The Science of Interstellar

by Kip S. Thorne, Christopher Nolan

Interstellar, from acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan, takes us on a fantastic voyage far beyond our solar system. Yet in The Science of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, the physicist who assisted Nolan on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, shows us that the movie’s jaw-dropping events and stunning, never-before-attempted visuals are grounded in real science. Thorne shares his experiences working as the science adviser on the film and then moves on to the science itself. In chapters on wormholes, black holes, interstellar travel, and much more, Thorne’s scientific insights—many of them triggered during the actual scripting and shooting of Interstellar—describe the physical laws that govern our universe and the truly astounding phenomena that those laws make possible.


Interstellar and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s14).

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Space, Astronomy, Popular Science, Film

367 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 2015

About the author

Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist and writer known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.
A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and speaks of the astrophysical implications of the general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.

Reviews

[Alejandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing reading!


HOW CAN BE REAL THE SCIENCE ON INTERSTELLAR?

If you watched the film (that definitely I recommend to do before of reading this research book), you may wonder how they can explain some key details that it seemed to be kinda farfetched on the movie.

Since it does not matter how absurd it may be seemed some of the phenomena or technologies presented in the film, just think how the things were just 200 years ago...

...there were no telephones, televisions, cinema (where the three have also evolved since its conception), neither were airplanes, automobiles, space shuttles, computers, internet, x-rays, for not to say any control over electricity, which allowed all this possible; could certainly be absurd and impossible to believe for anyone who had been alive 200 years ago.

So, who can tell what kind of technology will be in 200 years in the future, that today it may seem absurd and impossible to believe for us?


HARDCORE SCIENCE

Don't be mistaken, while the commercial appeal of the book is to be a tie-in product to the film "Interstellar", this is without a doubt a real book about hardcore space science that it can be used as reference to any real study.

In this book, it's explained as accessible as possible for the general audience (but still is really deep to digest), astronomical aspects, spatial phenomena and advanced technology that arise during the film's plot of "Interstellar".

Explaining which ones were based on proven true scientific facts, which ones on educated guesses and which ones on speculation. But always, without leaving anything to chance or without, at least, an accepted theory by the scientific community as possible.


WHO IS KIP THORNE?

Kip Thorne is a graduate scientist at Caltech and later professor there too, specializing in the field of theoretical physics and gravitational physics and astrophysics.

He has also conducted research on topics such as Black Holes, Wormholes, Gravitational Waves and Theories about Time Travel.

Honored with many awards throughout his long career, also his work has been published in various scientific magazines.

Counting among his personal friends, there are colleagues such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and even his mentor was John Wheeler (who was the one who "baptized" the Black Holes with that name).

He also participated as scientific consultant previously in the adaptation of the film "Contact" whose original novel was written by Carl Sagan.

And finally Kip Throne was the scientific consultant behind the film "Interstellar", contributing with his knowledge to support all the scientific elements presented in this film.

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 4 out of 5]

DO NOT GO HUMBLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

The book discusses the movie, so it is only fair that I use most of the space to discuss the movie as well. I will discuss the book itself in one of the sections below. To get a better understanding, we can break our discussion it up into three overlapping sections --
The Three aspects of the movie that has to be examined to get at its core Premise:

1. The Future

2. The Science

3. The Dreams

Book Rating: 4/5 (Goodreads); Movie Rating: 9/10 (IMDB)

Caution: Spoilers Ahead; Spoilers Abound

“The overriding question, ‘What might we build tomorrow?’
blinds us to questions of our ongoing responsibilities
for what we built yesterday.”
~ Paul Dourish

THE FUTURE

Scenario

Interstellar is about mankind’s future and about the options we face. It challenges us to think about how we should react to that future.

It starts from the premise that the Earth has been wrecked.

We have become a largely agrarian society, struggling to feed and shelter ourselves. But ours is not a dystopia. Life is still tolerable and in some ways pleasant, with little amenities such as baseball continuing. However, we no longer think big. We no longer aspire to great things. We aspire to little more than just keeping life going.

Humans have coped with their sudden tragedy by shutting down technology, engineering, research and all the marvels of science. This was the only option left to them.

But why this extreme reaction by a species that was not frightened even by Frankenstein’s monster? Presumably science/progress had something to do with unleashing the blight? My guess would be too much monoculture.

Most of them seem to think that the catastrophes are finished, that we humans are securing ourselves in this new world and things may start improving. But in reality the blight is so lethal, and leaps so quickly from crop to crop (there is also a bit of unscientific nonsense about Nitrogen versus Oxygen, but let us not be too critical), that the human race is doomed within the lifetime of Cooper’s grandchildren. The only hope is to start dreaming again. To get back on the Science Bandwagon.

And (thankfully?) there are dreamers, who refuse to give up to this sub-par, non-imaginative existence.

We are explorers, we are adventurers. Humanity is not meant to give up like this, Nolan tells us. And uses Dylan to drive the point home (too many times!).

The prevailing attitude of stopping progress and just focussing on ‘surviving’ is seen to be a regressive step by our intrepid explorers.

Instead our heroes decide to risk it all on a cross-galaxy exploration. To find a new home for humanity, out among the stars.

In the process Nolan also attempts to reverse the message of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey and portray technology as a friend to humanity (TARS), instead of an unknown and volatile threat (as embodied by HAL).

Commentary

This is an eminently plausible future. It is also an eminent plausible reaction to such a future. In face it is very close to what Naomi Oreskes  imagines in her own Near-future scenario: Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. A dictatorial regime, community-based (communist, in fact), strictly controlled, paranoid. We have seen these things before in history, during the dark ages. It is one of our worst nightmares.

A totalitarian govt is pretty much what would be in store in such a future. Freedom comes with trade-offs — the more we can indulge now, the more we restrict humanity later.

The only problem is that by the time we have had time to degrade so much, to feel the hopelessness, to tighten control over a society so much with so less technology, it would probably be too late to be even thinking of interstellar travel.

And that is where the Future that is shown to us breaks down. It shows us an agrarian world that is still capable of inter-planetary travel. That would require a very fast breakdown of things. Fast enough to not let the technology or the knowledge wither away. One bad generation would enough to lose the skills that were required for the Exodus. The plot had to assume an almost impossible fast degeneration and a lot of coincidental happenings in that very small window allowed even in such a world. That is not very realistic.

Lucky we had a miracle to bail us out.



An illustrative chart of Fictional Futures:
See high-res Here: http://goo.gl/x0eoa

THE SCIENCE

Soft Science

This is where science comes in. Under what scientific capacity we have, and with what technology we can reasonably expect in the near future, we cannot really travel inter-galactic distances in a time span that is remotely realistic, at least for current generations. Nor do we have the cryopreservation methods to take any live humans across such time spans.

