environment and chemistry unlike our own. The findings were published in Nature Astronomy.
New Horizons observations indicate interstellar material slows the solar wind as it moves outward, adding a gradual drag beyond the termination shock. Simulations align with Voyager 2 data, showing the wind is about 5–10% slower between 30–43 AU and 13–15% slower at ~58 AU, due to ionized interstellar matter shaping the heliosphere’s boundaries and affecting cosmic-ray exposure—insights that could inform future interstellar exploration.
In July 2025, the ATLAS sky survey in Chile detected a faint, fast-moving object with a hyperbolic (unbound) orbit, later identified as 3I/ATLAS, the third confirmed interstellar object. Traveling about 130,000 mph, it was not a threat to Earth, with a close approach well outside the Moon’s orbit. Hubble and other facilities observed a dust plume and activity consistent with a comet, constraining the nucleus size and confirming a cometary nature. The discovery shows interstellar visitors are real and detectable with modern surveys, enabling comparative studies of material from other star systems.