When Kip Thorne, theoretical physicist and executive producer on Interstellar, was put in charge of the visuals behind the film’s black hole, the number one thing he wanted to ensure was realism, both on screen and scientifically. At the same time, Christopher Nolan, Interstellar’s director, needed a visual effect that would promise a mesmerizing and enthralling movie-going experience. Given the film’s acclaim, from both audiences and physicists, Thorne and Nolan succeeded in their goals.
In order to produce an accurate representation of a black hole, a practically invisible phenomenon, Kip Thorne formed a set of equations to guide the visual rendering software of the effects team. After an entire year of development by Thorne, the special effects team of 30 people, and thousands of computers, the end results was a wholly believable and accurate representation of a black hole/wormhole in space.
Although we cannot see them, there are many facts known about black holes that Thorne, and the visual effects team, used to pull off this challenge. For example, black holes warp space and time. They spin at speeds approximate to the speed of light, pulling the space that surrounds it. We also know that they were once massive stars that collapsed in on itself so its center is infinitely dense with a gravity so intense that light and other space objects orbit it, creating a ring appearance, called an accretion disk.
When trying to imitate this disk, the team originally created a multicolored, flat ring near the edge of the black hole. This is when they made a startling discovery.
“We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” explained Paul Franklin, a senior supervisor of Academy Award-winning effects house Double Negative. “So rather than looking like Saturn’s rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.” Initially, they believed the effect to be caused by a software glitch until Thorne took a closer look.
“This is our observational data,” he said of the movie’s visualizations. “That’s the way nature behaves. Period.” Thorne has also stated that he plans an article or two about the experience and discovery. Perhaps what’s most exciting about Thorne’s work on the movie is that he got to share his love of science and physics with mass audiences and we all shared the learning experience with factual science.
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