And if we were capable of sacrificing our present for the future generations...? Well. Umm. We wouldn’t be in a fix in the first place, would we?

The nearest star (other than our Sun) thought to have a habitable planet is Tau Ceti, 11.9 light-years from Earth, so traveling at light speed you would need 11.9 years to reach it. If there are any habitable planets closer than that, they can’t be much closer.

Voyager 1 is traveling out of the solar system at 17 kilometers per second, having been boosted by gravitational slingshots around Jupiter and Saturn. In Interstellar, the Endurance travels from Earth to Saturn in two years, at an average speed of about 20 kilometers per second.

Even if we imagine an extreme 300 kilometers per second, we would need 5000 years to reach Proxima Centauri (nearest star to earth) and 13,000 years to reach Tau Ceti. Not a pleasant prospect!

Using twenty-first-century technology, we are stuck with thousands of years to reach other solar systems. The only hope (an exceedingly faint hope) for faster interstellar travel, in the event of an earthly disaster, is a wormhole like that in Interstellar, or some other extreme form of spacetime warp.

So a major inter-galactic, centuries-spanning exploration is out of the question.

What then?

Luckily we have the Gods helping us (well, 5 dimensional beings - “them” for short) out.

They make our job a lot easier with a strategically placed wormhole - not too near to rip earth apart, but not so far that we don’t notice it, or will have to spend too much time reaching it. And it takes us to a place with multiple earth-like planets. And we go there on LAZARUS missions (Get it? Christ will walk amongst us at The End of Days — as Technology!). Resurrection itself, no less, is on display here!

Talk about miracles.

“And whoever They are, They appear to be looking out for us. That wormhole lets us travel to other stars. It came along right as we needed it.”

Well, what do you know, we are a lucky species.

Hard Science

I have heard a lot of people criticizing the science behind the movie. To me that is the most acceptable part in the movie. The science mostly makes good sense, except for a few artistic liberties here and there. Also the story was written first and the science was made-to-order. But despite that, it hangs together well.

The movie is exclusively based on a String Theory interpretation of the universe. Most of it won’t make sense unless you accept all the premises required under String Theory.

So we live in a “Brane” inside a “Bulk”. Our universe is the Brane and the Bulk Beings live in higher dimension, in the Bulk. The movie simplifies matters a bit by assuming the Bulk to be in only 1 dimension more than ours, while String Theorists tend to assume 5-6 extra dimensions in the Bulk. Also they are supposed to be curled-up microscopic dimensions, certainly not big enough for Cooper to be floating around in. Nolan didn’t want to confuse a mass audience. Let us accept that as fair.



All this is beautifully explained in the book and reading it will make you respect the rigor and faithfulness to scientific principles that is on view in the movie. Everything (including all those stunning visuals) is modeled based on equations and backed by scientific possibility (speculation at best). The movie allows us to visualize what a wormhole, black-hole, accretion disks, tesseract, world-tubes, etc. would look like IF they were real. And they allow us to do so with scientific rigor. Nolan brings String Theory to spectacular life. So this movie sets a pretty high standard as far as fidelity to science is concerned. Let us give full points for that.



I am wiling to defend most of the science on display in the movie. Please feel free to fire away in the comment section.

They even use realistic equations in the movie. Gotta give points for that too.



Even when the equation is attempting to “solve gravity”. *chuckles*



In short, it is easy to be skeptical of the science, but this companion book does a good job of shooting down most objections you might have and proves how well-founded most o the exotic stuff in the movie is. The really exotic things turn out to be closer to home, in the Future that is depicted and in the Dreams we are being asked to nurture! I started this book being very critical of the movie, looking for weapons to bludgeon it with, but the constant doses of science has softened me up. Reading this book will probably make you respect the movie much more too. Highly recommended.

Artistic Licences

That said, Nolan does take many liberties with science in the movie, but mostly they are for visual effect.

As Kip says, If Chris had followed the dictates of Einstein’s laws, it would have spoiled his movie. So Chris consciously invoked artistic license at some points. Although I’m a scientist and aspire to science accuracy in science fiction, I can’t blame Chris at all. I would have done the same, had I been making the decision. And you’d have thanked me for it.

Truth, Educated Guesses, and Speculations

The science of Interstellar lies in all four domains: Newtonian, relativistic, quantum, and quantum gravity. Correspondingly, some of the science is known to be true, some is an educated guess, and some is speculation.



That is why throughout this book, when discussing the science of Interstellar, Kip has to explain the status of that science—truth, educated guess, or speculation—and he label it so at the beginning of a chapter or section with a symbol:



TO SUM UP

The thing is that a wormhole cant work (they are just not stable enough to be traversable, even if they actually exist — admitted freely in the book, in fact Kip goes so far as to almost admit that Wormholes are the most impossible outrageous idea in the book, and he was also the one responsible for introducing a wormhole into Contact and thus into mass consciousness!), time can’t be fixed, and if you have enough energy/tech to make a new planet habitable, you will definitely have enough to make earth re-habitable!

So we will never actually face a choice — either we will be capable of saving the earth AND colonizing a new planet. Or we will be incapable of both. And if the earth is in a bad enough condition it is unlikely that a true centuries-spanning mission is going to get funding anyway. And if we can fix the planet, how can we choose to leave all the other species behind? (Diversity being so important, as mentioned in the movie — and true genetic diversity should also include species diversity.)

The Science in the Movie DOES NOT matter. Because it is not a question of what is possible, but of what we want to believe in.

Cooper = Christ

This movie is about Miracles & Dreams, not of Science. And, to drive it home, religious hints litter the movie, as pointed out with the Lazarus missions above.

We thus have Cooper in a double role, as a Christ figure who brings God’s message to a Prophet, and also as an Apostle-Prime, who alone has experienced divinity, who is convinced that the miracles are being performed by The Children of Men. That men will become Gods one day, capable of miracles. Get it? The Bulk-beings, the 5-Dimensional Gods are nothing but the Children of Men, conceived immaculately through a Technology-Mary)

“Not yet,” Cooper says, “but one day. Not you and me but people, people who’ve evolved beyond the four dimensions we know.”

Traditionally, when you fall into a black hole, you should get pulled apart, instead the movie itself gets pulled apart by its seams. It was a plot necessity. Of course, our new understanding of singularities allow a slim chance of survival, but certainly not for the Nolan-esque climax. It’s a brave plunge, either way.



THE DREAMS

The real message of the movie might very well be to show how difficult it would be to find an inhabitable planet and get to it, even with plenty of miraculous deus ex machinas thrown in. And we still need to have an infinite source of energy — gravity itself — to have any shot at a humane solution (of transporting everyone instead of having to deal with the rough job of choosing WHO gets to go!)

In the move, it all ends in an optimistic note in COOPER STATION, but what of the Earth? Kip admits in the book that to “harness gravity” to get off the earth would probably require a complete destruction of the planet (through extreme compression).

