Science: Gargantua in Interstellar

Gargantua, the black hole, io9

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Interstellar, the film, captured the imagination of many viewers, myself included. One of the main plot elements is Gargantua, a black hole. Since none of us has seen a black hole up close (it's not like you can go for a drive and snap a photo of one), we're at the mercy of illustrators to visualize them for us.

According to io9, Interstellar's director, Christopher Nolan, and science adviser, Kip Thorne, worked closely to depict a black hole as accurately as possible, considering the medium and the audience. The image above is one result of their collaboration. The article at io9, The Truth Behind Interstellar's "Scientifically Accurate" Black Hole, is an interesting read about this topic. Some of the comments are a hoot. Thorne, a Caltech physicist, has written a book on The Science of Interstellar; it's available at Amazon.

There's an infographic on Interstellar at Science.com.

If you had some intellectual trouble with the depiction of space-time at the end, so did I. Here's a timeline chart that might help. To me and Arthur Stanley Eddington time is an arrow, pointing only one way. According to Einstein, relativistic time dilation is allowed.

-- Marge