Many people have heard of the black hole. They are some of the most fascinating and dangerous anomalies in the universe, and they make for some great sci-fi scenes. So what exactly is a black hole? A black hole typically is formed from the collapse of a star. When the gravity a star creates exceeds its ability to stay formed in three dimensional space, the star essentially implodes into a greedy abyss of gravity. Once the star is pulled in, the mass of the black hole is increased and therefore the gravity is increased. At this point the black hole will continue to strengthen. So in simpler terms, a black hole is a supermassive anomaly in the universe that uses its immense gravity to eternally pull more and more into it. The gravity of a black hole can get so strong that light itself cannot even escape it. This is why they are dubbed black holes. To put this strength into perspective, the Earth is being warped and manipulated by black holes that are over 1.3 billion light years away! Black holes are some seriously dangerous and strong forces in the universe.

Now that you understand what a black hole is, we can look into the first-ever accurately rendered black hole, found in the movie Interstellar. Interstellar is my personal favorite sci-fi movie and it’s black hole scene is one of the most scientifically accurate scenes in movie history, as well as one of the most renowned scenes in sci-fi history. The producers of Interstellar wanted a scene that was scientifically accurate. To achieve this, the producers gathered a team of astrophysicists. The astrophysicists were tasked with using the equations of a black hole to derive visual equations for a black hole. With these new equations, the producers input the equations into a supercomputer to be rendered by video effects software. Each scene was so complex that it took roughly 100 hours to render. When the final product was complete, the producers had a never seen before look at a black hole, but it didn’t look like they had expected.

The scene was so scientifically accurate that the scientists were unable to comprehend beforehand what the black hole actually should have looked like. What they saw was a massive black hole with intersecting rings around the perimeter. Science had always concluded that there should be one ring around the black hole like Saturn or the Andromeda galaxy, and they didn’t know why. After some more research and mathematical exploration, the scientists learned that the black hole actually bent the light passing by it, so when looking at the black hole, you were seeing all of the way around it! The discoveries of the black hole scene in Interstellar were so accurate that scientific papers were actually written after it. One paper was written about gravitational scattering and the reason why the light bends around the black hole, and the other was written for the VFX community on astronomical renderings. 

It is crazy to see how a sci-fi movie can better show and render black holes than even the best scientists can!