Interstellar's Gargantua: pre Hollywood

[Nertea]

The gravitational lensing paper about rendering a black hole that Kip Thorne and co mentioned was in the pipe has been published. It's pretty involved (and interesting), and includes some renders on how the simulations turned out before the renderings were modified to make them more comprehensible to Interstellar's viewers.

Article in New Scientist has a good summary, and the paper is here, it has a few more images in it.

[Bill Phil]

Why would it not be like a cloud? Why does it break down into two planes?

[lajoswinkler]

Why would it not be like a cloud? Why does it break down into two planes?

Because that's the accretion disc.

[Mr Shifty]

Why would it not be like a cloud? Why does it break down into two planes?

Presumably, and I haven't read the paper so I don't know for sure, the disk is there because the black hole is spinning. The other plane is actually a visual artifact due to gravitational lensing.

[-Velocity-]

Presumably, and I haven't read the paper so I don't know for sure, the disk is there because the black hole is spinning. The other plane is actually a visual artifact due to gravitational lensing.

There ought to be a disk even if the black hole wasn't spinning due to conservation of angular momentum.