The Science of Interstellar – The Astronomy Club

“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.’-Stephen Hawking

Much like Kip Thorne’s book bearing the same name, Science of Interstellar was an enthralling escapade into the enchanting kingdom of astrophysics taken up by the Astronomy Club of MIT. At first, most of the factual data may have gone far beyond one’s intellectual capacities, it was an extremely beguiling and comprehensive lecture.

The talk was delivered by the highly charismatic Rohan Gupta, who delved below the depths of the space-time fabric to entirely grasp the essence of arguably one of the most inexplicable films of our time, Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan. The crowd of about 45 relived a similar exhilaration that they experienced when they first watched the film, and were deeply engrossed throughout in the informative lecture.

The minds behind the very first draft of Interstellar were Kip Thorne, Jonathan Nolan and Lynda Obst. The idea was germinated back in the 1980’s, when all of them were fairly inexperienced, and yet fiercely undeterred in altering their vision into reality.

Kip Thorne had laid down certain conditions which the creators of the film had to adhere to in order to seek his assistance:

  1. Nothing in the film shall violate or establish the Laws of Physics, or our firmly established knowledge of the universe.
  2. Speculations (often wild) about ill-understood physical laws and the universe will spring from real science.

Deeply intriguing discussions on white dwarves, neutron stars and black holes then ensued.

As a sort of sequel to the talk on Gravitational waves undertaken by the Astronomy Club previously, we explored the intricacies of the mechanism of the space-time fabric. We went on to discuss the complications of tidal locking and time dilation.

In Interstellar the prominent motive to leave the planet was severe blight. Cooper was then called in to embark on a mission initially considered to be implausible, to get into Gargantua’s System.

“Everything wants to live where it will age slowly, so gravity pulls it there”-Einstein. This holds especially true since our universe is calibrated to time moving linearly, but because of the spin of the black hole produced by extreme warping of space and time, it spins too. To counteract the spinning action, time slows down in the only way it can-linearly.

 

The infamous theory of space being nothing but a rubber fabric was held as a reference, as Rahul broke the space-time continuum down to resemble an exaggerated ice-cream cone. Time has an added motion in this particular condition, besides linear and spinning- Singularity. Singularity’s gravity is so magnanimous that instead of warping time, it attracts it.

Let’s say a 2D rubber sheet is stretched down to three dimensions. Owing to the groundbreaking revelation that space and time are moving, time becomes our fourth dimension that holds our 3D space together. Hyperspace is the extra dimensional space outside our universe, created by gravity.

The speaker provided a brilliant analogy of a 2-D liquid flowing in a 3-D container, moving in a 4-D space. Now, all we must do to effectively visualise this, is to add a dimension. This introduces the fifth dimension, which is gravity. In the Tesseract, Cooper experiences a 3-D phase of the Tesseract, essentially moving time to create anomalies. Time can be controlled with gravity. Cooper physically manipulated time, which was effectively balanced by gravity. One of the most exhilarating moments in the film was the enclosure that the seemingly imposing mountains on Miller’s Planet were, in fact, waves. Murphy got the equation to essentially manipulate gravity, and received the information to create a 5-D universe.

The talk was an in-depth explanation of the working of wormholes, black holes and a myriad other cosmic entities, so it may not have appealed to those less inclined to step into the realm of astrophysics.

Space is best described as an onion with innumerable layers, which can only be torn down by intensive research by some of the most distinguished minds the world has to offer. Whether or not we unravel all the mysteries, can best be left up to Murphy’s Law.

Ananya Roy for MTTN

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