• Question: Have you seen the movie Intersteller because at the end the main character goes into a black hole, and he lives to look through his past, so I was wondering what would actually happen if you went into a black hole, also it is quite a confusing movie with music by hanz Zimmer, Bye!

    Asked by Ozzlord to Angus, Christine, Guy, Hermine, Ollie on 14 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Guy Rixon

      Guy Rixon answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      The use of science in the movie is interesting. Most science fiction gets it completely wrong – like Star Wars & Star Trek. Interstellar is based on ideas from real science – things that are just about *possible* based on current theories, but not definite things that we *know* to really happen.

      Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist of note, came up with the ideas for the film. Quoting from Wikipedia: “Early in the process, Thorne laid down two guidelines: “First, that nothing would violate established physical laws. Second, that all the wild speculations … would spring from science and not from the fertile mind of a screenwriter.” So what happens in the film is *possibly* what would happen in a journey through a black hole but we just don’t really know if it’s right. Surviving the journey, in the real world, is particularly tricky.

    • Photo: Alexander Burke

      Alexander Burke answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      It’s a very very scientific movie which touches upon Einstein’s theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. When Cooper falls into the black hole (which is called Gargantua due to its sheer size and spin), he crosses the event horizon and falls into what is called a tesseract. A tesseract is a 4-dimensional hypercube which is one of many theories about what could lie inside a black hole (this is quantum gravity… which is still not solved yet!!!). Whilst he is inside the black hole, the “exists” in the 5th dimension which allows him to use time as a “physical dimension” and is able to communicate with his daughter Murph using gravity. This is Kip Thornes interpretation of what would happen inside a black hole and is purely speculation. It could be completely wrong!

      In reality, if a human was to enter a black hole they would be torn apart due to the immense gravity and stretched into a very long “string” of atoms. This process is called spaghettification! The human would be destroyed and (perhaps) spat out into another universe through a white hole. The science behind interstellar is very complicated… Kip Thorne wrote a book attempting to explain the science behind the film (it’s a fantastic read by the way). If you’re curious you should try and get your hands on the book =).

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