So where did the Sphere come from?
Any guesses?
sharethis is fiction. you can imagine whatever you want, there is no real answer to your question.
besides, the point of the film is not where that sphere come from, it is rather a deep analysis of the human mind and our fears.
Mabey if you turn it over it says 'Made in Korea'
sharelol
shareAt the end we see that the sphere has intelligence & power of volition (because it decides to head for the hills). This might imply that the sphere "found" the spaceship--not the other way around. The sphere may have been floating around in space for trillions of years searching for intelligent life, then along comes the spaceship and it's like "yo over here homeys. take me to your leader".
Ok, here's another totally wacky possibility...
Again, based on the idea that the sphere has intelligence and can go where it wants... maybe the sphere originally came to Earth in the year 2043. Humans quickly realized the devastating power, so they decided to return it to space & throw it into a black hole. That would explain why the ship seemed to be specially constructed with a bay large enough to hold the sphere. Along the way to the black hole, the astronauts went nuts, killed each other off, and they were all dead by the time the ship reached the black hole which sent them back in time. The ship's autopilot returned the ship & its cargo back to earth. If you've seen "The Changeling", the sphere is like that evil red rubber ball that keeps coming back.
I've not read the book, so my interpretation is of the movie.
I thought about the idea that the crew were transporting the sphere back to Earth, and one of the crew members went into the sphere. The crewman falls asleep, manifests the black hole, they fall into it and travel back in time, lose control over the ship on the other side, appear near Earth and crash in the ocean, and not until then do they start killing each other, because they can't get out, which is very similar to the crew in the habitat.
Maybe in the future, there will be space travelers, whose greatest fear is to fall into a black hole, like giant squids were for seamen back in the 16th - 18th century.
The reason for the manifestation theory is:
They crash on an Earth ocean. You don't do that unless the ship is somehow near the Earth. This can be for two reasons:
1. The black hole is manifested with a mechanism that will lead them near the Earth 300 years earlier. Without this specific mechanism, it's highly unlikely they would crash on Earth or even on a planet. It would be like driving in the desert, lose control of your car and crash into the only tree for hundreds of miles. Oh, and the tree is also moving. :-)
2. The black hole is manifested, they travel back, ship partially damaged, limp their way back to Earth, fail to enter orbit properly and crash.
If 1 is the case, then another theory could be presented:
The black hole is manifested near Earth by a crew member and so, it would also destroy the Earth. Given this particular crew member's terror in inadvertently destroying the Earth, the design of the black hole changes and becomes such that it leads them to go back in time to an undamaged Earth.
Given the time mechanics shown in the movie, the "Unknown Event" bit, the discovery of the sphere always leads to the destruction of the Earth, because Beth, Harry and Norman all choose to forget the sphere.
None of this reveals:
- Where the fresh footsteps discovered on a catwalk in the ship, when they first enter, come from.
- The purpose of the sphere.
- Why the sphere leaves and where it goes.
- Why the sphere chooses to stay in the ship on the bottom of the ocean for 300 years.
I like your "manifested black hole" theory. I mean, jeez, you'd think an advanced spacecraft would see a black hole coming a parsec away, and oopsy they happen to fly right into it? Nah, it makes more sense that the crewmembers feared it, so it became a reality right in front of them.
The ancient fears of mariners & explorers (squids, falling off the edge of the earth, etc) match this theory perfectly. And if I'm not mistaken in the beginning credits of the film we see a lot of distorted images of sea monsters and other irrational fears. Yes, space travellers would carry those same fears, wouldn't they?
When you break it down, I go with sub-theory #2. The spaceship was spit out essentially in the same location but 300 years earlier. They then limp back to earth, crash underwater, go stir crazy & kill each other.
I forgot completely about the footprints. Perhaps this is a mystery that's never to be answered, like in 2010 when they open the derelict ship, and a scrap of paper floats past them never to be seen again. In that book, I remember the author made a point that they would never know what that paper said.
Purpose of the sphere? Again drawing a parallel with the world of Arthur C. Clarke, I'd guess that the sphere is created by superior beings with the intent of helping humans evolve. In 2001 the monolith was successful, but in Sphere maybe we see that it doesn't always benefit humankind.
