"We used to look up at the stars and think about our place in the universe; now, we just keep our eyes on the earth and worry about our place on earth."
The author of the post is blunt, but if you have time, I still hope that everyone will read this film review, not to respect the film critics, but to respect the film itself, as well as the awe of science and the universe.
Dedicated to movie fans and astronomy enthusiasts, they all have a persistent and pure soul.
Here's a synopsis of the movie review:
Part 1: After twists and turns, nine years of dream
Part II: Directors and Actors
Part 3: Analysis of the plot of the film
Part 4: Soundtrack
Part 5: CG and Composition
Part VI: Deeper Implications
Part VII: The Science of Interstellar Travel (emphasis)
Part 8: Epilogue
There is no very big connection between each part, and readers who are only interested in one of them need not worry.
If the reader is not too long-winded, please listen to me first, the past and present of "Interstellar"——
1. A dream, nine years of twists and turns
Linda Obst (who directed Carl Sagan's "Encounter") told Kip Thorne at a party that she wanted to make a movie about wormholes, and the two People spent 4 months discussing and formulating the prototype of the film, and they initially decided that this great film contains black holes, wormholes, high-dimensional space and the most cutting-edge content in today's physics world.
(1) Who was the original director?
In 2006, when Interstellar was still being planned, Spielberg expressed his interest in the film and hoped to see the general script. Kip and Linda were overjoyed, and worked day and night to produce an 8-page book. Outline, a week later, Spielberg signed off on the film after reading the script (unprecedented in Hollywood history), and soon after, Spielberg convened an 8-hour long The conference invites the top scientists in multiple fields to discuss the scientific nature of the script content.
By January 2007, the script outline was 37 pages long.
(2) The creation of the script
Steven and Linda went through many screenwriting selections, and finally asked Jonathan Nolan (Christopher Nolan's younger brother) to write the script, because Kip put forward two hard conditions when planning the film: the plot in the film cannot be Violating the established laws of physics cannot violate our well-established cognition of the universe; conjectures about the still unclear laws of physics and the universe originate from real science, and the basis for the conjectures must at least be recognized. Therefore, Jonathan often visited Kip's office during the creative process, and discussed with Kip the science of the script and content, and at the same time put forward many bold ideas.
In November 2007, Jonathan, Steven, Linda, and Kip had extensively revised the script, incorporating the original outline and Jonathan's daring ideas, before Jonathan threw himself into the script.
(3) Stagnation and waiting
Just when Kip and Linda thought the future of interstellar travel was bright, disaster struck.
On November 5, 2007, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, and Jonathan was banned from writing by the Writers Guild, so he "disappeared". The strike lasted for three months, until February 12, 2008, when Jonathan continued to write the script. After 16 months, he created a detailed script outline and revised it three times.
However, misfortunes do not come singly.
In June 2009, Jonathan "disappeared" again - he took over the script for "The Dark Knight Rises", but delayed for the creation of "Interstellar", because the delivery time of the Darkness Rise script was approaching, he had to Let go of other things at hand. Fortunately, he works fast.
However, the tragedy of interstellar travel did not end.
Just as Jonathan was preparing to continue the interstellar script, the Nolan brothers' father fell seriously ill, and the script's progress stalled again. During their father's final months, Jonathan was by his father's side.
The script of interstellar travel seems to be far away, but everyone has not given up.
Steven, Kip and Linda are all waiting, waiting for Jonathan's return.
In February 2010, after several twists and turns, Jonathan finally came back. In June, Jonathan began to revise the fourth edition script with all his strength, and the content of the film was basically determined. (For this paragraph, please refer to Chapter 6 of "Sleepless in Hollywood")
(4) Final decision of director
Just when everything finally started running smoothly again, Steven's agreement went awry, and for a split second, Interstellar lost its director again. Its hefty budget prevented Paramount from trusting any director to deliver such a massive production. For a while, Kip and Linda felt that interstellar travel had come to an end - but they still didn't give up waiting.
After months of communicating with Linda and Emma Thomas (Nolan's wife), Christopher Nolan decided to sign the film, and Kip and Linda had to wait nearly two years for the film to begin - from June 2010 until September 2012.
(5) Complex agreements
Christopher insisted that Paramount and Warner had to work together before he agreed to direct the film, but since the two companies were rivals, the negotiation of the deal was a tough one, but it was eventually negotiated (although the content was The complexity is beyond imagination), and the progress of interstellar travel has become smoother.
After a long period of shooting, editing, and processing, finally——
In 2014, Interstellar was born.
2. About directors and actors
Christopher Nolan must be familiar to all die-hard movie fans, whether it is the famous "Following", or the "Memento" that followed, to "The White Night", "Deadly Magic", and the three Batman prequels. , and then to "Inception", from "how do you face life when your memory is fragmented", to "the difficulty is not to make it disappear, but to change it back", and then to "since you have a dream, make it bigger ", followed by "beyond the original, pathetic to charming", until "humanity's next step is extraordinary"...
