The Science of Interstellar

"The Science of Interstellar" is a great book that serves as an insightful companion to the film. The movie is very entertaining, and it left me curious to find out more about some of the scientific aspects. The movie was marketed as being based on "real science" - after watching the film, it's clear that it is not that simple. Some of the film (particularly the latter part of it) hinges on theories that have not been proven by any means; nor have they been disproven, so in some sense the film may be accurate to what some of our "best guesses" are when it comes to current science. Kip Thorne, whose work on theoretical physics is featured in the film, authors this book. He elaborates on the science seen in the movie, and aims to increase the audience's understanding of the theories within. It's a well-written text that does a good job explaining things to an average reader. He includes a number of charts, diagrams, and illustrations which definitely helped me to understand some of the more difficult concepts. I look forward to seeing the film again now that I have read the book; I think it will certainly allow my appreciation for the movie to grow. Some examples of what is discussed in the book: - The physical laws of our universe - The physics of wormholes and black holes - Gravity & time dilation - Details of the spacecraft Endurance - Blight, food/oxygen shortage on Earth - The equations on the chalkboard - much more, including spoilers. For more reviews of Film & TV related books, visit MovieArtBook(dot)com ** Note: If you want to learn more about the making of the movie, I also recommend this book: Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space

From Dr. Vernon M. Dolphin This book is well-crafted, with a solid foundation in astrophysics. The author, Kip Thorne, is a professor of the subject at the California Institute of Technology. That hooked me. I was tired of being zipped about the universe on sheer imagination with no roots in fact. Imagination of our century is soaring as the master gear of social change. The writer of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, wants you to soar with him. I believe Interstellar will touch your brain and launch your imagination. An admirer of H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, Kip Thorne follows the best of the best. As a bona fide scientist at Cal Tech, and meticulous writer, he earns your credence from page one. For me, as a retired professor of the philosophy of science, logic and the philosophy of mathematics – I tire of the mishmash of wannabee Sci-Fi writers. We can’t fly high with high school gimmicks. We need to believe what we see, hear and believe what we read. So I’m glad Interstellar was born. I feel the plausibility. If your sky’s the limit. Go For it. Also, Interstellar is also an excellent desk book for teachers of advanced high school, or college. Students will lap up Thorne’s carefully crafted descriptions of the four energies in the universe. Students will stand on the shoulders of Newton, Einstein et al. just as Newton himself said he did with his math teacher. Last point. The discipline of writing and of reading requires a sense of limits. Kip Thorne’s book reminds us of a vital intellectual responsibility. Martin Cruz, an eminent author said it: “Just don’t fake it.” With but a small bow to the Hollywood moguls, Kip Thorne’s succeeds. You may or may not fly high with the movie, but as for Thorne’s book, I’d say go for it. Dr. V.M. Dolphin

The imagery in Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar is breathtaking in IMAX. One of the most memorable scenes is of the massive black hole named Gargantua. In this scene we view something that mankind will not see in reality in the foreseeable future. In Kit Thorne's book the reader learns that in making the movie Nolan stayed as close to known science and scientific speculation as possible. This science can be difficult, but Thorne writes well and provides a number of diagrams that illustrate the points he is making. Prof. Thorne worked on the movie from it's early beginnings in 2005, when Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan worked on the early screen play. At one time Steven Spielberg was slated to direct the movie. We can be glad that he dropped out, because he would not have made the breathtaking movie that Nolan did. Thorne covers the science from the beginning of the movie to the end, where Cooper falls through the black hole into the tesseract structure. As Thorne warns at the start of the book, some sections can be heavy going. If you don't know what an event horizon is, the book may be especially difficult. What makes black holes so difficult is that their physics is far outside any normal experience. For example, at the end of the movie, Cooper, in one of the landing craft, falls into the black hole. In a massive black hole the tidal forces (the difference in gravity between your toes and the top of your head) are small so he can survive the trip across the event horizon. Thorne mentions several times in the book that as an object approaches the event horizon, time, relative to the rest of the universe, slows toward infinity. To the outside observer, an object becomes trapped at the event horizon (although it cannot be seen). What is hard to understand is that the object, in its own frame of reference, does cross the event horizon. Thorne does not succeed in fully explaining exactly what is happening in this strange region that is outside of our universe. For example, looking out of the hole, in the direction he is falling, does Cooper see all of time come to an end? How fast is he traveling? If he orbits just below the event horizon, is he traveling near the speed of light? Why, exactly, is it so important that Cooper intersect the out falling singularity? Simply stating that this is "historical light" is not an obvious explanation. I suspect that the problem is that many of the answers to these questions exist in mathematical equations, which are Thorne's old friends, since he has spent a lifetime with them. These complexities make the book both fascinating and difficult at the same time. Einstein once said that ideas should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Thorne is dealing with complex material and has done a good job of trying to live up to Einstein's dictum.

