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In Kip Thorne’s book about Interstellar he talks about what they had to do to make something that would work for a movie. They had to choose a specific mass an

In Kip Thorne’s book about Interstellar he talks about what they had to do to make something that would work for a movie. They had to choose a specific mass and rotation speed that doesn’t really exist in nature or the image would not be something that would be intelligible to the viewer and work for the story. This includes the tidal effect in the film. In the end they were making a science fiction film and not writing a scientific paper.

shepardrtc 5y ago
> they had to do to make something that would work for a movie Here's an article that includes a picture of what they thought it would really look like: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-true-black-hole-too-confusing/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-t... I think that would have worked perfectly fine. Maybe throw in some more stuff circling it further out.
short_sells_poo 5y ago
I agree with you. The fact that the visuals of the black hole didn't include the frequency shift and intensity variance was perhaps the smallest artistic license that was taken and didn't really prevent my suspension of disbelief. If they wanted to create something physically accurate, then all we'd have seen is a blinding white globe as the accretion disk of a black hole emits tremendous amounts of energy and couldn't be resolved to the iconic shape in the movie by the naked eye. The hapless astronauts would've likely received a fatal dose of ionizing radiation in minutes (if not seconds), and Matthew Mcconaughey would've been shredded by tidal forces long before he entered the event horizon of a stellar mass black hole. The movie took some liberty with physics, but managed to capture the imagination of so many people. I much prefer it this way. Those who want to dig deeper can either watch an actual documentary or read some books on the topic.

shepardrtc 5y ago

> they had to do to make something that would work for a movie Here's an article that includes a picture of what they thought it would really look like: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-true-black-hole-too-confusing/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26966-interstellars-t... I think that would have worked perfectly fine. Maybe throw in some more stuff circling it further out.

short_sells_poo 5y ago

I agree with you. The fact that the visuals of the black hole didn't include the frequency shift and intensity variance was perhaps the smallest artistic license that was taken and didn't really prevent my suspension of disbelief. If they wanted to create something physically accurate, then all we'd have seen is a blinding white globe as the accretion disk of a black hole emits tremendous amounts of energy and couldn't be resolved to the iconic shape in the movie by the naked eye. The hapless astronauts would've likely received a fatal dose of ionizing radiation in minutes (if not seconds), and Matthew Mcconaughey would've been shredded by tidal forces long before he entered the event horizon of a stellar mass black hole. The movie took some liberty with physics, but managed to capture the imagination of so many people. I much prefer it this way. Those who want to dig deeper can either watch an actual documentary or read some books on the topic.