If they had access to enormous energy, through “solving gravity”, then surely they could have fixed Earth instead? Given the choice between a beautiful Earth and an artificially recreated station (limited by man’s imagination, even if by the imagination of the most brilliant among us), where would you choose to live? What would you choose for your child? Even today, would you rather stay in a magnificently designed IT park imitation or actually go and visit the original? And what of the history, architecture and ecology we have to leave behind? I know what choice I will make. I might make a visit, but I would want come back to earth.

A Cut-And-Run Theme

As an article puts it:

At first glance, Interstellar does seem to have a green message, warning that climate change could make the world uninhabitable for humans (and, presumably, other species). Yet there's an odd twist. The tag line for the film is, "The end of the Earth will not be the end of us." And the lead scientist, played by Michael Caine (no longer Alfred the Butler), says at one point: "We are not meant to save the world. We are meant to leave it." In other words, if humans do trash the planet, don't worry, some super-smart folks will help us make a nice get-away somewhere else in this swell and expanding universe. Given that Grinspoon researches life and planetary development, I wondered what he thought of this cut-and-run theme.

Once we cut out all the fantasy elements, Interstellar has this dire projection for us:

1. We are ruining the planet

2. We need to look for options to save ourselves.

Now, I have no objection to Humans leaving the Planet. Best case might even be that Humans leave the Planet to save the Planet.

3. But, whatever solutions we want to imagine/implement, we need to do it before it is too late.

By the time it is too late for the planet, it is bound to be too late for our technology too.

Cut-And-Run is not a feasible option. Deus Ex Machina happens only in movies.

As I have repeated many times by now The Science of Interstellar is the least questionable aspect of the movie. Its core premise (the Future & The Dreams) is what is really questionable.

Interstellar operates from a premise that it is never too late as long we keep the flame of exploration and technology alive. It ignores the ethical dilemmas of leaving a planet and most of its inhabitants (including humans) to die. It also ignores the more present question of how to avert a cut-and-run scenario from ever manifesting itself. That is the real question in front of humanity today. By skipping ahead and showing us an imaginary solution to present day problems, Nolan is indulging in a sort of escapism.

Let us just deal with it:

The right dream to have might just be of saving the planet and thus ourselves, and not of leaving it.

The movie was good entertainment and the book does a wonderful job of backing it up scientifically. But having the right dream is important too, to direct Science, which is merely a tool.

Humanity was not meant to die on Earth.
Earth was not meant to die of Humanity either.

VERDICT: THE SCIENCE IS SOLID. THE FUTURE IS SHAKY. AND THE DREAM IS JUST PLAIN STUPID.

Arthur C. Clarke took us on a similar journey in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he asked us uncomfortable questions: Where are we headed? Are we ready to rely on Technology? What hidden dangers lurk in the Highway of Progress?

Nolan instead chooses to allay most of those uncomfortable questions and leaves us with a too simple an answer: Trust in technology, keep the spirit alive and everything will be fine.

I am not sure that is the right message for our times. It needs to be examined, and hence the review. I have done a shoddy job of it, but it is something.

All this is not to indulge in technology-bashing. Our scientific knowledge and our capacity for improvement are still our best bets to continuing survival. But “Solutionism” is not the answer.

This is how “Solutionism” is defined:

“‘Solutionism’ interprets issues as puzzles to which there is a solution, rather than problems to which there may be a response.”
~ Gilles Paquet

We should be optimistic, but only cautiously so. We should not ride headlong into a future we don’t want, expecting a miracle at the end of the lane to bail us out. We should respect science and trust in it, and expect it to not only be a miracle, but also a path-finder. Science should show us the way, it should show us the means to avoid the unwanted future. It should be a companion, not a god-of-last-resort, to which we turn only once we have ruined ourselves by ignoring it.

Let us use science to chart the best course. Let us respect what our scientists tell us instead of allowing our politicians and our run-away consumerist economy to take us to a cliff from which even Science cannot be expected to work a Miracle.

Even though the movie was supposed to be a powerful message about Man’s power, in the end it turns out to be about man’s desperate need for miracles, for easy answers. That is its failure.

[exploraDora · Rating 5 out of 5]

***5 stars***

To put it simply: this book was B R I L L I A N T.

If you've seen the movie Interstellar (and preferably liked it, too), then this book is for you.

Personally, I am a huge sci-fi fan and a space opera enthusiast. I live for stories about our great unknown universe, far away stars and planets and everything "astro-physicsy". Especially if they hold some truth and real, actual science in them.

When the movie Interstellar came out, I was intrigued with the science of it. Fast forward several years and I find out that most of it is actually accurate?! MIND. BLOWN.



Kip Thorne's Science of Interstellar answers just about every question one could possibly have after seeing Christopher Nolan's incredible movie. From the simple law of gravity, to some insanely complex ideas of space time warping and singularities, as well as gravitational anomalies, Kip takes his incredible knowledge of the universes and translates it into language that we can all understand.

Throughout the book, Thorne states which facts are true, speculated or which ones are an educated guess. The discussions on the anatomy of black holes, wormholes, the bulk and the 5th dimension are all wonderful, concise and very understandable. I also loved the fact that the book does not get into the math behind some of the concepts and yet Professor Throne does tell you where to find it if you're interested. The book also has tons of incredible illustrations that help you understand everything even better.

If you saw the movie and walked away with questions, this is the road to enlightenment.

[Manny]

We were lured by the advance hype into watching this extremely disappointing movie. Don't be fooled like we were: this is no 2001.

Yes, they have maybe got all the science right, but that's not the most important thing in what's supposed to be a piece of entertainment. The story is stiff, awkward and sometimes just plain embarrassing. The characters are uninteresting. Oh, how we missed HAL! The visuals are okay, but nothing special compared to Kubrick's astonishing cinematography. Above all, they've completely forgotten the principle of show, don't tell. There were sequences where people would go on telling you things for minutes at a time; it was worse than George Bernard Shaw. The movie is interminably long. And I will never again be able to listen to Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle..." without cringing.

I honestly do not understand how this turkey can currently be running a 9.0 rating on IMDB.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aside from the wonderful introduction--which covers the genesis of the movie--I did not particularly like The Science of Interstellar.  But, this is likely due to my faulty assumptions rather than the book.  Given Kip Thorne's reputation as a premier theoretical physicist, I expected this work to deal principally with cutting edge topics such as extra dimensions and wormholes.  Such issues are covered to varying extents.  However, the work spends significantly more time on far more established matters like why various scenes in the movie were visualized in that specific manner.  While this material did not interest me, it certainly was true to the author's promise to explain the science involved in the brilliant film. 

[Gerhard · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it takes a book like this to remind us how cutting-edge and accurate Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar really was, author Kip S. Thorne (predictably) ignores what is perhaps the biggest idea of the movie.

