movie sets for, 13–14
see also Interstellar, scenes in
Interstellar, scenes in:
opening scene, Cooper trying to land a Ranger, 208
life on Earth (“Cooper’s world”), 106–107, 107
blight in crops on Earth, 31, 105–106, 111, 112, 114; see also blight in crops
gravitational anomalies on Earth:
in opening scene of movie, 208
harvesters gone haywire, falling books and dust, 208
in Murph’s bedroom, 202, 208–209, 211
see also gravitational anomalies in Interstellar
Cooper at NASA, 133, 273
Endurance’s trip from Earth to Saturn, 68, 74, 117
Romilly explains wormholes, 136
the wormhole, 145, 208
Endurance’s trip through the wormhole, 144
Ranger’s trip from Endurance to Miller’s planet, 68–70, 168, 169
crew on Miller’s planet, 58–59, 161, 164–165, 165
crew’s return to Endurance and to Romilly, 170
choice of where to go after Miller’s planet, 100
Endurance’s trip to Mann’s planet, 176
Ranger scraping ice clouds when landing on Mann’s planet, 177
crew on Mann’s planet, 178–179
Dr. Mann describing Professor’s struggle to understand gravity, 229
Romilly urging Cooper to seek information from Gargantua’s singularities, 234
scenes back on Earth:
the Professor and Murph in the Professor’s office, 213, 221
the Professor dying, 222
Endurance’s explosion above Mann’s planet, 181–182, 181
Endurance’s plunge and rescue near Gargantua’s critical orbit, 237–244
Cooper and TARS plunging into Gargantua, 234, 242–244, 247–251
Endurance’s launch off critical orbit toward Mann’s planet, 244–245
Cooper rescued by the tesseract, 251–252
Cooper in tesseract, communicating backward in time with young Murph, 255–261, 265–266, 270–271, 297
Cooper touching Brand across the fifth dimension, 193, 272
Cooper in the space colony, 274–275
Cooper sets out in search of Brand, 275
interstellar travel, 115–123, 282
with twenty-first-century technology, 117
with far-future technology, 117–123
via thermonuclear fusion, 118–119
via laser beam and light sail, 119–120
via gravitational slingshots, 120–123
via wormholes and other space warps, 123, 282
references on, 282
inverse square law for gravity, 26, 26, 27, 34, 194–196, 198–199, 202–204, 216, 219, 274, 292, 295; see also bulk, confining gravity in
Io (moon of Jupiter), 168
jets from black holes:
visually impressive to astronomers, 87
in the quasar 3C273, 88–89, 89
powered by whirling magnetic fields, 91–92
missing from Gargantua, 94
astrophysicists’ simulations of, 280–281
Kip Thorne (me):
photos of, 6, 9, 11, 213, 221
roles in LIGO, 151, 154, 224
roles in Interstellar, 1–14
roles in computer simulations of warped spacetime, 154
discovery of tendex lines, 41
maximum spin of a black hole, 61
the Blandford-Znajek mechanism to power black-hole jets, 92
wormhole research, 2
time-travel research, 268
bet with Hawking about naked singularities, 227–229
law of time warps, Einstein’s, see time warps, Einstein’s law of
laws of physics, 27–34, 278
shape and control our universe, 27
Newtonian laws, 27–30; see also inverse square law for gravity
Einstein’s relativistic laws, 28–32; see also warped spacetime
Einstein’s formulation of, 37–38, 203–204
Einstein’s law of time warps, see time warps, Einstein’s law of
same predictions as Newtonian laws when gravity weak and speeds small, 43
extension into five spacetime dimensions, 200, 220, 269, 286
quantum laws, 28–30, 32, 34
nature of, 223–225
their primacy over Newtonian and relativistic laws, 223–225
discard fluctuations to recover Newtonian and relativistic laws, 224
references on, 287
quantum gravity laws (tera almost incognita), 29–30, 32
and superstring theory, 187–188, 284
their nature encoded in singularities inside black holes, 225–227
references on, 287
power of multiple viewpoints on laws of physics, 44
revolutions that upend established laws, 34, 275
power that mastery of the laws gives to humans, 275
LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory):
how it works, 152–153
the LIGO international collaboration, 153
see also gravitational waves
magnetic fields, 22-25
bar magnet and field lines, 22–23, 23
Earth’s, and Aurora Borealis, 23–25, 25
neutron star’s, 25, 30
accretion disk’s, 90–92
power a black hole’s jets, 91–92
magnetic levitation, 23, 23
confined to our brane, 192, 215, 296
Mann’s planet:
orbit of, 174–175, 175, 298
lack of a sun, 175
ice clouds, 176–177
geological data—signs of life, 177–179
Milky Way galaxy, 19, 52–53, 279
Miller’s planet:
used to infer properties of Gargantua, 58–62, 292
orbit of, 62–63, 62, 161–162
image of, above Gargantua’s disk, 98
slowing of time on, 59–61, 163
rotation of, 163, 165–166
rocking of, 165–167
Gargantua’s tidal gravity acting on, 58, 163
Gargantua’s whirl of space near, 163–164
giant water waves on, 164–166, 165
past history of, 166–168
appearance of Gargantua from, 168–169, 169
scenes in Interstellar, 58–59, 161, 164–165, 165
neutron stars:
born through implosion of a star (supernova), 206
masses and circumferences, 22, 22
magnetic fields, 25, 25, 30
jets from, 25, 25
torn apart by black holes, 148–149
as pulsars, 25, 30
slingshot off, in Interstellar, 68–70
torn apart by black holes, 146–149
Newtonian laws of physics, see laws of physics, Newtonian laws
Nolan, Christopher:
foreword to this book, vii
collaboration with his brother, Jonathan, 4, 8, 262
negotiations to rewrite and direct Interstellar, 7, 8, 233
Kip’s interactions with, 8–10, 59, 69–70, 151, 189, 213, 246, 249 , 250, 256, 264
knowledge and intuition about science, 8–9, 189
commitment to science accuracy, vii, 8–9, 83, 94–96, 182
some science choices and ideas, 9