Where does the sphere go? Disneyland. Next question.
Why does the sphere stay in the ship for 300 years? I guess we can assume--if the sphere has intelligence--that it wanted to give humans a 2nd chance. That itself is a bit illogical. I would've prefered that the sphere either (1) remain there to give us more chances until we get it right; or (2) vanish after the 1st mess. Honestly, that's the only thing I didn't like about the movie: the way the sphere suddenly flies off at the end.
However, just thinking about it right now, it's possible that the sphere remained after the 1st group because it still saw potential in humans. But after the 2nd group resorts to nuking the thing, it decided that humans were a lost cause.
I'm curious to read the book, but at the same time I'm having just as much fun theorizing about all the possibilities. Sometimes when you read a book, it over-explains things & ruins all the fun.
Here's a thought.
The neat thing is that the sphere goes back eventually to the same location the human spaceship found it out in space in the future. The crew goes through the same experiment and become insane (like the bashing of the head of the crewman corpse), and one of them imagines a black hole.
It's strictly a black hole from imagination, so its properties are all dependent on the human who imagines it. The crewman probably imagined the typical sci-fi black hole. It sucks you up and sends you across time. Where to? The crewman probably pictured some time in Earth's past. This can explain why the metal door was so easy to chip when Ted chiseled it. It implied the ship would have shown some damages if it had crashed through the atmosphere and ocean. It "arrived" here, not crashed here.
That sphere sits tight for 300 years until the folks from the movie dive down and find it. And so forth, according to the film.
All of this means that the sphere only exists within a period of about 350 years in our universe. It goes back in time on the space ship to 1700, it gets discovered in 2000, then flies out into space for 50 years to be discovered by the same space ship, and then it goes back in time to 1700.
So I don't think its possible to answer just where the heck this Sphere came from. It didn't really come from anywhere, it just existed for some time.
However, in the book,
I do not recall any mention of the sphere flying out into space. I may have missed it, but I thought it all got wrecked by the explosions. So, I don't know...
The sphere doesn't "head for the hills"--the surviving trio "wish" that they had never discovered it and it "leaves" because of their decision. They also all wish they never had knowledge of their power.
...or they discovered the sphere after they were pulled into the black hole bringing it crossing into another dimension before returning home.
...or the sphere brought the ship to Earth having "read" the mind of the crew before they were killed and wanting to explore our species more.
The sphere doesn't "head for the hills"--the surviving trio "wish" that they had never discovered it and it "leaves" because of their decision.
"heads for the hills" = "leaves"
retreats, goes away, vamooses, amscrays, makes like a prom dress and takes off... however you want to say it
My point is that the sphere exhibits independent volition; i.e. it has some sort of intelligence or is controlled by some form of sentient program. Therefore it is possible that the sphere found the original crew, not the other way around. share
LMAO!
Thanks for the explanation because when i read the other post i was also like "Huh? What hills? I don't remember any hills!" XD
Yeah, english not being my first language and all...
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs
And the other poster made the point that it was the combined godlike powers of the three survivors that made the sphere move(what would amount to telekinesis in a duck test). In other words, the other poster is basically saying the survivors themselves were the intelligence you are attributing to the sphere itself.
Personally, I think this is the more likely scenario. Sure, some could say that them not being reflected is also a sign of the sphere's intelligence but considering the powers a person can attain from it, it could just as easily be explained that the reason they aren't reflected is because they hadn't chosen to go inside the sphere yet. Remember, they DO get reflections once they make that decision(or assumedly so since Harry was the only one we actually saw go inside and that's what happened with him).
**edit**Just rewatched this and I was a bit wrong. Norm does go into the sphere almost right after Harry reappears outside it. I must have watched an edited-for-tv version or something last time because I could have sworn they didn't reveal that until the flashback scene later(right before going to the mini-sub). Oh well, each viewing would get kind of boring if I had a photographic memory of movies, books and other entertainment mediums. ;D
Rudy, question.
Yeah?
...Know any virgins?**cue spit take**