Believe me, I’m no science nerd; however, after watching Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, I became instantly fascinated with the beautiful mystery of outer space. In the film, Bradley Cooper is portrayed as a former space engineer and NASA pilot named Cooper. After enigmatically being given the coordinates to NASA’s secret headquarters, Cooper finds himself between a rock and a hard place when he has to decide whether to embark on an interstellar journey to find a new habitable planet for human kind or to remain on the dying Earth and become sitting ducks with his beloved daughter, Murphy (named after Murphy’s Law). Ultimately, Cooper bites the bullet and decides to pilot the “Endurance” along with three other brave astronauts, including famous actress, Anne Hathaway. I know what you’re thinking — “it’s a hollywood movie, and everyone knows that half the material in those things are complete B.S.” Although that statement may be true on most occasions, Interstellar acquired the services of renowned physicist Kip Thorne to help make the film as realistic and scientifically accurate as possible.
If you haven’t seen the movie and are wondering what the hell that picture is of, it is a representation of what a wormhole looks like. First thing’s first though…what is a wormhole? Dr. William Hiscock from Montana State University defines a wormhole as “a tunnel-like connection through space-time, much like the real tunnels bored by worms in a (Newtonian) apple.” In other words, instead of having to travel from point A to B in a straight line, space bends so that you can travel through both singularities and take a major shortcut.
Secondly, why is it circular? In Karl Tate’s web article, “The Science of ‘Interstellar’ Explained”, he points out that when “seen in person, a wormhole would be a sphere. A gravitationally distorted view of space on the other side can be seen on the sphere’s surface”, hence the transparency of the wormhole in the Interstellar picture. The magic about wormholes is that they not only possess the ability to connect two separate universes, but they allow for the possibility of time travel. Although we do not yet have the technology to stabilize and successfully travel through a wormhole, scientists continue to pursue the idea of interstellar travel by means of wormhole excavation.
In this second image, Cooper and two members of the crew are excavating a world made completely of water for signs of potential life. The only problem is, every hour spent on the water world is equivalent to SEVEN YEARS back on the Endurance ship which remained up in space…that’s relativity, folks. As ridiculous as this scene sounds, Albert Einstein proved that this phenomenon can actually happen! Einstein proved that there exists two types of relativity: general and special relativity. In Cooper’s situation, he would be experiencing general relativity. According to Einstein’s principles, general relativity means that time slows down in stronger gravitational fields. Unfortunately, after spending 3.3 hours on the extraneous planet, a catastrophic accident led to a death of a crew member and 24 years passing by.
At first glance, one might look at this image and think it’s a lighted up outline of Saturn; however, this is actually the most accurate representation of what a black hole looks like in reality constructed by Kip Thorne. According to the Caltech physicist, all matter that is attracted by the black hole’s immense gravitational pull first circulates around and over it’s “sphere”, giving it it’s glowing ring; this is called the “event horizon”. Once sucked inside, all matter compresses together because of unfathomable pressure and then releases a singularity streaming from the top and bottom of the black hole. In the movie, Cooper falls into a black hole and somehow falls into the 5th dimension (trippy!!!) and this is when the movie gets all fictitious.
Although the movie is considered fiction, Christopher Nolan did a tremendous job of incorporating real life science into a hollywood film. Not to mention, he grasped the attention of millions and peaked the curiosity of non-scientists around the world.
Sources for Pictures:
https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/111114_TimeCircle_Wormhole.jpg
https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/interstellar-wormhole.png
https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/47191081.cached.jpg
https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/wp-content/uploads/sites/29639/2015/09/dnews-files-2014-10-binterstellar-black-hole-670×440-141029-jpg.jpg