in Interstellar the crew lands on the water planet ,right, but how can there be such huge waves with no water seen rushing to “feed” them?

Question

How do they have 1.2km high waves but the level of the water is beneath their knees and no water is seen to be moving at all?

In: 3

Answer 1

In real life when a tsunami happens, the tide (even if at full high tide) will generally dissipate very fast. So much so that people who don’t realize a tsunami is coming will actually go closer to the beach sometimes to look at the beach bed because it can be completely exposed. This is of course very dangerous.

But back to your question, my assumption is in the movie the giant wave is happening because of the gravitational force and the reason it’s so shallow is because much of the water is already in the formed wave.

Think about your bath tub. If you were in the bath and you could magically “shape” the water as if it was a slightly more solid substance. If you created a wave at one side of the tub the water level would shrink a great amount at the other side making it quite shallow.