His unique non-linear narrative style completely changes the dimensions of the filmmaking structure.
As the saying goes: "Kashen improves technology, and Nuoshen improves structure."
Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain... The dazzling cast is also rare in other films. Their acting skills in this film are really impressive People are amazing, including their expressions and movements when they talk about the physical content of the line , they are not "acting", they are interpreting and interpreting the human beings of that era.
Cooper's decadent tone, the verse that old Brand recited until his death...
All of this conveys the concept of people at that time to the viewers——
"Here we are, waiting to die, suffocating".
3. About the content of the video
(1) DIRT
In the middle of the 21st century, disasters are raging on the earth - blight, sandstorms, atmospheric deterioration, ecological depletion... Human beings have almost given up fighting, and are just struggling to survive.
After a brief opening close-up of the bookshelf and pseudo-documentary wind, the shot cuts to Cooper's nightmare -- a blunder on a NASA mission. After waking up, the camera is accompanied by a low pipe organ, followed by Cooper to the cornfield outside the window.
Cooper is a retired NASA astronaut. In order to survive, human beings have limited limited resources and devoted themselves to agricultural production. Therefore, the country closed NASA many years ago, and he has since become a farmer.
(2) They
Life was broken by the strange phenomenon that happened around him. His daughter Murphy found that the books on the bookshelf in the room often fell automatically, and the automatic harvester in the cornfield also inexplicably collectively had an abnormal positioning system, and sand and dust were on the floor of Murphy's room. Leaving behind a mysterious pattern, Cooper found that the gravitational anomaly was a binary coordinate, as if some mysterious force was guiding him.
Cooper came to the secret base reorganized by NASA, where he met Professor Brand and learned that human beings are about to face the danger of extinction, so NASA was reorganized to find a planet suitable for human habitation in the universe and carry out migrant.
(3) Explorers
The professor told Cooper about the wormhole next to Jupiter and the Lazarus plan, and also introduced his own plan A (solving the gravitational equation and sending all human beings to life in space on a space station) and plan B (using fertilized eggs on the spacecraft) Let the fire of mankind continue on a habitable planet), I hope Cooper can join the ranks of explorers. Cooper couldn't reach an agreement after communicating with his family, but still embarked on an interstellar journey.
They traveled through wormholes and explored two potentially habitable planets.
On Miller's planet, they were confronted with monstrous waves two thousand meters high; on the frozen planet, they were betrayed by Dr. Mann. Because Miller's planet is very close to the black hole Gargantua, they have to accept the reality of "one time on earth, seven years in the sky". At the same time, the spacecraft was almost out of fuel, and they had no choice but to fly through the black hole's gravitational slingshot effect.
(4) Lies
When the professor was dying, he told Cooper's daughter Murphy that Plan A was a scam, because the solution of the gravitational equation was only complete when humans mastered the data inside the black hole singularity, and it was impossible for humans to be saved. However, Murphy did not give up.
(5) go home
In order for Amelia Brand to reach the last habitable planet, Cooper threw himself into a black hole, but fell into the "hypercube" of superhuman beings and saw his daughter's past and future. He found that gravity can transmit information to the past, and he used Morse code to transmit the information in the black hole to his daughter through the hands on the watch. After that, the Hypercube began to shrink, sending Cooper to the human space station.
(6) A new journey
Cooper saw his daughter, but the old Murphy told him to find Amelia, she was alone in the universe, Cooper did not want to see his daughter die, turned away, and set foot on a new life without hesitation. journey.
4. About invisible art
The soundtrack plays an important role in the emotional communication of the film.
The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer itself is pure music worthy of a single loop. His control of the audience's emotions and the tension in the expression of the film's content are shocking in every note, just like the infinite Miao Yu from heaven. The hymn, it's almost divine.
(1) "Cornfield Chace" - a chant from weak to strong
The soundtrack appears in a clip of Cooper, Murphy, and Tom chasing the drone. From the previous debate on Murphy's Law, to the surprise of drones, and the thrill of chasing drones, the soundtrack has just the right amount of control over the audience's emotions.
Under Zimmer's hands, the thousands of keys of a church organ play an ethereal hymn that descends from heaven.
This soundtrack reminds me of the shocking soundtrack "Time" at the end of "Inception", and the two have striking similarities. As long as you listen to it a few times, you will find that the melody before and after this soundtrack is constantly repeating, in other words, it has only one melody from beginning to end, and the number of notes per second gradually increases over time, but as long as you listen carefully, You will find that the notes on the same beat at the beginning and at the end are exactly the same! That said, Zimmer just "pumps" most of the notes out of the back section to make up the front section - which is almost inconceivable. The number of notes per second is directly proportional to the loudness, giving people a feeling from weak to strong.
"It has to do something useful to society."
"Can't we just let it go?"
"It has to learn to adapt to the world, just like us."
(2) "STAY" - the inaudible roar
The monotonous piano solos, coupled with the soft electronic background, are intertwined with Murphy's ghost.
