The Science of Interstellar

time warps, Einstein’s law of, 35–37, 291

applications of, 47, 139, 162, 267

toxins, 108

truth, educated guess, and speculation in science, 30–34

tsunamis:

on Earth, 167, 274–275

on Miller’s planet, 166

universe, our:

overview of, 17–26, 277

laws that control it, 27–34; see also laws of physics

as a brane in a higher-dimensional bulk, 32, 187–188; see also branes

Viking spacecraft, 38–39

volcano’s rim, see critical orbit around a black hole

Vulcan, 203, 285

warped side of the universe, 154, 283; see also big-bang origin of our universe; black holes; geometrodynamics; gravitational waves; wormholes

warped spacetime, 35–41

space warps, 37–41

time warps, 35–37

underlies Einstein’s relativistic laws, 28–29

and tidal gravity, 41

whirling space, 48-49; see also black holes, whirl of space near

warping begets warping, 46–47

around black hole, precise depiction, 49

white dwarfs, 21–22

wormhole in Interstellar:

visual appearance, 145

visualization of, by Double Negative visual-effects team, 138–145

gravitational pull and time warping, 138–139

handles for its shape: radius, length, and lensing width, 139–140

influence of handles on its appearance, 140–144

gravitational lensing by, 142–145

discovering the wormhole by gravitational waves: my extrapolation, 146–151

bulk fields hold it open, in my interpretation, 218–219

see also wormholes

wormholes:

how they got their name, 127

mouths, 133

some history of research on, 128–129, 130–132

almost certainly do not occur naturally, 133–135

perhaps forbidden by laws of physics, 136–137

problem of holding them open, 129–130, 218, 218

problem of making them artificially, 135–136

in Contact (the movie), 130–132

Flamm’s wormhole (Einstein-Rosen bridge), 128–130

as seen from the bulk, 128, 129, 131

visualizing via gravitational lensing, 138–144

visual appearance, 132–133, 133, 141, 143, 145

microscopic wormholes (quantum foam), 134–135, 134, 224–225, 225, 287

see also wormhole in Interstellar

ALSO BY KIP THORNE

The Future of Spacetime (with Stephen W. Hawking, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris, Alan Lightman, and Richard H. Price)

Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy

Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm (with Richard H. Price and Douglas A. MacDonald)

Gravitation (with Charles W. Misner and John Archibald Wheeler)

Gravitation Theory and Gravitational Collapse (with B. Kent Harrison, Masami Wakano, and John Archibald Wheeler)

Copyright

Copyright © 2014 Itzy

Text © Kip Thorne

Foreword copyright © 2014 by Christopher Nolan

Film © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

INTERSTELLAR and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

WB SHIELD: TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

The following images from the book are included with permission from Warner Bros.: Figures 1.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 5.6, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.7, 9.9, 9.10, 9.11, 11.1, 14.9, 15.2, 15.4, 15.5, 17.5, 17.9, 18.1, 19.2, 19.3, 20.1, 20.2, 24.5, 25.1, 25.7, 25.8, 25.9, 27.8, 28.3, 29.8, 29.14, 30.1, and 31.1. Images © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

All rights reserved

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Book design by Chris Welch

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ISBN 978-0-393-35137-8

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