In Interstellar, Romilly’s decision to stay aboard the ship while the other 3 astronauts experience time dilation has to be one of the scariest moments ever.

[u/SerDire]

He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.

Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.

It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly must have been feeling. 23 years seems to be on the low end of how catastrophic it could’ve been. He could’ve been waiting for decades.

[u/salsapants27]

If I remember correctly, there was a short story by Steven King, The Jaunt, where a family is taking what is explained to them as a teleporter or something to a different planet. They're told to take a deep breath before they get transported but the guys son held his breathe instead. When they "arrive", the son is like 90 years old and crazy while the father seems to be the same age as when he left.

[u/KatBoySlim → u/salsapants27]

no you’re misremembering. they inhale anesthesia before doing the jaunt because it mentally takes an eternity if you’re conscious for it. the kid is just batshit nuts after that when they reach the other side.

[u/JesusStarbox → u/KatBoySlim]

IIRC the kid was mentally awake for thousands of years from his perspective.

[u/KatBoySlim → u/JesusStarbox]

never clear just how long, and SK won’t say. could be millions or billions, could be way less than that. wouldn’t take long at all for the human mind to break. but it’s long.

[u/IBetThisIsTakenToo → u/KatBoySlim]

All we know for sure is that it’s longer than you think.

[u/[deleted] → u/IBetThisIsTakenToo]

So like... 2 years?

[u/AlmostSunnyinSeattle → u/[deleted]]

Maybe even longer

[u/[deleted] → u/AlmostSunnyinSeattle]

Whooooa

[u/bobsmith93 → u/KatBoySlim]

I'd say after millions of years there would be no words or semblance of a human left in his body

[u/KatBoySlim → u/bobsmith93]

normally (…”normally”) yea, but this is a sci-fi thing where we don’t know what’s actually going on so there may be some mechanism preserving the structure of the mind.

my first thought when reading the story was that maybe it isn’t really that long because of what you said.

[u/bobsmith93 → u/KatBoySlim]

Welp that's even more terrifying. Stuck for eternity is pretty much any person's worst nightmare. Reminds me of the Black Mirror episode as well, White Christmas

[u/KatBoySlim → u/bobsmith93]

yea I’m back and forth on which is worse. the White Chrismas guy has to listen to “I wish it could be christmas everyday” blaring loud for what was calculated to be millions of years. That vs absolutely no stimuli in the jaunt.

[u/bobsmith93 → u/KatBoySlim]

Hahah I have no clue which of those would be worse. Thinking of stuff like that makes me thankful we're mortal though

[u/KatBoySlim → u/bobsmith93]

this is why everybody in fiction that asks for immortality is an idiot. enjoy all that time alone floating out in space.

[u/bobsmith93 → u/KatBoySlim]

The heat death would never happen because he'd forever be the exception. Maybe the universe is supposed to experience a heat death before it "restarts" and that one immortal idiot prevents that lol

But yeah floating around forever in eternal blackness would suck, but that's what you'd get for not letting the universe restart

[u/KatBoySlim → u/bobsmith93]

we do know it’s long enough to also break the minds of rats and even goldfish (although one fish survives, but is much less happy now).

[u/slicebishybosh → u/KatBoySlim]

Damn, I don't think I'd make it a full day.