Visual aids are highly effective as teaching tools. Scientists are in agreement that for science classes tackling the physics of space, the movie Interstellar would be a great choice.
What sets the film apart from all the other movies that have portrayed space travel? It got its science right. Interstellar did such a magnificent job staying true to the science of wormholes that experts have published papers about it, one of which is in the American Journal of Physics.
According to Dr. David Jackson, who printed the paper in AJP, the physics portrayed in Interstellar have been reviewed carefully by experts and were deemed accurate. Officially publishing a paper pointing out the accuracy of the film will hopefully encourage teachers in physics classes to show the film to their students and help them relay ideas about general relativity better.
Christopher Nolan, the movie's director, appreciates the commendation, saying that Interstellar was made in hopes of inspiring another generation "to look to the stars again."
"By dramatizing science and making it ... entertaining for kids, we might inspire some of the astronauts of tomorrow," he added.
To make the movie's science as realistic as possible, Nolan teamed up with Kip Thorne, a theoretical physics professor from the California Institute of Technology. Their partnership worked because the two were on the same page about producing a sci-fi movie with real science integrated into the story.
Thorne recounted that he had worked with a number of scientists before who got involved in their fields because of movies similar to Interstellar. As such, if a film was going to be used to attract youth to science, it had better be scientifically accurate.
In the movie particular attention was placed on representing a super-massive black hole and a wormhole that connects the solar system to a different galaxy. Double Negative, Interstellar's visual effects company, achieved the realistic portrayals by developing a new software suite that allowed for light rays traveling across warped space around a black hole to be calculated. High-resolution images were then produced, resulting in intricate filigree patterns never before seen.
Nolan said scientific accuracy played a part in helping him become a better storyteller for Interstellar. At the same time, he added that it is no longer an option to get science wrong in movies today, what with easy access to information allowing audiences to verify for themselves the things presented in a film.