This idea has also proved the most polarising, with a range of critics and viewers labelling Nolan as sentimental, goofy and on a New Age trip as a result. I am, of course, referring to Dr Amelia Brand’s Big Speech near the end (played with deadpan earnestness by Anne Hathaway):

Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful, it has to mean something... Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.

Many critics have commented that the strong father-daughter relationship that drives the emotional engine of Interstellar is a vestige of the script/story when Steven Spielberg was still on board to direct it, as far back as 2006.

The only time that Thorne refers to the human elements of the movie is when he talks about Mann’s planet and the explosion of Endurance, adding (apologetically) that Dr Mann’s murderous actions lie outside the remit of science (instead of a mad robot as in 2001, Nolan presents us with a ... mad scientist. Gee, how original.) Thorne then launches into a detailed, gleeful account of the Endurance explosion and how accurate it is, as enamoured as a Boy Scout with a ball of string.

Of course, the first time that Hollywood tried to depict a black hole was Disney’s 1979 movie, prosaically entitled The Black Hole. Thorne gives a compact account of how much our knowledge has changed in the interim.

The first time that the concept of a wormhole entered Hollywood as an SF staple of time/space travel was Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997), starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey (John Lithgow in Interstellar was also in 2010), based on the book by Carl Sagan (Thorne worked with both Sagan and Zemeckis on the science).

Flash-forward to 2014 and Nolan’s answer to Stanley Kubrick: a rigorously scientific and accurate SF movie, based upon (and extrapolated from) the latest research and data. Everything from Dr Brand’s equations on the blackboard to what Cooper sees within Gargantua, from the crop blight which decimates the earth at the beginning to the space colonies at the end, is either plausible or completely accurate.

Apart from Thorne himself, a crop of eminent scientists, theoreticians and academics were called upon for their two cents’ worth (though the final decision always lay with Nolan, Thorne points out constantly, especially when he has a quibble or two with the director’s artistic licence).

Needless to say, you should only read this book after you have seen the movie. If you attempt to read this first, I think you will have no desire whatsoever to see the movie, because it sounds like a graduate-level quantum physics lecture.

If you have seen the movie and then read a book like this, you will be amazed (as I was) at the amount of science you would have absorbed. And quite painlessly, all with state-of-the-art CGI and a truly thunderous Hans Zimmer score to boot.

My only quibble is that Thorne is a much better teacher than he is a writer – there are some wince-inducing instances here that could have used an editor’s cudgel. Apart from that, Thorne’s enthusiasm for his subject matter shines through every page, making this a truly memorable companion piece to a great movie.

Is it the greatest SF movie ever made? I would have to say it is probably the best American SF movie ever made, as the idea that the whole concept of space travel is simply to replicate the American Dream among the stars is singularly depressing.

There is no inkling here that base-line humanity will have to change; that evolution and transformation go hand in hand. One only has to look to great SF writers like Paul McAuley and Stephen Baxter to read what lies in store for us; hopefully Hollywood catches up soon.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the review: I know that there were plenty of aspects in the movie inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. I know it, but I still cannot stand the "2001" movie. Watched it four times, each time was worse than the prior. There had never been another movie in my life which I found as boring as "2001" and the Soundtrack still makes me cringe. However, I loved Interstellar. Just saying.



The scientific insights into the movie are splendid. Not only are they accessibly written so that even a person who has never dealt with astrophysics or physics in general can understand what is happening in the movie and why, but there is also a great deal of humour and some insights into how exactly the movie came into being, which was rather interesting as well.
Okay, I admit, it might take a bit to understand certain chapters, and I had to re-read one or two twice or even thrice in order to follow and connect the ideas, but it's worth it. Without any doubts.

The most exciting chapters for me were on Black Holes (haha, yeah, it takes up the biggest part of the book), their Singularities, since the last time I read about more than one Singularitie was a while ago and in a rather badly written book on physics, and Wormholes. Regardless of how unrealistic the idea of artificially produced Wormholes may be, I still love it.
The idea of multiple Singularities is one I personally find mind-blowing. Totally incredible, and it was a delight to read how they were successfully used for the movie.



Then, there are several chapters which concern themselves with the Dimensions and their probability (say nine dimensions, or five like in the movie), another brilliant topic, as well as Gravitation anomalies and the specifics of the planets of Gargantua's system. From the perspective of a normal human being I have to admit that a planet's orbit around a fast-spinning black hole blew my mind. It demanded a lot of creativity from my side to even imagine that.

Since I watched the movie for its scientific accuracy and my love for astrophysics this book was in a way even better than the movie, hardcore science explained by Kip Thorne and put into a movie by the brilliant Nolan, what more do I need? Correct, nothing.
I loved it from page one and until the last one. Highly recommended if you loved the movie and want to understand the topics behind it and if you are into science/astrophysics. For the rest - think twice before reading because it really is very complex.

[Bookmenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chyba wiem, co dziś będę oglądać (ponownie) :D

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

First things first. I loved the movie. Nice to see a thoughtful SF movie. I am amazed at the amount of ink, virtual and other otherwise, being spilled about "What is wrong with this movie" or "What is wrong with Chris Nolan". I am delighted that Prof. Kip Thorne was involved with this film. His book,"Black Holes and Time Warps" is one of the best "popular" science books available. If you have not read it,do so. if you have seen the movie and have not read it,do so.
No, "Interstellar" is not 2001. It pays homage to 2001. 2001 was the result of one the greatest directors, and one of the greatest SF writers coming together to make a very unique film at a critical junction of human history. "The Science of Interstellar" gives a good back ground to some of the thinking behind the movie. And,like "Black Holes and Time Warps", Prof. Thorne gives the reader an excellent bibliography for further exploration of one of the "hot" fields of astrophysics. For all the arm chair physicists out there flipping out about the movie, I have advice from from my favorite computer; "...sit down calmly,take a stress pill and think things over."

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considering the complexity of the topic, this was a surprisingly interesting and accessible read for a non-science geek like me. This book is part "behind the scenes of the making of Interstellar," part science textbook, and wholly enjoyable. Kip Thorne has a knack for making what could be very confusing concepts easily understood -- he truly has the soul of a teacher.

Reading this book made Interstellar even more interesting to me. Highly recommended for fans of Interstellar, or others simply interested in our universe and beyond.

[Michelle Curie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whether you enjoyed or disliked 2014's blockbuster Interstellar, it's not a film that's easily forgotten. I personally wasn't as hooked by it as I should have been, considering it was a carefully crafted intergalactic space journey set in an apocalyptic future made by a creative crew featuring a talented cast (all of which usually tends to be just my thing). What bugged me was the science. For somebody with an interest in the field of physics, I stumbled upon various maddening plot-holes that I just couldn't take my mind off. Would The Science of Interstellar put my mind at ease regarding at least a few of them? I was willing to find out.



