
Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in the Movie Interstellar (2015) - techrich
https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03808
======
moh_maya
An interview with Kip Thorne [1] (who recently won the Nobel Prize for physics
[2]) on the science in the movie and a book about the science in the movie
that he has written [3]

And a slightly breathless account of how working on developing the visuals for
the film drove development of new code and led to new insights [4]

Needless to say, I'm a fan of the film.. :D

[1] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/parsing-
th...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/parsing-the-science-
of-interstellar-with-physicist-kip-thorne/)

[2]
[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/20...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html)

[3]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar)

[4] [https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-
blac...](https://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/)

~~~
southern_cross
Someone admitted later than there was actually little or nothing "new" here -
maybe a somewhat slicker and more cinematic visualization of expected effects
around a black hole, but correct visualizations had already been done before.
So the "papers" that came out of this were probably largely just a waste of
ink.

I was quite disappointed in the movie myself. It claimed to be quite "sciency"
but it was mostly just science fiction, IMO. I kind of liked the robots,
though.

~~~
hyder_m29
How could it not be science fiction if it's set in the future?

~~~
garmaine
"Science fiction" admits a wide variety of classifications. Interstellar is
clearly science fiction so I don't like the grand parent's wording (I also
don't like yours: what does 'science' have to do with being in the future?).

But trying to generously interpret the GP's and your comment, Interstellar was
heavily promoted, and portrays itself as an _accurate_ representation of a
potential future, with correct physics and details rigorously fact checked,
etc., a sub-category called "hard science ficiton." In reality there are
numerous flaws in its physics, too many to count really. These aren't nits
either--the most ridiculous physics-defying nonsense is in fact fundamental to
the plot.

That's only the beginning of the problems. Interstellar was a terrible movie
all-around, with plot holes you could fly a starship through. But it is why I
think someone might say "It's not [the type of] science fiction [it claims to
be]".

~~~
tialaramex
Science Fiction (sometimes "Speculative Fiction") asks "What if?" questions.
One common formula for the question is, "What if ... in the future X?" but the
"alternate history" sub-genre asks questions like "What if Germany had won in
WW2?" and some asks about alternatives to the present.

When we tell stories that don't ask a "What if?" but are just set in space
without asking too many awkward questions about how space works, like Star
Wars, that's just called Space Opera.

In Hard SF it's inevitable that some of the specifics will be wrong. For
example Greg Egan's "Schild's Ladder" relies on a completely fictional set of
fundamental physics theorems concerning a "graph theory" for quantum state. In
the story one element of this theorem is wrong, but of course in reality the
whole theory is made up. What matters, as in most of fiction, is
verisimilitude, not truth, but _plausibility_. The fictional "quantum graph
theory" feels like something that theoretical fundamental physics might come
up with, the proposed experiment to verify it has the sort of "If we're wrong
we might all die, but we aren't wrong" vibe of many real experiments like the
first test explosions of a nuclear bomb or the LHC.

Sometimes a piece of fiction might seem like bad SF but it actually wasn't
intended as SF at all. Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" is like that. It's
astonishing to me that this was put forward for SF awards. If you assume that
whatever has been done/ will be done with these children makes sense, and are
on board with the story on that basis, finding out what's really going on is a
huge disappointment. But if you go into this knowing Ishiguro has no interest
whatever in medical ethics, genetics, cloning etcetera, then you can embrace
it as a metaphor about mortality (We are unable to truly accept our own
inevitable death, it's explained to us but it never really sinks in, even when
we see others die we always believe we're special) and it works fine.

Yes, Interstellar is a mess. It's a spectacle, I'll give it that, but well,
"full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". It has at least 50% more Hans
Zimmer than it needed, the plot has vast holes left in it for no apparent
reason, and the larger story seems a bit aimless and underwhelming considering
the setting.

------
evo_9
Here is a video that covers this as well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR4U3h5wSxg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR4U3h5wSxg)

~~~
rapnie
for some explanation in layman's terms see:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pAnRKD4raY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pAnRKD4raY)

------
techrich
The correct title that didnt fit!

Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and in the
Movie Interstellar

------
dreamcompiler
Part of the reason I love this movie is that Kip Thorne was a technical
advisor. And as this paper shows, some new science resulted from the movie-
making process.

~~~
nieve
Thorne's teaching abilities really get ignored. He used to TA a session of
first year physics at Caltech every year and he was amazing when I had him. To
teach accelerating frames of he clambered onto a table, saying "Define a frame
of reference centered on the tip of my nose", then tossed it gently forward as
he stepped off. It was a perfectly intuitive demonstration and he got us to
laugh in the process.

~~~
jsweojtj
he gently tossed the tip of his nose?

~~~
andrewflnr
Maybe he tossed the table.

~~~
nieve
That was missing an eraser.

------
duxup
Related question.

Could a habitable planet exist in orbit around black hole? At least habitable
as far as humans go? I didn't think there was another star that those planets
had to feed them light and energy, and could they get enough light and energy,
keep an atmosphere, and etc in orbit around a black hole?

~~~
moh_maya
[1] suggests, even if it were possible for life to exist on such a planet, it
may not be conducive for a civilization such as ours..

[1] [https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19032/how-life-
could...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19032/how-life-could-
survive-in-a-planet-orbiting-a-black-hole/)

~~~
duxup
Thank you. That made a lot more sense than I thought the movie did. At least
in my layman's brain, it didn't make sense that you could get enough energy
from a black hole and at the same time ... survive as a habitable planet, at
least not one we'd recognize / could use for long.

------
khazhou
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdJRjihJpCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdJRjihJpCs)

(longer version of the one posted by evo_9)

------
sova
Incredible. Thanks a lot for making one of the most moving films I've ever
witnessed, and being true to the science as we know it best in 2015 <3

------
lolptdr
Can anyone recommend books/videos/lectures/courses that give insight or go
beyond the astrophysics in Interstellar?

~~~
tbabb
_Black Holes and Time Warps_ , by Kip Thorne himself:
[https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-
Commonwealth/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Holes-Time-Warps-
Commonwealth/dp/0393312763)

------
jacobsenscott
That movie has certain black-hole like properties I guess. For example when
you are stuck in the theater watching it it feels like you've been there for
30 hours. But you come out and it has only been 3 hours.

