Line #7 Headscratchers/Sphere


1	* So, they became reality warpers, but their human minds weren't ready for such power. Couldn't they just wish themselves into being able to hold such power?
2	** Except that's not how the Sphere works. All it does is unlock a part of the human mind and abilities that people already have, but can't normally access. The Sphere isn't so much a LiteralGenie as a key, and that still leaves the problem of their minds not being able to handle it just because of the way they're built.
3	** Short version is that they can't do ''anything'', just almost. Therefore they couldn't improve their own levels of comprehension.
4	** It's also a matter of responsibility. Even if they could control the powers, they'd be the only three people in the world with omnipotence. That would completely destabilize life on Earth as we know it. It might be cool in the short term, but it could certainly turn into a nightmare of epic proportions. Our conscious feelings can manifest things just as if not more horrific as our subconscious can. Worse, what would happen if everybody in the world wanted a crack at the Sphere, or the military tried to weaponize it?
5	*** It would be easy for someone with the Power to kill the others, erase all record of the sphere, block access, and then conquer the world and rule as GodEmperor. It's honestly amazing none of them did that ''by accident'' with a stray thought right after they all realized what was happening; just a slight twinge of ambition would do it.
6	* If the letters J and E were mistakenly substituted for H and A in the cipher, why was Harry the only word affected in the translation instead of every word containing those letters?
7	** I think the implication was that he mistranslated it ''deliberately'' and just changed those letters to avoid implicating himself, since he figured out what was going on since he'd been in the Sphere by that point. That or the time in the Sphere made him forget and he simply didn't want to acknowledge that it was really him so he subconsciously changed it.
8	*** The way the code works is shown, every two number combination gets translated as a single letter. If A and E were switched around in one place, they would have been switched around in all places, not just in one specific word. This means that "Stop calling me Jerry" would actually appear on screen as "Stop celling ma Harry!" (Unless of course the character managed to sneak in a subroutine for replacing every "Harry" with "Jerry" and the reverse but only when communicating in the opposite direction within a few seconds while everyone was watching.)
9	** They didn't bother going through the cypher with words that had already been used. They saw the code for "Jerry" (actually "Harry") enough times that they just recognized the original, pre-decyphering word as "Jerry."
10	*** In the film at least, this isn't the case. The translation is completely automated by the computer.
11	*** Except Harry is doing the translation, and ''he entered the sphere''. His ''mind'' changed the letters.
12	* At one point in the film, Dustin Hoffman's character was forced to leave the lab and go into the water without a suit. Beth warns him he'll freeze. Wouldn't the pressure of the water down there be enough to crush him?
13	** No. It was already explained during their briefing that you could go out into the water and be perfectly fine. The pressure won't kill you - the cold will.
14	** Specifically, they'd already been acclimated to the pressure (and why when they go back up they need to be in a decompression chamber) so you'd only get crushed if your body hadn't already adjusted to the outside pressure. So he was fine.
15	** A lot of the technology shown in the movie actually uses this. The characters can dive out of a simple opening in the floor of their habitat because the air pressure is just as high as the water pressure, and the soft suits they use in the diving scenes would offer no protection from pressure whatsoever.
16	** [[note]]This is from not seeing the movie[[/note]] I would imagine that at a certain point, you'll be crushed by ''enough'' pressure, regardless of it being air or water. (Sort of an inverse of "explosive decompression") But, I (also) guess that if you're accustomed to the air pressure, then the water pressure wouldn't be a problem. Just, you know, moving around against the multi-atmospheric-pressure resistance.
17	* So Harry is convinced that they all die at the bottom of the sea because in the future, the encounter with the black hole that sent the spaceship back in time is listed as an "unknown entry event." Why does it never occur to him or Ted that perhaps it arrived from an alternate future parallel to the one they are living in? The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is a real scientific theory that was well-known even in 1998 during the time this movie is set, should have been one possibility brought up.
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Context Headscratchers / Sphere