
The sci-fi film Interstellar presents an almost accurate look at how it is to be near a black hole. Now, the film is backed-up by scientific paper about these dark forces in the universe.



The film attempted to be true to scientific facts and findings as much as possible and NASA even promoted the Hollywood movie.



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Physicist Kip Thorne, who also worked on the Carl Sagan sci-fi film, Contact, said he first proposed the idea to create a film depicting black holes in the most realistic way possible. The scientist then approached a visual effects studio in London called Double Negative to collaborate with this new film along with director Christopher Nolan.



Oliver James, chief scientist at Double Negative, said when he later consulted with Thorne, he received a beautifully presented paper with scientific references and answers about some problems the studio was facing during the process of creating an accurate black hole for the film.



The colossal black hole featured in the film called Gargantua possess a large accretion disk around it. This disk occurs when matter, light and dust gravitates toward an object and emits radiation inward.



This explanation is rather challenging to depict to audiences so the early images of the black hole appears to be squashed due to this rotation effect. Also, the Doppler shift in light causes half the rotating disk to turn blue to the naked eye and was removed from the film. In the film, the final black hole Gargantua is depicted more massively and redder than in real life.



Rays of light were depicted in bundles and bands as opposed to individual streaking pathways so it would create a bigger visual impact for moviegoers. Using technology and computer animation, the light activity in the black hole was simulated as it passed through a massive body. This gave astronomers clues as to what can happen in real life under those kinds of conditions.



The animation of gravitational lensing in which the images of a star or galaxy is projected behind the event horizon of a black hole was successfully created.



Thorne believes that when someone is at the edge of a black hole, a dozen images of background stars and galaxies can be seen from above due to a phenomenon called caustics where regions of space are warped due to powerful gravitational forces from the black hole.



The paper also examines the algorithms used to design the black hole in Interstellar. Astronomers might somehow apply the algorithms in the near future when studying real life black holes.



This new research was published in the journal, Classical and Quantum Gravity.




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