Interstellar

Black Holes

In the movie Interstellar there are a lot of different physics topics to talk about but the most interesting is probably the black hole Gargantua. What makes black holes so interesting is that there is so little that we actually know about them yet there are some effects that we do know.
What we do know about how black holes work is that they exert a large gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing can escape from it. It also has the ability to exert a very strong gravitational force on any nearby object such as planets that are nearby. This is especially important when the group of astronauts land on the ocean planet that is nearby. On this nearby planet there are these very large waves that reach towards the sky. These waves are caused by the pull of the gravitational field of the nearby black hole. The pull of black hole would rock the planet back and forth relative to the black hole. This occurrence causes the planets tidal gravity to reach towards the black hole causing the waves to be as high as they are. However, in order for this to happen the planet would have to be closer to the black hole and at that point if the people were on the planet they would be crushed by the gravity.


The one thing in the movie with the black hole that does not work is the fact that the main character flies into the black hole and survives and is not worse for wear. In reality the main character would have been crushed by the shear force of the black hole. Yet once the character is inside he is in some sort of 5th dimensional space that he can directly interact with and alter time. In reality this would never have actually been possible for him to achieve and he would have been long dead before even reaching the center.

Comments

  1. Prof. Chris FragileDecember 4, 2019 at 9:21 AM

    There's obviously a lot more that can be said about black holes. I would have liked you to stick with the physics a bit more, as opposed to your own speculation. I would have also liked to see you use the book, Science of Interstellar, as more of a reference.

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