- Thorne, Kip.
The Science of Interstellar.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.
ISBN 978-0-393-35137-8.
-
Christopher Nolan's 2014 film
Interstellar
was eagerly awaited by science fiction enthusiasts who,
having been sorely disappointed so many times by movies
that crossed the line into fantasy by making up entirely
implausible things to move the plot along, hoped that this
effort would live up to its promise of getting the science
(mostly) right and employing scientifically plausible
speculation where our present knowledge is incomplete.
The author of the present book is one of the most eminent
physicists working in the field of general relativity
(Einstein's theory of gravitation) and a pioneer in exploring
the exotic strong field regime of the theory, including
black holes, wormholes, and gravitational radiation.
Prof. Thorne was involved in the project which became
Interstellar from its inception, and worked
closely with the screenwriters, director, and visual effects
team to get the science right. Some of the scenes in the
movie, such as the visual appearance of orbiting a rotating
black hole, have never been rendered accurately before,
and are based upon original work by Thorne in computing light
paths through spacetime in its vicinity which will be published
as professional papers.
Here, the author recounts the often bumpy story of the movie's
genesis and progress over the years from his own, Hollywood-outsider,
perspective, how the development of the story presented him,
as technical advisor (he is credited as an executive producer),
with problem after problem in finding a physically plausible
solution, sometimes requiring him to do new physics. Then,
Thorne provides a popular account of the exotic physics on
which the story is based, including gravitational time dilation,
black holes, wormholes, and speculative extra dimensions and
“brane”
scenarios stemming from string theory.
Then he “interprets” the events and visual images in
the film, explaining (where possible) how they could be
produced by known, plausible, or speculative physics. Of course,
this isn't always possible—in some cases the needs of
story-telling or the requirement not to completely baffle a
non-specialist with bewilderingly complicated and obscure
images had to take priority over scientific authenticity,
and when this is the case Thorne is forthright in admitting so.
Sections are labelled with icons identifying them as
“truth”: generally accepted by those working in
the field and often with experimental evidence,
“educated guess”: a plausible inference from
accepted physics, but without experimental evidence and
assuming existing laws of physics remain valid in
circumstances under which we've never tested them, and
“speculation”: wild and wooly stuff (for example
quantum gravity or the interior structure of a black hole)
which violates no known law of physics, but for which we have
no complete and consistent theory and no evidence whatsoever.
This is a clearly written and gorgeously illustrated book which,
for those who enjoyed the movie but weren't entirely clear
whence some of the stunning images they saw came, will
explain the science behind them. The cover of the book has a
“SPOILER ALERT” warning potential readers that
the ending and major plot details are given away in the text.
I will refrain from discussing them here so as not to
make this a spoiler in itself. I have not yet seen the movie, and
I expect when I do I will enjoy it more for having read
the book, since I'll know what to look for in some of the
visuals and be less likely to dismiss some of the apparently
outrageous occurrences by knowing that there is a physically
plausible (albeit extremely speculative and improbable) explanation
for them.
For the animations and blackboard images mentioned in the text,
the book directs you to a Web site which is so poorly designed
and difficult to navigate it took me ten minutes to find them on
the first visit. Here is a
direct link.
In the
Kindle edition
the index cites page numbers in the print edition which are
useless since the electronic edition does not contain real
page numbers. There are a few typographical errors and
one factual howler:
Io
is not “Saturn's closest moon”, and
Cassini
was captured in Saturn orbit by a
propulsion burn, not a gravitational slingshot (this does not
affect the movie in any way: it's in background material).
December 2014 