Like it or not, it’s hard to argue against Interstellar being a classic. Its emotional core, incredible ensemble cast, stunning VFX, and accurate science make it one of the most impressive films of the century so far, thanks in no small part to Christopher Nolan‘s obsession with telling a story that feels as realistic as possible. As it turns out, however, the science of Interstellar isn’t just accurate; it’s groundbreaking. Thanks to the collective efforts of astrophysicist Kip Thorne and the VFX team behind the film, an actual scientific discovery was made during production, adding to the long list of arguments about why we love this film.

‘Interstellar’ Used Accurate Science and Smart VFX To Create Its Rendering of a Black Hole

It was simply impossible for Interstellar to be 100% scientifically correct, and that’s where Kip Thorne comes in — to help make everything as accurate and feel as authentic as possible. His input was priceless, but he also contributed to the visual and aesthetic side of things by working together with the artists from the VFX house Double Negative to conceive a spherical black hole that fit Nolan’s vision, as per Wired. The result was actually the first accurate model of a black hole.

First, VFX artist Paul Franklin had a meeting with Thorne to get a better grasp of the theory and math surrounding black holes, and how they would behave in the movie’s context. With almost a scientific journal on hand, the team had no problem creating a wormhole, but the black hole, Gargantua, proved more challenging, as it actually bends light. “Ray-tracing software makes the generally reasonable assumption that light is traveling along straight paths,” according to CG supervisor Eugénie von Tunzelmann, so they had to write a completely new software, with almost 800 terabytes of data.

To give Gargantua its spherical appearance, Franklin went back to the theory by studying accretion disks, which are formed by matter surrounding a massive body with a gravitational pull, like black holes. “We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” he said. Instead of a “stable” disk, like Saturn’s rings, for example, Gargantua created a halo around the core singularity, thus making the black hole look spherical. What they didn’t know was that they had just broken new ground, scientifically speaking.

‘Interstellar’s Gargantua Is the First Scientifically Accurate Representation of a Black Hole

Initially, the Double Negative team thought the halo around Gargantua was a bug in the rendering software, but Kip Thorne realized that, following the theory and the math he supplied them, that was exactly what a black hole is supposed to look like. “Why, of course. That’s what it would do,” he told them, revealing that, up until that point, no one had ever modeled a black hole to know what it would look like. There were only theorems and equations that “described” the nature of a black hole, but, thanks to Interstellar, the scientific community could finally visualize one.

So, what we see in Interstellar is actually the very first scientifically accurate model of a black hole, with the light of the accretion disk trapped around and in front of a dark singularity. That was enough to impress Thorne: “I never expected that. Eugénie just did the simulations and said, ‘Hey, this is what I got.’ It was just amazing.” As exaggerated as science fiction can be sometimes, it’s rare to find one such story that sticks to what’s actually plausible, and Gargantua is exactly that, with data that supports Thorne’s thesis on how they work. “This is our observational data. That’s the way nature behaves. Period.”

That’s also not the only scientific conclusion that Thorne got from his work in developing Gargantua for Interstellar. Something like Miller’s planet, for example, where time behaves differently thanks to the black hole’s gravitational pull, was also thought to be impossible, but Thorne proved it could happen. It was initially believed that no planet could withstand such a gargantuan (pun intended, of course) pull to actually orbit a black hole, but it actually depends on how fast the black hole is spinning. Gargantua spins close to the speed of light, and that’s why Miller’s planet didn’t join the accretion disk.

NASA’s 2019 Black Hole Picture Confirms the Model in ‘Interstellar’

Sometimes, cinema and real life intersect to make both more interesting, and Gargantua’s design in Interstellar is one such case. That’s because, in 2019, NASA developed the first image of a real black hole thanks to the Event Horizon Telescope, and, lo and behold, it looks exactly as anticipated by the movie: a dark central shadow surrounded by an uneven accretion disk. The image’s definition may not be as pristine as the movie’s because Earth is not as physically close to the black hole as the astronauts in Interstellar are to Gargantua, but one can clearly make out all the elements, as well as how gravity dictates their behavior by how uneven the ring looks.

It isn’t really a “life imitates art” kind of situation, but rather one where art and science combine to anticipate something that happens in nature, but we had no means to see it. When technology caught up, the 2019 black hole image didn’t “prove” Interstellar was right in a scientific sense, but it confirmed that the movie’s visual design really is as realistic and plausible as possible. Not many films can claim that reality eventually caught up with their special effects, making it one more thing to love about Interstellar.

Interstellar is available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.

Release Date

November 7, 2014

Runtime

169 Minutes