Let’s start the math.

If you time 60 seconds of the track and count the ticks, you get 48 ticks. 60/48 = 1.25. That’s where you get the
time interval from. As we know, there are 3,600 seconds in an hour. They mention in the movie that every hour on the planet is
roughly 7 years in Earth time. 7 years is 221,000,000 seconds.
Take 221,000,000/3,600 and you get roughly 61,400 seconds that pass on Earth for every second spent on the water planet. Multiply
61,400 by 1.25 (the interval) and you get 77,000 seconds, or 21 hours.
Thus each tick is a whole day passing on Earth.
If you make the assumption that each tick is exactly 1 Earth day (86,400 Earth seconds) then an hour correlates to 7.88 years on
Earth. The extra .88 could be rounding errors by the crew.
As an extra tidbit: a time dilation factor of 61320 gives a tick interval of 1.409 seconds, and a tick interval of 1.25 seconds gives a
time dilation factor of 69120.
Edit: Also, credit to /u/baconarcher for the math and pointing this out in 2014. I found the OP on /r/interstellar and thought it was an
interesting tidbit and decided to share it since it wasn’t very well known.

That's so cool! Hans Zimmer likes to add ticking to his soundtracks, but the fact that they
managed to incorporate the soundtrack to reflect the plot in this realistic and literal way really
goes the extra mile.
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level 3
JohnnyTeaTears
758 points·9 months ago
I loved the stressful ticking in the Dunkirk soundtrack as well. Really puts you on edge.
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level 4
--Christ--
216 points·9 months ago
I was late getting to the theater to see Dunkirk so the screen I saw it on was small and the
sound wasn't too great but I will never forget the experience.
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level 5
JohnnyTeaTears
201 points·9 months ago
I honestly think it should have won Best Picture. I liked The Shape of Water, but Dunkirk was
easily the best film I saw last year.
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level 6
camcamwabam
85 points·9 months ago
Paddington 2 was the best movie I’m sorry