Kip Thorne is an American theoretical physicist who is active in the field of gravitational physics and astrophysics. He does scientific consulting as well, most notably for (take a guess) Interstellar. The first surprise of the book came only a few pages in, when I realised how important for the film-makers it was to build a story around science and not do it the other way around.

"Most important to me was our vision for a blockbuster movie grounded from the outset in real science. Science at and just beyond the frontiers of human knowledge. A film in which the director, screenwriters, and producers respect the science, take inspiration from it and weave it into the movie's fabric, thoroughly and compelling."

The book starts off with a few tidbits about how the movie came about (which will be interesting to read for fans and the curious - Steven Spielberg was to direct the film at first for example and Matthew McConaughey seems to be an absolute pleasure to work with), before launching into the meaty bits.



The Science of Interstellar is divided into different sections, with Thorne taking time first to explain some of the foundations (our universe, warped time, tidal gravity, black holes) that will be relevant later as he goes on tying the knowledge into the film's context and taking everything to a more speculative level.

Kip Thorne does a good job at explaining things, he writes in a compelling and chatty way, that's easy to read and enjoyable to follow. The book features loads of illustrations and annotations as well, which were fantastic! It made things a lot easier to understand, as the information load is immense. There are quite a lot of things covered on these pages and while it's not enough to make you an expert, it's actually a nice book to gather some basic knowledge on the subject.

However, this book is still strictly centred around the movie, so on various occasions Thorne doesn't go into as much detail as it would have been interesting for him to, solely because more knowledge isn't required to make sense of what happens in Interstellar. Speaking of the film - my frustration with it only partially eased away. While Christopher Nolan did think about the science of his movie a lot, on various occasions he deliberately ignored or changed things to make it more accessible for a mass audience.

It's definitely a good book and if you enjoy physics and enjoyed Interstellar, this is a beautiful and highly recommended read. If the movie didn't do much for you, than this publication certainly won't change your mind about it though.

[Rama Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flying along the perils of a black hole

In a recent 2019 paper published in journal Nature, astronomers glimpsed the blackness of a black hole with an event horizon, the perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light. This is the gate of hell and the end of spacetime. At a distance from the event horizon, the radio waves emitted by plasma of matter spiraling towards the black hole bends while orbiting the black hole. The resulting light ring is referred to as ‘photon ring’. This is very exciting about a black hole, and you will learn from the best, Caltech Professor Kip Thorne who won the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for his work on gravitational waves.

When the movie Interstellar was released in 2014, this book was also published on the same day. But many physicists rushed to comment on the movie erroneously. Looking back at their comments, I wished they read the book first. Author Kip Thorne discusses the physics behind the path to black hole, Gargantua. Warping of space is the key in the story. The existence of the wormhole connecting the solar system to the far reaches of the universe where Gargantua exist. The distortion of space around the wormhole and Gargantua creates a path for the flight to the distant part of the universe.

Black holes can spin just like earth, and a spinning hole drags space around it into a vortex-type, whirling motion. Like the air in a tornado, space whirls fastest near the hole's center, and the whirl slows as one moves outward, away from the hole. Anything that falls toward the hole's horizon gets dragged, by the whirl of space. But where does space bend to in a black hole? Physicists conjecture that space bends inside a higher-dimensional hyperspace called "the bulk," which is not part of our universe! How do we visualize this? Suppose if we look horizontally along the Sun's equatorial plane, it would appear as a two-dimensional surface, a two-dimensional membrane (brane), and at Sun’s core space bends slightly downward in a higher-dimensional bulk. This is extremely small for a star like Sun but very large for a black hole. When Professor Brand works with equations of relativity, he discovers the possibility of gravitational anomalies triggered by physical fields that reside in the bulk. In fact, the bulk is known to contain much of the gravity that belongs to our universe.

The Tesseract is an enormous, hyper-cubic, grid-like structure and a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with Earth. Copper lands in tesseract that is placed by bulk beings near Gargantua, and he is carried into the bulk. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions including the time dimension; every moment in the past, present, and future. They can influence gravity within any of those time frames.

Director Christopher Nolan wanted the Miller's planet circling Gargantua where one hour is seven years on Earth. Thorne figured out a way out, a black hole can have a maximum spin rate. When a black hole spin is one part in 100trillion smaller than the maximum possible, then that black hole has difficulty capturing objects that orbit in the same direction as the hole rotates. This will get the extreme slowing of time on nearby Miller's planet and such a black hole will not have any harmful jets of radiation streaming through the sky. In addition, the Ranger spacecraft gets a gravitational slingshot maneuver at such an extreme gravity to fly toward Edmund planet.

Life is made of atoms and molecules. Atomic structure evolved in three-spatial dimensions to create specific atomic orbitals in space that leads to the valence structure, like carbon has sp, sp2 and sp3 hybridizations that result in specific spatial orientation leading to various molecular structures. Exposing atoms to four-spatial dimension will destroy the three-dimensional molecular and atomic shapes, and instantly collapses life in the a four-space world. Kip Thorne argues that Cooper is confined to reside in one of the tesseract's three-space-dimensional faces, and he does not experience the tesseract's fourth spatial dimension. This is highly speculative!

Another interesting fact you will learn is that If it is not possible to go backward in time. But you can only do so by traveling outward in space and then returning to spacetime at starting point before you left. You cannot go backward in time at some fixed location, while watching others go forward in time. You can’t engineer your own salvation or exclude your existence by causing the demise of your parents before you were born. That physical reality is strongly favored by the existing laws of physics.

Thorne is a top-notch writer and a narrator of the physics behind the movie “Interstellar.” This book is highly engaging, but some segments may be rough going. That's the nature of real science, it requires thought, but thinking is rewarding, or you may skip rough parts. Thorne explains the fact of this book in three parts, some are science-truths, others are educated guess, and some speculation. The 2019 Nature paper essentially confirms the black hole we saw in the movie Interstellar, and this is described in significant detail in this book.

[Constantin Beda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am vizionat de două ori Interstellar, filmul science-fiction regizat de Christopher Nolan și lansat în 2014. Prima dată în urmă cu câțiva ani, nu mult după ce apăruse, într-o vreme în care nu eram foarte atras de fizică. A doua oară m-am uitat foarte recent, înainte de a citi cartea lui Kip Thorne. Urmează să-l văd a treia oară, și cu ocazia asta niște piese de puzzle se vor așeza la locul lor. Interstellar împletește într-un fel unic teoriile demonstrate ale fizicii lui Newton și Einstein cu cele foarte puțin explorate ale fizicii cuantice, unde se studiază elementele la nivel micro.