Although I haven't seen the movie yet, I bought everything about it in book form. I'm obviously a sci-fi nut. My own difference from the intended Hollywood-defined Mass Audience (Slam!) is that I have been studying gravitation theory, high-energy particle physics (Wheeler), and advanced math since the 1960s, worked at UCSD in high-energy physics, and gee whiz, got lectured by people at Cal Tech like Feynman. There, take that--I can drop names too, which this book does a helluva lot. I'm delighted to read about the people who make movies. Watching an Extra on the BLADE RUNNER Blu-ray disc yesterday reinforced what Kip Thorne says about Directors: they are gods. The Director goes with Mass Audience appeal over Truth, beauty over Truth, which is how to make money and get an Oscar for Special Effects. Nothing wrong with that. Unusual to read that Truth in a science book, however. I appreciate the updates in cosmology theory, even when they have to be labeled truth, educated guess, or speculation. There should have been a fourth circled symbol OG for when explanations were meant for Old Geezers like me. All the emphasis on colorful black boards full of symbols takes me back to the obviously-Einstein character in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, although his blackboard was just plain chalk on slate probably. In both movies, that DAY ESS and INTERSTELLAR, a blackboard full of incomprehensible (to The Mass Audience) are as much Eye Candy as the actresses. One of my Professors wrote equations with his right hand and simultaneously erased them with his left hand. Thanks to this book and its internet links, at least we can study the equations longer, until our brains float thru the branes. Funny how INTERSTELLAR has a religious or occult theme, like CONTACT bringing Arroway to her dead father, and GRAVITY bringing its heroine to prayer and thanksgiving at the end. Is it fair to ask if that trope should be labeled S? Mass Audience again will answer.

Great book explaining all the science behind the movie. However in the book there are some conflicting claims about the properties of black holes that should be cleared up. In Chapter 5 on Black Holes on page 45, Dr. Thorne writes "First, a weird claim: Black holes are made from warped space and warped time. Nothing else - no matter whatsoever." Then in Chapter 6 on Gargantuan's Anatomy on page 57, Dr. Thorne writes "If we know the mass of a black hole and how fast it spins, then from Einstein's relativistic laws we can deduce all the hole's other properties:". If there is no matter whatsoever in a black hole, how can we calculate the mass? The equation w (weight, matter) = m (mass) x g (gravity) doesn't hold since Einstein's relativistic laws are used to calculate the mass where m (mass) = c2 (speed of light squared) / E (energy). I think this should have been made clearer with some simple examples and calculations to reduce confusion for the average person between mass and matter and where and how the Energy is measured for a black hole. I do like the quote about black holes to indicate that there are no extra, independent properties beyond its mass and spin on page 57: "A black hole has only two hairs, from which you can deduce everything else about it." One question though, what about non-spinning black holes, are these just "single hair" black holes? I also really like Dr. Thorne's labeling of the status of the science for Interstellar on page 33 where "T" stands for Truth (green), "EG" stands for Educated Guess (purple), and "S" stands for Speculation (red) and this is labeled in color at the beginning of a chapter or section so the reader is aware of where science stands today on the particular subject in the movie. Overall a great book on black holes and explaining all the science behind the movie which couldn't be explained well in the movie's limited time. Well worth the read and furthering of science education.

This book is amazing! Interstellar is my favorite movie, and this was the perfect book to "nerd out" with and dive deeper into the scientific theories used to develop the film. It is super interesting and very easy to understand. Kip has a way of making even the most complex theories easy to understand through his writing and illustrations .

Noble prize winning Kip Thorne back at it again with yet another Great book. This book has alot of pictures to help with the concepts. Get book to go along side the movie. Great quality i wish it came in hardcover but the paperback is build well.

