Christopher Nolan, director of the upcoming sci-fi movie "Interstellar", did not disappoint scientists with his depiction of a black hole. It may seem surprising that a big budget sci-fi movie got most of the facts right, but "Interstellar" had a ton of support to do so, including famous theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who was an executive producer on the film.
Thorne is hyping this as the most scientifically-accurate depiction of a black hole ever to appear in a movie.
"Neither wormholes or black holes have been depicted in any Hollywood movie in the way they actually would appear. This is the first time that the depiction (of a black hole) began with Einstein's general relativity equations," Thorne said.
Producers worked closely with Thorne to create a realistic visual depiction of an actual black hole. It took a team of 30 people working at Double Negative to get the visual effects of this movie just right, and what they created is truly spectacular.
The concept of the movie is inspired by talks Thorne had with Lynda Obst, one of the producers of the movie. The script is written by Jonathan "Jonah" Nolan, brother of the director Christopher Nolan. Jonathan Nolan also wrote the short story that inspired the 2000 film "Memento."
"The story is now essentially all Chris and Jonah's. But the spirit of it, the goal of having a movie in which science is embedded in the fabric from the beginning - and it's great science - that was preserved," Thorne said.
Thorne also suggested the idea of using wormholes in this movie so characters could travel to other stars relatively quickly. Jonathan Nolan's script also needed characters experiencing time at different speeds. For that, Thorne suggested a black hole that was moving at almost the speed of light. In the movie, that became a black hole named Gargantua. Christopher Nolan had Paul Franklin, the lead visual designer of the movie, work directly with Thorne to imagine how this black hole would look.
The stunning visual effect isn't the only good thing to come out of Thorne's conversations with Franklin. Thorne said that he learned new things about black holes by working on this, and that he is planning to write several papers about the discoveries he made about gravitational lensing in rapidly spinning black holes.
"Interstellar" will be in theaters everywhere on November 7.
