Kip Thorne looks into the black hole he helped create and thinks, “Why, of course. Thats what it would do.” ¶ This particular black hole is a simulation of unprecedented accuracy. It appears to spin at nearly the speed of light, dragging bits of the universe along with it. (Thats gravity for you; relativity is superweird.) In theory it was once a star, but instead of fading or exploding, it collapsed like a failed soufflé into a tiny point of inescapable singularity. A glowing ring orbiting the spheroidal maelstrom seems to curve over the top and below the bottom simultaneously. All this is only natural, because weird things happen near black holes. For example, their gravity is so strong that they bend the fabric of the universe. Einstein explained this: The more massive something is, the more gravity it produces. Objects like stars and black holes do this so powerfully that they actually bend light and pull space and time with it. And it gets weirder: If you were closer to a black hole than I was, our perceptions of space and time would diverge. Relatively speaking, time would seem to be going faster for me. What does Thorne see in there? Hes an astrophysicist; his math guided the creation of this mesmerizing visual effect, the most accurate simulation ever of what a black hole would look like. Its the product of a year of work by 30 people and thousands of computers. And alongside a small galaxy of Hollywood stars—Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow—the simulation plays a central role in Interstellar, the prestige space travel epic directed by Christopher Nolan opening November 7. Thorne sees truth. Nolan, the consummate image maker, sees beauty. Black holes, even fictional ones, can warp perception. Thorne Isnt your average astrophysicist. Sure, hes a famous theorist, but even before his retirement from Caltech in 2009 he was deeply interested in explaining the heady ideas of relativity to the general public. Just before his retirement, Thorne and film producer Lynda Obst, whom hed known since Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date three decades earlier, were playing around with an idea for a movie that would involve the mysterious properties of black holes and wormholes. Before long, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct; screenwriter Jonathan “Jonah” Nolan wrote a script. Eventually Spielberg dropped out; Jonathans brother Chris—known for directing mind-bendy movies like Memento and Inception (plus Batman) dropped in. And while Chris Nolan was rewriting his brothers script, he wanted to get a handle on the science at the heart of his story. So he started meeting with Thorne. Over the course of a couple months in early 2013, Thorne and Nolan delved into what the physicist calls “the warped side of the universe”—curved spacetime, holes in the fabric of reality, how gravity bends light. “The story is now essentially all Chris and Jonahs,” Thorne says. “But the spirit of it, the goal of having a movie in which science is embedded in the fabric from the beginning—and its great science—that was preserved.” wired/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 02:13:44 +0000
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