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Why is Tenet connected with physics?

• Tenet deals with time inversion. Christopher Nolan’s quote about it:

“[Tenet] deals with time and the different ways in which time can function. Not to
get into a physics lesson, but inversion is this idea of material that has had its
entropy inverted, so it’s running backwards through time, relative to us.”

• Nolan’s brief explanation is built on the general physics concept of population inversion. Population inversion is
the redistribution of atomic energy levels that takes place in a system so laser action can occur.

• There is a system of atoms maintaining an equilibrium with more

atoms in low energy states than high ones. However, if there is
energy pushed into the system, the population of atoms in the
higher energy state will become greater than those in the low
energy state. In Tenet, time would be the system. Entropy, a
thermodynamic quantity that represents a degree of disorder or
randomness in a system, is the measure of the energy within this
time system that is generally not available to be used or
controlled.
Why is Tenet connected to physics?
• The guy who is speaking to Protagonist at the beginning says the inputs may put you in some places that you want to be
and other places you may not want to be. So, you can’t look at time as a straight line—it’s a function that has inputs and
variables…and you could end up in times and places that are either advantageous or not advantageous while trying to
find the specific variables you are looking for.”
• Why Protagonist appears to be blurry at times? He is in a state of flux, just like the atoms in population
inversion.
Murphy’s law
Tenet is pretty much the embodiment of
Murphy’s Law.
“Murphy’s Law is basically a law of
nature that says that anything that can go
wrong, will go wrong. You would play the
law of averages of trying to get as close to
the specific set of data that will put you
where you want to go.”
Mirrored World hypothesis
Tenet takes place in a mirror world or universe. Unlike a
parallel universe where everything moves in the same
general direction with maybe some variation, a mirror
universe directly reflects that world.
Maybe Protagonist (and Tenet) are experiencing the world
from a different side of the mirror than what we are
seeing as the viewer. And if they can access both sides,
they can cause some manipulation on the side that seems
to move forward to prevent the other side from
transpiring.
The word “tenet” itself is a palindrome—a word that is
spelled the same way backwards and forwards. If you
split it in half, it is indeed a mirror.  In Tenet, things can
appear to be going forward or backwards depending on
what side of the mirror you are on.
Time inversion
Thanks to technology sent back from the future - including turnstiles that invert or correct objects relative to the
flow of time - anything or person can be inverted, having their entropy reversed, which, according to the second
law of thermodynamics, (as time moves forward, entropy can never decrease) is impossible.
An inverted object or person appears to be moving backwards to someone whose entropy remains constant. Time
itself cannot be turned back, but rather inverted objects and individuals travel against it rather than with it, like
they're walking up-stream against the current.
Thanks for attention!