Kip Thorne a fost consultantul științific al filmului și, mai important, laureat al premiului Nobel pentru fizică în 2017 “pentru contribuții decisive la detectorul LIGO și observarea undelor gravitaționale”. Însă și mai interesant mi s-a părut  faptul că pasiunea pentru literatura SF a fost cea care l-a determinat să studieze fizica și să aleagă o carieră în domeniul științei. A fost prieten cu Carl Sagan, căruia i-a dat niște idei foarte utile pentru celebrul roman “Contact”. La rândul lui, Sagan i-a făcut cunoștință în anii ’80 cu Lynda Obst, cea care avea să fie, peste ani, producătoarea filmelor Contact și Interstellar.

Cartea desface filmul de la început la sfârșit din punctul de vedere al fizicii. K. Thorne împarte capitolele în informații cunoscute și verificate – fizica știută, de zi cu zi -, în speculații nedovedite ce țin mai mult de science-fiction și în ipoteze plauzibile, însă fără fundamente dovedite. Începând de la mana care distruge plantele și din cauza căreia viața pe Terra nu va mai fi posibilă,  gaura de vierme apărută din senin lângă Saturn și gaura neagră de la capătul acesteia, până la forța gravitațională și hiperspațiu, toate sunt puse sub lupă și explicate. Sunt, într-adevăr, și bucăți mai greu de înțeles, în care e posibil să-ți prinzi urechile (și eu am pățit-o), dar e dificil să explici spațiul în cinci dimensiuni, călătoria printr-o gaură de vierme ce are o durată de viață limitată sau câte tipuri de singularități are o gaură neagră cu o masă de miliarde de ori cât masa soarelui care ne încălzește pe noi. Însă toate acestea au fost provocări, nu limitări.

Dacă-ți place SF-ul, dacă te fascinează universul, stelele, materia întunecată și pulsarii, dacă te pasionează știința și vrei să afli cum se vede lumea dintr-un teseract (nu cel din Avengers), ori dacă vrei să știi cum să trimiți un mesaj în trecut, atunci uită-te la film și citește cartea. Apoi vezi din nou filmul și citește cartea.

 

[Yash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interstellar is one my fav film & Christopher Nolan is my fav director I have seen all movies of him (except 'following' which I m gonna watch soon) besides him the work of 'double negative' the visual effect team of Paul Franklin made to Oscar & ofcourse the sources Kip Throne & Lynda Obst...

The Climax of the film 'The Tesserect' made me surprisingly awestrucked which happens to arise my interest in the book of the great scientist Kip Throne..

The chapters in the book are labeled as-
1) Truth
2) Educated Guess
3) Speculation
So it's a complete interpretation of scientific phenomenons happening in the movie from that I have known things that I had never heard before...

The most interesting parts of book are:
# The 5D Bulk
# The Brands
# Gravitational Anomalies
# Warped Space-Time
# Tidal Gravity
# Black Holes (Gargantua)
# Worm Holes
# Gravitational Slingshots
# Blight (On Earth)
# Miller's & Mann's Planets
# The Tesserect
These are the mind blowing concepts scientists have discovered recently..

I would write a lot about Tesserect, Black holes & Wormholes but I don't want spoilers here...lol there isn't anything like spoilers in science non-fiction u will have to read it to get it...

The thing I wanna say is we humans r capable of discovering, deciphering, mastering and using to control our own fate & of dealing with most any catastrophe the universe may throw at us or our own ones..

We are very close to discover the unified theory to unravel all the mysteries of forces & fields in nature by amalgamation of Newtonian,Relativistic,Quantum & other new laws.We come across new frontiers no matter how incognita it seems.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had trouble following a lot of Thorne's explanations, particularly the subjects of 'brane' and 'bulk'. He doesnt clearly explain these concepts. He mentions that there may be 'membranes' and we exist in a 3-dimensional membrane or 'brane', and there are separate branes above and below us like a sandwich. Im not an astrophysicist so this concept completely flew over my mind, is this brane made out of dark matter like the rest of our universe? I understand these are heavy concepts based on decades of physics and math research but it would be nice if they were broken down a bit more.

Thorne's pictures did help to some extent but when we are talking about dealing with concepts like multi-dimensional 'branes' and beings, time stretching and spacetime folding, its very hard to visualize and understand even the most basic of concepts. I had to google the word 'tesseract' to fully understand what Thorne was talking about, he never explains the basic concepts. Things like 'singularity' are never fully explained so you will need to do a lot of additional googling outside the book (not a big deal but worth mentioning)

I would give this book at least 3 stars though because its absolutely mind bending and makes you visualize the entire universe in a different way, it was very exciting to read. To imagine our 3D selves living in a universe with multiple other dimensions and spacetime folding is absolutely incredible. I would definitely recommend this to people looking for answers to the movie.

One thing the book did not answer; in the movie Cooper lands on Millers planet, then leaves when the waves are about to hit them. The characters mention that both Millers and Mann planets are roughly 80% of Earth size and have similar gravity pull (we know this because Brand and the robot are walking 'normally' on Millers sufrace so the gravity looks very Earth like.

My question is why did the Ranger lift off Millers planet so easily (when the waves hit) yet back on Earth they need massive booster rockets to put payload into orbit? It makes no sense technologically, if Ranger can leave Millers gravitational pull just using its own engines, why are they using booster rockets back on earth?

[Atila Iamarino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ótimo livro de física e o melhor complemento para quem quer entender o livro. Kip Thorne detalha os princípios científicos (como um buraco negro funciona, por exemplo) e o raciocínio que ele usou no filme. Me deu outra dimensão para o filme e um respeito enorme pelo tanto de ciência que Nollan colocou nele. É o filme mais cientificamente embasado que consigo lembrar. E, quanto ao livro, foi a primeira vez que tive uma noção clara do que seria uma hiperdimensão.

[Alexander Draganov · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say... incredible book. I applaud the author for the effort to present complex science to ordinary readers like me. The universe is indeed stranger than we can even imagine.

[shakespeareandspice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was self-indulging.

[Raviteja Vangara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have given 10 stars out of 5 for this book. Though I m reading this book late, this is one of the brilliant masterpieces I have read. Interstellar is one of my favorite movies as it is one of the very few movies that use Einstein's relativity laws and you digest them with the flow of the movie. Kip Thorne wrote this book as an introductory textbook to interstellar science. Higher dimensionality, the science of black holes and worm holes, tidal gravity, Gargantua simulations, bulk beings, gravitational anomalies - presented in the easiest way with illustrations and detailed explanations. I bet you 'll learn loads. Also, this book frankly exposes Nolan's exaggerations (in terms of science vs Art) and corresponding justifications. This was one of the best books I have read. If you liked the movie Interstellar - don't miss to read this book. If you just read the book, watch the movie again.

[G.R. Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel ashamed I ever had that brief fling with Kip, and I've written to him to say that it's officially never happened. He apologized and said he understood. At least these cutting-edge physicists are more understanding than usual about retroactive alterations to reality.

