Why a Physicist Is the Protagonist in Arrival ?

Abstract

Arrival, a film in 2016, is based on a short story by Ted Chiang in which two main characters (a physicist and a linguist) decipher an alien language Heptapod-B. Heptapod-B is composed of ring images similar to the Einstein Ring. Based on this observation, I will discuss why the knowledge of modern physics, including General Relativity, is crucial for understanding the movie.