Cooper and his crew’s arrival on Miller’s planet is one of the most pivotal and jarring moments in Interstellar. In pursuit of finding an exoplanet capable of supporting human life, Cooper and his crew travel through a mysterious wormhole after setting their eyes on three planets. Their first destination on this journey is Miller’s planet, an ocean world where explorer Laura Miller was the first to set a base camp. Hoping that Miller’s planet will be capable of sustaining human life, they make their way to it.

In Interstellar, Miller and the crew reach their destination and find three planets orbiting around a supermᴀssive black hole, Gargantua. While one crew member, Romily, stays in orbit to study Gargantua’s gravity, others head to Miller’s planet’s surface, hoping to find answers. Things take a grim turn when they face the threat of giant tidal waves and experience extreme time dilation. Here is a breakdown of what time dilation means, what causes it, and how it makes Miller’s death sadder in Interstellar.

Miller’s Planet’s Time Dilation Is Caused By The Nearby Black Hole

The Giant Stellar Object Warps The Flow On Time

The science of Insterstellar, including the time dilation on Miller’s planet, is based on the work of Albert Einstein. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, mᴀss and energy warp or “bend” the fabric of space and time. This curving of space-time is gravity. Since time is directly affected by gravity, according to Einstein’s theory, the pᴀssage of time is relatively different in regions that experience different gravitational fields. When a planet is closer to the strong gravitational field of a mᴀssive star, planet, or black hole, time pᴀsses slower compared to an object that experiences a weaker gravitational pull.

In Interstellar, Miller’s planet is close to a supermᴀssive black hole, Gargantua. Since the black hole creates a mᴀssive curvature in spacetime with its gravitational fields, Miller’s planet experiences extreme time dilation. Because of this time dilation from Gargantua’s gravitational fields, time on Miller’s planet moves relatively slower than Earth’s.

Specifically, for every hour on Miller’s planet, seven years pᴀss on Earth for Cooper and his crew. Interstellar reveals that Cooper and his team spent twenty-three years, four months, and eight days in Earth time on Miller’s planet, suggesting that they were roughly down there for only three hours and seventeen minutes.

How The Planet’s Time Dilation Makes Miller’s Death More Tragic

Decades Pᴀssed Before Miller Was Discovered

Laura Miller landed on the water planet years before Cooper and the team. However, because of the time dilation effect, she died only a few minutes before Cooper and his crew landed on the planet. This relativity makes Miller’s death all the more tragic because she barely spent any time on the planet before her death. However, everyone she ever knew lived several years without her on Earth.

The mere thought of the relative isolation she experienced by spending years on the planet in Earth’s time, putting a significant portion of her life into futile research when she could have done so much more on Earth, is simply tragic.​​​​​​​

How Hans Zimmer’s Mountains Symbolizes The Planet’s Time Dilation

The Music Of Interstellar Perfectly Fits Miller’s Planet

Hans Zimmer’s original score for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, “Mountains,” which plays during the Miller’s planet scene, has a constant ticking sound in the background. A theory suggests that each tick in the soundtrack seems to represent the pᴀssing of a day on Earth (via Reddit). Even the math of this theory seems to add up, suggesting that Hans Zimmer must have intentionally orchestrated the soundtrack to ensure that it is in tandem with Interstellar‘s complex depiction of time.

The ticking sound also gradually speeds up the closer Cooper and his crew get to the planet, reflecting how the gravitational field increases as they reach the surface. While no official confirmations have been made surrounding this theory, it is in the realm of possibility that Hans Zimmer was extremely calculative about the ticks in the score. After all, this would not be the first time the music composer manipulated his soundtracks to fit into Christopher Nolan’s complex portrayal of time in movies.

For instance, before Interstellar, Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan used music as a narrative device in Inception‘s opening scene by featuring a slowed version of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je ne Regrette Rien” to highlight how time runs slower in dreams compared to real-time.

How The Time Dilation Scene Is The Film’s Most Important

Coop Learns That He Is Losing Everything

One of the most heartbreaking scenes in Interstellar was when Cooper returned to Endurance and watched the recordings his children left for him while he was on the planet. While he was only there for a short time, it ended up being 23 years, four months, and eight days according to Earth time. When he watched the videos and realized that his kids had given up on him, it was a tragic moment and one that played the most critical moment in the entire film. Considering how much the world changes in 10 years, Cooper saw what he lost.

Cooper and his crew lost so much in those lost 23 years that it made his choices later in the film so important because he knew he had so much to make up for. When he realized the only way to get home was to slingsH๏τ around the black hole, he knew the time dilation would wipe out the rest of the years of his loved ones who knew him. He finally returns to see his daughter on her deathbed as an old woman while he remains barely older than he was when he left. This is the real heartbreaking ending of Interstellar​​​​​​.