[Bogdan Teodorescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was just amazing. Kip Thorne is talking about just EVERYTHING that happened in the record-braking and Oscar-winner movie. If you really want to understand exactly all the cool stuff that happened through the movie, just read this :))

[Brok3n · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to see black holes and wormholes

This is how every explanation of science to a general audience should begin

If your struggle [to understand] is fruitless, then that’s my fault, not yours, and I apologize.

There are far, FAR too many people who thinking that being hard to understand is a sign of genius. This belief is as wrong as it gets. The sign of a real genius (and Kip S. Thorne is that) is making the most difficult ideas understandable to everyone. In a foreword, Chris Nolan (director of Interstellar) writes of Thorne

He saw his role not as science police, but as narrative collaborator—scouring scientific journals and academic papers for solutions to corners I’d written myself into. Kip has taught me the defining characteristic of science—its humility in the face of nature’s surprises.

Now, Thorne's words do hint at one limit. He mentions "your struggle". He's not promising to slip the comprehension effortlessly into your brain. If you want it, you have to work for it -- he can't entirely do that part for you. It's a fair demand. He has surely worked very, very hard, most of his life, to understand these things he's trying to explain. On top of that, he worked hard on the film and on this book.

A warning for kindle users: there are lots of pictures, most of them are in color, and you will not understand them without the color. I read the text on my kindle paperwhite, which doesn't do color, but kept a copy open on my desktop computer for the sake of the pictures. This worked pretty well for me.

I am a scientist and a mathematician. I am far from an expert on gravity, but I have studied it. Still, I learned a lot. I remember when I saw Interstellar, many of my friends complained that the film presents an unrealistic picture of what happens when one falls into a black hole -- that in reality your body would be shredded to atoms on encountering the singularity. I thought the same, but was willing to let it go -- it's science fiction, after all. Turns out we were all wrong. The singularities (plural -- yes, there are three) of a black hole may be more gentle than I or my friends had any idea of. Thorne doesn't tell you that it's possible to survive falling into a black hole. Indeed, he says in his opinion, it is unlikely. But that is just his opinion, not proven fact.

I do have one complaint. Too much of the book read like a HOWTO for producing images of blackholes and wormholes. Of course this was a big deal for Thorne and the Interstellar team, who worked hard to produce the extraordinary (and Oscar-winning) realistic visual effects. A lot of new and original science by Thorne and visual effects lead Paul Franklin went into this. Very cool. But honestly, I didn't really want it explained in quite so much such detail.

In summary, The Science of Interstellar is a great work of science explanation, and is also interesting for showing how a scientifically realistic science fiction movie got made.

Blog review.

[Ady ZYN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Autorul, Kip Thorne este fizicianul a cărui expertiză științifică a fost folosită la acuratețea științifică a celebrului film, Interstellar. Filmul este o reprezentare complexă a unui eveniment ipotetic, dar nu imposibil, al instinctului de supraviețuire al umanității în urma unui dezastru global. Urmărind descrierile din carte, filmul apare și mai complex. Explorând un teritoriu științific extrem de vast, de la fizică relativistă, biologie, fizică cuantică, geofizică, realizăm complexitatea fulminantă a universului care ne înconjoară din toate părțile, de la nivelul microuniversului cuantic până la copleșitorul macrounivers.

Prezentarea se desfășoară de-a lungul a 30 de capitole caracterizate fiecare de gradul cunoașterii științifice care se află în spatele imaginilor și acțiunii filmului. Ca să înțelegem bine fenomenele științifice pe care se cadrează filmul avem nevoie să discernem între adevăruri științifice, teorii verificate prin observații; ipoteze plauzibile și speculații, fenomene care au un anume grad probabilitate de a exista și a fi observate și devin adevărate după ce intrăm în contact cu efectele lor.

Autorul prezintă un breviar cosmologic al stelelor neutronice, quasarilor, găurilor negre și a anatomiei acestora și a altor teorii care stau la baza simulărilor efectelor din film și apoi parcurge spațiul speculațiilor pe baza ipotezelor, care dau filmului un conținut viu. Astfel că ajungem să aflăm idei avansate despre structura spațiului multidimensional și al mersului în timp, acestea având în spate anumite date științifice însă neobservabile fizic, dar întemeiate pe date ale fizicii teoretice. De aceea clasificarea de scient-fiction a filmului înclină mult spre aspectul științific. Chiar și fenomenele care par fanteziste, destul de improbabile în realitate, pot fi considerate ca soluții ale fizicii teoretice. Explicațiile sunt însoțite foarte frecvent de reprezentări grafice sugestive, color, pentru a da cititorului șansa de a înțelege mai bine fenomenele fizice contraintuitive.

Dincolo de mesajul filmului, autorul ține să sublinieze lucrul care este esențial, și care se deduce in complexitatea subiectului, că omul, pentru propria lui supraviețuire, în fața fatalității naturii, „pentru a ne controla destinul, e nevoie ca o mare parte din noi să înțelegem și să prețuim știința: felul în care ea funcționează. Ce ne învață ea despre univers, Pământ și viață. Ce poate ea înfăptui. Care îi sunt limitele, determinate de cunoașterea sau tehnologia inadecvate. Cum pot fi depășite acele limite. Cum progresăm de la speculație la ipoteză plauzibilă, apoi la adevăr. Cât de rare sunt revoluțiile care schimbă felul în care percepem advărul, dar cât de importante”.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The physicist Kip Thorne is the scientific mind behind the science of "Interstellar", thus if you want to know anything related to the astrophysics discussed in the movie, this is the book to read. Thorne introduces us to the beginning of the idea, when the movie was still to be directed by Steven Spielberg, and then moves to discussing in detail all the science present in the movie.
Thorne does good a job in communicating complex concepts, however don't expect this book to be as easy as "Interstellar", because if you really want to understand what is being discussed, you'll have to put your mind to work. The book is challenging but Thorne works hard to make it accessible using lots of pictures to help us visualise the most difficult ideas.
I just don't give the 5 stars because the book is organised only around the film, lacking a structure of itself, failing to build its own narrative. But it serves very well the purpose, to enlarge the scope of the discussion started by Interstellar.

[Megan Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interstellar is my favorite movie of all time so I really enjoyed this, and it made me want to watch the movie again for the 300th time.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interstellar is one of my favorite movies so when I saw the book The Science of Interstellar at Barnes and Noble and noticed it was written by the great theoretical physicist Kip Thorne I bought it right away. Thorne was the science adviser and executive producer of Interstellar which was directed by Christopher Nolan and starred Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck, and Michael Caine. Chrisopher Nolan wrote the Forward to the book.

