Christopher Nolans "Interstellar" movie shines new light on black holes.

[Frank_G]

Well it seems, science fiction is back to what it is meant to be.

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/22292/1/sci-fi-film-interstellar-leads-to-new-scientific-discovery

[rtxoff]

nice one, nice render work, one more reason to go and watch interstellar

[Helix935]

read that on wired (yes i know) a few days ago and i was impressed too

[sp1989]

The question is how long will it take for someone to make a Mod for the ship in the movie. And will it be integrated into the Interstellar Mod?

[Nibb31]

There is already a thread here.

Edited October 26, 2014 by Nibb31

[lajoswinkler]

Yeah, there's already a thread, this should go there.

On the topic of black holes - I'm not exactly sure what's new here. We knew they bend light so that around its edges you can see the whole universe.

[CalculusWarrior]

That's really cool; I'm glad they are trying to stay grounded in reality for the visual effects.

[sp1989]

Yeah, there's already a thread, this should go there.

On the topic of black holes - I'm not exactly sure what's new here. We knew they bend light so that around its edges you can see the whole universe.

Im sure someone will correct me if i am wrong. But I think what is so cool about it, is that because of the equations and the rendering computer, the black hole in Interstellar is the most realistic rendering of a Black Hole ever seen. We don't know what a Black Hole actually looks like, but now because of hollywood we do. I think the overarching point is that it took the funding for a movie to get the a job done and I am sure scientists have been wanting to render what they think a Black Hole looks like for years. The problem is funding, and that our priorities are in making movies about exploring black holes instead of actually exploring black holes.

[ZedNova]

Sounds cool, but didn't they already know what black holes "Look like".

[sp1989]

Sounds cool, but didn't they already know what black holes "Look like".

Scientists have ideas of what black holes like. There have been renderings of black holes look like, but they have always been kinda sci fi looking or just a black hole in the middle of the picture. The point of the article is that using what I assume is a computer that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars they have created an image of black hole that should be, if not exactly resemble what a black hole looks like.

What everyone thinks of when they hear black hole

What a really expensive computer and a team of graphic artists can do with Hollywood funding

[lajoswinkler]

Nope, this is what people think a black hole looks like.

A two dimensional hole.

[Kryten]

That's a reasonably accurate picture of a black hole with an accretion disc. The difference is one of scale, not accuracy.

[YNM]

So... They run a model of a black hole and how lights around it would be bent ? That's fairly cool.

[Aningaaq]

I'll wait until he publishes the two papers until I believe that this is accurate.

[How2FoldSoup]

I'll wait until he publishes the two papers until I believe that this is accurate.

I looked at the equations and they seemed legit

take it from me! I'm an undergrad!

In all seriousness - what the article says is that this is the first time we've been able to model a blackhole and a wormhole how we would see it with our eyes. If we could travel to the center of our galaxy and look at the black hole you would see what their team has rendered. There have been attempts but none have been as scientifically accurate at this. Also, I think this topic deserves it's own thread because it's specifically about the movie realistically modeling black holes which is a scientific discussion and, not about the movie itself

[Aningaaq]

I looked at the equations and they seemed legit

take it from me! I'm an undergrad!

In all seriousness - what the article says is that this is the first time we've been able to model a blackhole and a wormhole how we would see it with our eyes. If we could travel to the center of our galaxy and look at the black hole you would see what their team has rendered. There have been attempts but none have been as scientifically accurate at this. Also, I think this topic deserves it's own thread because it's specifically about the movie realistically modeling black holes which is a scientific discussion and, not about the movie itself

Sorry, I'm still skeptical. Especially when this article was published 1 week before the movie comes out. How do you know its accurate other than these short articles. I must be missing important information other than this guy saying "trust me".

[YNM]

I looked at the equations and they seemed legit

take it from me! I'm an undergrad!

In all seriousness - what the article says is that this is the first time we've been able to model a blackhole and a wormhole how we would see it with our eyes. If we could travel to the center of our galaxy and look at the black hole you would see what their team has rendered. There have been attempts but none have been as scientifically accurate at this. Also, I think this topic deserves it's own thread because it's specifically about the movie realistically modeling black holes which is a scientific discussion and, not about the movie itself

Sorry, I'm still skeptical. Especially when this article was published 1 week before the movie comes out. How do you know its accurate other than these short articles. I must be missing important information other than this guy saying "trust me".

Yeah, looks like I haven't updated things a lot...

Some of my concerns through is regarding the black hole. It's a stellar-mass one from what I saw in the trailer, so most likely not all black holes looks like that.

[How2FoldSoup]

Sorry, I'm still skeptical. Especially when this article was published 1 week before the movie comes out. How do you know its accurate other than these short articles. I must be missing important information other than this guy saying "trust me".

You know, you've got a point. I took it on the fact that Kip Thorne said it who is an esteemed astrophysicist but I am also waiting for the papers to see exactly what they have to say. I happen to be super excited about the movie and the fanboy in me refused to be as skeptical as I should be.

