![]() The big question in the movie is why are they here. They have travelled across the vast distances of space and have come to Earth. The implication is that the aliens are enormously more evolved than humans. They have no visible thrusters, but the aliens are able to manipulate gravity and somehow have mastered interstellar travel with their advanced technology. They completely lack any surface features and emit nothing detectable, heat, radiation or anything else. Heptapod spacecraft (referred to as “Shells”) are 450-meter-tall interstellar craft which are made of some sort of a black, stone-like material of unknown composition, and are oval and somewhat flat in shape. Of course, this story is just that, a story and total fiction. Looking at one of the alien sentences (on the right) it does not seem to have reversible symmetry, in the structures that form their words (spiky bits that stick out), though, of course, a circle is not linear in one sense as it is represented on a plane. At least that is what I understood it was intended to be. Heptapod B is written in a circular way and is palindromic. The word “HannaH” is a palindrome–a sequence of letters or characters that can be read either forward or backward and produce the same word. Banks, about whom she experiences future memories. And in this movie this is highlighted by the name, Hannah, of the yet to be conceived daughter of Prof. However, for particle physics (including electromagnetism) there is no preference to which way time flows. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, where entropy never decreases in a closed system, but generally increases, is an exception and the primary reason we always perceive the forward arrow of time. That might sound strange to some but most of the laws of physics are time reversible. It is still an open question of why do we remember the past and not the future. The concept here of our perception of time does have some basis in real physics. Then, with this new perception of time, time-like loops are introduced (really time paradoxes) where, because the professor experiences (in her thoughts or perception) the future, she gets knowledge (of future events) that she then uses to determine the future events she perceives. The story introduces the concept of when one learns a new language, one also learns to think the same way that the producers of that language think– the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis–because one’s brain is rewired to think that way. We are told that a deep understanding of their language can induce a non-linear perception of time in those who learn it. This idea is where it really gets crazy. Heptapod B is written with the ink-like substance they eject from their tendrils and they are able to manipulate it in space to form the characters of Heptapod B. But strangely enough the vocal and writing components are unrelated, in the sense that Heptapod B does not represent sound. These alien heptapods use a vocal communication that is unpronounceable by humans (classified as Heptapod A), but, as professor Banks discovers, they also have a written script (Heptapod B), which can be dissected and interpreted. It’s science fiction after all.) Alien language and perception of time Remember octopuses produce a black ink like substance. Their 7 tentacles each have 7 tendrils, out of the centre of which they eject an ink-like substance. The 7-foot tall aliens, heptapods, 2 which look something like octopuses with 7 tentacles and a human hand, are depicted as enormously technologically advanced on humans. Here is the trailer from Paramount Pictures: 1 It was directed by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve and stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker. The movie is based on the short story “ Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (1998). The key character, a linguistics professor, Louise Banks is seconded by the military to interpret the language of alien visitors. ![]() It depicts the story of the arrival, at twelve separate locations around the earth, of twelve mysterious spacecraft. Recently I watched the 2016 movie “ Arrival“.
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