"An Idea is the most resilient parasite", says Cobb. Well, we'll find whether Nolan's Inception was Pure science fiction or Pure Science. I guess its the blurry overlapping region in between. Let's unfurl the curtains of dream science..
' Hey, I was playing volleyball with Neil Armstrong on a beach in Florida, when suddenly a tsunami came and it drowned me. Gosh !! '
An Introduction to dream snatching
Almost everybody reading this will have had dreams in the past. So, what Cobb and his team do is that they try to go into people's dreams and try to steal information from them, A job they called 'Extraction'. Well the basis of this summer blockbuster involves around Dream-Sharing.
Is Dream-Sharing Possible ?
Yes, it indeed is. But, it doesn't happen the way illustrated in the movie. You don't go to someone and insert an IV needle in their veins and use a briefcase ( its actually a Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous - PASIV) to administer a Dream-Sharing drug called Somnacin and upload a dream scenario into the dreamers' heads. Although fMRI scanners are able to peer inside people's heads to reveal what they are looking at. But, its impossible to load a dream into heads of targets and/or the team. Although Somanacin won't help to access people's dreams, drugs such as Modafinal exist, which can drastically modulate sleep patterns. But, wait !! Why to depend on somnacin to share dreams when you already have a natural solution. Actually studies show that twins who share common experiences are able to have similar dreams. Although it is possible to have the same dream, however, it is unlikely that one of the dreamer can enter the subconscious of another person having the same dream as portrayed in the movie.
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| PASIV |
Can the physical world influence our dream ?
Yep, the physical world can influence our dreams. For instance, say..., if I dunk you with a bucket of water while you are in a dream, you may recount your experience in your dream as :
It must be noted that dreams can be influenced by the physical world only in REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). And gravity, as shown in the movie, is a similar phenomena. Some impossible real-life objects such as the penrose stairs, as portrayed in the movie, can exist in dreams. However, the dream has to obey some basic real-life Physics : Jeff Warren, writer and producer, writes, "Without sensory input, consciousness appears to behave in predictable ways. Informal laws can be deduced, for example, the "law of self-fulfilling expectations" (what you expect to happen will happen) the "law of narrative momentum" (linger too long in one place and the dream world begins to fray)."
The dream-world in Inception 'frays' when external influences from the physical world intrude.
How to get back to reality ?
In a single-layer dream, you can get back by killing yourself in the dream. But, in a multi-layered stable dream, which includes the use of a powerful version of Somnacin, killing yourself in the dreamwill get you to Limbo, a deep blank subconscious that will trap you and burn your mind out. To get out of a multi-layered dream, you need to set up a synchronized system of 'kicks'. I won't go deep into that but in reality 'kicks' are real life Hypnic Jerks. Most of us would have had dreams where we fall down from stairs, or trip on our legs, and then wake up to find our muscles tightly contracted. Well, this is basically a Hypnic jerk. In the movie Hypnic Jerks are administered from inside out, i.e., from the dream to the reality although it is also possible vice-versa.
Can I know that I am dreaming ?
Good news here for video-gamers because their keen focus at a single task enables them to Lucid Dreaming. It is a type of dreaming where you can ask yourself : "Hey boy, am I dreaming" and get an 'Yes' for an answer. Inception is roughly based on this. But Inception showed tasks like reading can be carried out in dreams, which, in fact is not possible.
Subjective Time in Dreams
In Inception, dream time runs much slower than real time, and there is a scaling effect, such that if you dream within a dream, time passes even more slowly. So 5 minutes of real time equals 1 hour of dream time, a 5-minute dream inside a dream equals one week of second-level dream time, and so on. But, what happens when our Brain forgets Time and creates an illusion. So, time travel in Dreams. Possible, but, little evidence for time scaling as in Inception.
The last thing on Inception is planting an idea. Although its hardly possible, researchers have been able to plant false memories by the use of suggesting questions, and, believe me guys, I have already tried it on my cousin.
Ok. The conclusion is that Inception won't be possible anytime soon.
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