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

Science: the black hole conundrum

A high resolution mid-infrared picture taken of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals details about dust swirling into the black hole that dominates the region. - Image Credit: Dr. Mark Morris (UCLA) Keck II, Mirlen instrument, keckobservatory.org

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A number of different astronomers have stated that each galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. Or at the least, most galaxies, ours included. How can this be? Modern culture would have us believe black holes suck in all surrounding matter once it crosses the event horizon. A page about black holes at NASA Chats - Ask an expert says:

Black holes are really just the evolutionary end points of massive stars. 

Even more intriguing, but somehow reassuring, too.  The end of life may generate a new beginning. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness keeps coming to mind. An article at Cosmotography--A Singular Place--explores the relationship between a black hole and its surrounding galaxy.

Some interesting work observing the black hole called Sagittarius A*, at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is being done. A relatively new device for observation is NASA's NuSTAR (video posted by Teknociencia).

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Sgr A* is a research topic for astronomer James Lyke at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Recently he's captured some good information about the black hole, using several complementary technologies. Note in the video below, posted by the Science Channel, what it takes in terms of manpower and mechanical positioning to capture such information.

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You can track current news about Keck Observatory at this dedicated site.

-- Marge