[Aningaaq]

You know, you've got a point. I took it on the fact that Kip Thorne said it who is an esteemed astrophysicist but I am also waiting for the papers to see exactly what they have to say. I happen to be super excited about the movie and the fanboy in me refused to be as skeptical as I should be.

Well, I just had to speak for myself. I imagine you may understand this more than myself. I study geophysics and other irrelevant fields. Maybe you are capable of seeing the potential accuracy here when I might not. I really look forward to the papers as well. I imagine this will be a very discussed topic soon. Maybe it will inspire other big budget sci-fictions to participate in simulations like this.

Can't wait for the movie either! Interstellar Nov 7th...Philae landing on the 12th. It looks like November is going to be one heck of a month!

[K^2]

It's pretty accurate. I mean, I haven't gone through the numbers, but gravitational lensing isn't a terribly complex problem. They just happened to run it through actual ray tracing with other stuff floating about, rather than do a simple deflection angle against a fixed background image, as people have been doing before. There is no reason to think that it's not accurate.

That's a reasonably accurate picture of a black hole with an accretion disc. The difference is one of scale, not accuracy.

The disk only gets brighter as you get closer to the event horizon. If this was just matter of scale, we wouldn't see a black disk in the center. And if that black disk represents extents of event horizon, gravitational lensing should be quite apparent.

[-Velocity-]

Yeah, there's already a thread, this should go there.

On the topic of black holes - I'm not exactly sure what's new here. We knew they bend light so that around its edges you can see the whole universe.

Yup, I remember reading a some time ago (five years?) that, even if you view the black hole near edge-on, you can see both sides of the accretion disk due to the warping of space. I think it was while reading a discussion on how they are trying to use very long baseline radio interferometry to image the event horizon of our galaxy's central black hole (the bright inner edge of the accretion disk allows us to view the "shadow" of the event horizon). It should appear like a doughnut no matter what angle we view it from due to to this effect.

So yea, I'm not sure what's new here.

Speaking of very long baseline radio interferometry, from what I remember, they should supposedly have achieved the resolution necessary to image the event-horizon-hole caused by our galaxy's supermassive black hole by about now, I think. I wonder how the effort is going?

An interesting tidbit I remember reading is that after the event horizon of our galaxy's supermassive black hole, the second most angularly large event horizon in the sky is the 4 billion solar mass monster at the heart of M87. It's something like 50 million light-years away, but it is 1000 times more massive than our black hole, so its event horizon is HUGE.

[How2FoldSoup]

Well, I just had to speak for myself. I imagine you may understand this more than myself. I study geophysics and other irrelevant fields. Maybe you are capable of seeing the potential accuracy here when I might not. I really look forward to the papers as well. I imagine this will be a very discussed topic soon. Maybe it will inspire other big budget sci-fictions to participate in simulations like this.

Can't wait for the movie either! Interstellar Nov 7th...Philae landing on the 12th. It looks like November is going to be one heck of a month!

Me neither! My birthday is in November too so I have to agree with you! Except getting older is now more of a sad thing than a happy day.

I'm working towards a degree in physics so I have an understanding, to an extent, of what should be happening and what he says should be going on. That being said, I am no expert. However, What he says makes sense in my head that this could possibly be quite accurate. Our universe behaves very strangely in areas of intense warping of spacetime. I have personally never worked on general relativity equations, especially concering light around a blackhole which is exactly why I'll say I'm no expert. From what I hear, the topic is mainly grad school courses in the first place. Looking at the modeling, I can see how the light from surrounding stars and the accretion disk can be warped around the blackhole and it feels conceptually(from my understanding) correct. I'll end with saying that feeling has no place in science and neither are papers, but the words of an expert on the topic will hold greater weight than my feelings and they should.

[Razorcane]

It's incredible that they hired an astrophysicist to help get this movie right. Christopher Nolan has always been a good director, but going the extra mile is what turns a great movie into a masterpiece. If only Alfonso Cuaron had hired an expert for Gravity, it might have been a decent movie. Actually, if he had hired an expert, there would have been no movie, since the whole premise for the film wouldn't exist (I'm referring to what happens near the beginning of the movie).

[Geneborg]

It's incredible that they hired an astrophysicist to help get this movie right.

Don't overthink this, its not incredible, its done all the time, sientific advisors are standard in scifi movies. The problem is that most "suggestions" from experts get thrown out because "artistic license" is more important to most directors, or the script just NEEDS something to happen...screw physics. Its entertainment after all.

Seth Shostak for example did it for the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (he wrote the equation on the board from the scientist, the father of the girl) and explained extensively on his podcast how something like this works, why its frustrating when nobody listens and how he accepted that most of the script is just fiction and everything has to bow to it.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Geneborg

[-Velocity-]

What is important in today's movies is more often just effects and eye candy more than an intelligent plot. IRL, black holes look so awesome that they probably just didn't feel the need to soup them up with fake effects.