Primer (film) - Physics and Science

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 drop the coolant bath for the required superconductors. They instead increase the transition temperature of the superconductor to "something more usable" by "knock out the interior magnetic field." The machine operates on the principles of the Meissner effect. The characters allude to this as they design the machine.
• Aaron and Abe require palladium to build their machine. This is the reason they take the catalytic converter from a car (catalytic converters contain small amounts of palladium).
• 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, there's really no difference between watching an interaction happen forward and backward in time."