THE SCIENCE OF ‘INTERSTELLAR’: BLACK HOLES,
WORMHOLES AND SPACE TRAVEL
Journey through a wormhole
“Interstellar” is set at some nebulous point in the
not-too-distant future, when global crop failures
threaten humanity with extinction. So a small band of
explorers, led by a pilot-turned-farmer named Cooper
(McConaughey), blasts off to search for an exoplanet
that could serve as a new home for the human race.
The astronauts are aided in their quest by a wormhole
— a sort of tunnel that allows relatively quick travel
between widely separated parts of the universe —
The sci-fi epic “Interstellar” is just a movie, but
it throws a lot of science on the screen for space
geeks to sink their teeth into.
“Interstellar,” which opened in theaters across
Turkey on Nov. 7 2014, delves into black holes and
wormholes, and it touches down on more than one
alien planet. The film apparently takes its science
seriously; renowned theoretical physicist Kip
Thorne served as an adviser and executive producer
on “Interstellar.”
Here’s a look at some of the space-science
concepts that play key roles in the film, which was
directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Matthew
McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain
and Michael Caine.
which had mysteriously appeared near Saturn some
years before. Cooper steers the pioneers’ ship, called
Endurance, through the wormhole into a planet-rich
portion of a faraway galaxy.
Though wormholes are a favored sci-fi trope, nobody
knows whether or not they actually exist. According
to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, they are
possible, but no sign of them has ever been spotted.
Furthermore, scientists say, a wormhole would
likely collapse quickly unless it was propped open
using some kind of negative-energy matter. So the
big wormhole in “Interstellar” would require some
serious and exotic engineering work — but I’ll stop
here, so I don’t give too much away about the film.
The “Interstellar” visual-effects team used
equations provided by Thorne to come up with
their representation of the wormhole, depicting its
THE CLAPPER 2014 - 2015
48