Reflections

Listening to the Universe, a reflection on Messengers:

The credits are rolling, and the lights are dimmed. A murmur goes through the movie theatre. I am filled with awe at the beautiful imagery of the movie and left with a slightly empty feeling - the broad existential questions and their implications the movie has left in me.

„Where does our universe come from?“ That is the question many scientists are hoping to answer through the research of the smallest known particles with mass, called neutrinos. A question that wasn’t at the center of this movie discussion - maybe due to its limited discussability and the short amount of time - but also because I feel that an answer was never the intended message of this movie.

More so, was I met with a lovely conversational discussion between the researcher Michelle and the director of the movie, Jeffrey. Both managed to capture my attention easily through their mutual curiosity in each other’s work, bound by such a fascinating topic of astrophysics.

Inquiries of human curiosity, of aesthetics in huge deep laboratories, and of the connection of physics to the unconscious were exchanged. All the while, the audience got to learn more about the process of how the movie came to be.

„There are tens of trillions of neutrinos passing through us every second! “, states Michelle, after quickly introducing her own background as a researcher who has visited and spent loads of time in these underground labs.

When asked about initial inspiration for the movie, Jeffrey explains that it all started with pictures of the golden, sparkly insides of the deep lab SuperK. Without any background in science or physics, these images sparked a loving obsession that led him to conclude: „I have to go there, this has to be part of my life!“.

He further goes on to say that he soon discovered how the research of neutrinos is so intimately enmeshed with the Earth itself – something he tried, and if you ask me, so profoundly captured with the many stunning still shots of the nature surrounding these big laboratories. The nature of our planet is necessary for the laboratories to „listen” to the universe. They do so through stones, water and ice in the deep underground.

As a stark contrast to these nature shots, we get haunting footage of the vast insides of the mines in which the laboratories are located. Most of the filming shows the absence of humans in these spaces. Yet still the traces the researchers have left over time remain - a rack of shoes in the lab entry, notes of visitors from all over the world, a bunk bed in case someone gets stuck in the Kamioka observatory overnight, and all of the souvenirs left to be preserved in the freezing cold of Ice Lab.

Michelle and Jeffrey discuss the atmosphere of these labs - the soundscape of an almost silence, interrupted by occasional clanging of metal, the fluorescent lights, and the motion of air that isn’t entirely natural. As a labyrinth of wires and machines, shut off form as much disturbance as possible, these aren’t places that are built for humans to exist in. As they emphasize this, I can only think of the testament these laboratories are to human curiosity. Michelle puts a profound question into the air: „What will this look like to a future civilisation? “ It still lingers in my mind.

Building a sense of relatable human scale was something Jeffery tried to achieve in his creative process - to remind us of how small and fragile we, as a species, are on our own planet. I believe the strong sense of curiosity, belonging and at the same time, awareness of my own mortality that I felt while watching, reflected his mission and care that went into the creation of the movie.

The pure humanness of the research was so very tangible to me. I think Jeffrey managed to describe it really well as a „beautiful, human, revealing thing“, when talking about the naming of the Ice cube sensors, called DOM‘s. In a mission of a Swedish research team, the researchers named those detectors – distributed deep within the underground ice -after simple human things like „Habanero Pepper“ and „Pompeii“.

In a second part of the conversation, we get to know a little more about a further inspiration and connection Jeffrey makes in the movie - the connection to the theme of the human unconscious. This comes up as Michelle asks about the references the movie makes to Wolfgang Pauli’s physics theories.

Atom and Archetype, Wolfgang Pauli’s and Carl Jung’s book of letters, from 1933 to 1957, explores the connection of physics structures to the human unconscious and what meaning that holds for humanity. The book was an early part of research to the movie, explains Jeffrey. He talks about how he wanted the movie to have a similar framing to Pauli’s work. Aiming to draw an analogy between the mysterious unknown, that underlies particle physics, and our subconscious mind, that guides us as people. I think both can be described by how Jeffrey retells Pauli’s work: „This is a rectilinear space, and we can understand what‘s going on. But there is also this other realm that is somewhat unknowable – yet we can tune into it if we are present in the right way.“

Michelle closes the thought by agreeing that Pauli’s work was fully grounded in the conservation of energy - one of the most fundamental physical principles - while still being open to the unconscious.

The time of the discussion progresses quickly, but before it’s up, there is the chance to ask Michelle and Jeffrey a few questions. A couple of hands shoot up, and I’m glad I get to hear more, even when I personally haven’t gathered my thoughts enough to ask a question yet.

The first two audience questions are about how Jeffrey managed to animate some of the more challenging scenes in the movie - specifically, the shots of Ice Lab and the DOM detectors enclosed in the ice underground, as well as the animation of the Cherenkov radiation inside of one of the detection tanks.

Jeffrey explains how he struggled with the creation of a relatable scale in the underground animation of Ice Lab. He wanted to portray the vast distribution of detectors in a comprehensible way, without it looking like “some kind of magic visualisation”. In reality, those detectors are about the size of a basketball, but they are spaced really far apart. “The technique I wanted to use was almost like if you gave an IMAX camera to a ghost.”, remarked Jeffrey.

As for the Cherenkov radiation – symbolised by the blue flashes of light in the movie – we learn, apart from the dilation of the time scale in which the impulses are happening, they would be rather accurate. Michelle confirms that the radiation can be detected as a blue glow, in some cases even by the human eye, though of course only if happening much slower.

I get really excited as my friend sitting next to me asks a question I’ve been wondering myself throughout the whole discussion: The question of how Jeffrey got access to filming in these locations. In response, Jeffrey doesn’t say exactly how he got access but instead describes the challenges he faced, even after conformation of filming dates. This included having to train people - based on storyboards - to film themselves because his plan to bring his cinematographer was denied due to COVID restrictions. Another time, a shoot day even got cancelled because of an electrical fire inside of one of the labs. “The sensitivity of it made it very difficult”, remarked Jeffrey.

He notes that he had very little time to film in most locations, so to prepare he memorized the spaces to maximize the precious time he had. Over the two years of making this film, he had faced many instances where he had to admit to himself: “I don’t know if there is a movie today!” He revealed that he had to start making the film out of a sense of faith and personal drive that there would be a movie one day.

From these remarks about danger, a short discussion emerges on how frightening these laboratories can be. To such an extent that, in Snow Lab, you must always carry a respirator with you in risk of a collapse. Additionally, Michelle reveals that she has a special driver’s licence for driving inside of the Kamioka lab, where all of the halls are labelled in Japanese – but one hallway you’d have to recognize better than any other, because of the rock of the passage being oxygen-absorbent; you’d “suffocate if you take a left turn.” Michelle laughs, grimly amused.

So as not to end on a morbid note, Jeffrey takes on one last question. Where he rounds out this discussion by explaining the title Messengers as tying together both the idea of multi-messenger astronomy - where neutrinos carry information - and the subconscious element of psychology.

Jeffrey finishes talking, the audience applauds and for a brief moment the room feels suspended in a shared quiet. Walking out of the theatre, I find that the discussion has left me with the same lingering wonder as the film itself, and a strange comfort in human curiosity – simply that we humans keep trying to understand the things that lie just beyond our reach. And in that sense, Messengers and this inspiring talk between Michelle and Jeffrey reached me as a small reminder to stay curious and pay attention to the questions I’m drawn to, even if I don’t know yet where they will lead me.