In Amanda Gefter's book "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn", she wrote how Kip Thorne wasn't into research as much any more because he's "bored". He is more into working on two Hollywood science fiction movies and writing for Playboy. That's one of the privileges of tenure, how much fun it is to tell the world to get off. I admire how even then, he's still got young bright Caltech graduate students writing great code for simulating accretion disks around black holes. Well, true to form, Thorne came out with this book on one of those movies, "Interstellar", in a few months. So many authors have written on this topic now they almost form a tribe that talk to each other across Kindle. So that sour grape remark aside aside, let me get down to the movie, then this review. The movie I thought was the worst mishmash of nonsense from the narrative point of view. No part of the story is believable and there's no character worth any empathy with. The lead actor is a corn farmer who's supposed to be an alienated or semi-retired rocket scientist who can spout general relativity with aplomb but does it in such a slur I couldn't make out half the words in the theater. Maybe watching it on IMAX might have helped but I have my doubts. When he tunnels through the wormhole and can still watch the latest news of his daughter on TV, I can no longer suppress my annoyance and have a hard time letting go and following the thread. Well, that's where this book comes in: to explain what I missed. First Gargantuan, and all the latest hype about the software written just for the movie (that's being published in a scientific journal for GR simulations). Well and good, except the picture that's generated by all that software is no better than the picture of just such a thing as I can find in a textbook by one of Thorne's peers: Edwin Taylor and GR's main maven, the late great John Wheeler. That great book is "Exploring Black Holes, Introduction to General Relavitivy" which you can find on Amazon. The story of the movie gets worse towards the end, when attempts are made to create closure on past-future communications, before the canned final Hollywood ending with the lead jetting off to join his pseudo-romantic interest and colonizer near Saturn. Like the Time Machine man going back in time to rescue the girl from the Morlocks. Yes, "Interstellar" the movie is a true non-dazzling mess, but perversely I look forward to more from Professor Thorne in the future, because he's always right out there.

I think it is a sign of s great scientific mind that they can impart their work to others less able than themselves, a fundemental Tenet of teaching. Such scientists include Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking and I would add to these Kip Thorne. As a sci-fi fan from childhood I was always interested in physics, astrophysics and astronomy, but lacked the mathematcical ability to pursuse these subjects very far in academia. Howver, I have aways maintained my interest and have a large selection fo 'popular science' books in the field, to which I have now added this volume. As a fan of everything Christopher Nolan has done (spot the reference ealrier in this review?), I enjoyed Interstellar, but was only recently reminded (buy Sheldon, Howard and the gang) of Kip Thorne's central role in bringing cosomology to the big screen. A couple of clicks later and I bought this excellent book, which I read (and yes understood) in a single sitting over the weekend. Though my maths isn't up to the challenge of higher calculus, my interlect does allow me to comprehend and appreciate the concepts involved. If anything these are even more mind blowing than can be captured in film. When I first read A Brief History of Time I was astonished that work colleagues far better qualified than I, could not get through the text. I did and understood it, which has lead to a lifetime of reading on quantum mechanics, cosmology, unified field theory (what we used to call the G.U.T.) and now gravitational waves. I'm crap at Sudoku so my intellectual challenge is to try and understand amazing facts and theories from great books like this by Kip Thorne. Whether you buy it or borrow it from a library, I do recommend you read this book and when you have watch Interstellar again with more informed eyes. I guarantee you'll enjoy the film on a whole new level, and if you like have a Chirstopher Nolan film night and amaze your friends with your dazzling insight. Extraordinay work made accesible by a Nobel Laureat, thank you Professor Thorne for allowing me to stand on your shoulders and see further. This is a superb book, highly recommended. BTG

Wer d n Film mag, sollte sich unbedingt dieses Buch kaufen. In englischer Sprache, aber trotzdem relativ einfach zu lesen. Man bekommt gute Einblicke hinter die Kulissen.

This book, written by Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne, provides an easy to understand explanation of of the science of the movie Interstellar. You don't need to have seen the movie to enjoy the book. Indeed, much of the book provides basic explanations of the science of black holes and wormholes so even if you are not interested in the movie, it provides an easy and accessible introduction to the topic. Of course, if you've seen the movie, what's interesting is that Kip was the scientific advisor for the movie and he made sure that the science of it was either as accurate as possible, or he tries to explain how artistic decision could have been made possible in his estimation. The visualization of a black hole is, as we learn from the book, somewhat simplified, but it was also done in a way that hadn't been quite done before by scientists. So it provides an accessible way to see what a black hole might look like. As you might be able to tell from the photos inuploaded of the book, there is tons of illustrations in this book, and they are very helpful. Does book feels a little bit like a textbook in a sense that it's got glossy pages and most pages have pictures or diagrams to help understand the concepts. As someone who is familiar with science but not necessarily astronomy, I found the book to be very accessible and easy to understand. I wish there was a little bit more detail and depth, but some of those details are provided in the appendices. No math is used. The narrative of the movie serves to organize the book, with chapters on the black hole that is featured in the movie, and ones on each of the planets, and some of the technologies that are shown. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I am glad Thorne is interested in sharing his scientific interests with the world.