In Kip Thorne's preface to The Science of Interstellar he states that the science in the movie is at or just beyond today's frontiers of human understanding and in the body he explains what we know about the phenomena seen in the movie (black holes, wormholes, singularities, the fifth dimension, etc.) and finally he interprets from a scientists viewpoint what we are seeing in the movie. He admits that some of the book requires deep thought and will be hard to understand and confesses "if your struggle to understand is fruitless, then that's my fault, not yours, and I apologize."

The book is chock full of movie and scientific goodness. There are fantastic photos and interesting scientific illustrations throughout. My favorite photo happens to be of Kip writing the insanely complex equations on Professor Brands sixteen blackboards. He relates anecdotes of meeting and teaching the actors and talks in depth about his disagreements with Nolan about how the science should be portrayed in the movie. The behind the scenes "making of" parts were enthralling. The book does not skimp on the science. For each particular scientific phenomena Kip addresses he takes a deep dive in to the hard science behind it, and much of this hurt my head very much. It reminded me of reading the books by Kip's friend, Stephen Hawking.

In addition to all the interesting movie and science talk the book contains a section called "Where Can You Learn More?" in which Kip lists a number of books and websites to read to learn more about the science covered in each particular chapter. And if your brain was not completely melted by the science in the main text he includes a "Some Technical Notes" chapter with contains even more mind-numbing scientific information for some of the chapters. The book also contains an extensive bibliography, and separate indexes of people and subjects.

I think I saw Interstellar four times in the theater including two times in IMAX - I now want to see it again! If you saw and enjoyed Interstellar I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you haven't seen the movie yet don't read this book until you have. There is even a sticker on the outside of the book warning: "SPOILER ALERT: This book explains the fantastic climax and ending of Interstellar." I loved everything about his book.

My second read for #ScienceSeptember.

[Kerem Cankocak]

İzleyiciler tarafından büyük beğeni alan Yıldızlararası (Interstellar) filmi gerek içeriği, gerekse görsel yapısı ve bilime yaptığı katkılarıyla ses getirdi. Filmin bilim danışmanı (ve aynı zamanda yapımcılarından olan) ünlü fizikçi Kip Thorne bu kitapta filmdeki hemen her bir sahnenin bilimsel arkaplanını açıklıyor.
Yıldızlararası filmi baştan sona bilimsel kuramlara dayanmakta. Fantezi öğeleri yok filmde. Ancak bu bilimsel kuramların hepsi aynı türden değil. Kip Thorne Yıldızlararası’nın Bilimi’nde bilimsel kuramları üçe ayırıyor: İlki, kanıtlanmış bilimsel gerçekler (görelilik kuramı, kuantum kuramı vb gibi). İkincisi ise henüz kanıtlanmasa bile kanıtlanacağına kesin gözüyle bakılanlar (örneğin henüz Mars’a insan gönderemediysek de yakın bir zamanda göndereceğimiz kesin). Üçüncü tür bilimsel kuramlarsa, diğer bilimsel kuramlarla çelişmeyen ancak henüz kanıtlanmamış kuramlar (sicim kuramları, 5 veya 11 boyutlu uzayzaman vb gibi). Bu kuramların doğrulanacağına dair bir kanıt yok elimizde. Ancak diğer kuramlarla uyum içinde olduklarından bunlara fantezi veya hayal ürünü olarak bakamayız. Belki ilerde yanlışlanacaklar ve yerlerini başka kuramlara bırakacaklar ama şu anda bunları kullanarak evrene ilişkin bazı olguları açıklamaya çalışmakta bir sakınca yok. Sonuçta bu bir film, eğlenceli ve ufuk açıcı olması gerekiyor.
Kitabın yazarı Kip Thorne solucan deliği fikrini bilimkurguya kazandırmasıyla tanınıyor. 1984’te Carl Sagan’a Mesaj romanı için verdiği solucan deliği fikri o günden bu yana bilimkurgunun vazgeçilmez unsuru haline gelmiştir. Gerek diğer bilimkurgu romanlarında ve filmlerinde gerekse Yıldızlararası’nda ışıktan hızlı seyahat için solucan deliği kullanılır. Bir solucan deliği, yukarıdaki simit örneğinde olduğu gibi, uzayzaman düzleminin bir noktasını tamamen ayrı bir bölgedeki bir diğer noktasına doğrudan bağlayan geçittir.


Başarılı yönetmen Christopher Nolan’ın Warner Bros. Pictures ve Paramount Pictures’la yaptığı gişe rekorları kıran son filmi Yıldızlararası [Interstellar], bizi evrenimizin en uzak köşelerine ve hatta evrenimizin ötesinde fizikçilerin “yığın” adını verdiği beşinci boyutun içerisine doğru fantastik bir yolculuğa çıkarıyor. Yıldızlararası’nın neredeyse başka bir dünyaya ait diyebileceğimiz hikâyesi ve görsel efektleri, ilk fikir aşamasından başlayarak filme katkı veren fizikçi Kip Thorne’un da etkisiyle gerçek bir bilimsel özellik taşıyor. Thorne kara delikler, solucan delikleri, bükülmüş zaman ve bükülmüş uzaydan tekillikler, kuantum kütleçekim, kütleçekim sapmaları, beşinci boyut, Christopher Nolan’ın teseraktına dek filmin dayandığı bilimi ve hikâyede ve özel efektlerde oynadığı rolü canlı bir biçimde açıklıyor. YILDIZLARARASININ BİLİMİ’nde bilimsel gerçeklerin bilimkurgu kadar garip ve ilgi çekici olabildiğini göreceksiniz.

[Tarin Bansal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is a must read if Interstellar made you least bit curious about a multi-dimensional universe. The book practically enhances the movie experience by delving into the depths of the scientific concepts used in the movie, which otherwise were not discussed in detail in the movie keeping in mind the diverse audience. If you really want to tear apart the science used in Interstellar and find flaws or inconsistencies, better refer to this honest scientific explanation written by the theoretical physicist who designed this sci-fi movie's 'Sci' part. Much more credible and reasonable than BuzzFeed articles or random blogs.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great resource for fans of the movie who want to know - as the title suggests - the science behind the story. It is much easier to get through than Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps but still not for the faint of heart, I think. One of my favorite aspects of the book was that Thorne labeled each section as Truth, Educated Guess, or Speculation, and through this the reader can gain a clearer picture as to how much of the movie is scientifically plausible (and it's a lot). And I love that Thorne and the world of physics actually learned new information about black holes as a result of the graphics created for the film.

[Sara Morelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. Mind-boggling but easily digestible even though I'm a total layman (but aficionado) when it comes to astrophysics. It covers every piece of science that is mentioned/hinted/unsaid in Interstellar, and well beyond that. Kip Thorne, producer-consultant-Nobel-prize-winner, is amazing at talking about difficult topics in a way that is easy to follow; I’ll surely check out other books from him.
Highly recommend it if you loved Interstellar and you’re curious about what actually went on behind the scenes physics-wise.