The Science of Interstellar

This post is a compilation of the cool things I discovered when reading the book The Science of Interstellar by the legndary physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne. In case you haven’t already, watch Interstellar!

• At the event horizon, time comes to a halt and inside the horizon, time flows spatially and the “future” for time is towards the singularity. This explains why nothing escapes the black hole after the event horizon since the future is towards the blackhole and escaping it would mean going back in time. Thus escaping the black hole isn’t prevented by a physical barrier but because it means going back in time
• Accretion disks : when a star comes close enough to a quasar’s black hole that it is affecetd by the hole’s gravity. This effect leads to the star being torn apart primarily cause the star’s gravity can no longer hold the star’s content together. This gas that is sucked up by the black hole leads to the formation of the accretion disk
• When looking at the accretion disk equitorially from one side of it, we can even see the part of the disk behind the black hole (the disk forms a circle around the black hole). Crazy, isn’t it? We can see stuff behind an absolutely impermeable object. The answer - gravitional lensing!