Da anni ormai mi interesso a livello non professionale di astrofisica, leggendo autori divulgativi come Brian Greene o Caleb Sharf, e quando ho visto Interstellar sono rimasto a bocca aperta quasi per tutta la durata del film. Ho comprato quindi questo libro senza pensarci due volte, e ciò che ho avuto per le mani ha superato di gran lunga le aspettative. Ho apprezzato moltissimo la capacità di affrontare tutte le tematiche del film, dal viaggio interstellare, all'utilizzo di Wormhole per raggiungere punti remoti dell'universo, a tutti gli altri interrogativi che emergono nella pellicola, specificando all'inizio di ogni sezione se si tratta di una verità scientifica assodata, un'ipotesi "educata" o una semplice speculazione. Ci sono molti aspetti che nel film, dedicato ad un'audience amplissima e non per forza appassionata di astrofisica, vengono sorvolati e si potrebbe pensare che gli autori non vi hanno riflettuto sopra a lungo, ma hanno semplificato senza troppe difficoltà: leggendo questo libro invece si capisce come Kip Thorne, Christopher Nolan e tutto lo staff di Interstellar hanno dedicato giorni se non settimane per capire come spiegare scientificamente, o quantomeno con delle ipotesi plausibili, ciò che accade nel film (ad esempio l'Endurance che sfrutta una fionda gravitazionale di un piccolo buco nero per manovrare attorno all'enorme buco nero Gargantua, non trattato nel film se non con qualche riferimento leggero). Sono narrati fatti che possono accadere con possibilità prossima allo zero, come ammette anche Kip Thorne in alcuni casi, ma sono scientificamente plausibili, non è il classico film fantascientifico tutto campato per aria da come si può vedere dal background presente in questo libro. Guardate il film PRIMA di leggere questo libro, leggetelo e poi riguarderete il film cercando di carpire ogni singolo messaggio "lanciato" da Nolan per darci spunti su queste profonde riflessioni che sono avvenute nel "backstage" del film. Il libro è in lingua inglese ma se la masticate un po' (a livello delle superiori) lo affronterete senza problemi. Concludo con alcuni link a libri che ho letto, sempre di carattere divulgativo, che sapranno farvi sognare come Interstellar e questo libro: - Amedeo Balbi: Cercatori di meraviglia. Storie di grandi scienziati curiosi del mondo , una lettura piacevole e molto scorrevole che tenterà di trasmettervi dall'inizio all fine questo senso di Meraviglia che ha guidato decine di scienziati, le menti più eccelse mai esistite, e che dovrebbe guidare ognuno di noi. - Brian Greene: L'Universo Elegante sulla Teoria delle Stringhe, La trama del cosmo. Spazio, tempo, realtà e La realtà nascosta. Universi paralleli e leggi profonde del cosmo - Caleb Sharf: I Motori della Gravità sui buchi neri e il ruolo fondamentale di creatori e distruttori che hanno rivestito nella creazione del nostro universo. Uno dei libri divulgativi più affascinanti che io abbia mai letto. - Lucia Votano: Il Fantasma dell'Universo. Che Cos'è il Neutrino - Leon Lederman e Christopher Hill: Oltre la particella di Dio: La fisica del XXI secolo sul Bosone di Higgs (ho letto altri libri in merito e questo è uno dei più chiari e piacevoli da leggere) - Richard Feynman: QED. La strana teoria della luce e della materia , una lettura che vi farà affrontare l'elettrodinamica quantistica in modo semplice e coinvolgente, anche se non siete 'addetti ai lavori'. Le capacità divulgative di Feynman sono eccezionali, lui sì che vi farà meravigliare senza alcun dubbio.

Excelente libro, jamas habia visto un libro tan bien explicado, con temas complejos de una forma tan simple!, digno del premio nobel, totalmente recomendable, esta en ingles, pero vale totalmente la pena. Lo compre para mis hijos y es excelente para introducirlos a la ciencia que tanto hace falta!