elements of science fiction is central to the film, Carruth's goal was to portray scientific discovery in a down-to-earth and realistic manner. He notes that many of the greatest breakthrough scientific discoveries in history have occurred by accident, in locations no more glamorous than Aaron's garage. Whether it involved the history of the number zero or the invention of the transistor, two things stood out to me. First is that the discovery that turns out to be the most valuable is usually dismissed as a side-effect. Second is that prototypes almost never include neon lights and chrome. I wanted to see a story play out that was more in line with the way real innovation takes place than I had seen on film before. Carruth has said he intended the central theme of the film to be the breakdown of Abe and Aaron's relationship, as a result of their inability to cope with the power afforded them by this technological advancement: First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never had any reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by it. The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking about the ethics of altering your former self. Physics and science Aaron and Abe start the film by attempting to create a device to somehow counter the effects of gravity. They have plans for such a device from another development team, but wish to improve on the viability of the design. Their main approach to achieve this is to discard the coolant bath for the required superconductors. They instead increase the transition temperature of the superconductor to "something more usable", a room-temperature superconductor. The time machine makes use of the property of superconductors called the Meissner effect, which "knock[s] out the interior magnetic field". Aaron and Abe require palladium to build their machine. This is the reason they take the catalytic converter containing a small amount of palladium from a car. The principles of time travel in the film are inspired by Feynman diagrams. Carruth explained: "Richard Feynman has some interesting ideas about time. When you look at Feynman diagrams [which map the interaction of elementary particles], there's really no difference between watching an interaction happen forward and backward in time." Production While writing the script, Carruth studied physics to help him make