"Grandpa said there are ghosts in this world."
"That's because Grandpa himself is about to become a ghost."
A book fell from the shelf without warning, the dust fell evenly on the ground according to the binary code, this is the ghost, behind the shelf, but you can't hear his roar.
"I put it in Morse code, do you know what it says?"
"Murphy, don't do this..."
"It said, Stay—Stay!"
(3) "Day One" - sailor
The piano lingers repeatedly, seemingly endlessly, and the electronic music that follows seems to be crying out for the loneliness of Infinite Miaoyu, the despair of human beings gradually suffocating but powerless, and the struggle for the last breath of life. .
We are supposed to be explorers of the infinite sky, and now we have finally embarked on the journey.
"I'm just worried that we are only separated by a few millimeters of steel plates from the universe outside."
"You know, Romilly, in fact, many sailors can't swim at all. We are explorers, and we are sailors in the universe."
(4) "Mountains" - Mountains
The music at the beginning is ethereal, like the ocean of Miller's planet.
Pay attention to the beat at the beginning of this paragraph. If you listen to the stopwatch, you will find that it is 1.25 seconds per beat. Is this a coincidence of the music or the necessity of the film? Why does the beginning beat happen to be a pendulum sound? If you do the conversion, you'll know that every 1.25 seconds on Miller's planet is a day on Earth.
The rhythm is getting faster and faster, the background music is gradually enhanced, and then with the camera of the huge wave, it burst out in an instant, seemingly in an endless battle with time.
"The launcher must be there! Let's go to the mountain!"
"That's not a mountain, that's a wave..."
Tension - Zimmer perfectly conveys to the audience the tense atmosphere and the approaching waves through changes in rhythm and loudness, the accumulation of the same melody and the explosion of the final melody.
Shocking - every shot of a huge wave is on the beat of the soundtrack, accompanied by strong sounds, this is the grandeur of the universe! This is the magic work of the creator! This is the hysterical roar of nature!
"I can't do it, leave me alone, let's go!"
"Yes you can, yes you can!"
(5) "No Time for Caution" - Rotation
Dr. Mann's forced operation caused the explosion of the Eternal's cabin, and the cabin began to spin rapidly, and the Eternal was Cooper and Amelia's only hope, and they had no choice.
"Cooper, there's no need to waste your fuel!"
"Tas, analyze the rotation state of the Eternal!"
"what are you doing?"
"Connect."
"The Eternal revs at 67...68 per minute..."
"Using reverse thrusters lets us synchronize with it."
"It's impossible!"
"No, it has to be possible!"
The organ is roaring, the fragments of the Eternal are scattered in the endless darkness, and in the vacuum, even the most heart-piercing cry of mankind has become small, too fragile to hear.
(6) "The Wormhole" - Interstellar
The continuous repetition of the crescendo of the music in the first part, coupled with the scene of the wormhole and the strange arc movement of the light produced by the gravitational lens effect, increases the tension, and the latter part of the music, coupled with the poetic picture of crossing, can be described as seamless. .
"Get ready to say goodbye to our solar system, and the Milky Way, here we go."
(7) "I'm Going Home" - see
Cooper is caught in the Hypercube, and he can see his daughter through the Hypercube's world tube.
Cooper sees her past, her future, he can talk, but nothing helps; he can see, but he can't intervene in the past; he can be angry, but only in books. However, he finally saw his daughter and home, but he never expected that in a few minutes, he would be able to return to his real home and see his real daughter.
"what is that?"
"Let's shake hands for the first time."
In 2013, Nolan approached his old partner, composer and film scorer Hans Zimmer, gave him a page of script and asked him to make a piece according to the script. It was about "two years ago in November, they were in a London restaurant talking about their children." After getting that page of the script, Hans Zimmer made a piece about his son and wrote Call Nolan over to the house to listen.
After listening, Nolan said: "I think my film can start shooting."
Hans Zimmer then asked puzzled: "But what exactly are you going to shoot?" So Nolan told him the grand space adventure story. Hans Zimmer said suspiciously: "But this is a very personal song, and it can only be listened to by the people you are closest and most trusted."
"That's the soul of the movie," Nolan said.
Yes, the soundtrack and family affection, as well as the hymn to Infinite Miao Yu, are the soul of "Interstellar".
5. About production
(1) "Real Shooting Crazy" Nolan
Recalling Inception, Nolan built a corridor that could rotate 360 degrees in order to take dozens of seconds of footage, and blew up an entire unfinished building for the Joker in The Dark Knight. In Interstellar, what happened to his hobby of real photography?
1. "Eternal" one-to-one model
Nolan built a 13.4-meter-long, 7.9-meter-wide, and 4.9-meter-high model of the Eternal, which could be moved from horizontal to almost vertical, because he didn't know which was cheaper, computer simulation or physical production.
It is worth mentioning that the explosion scene of the spaceship in the film was actually shot, and it can only be said that the artist is daring.
2. Advanced ways to save costs
In order to restore the scene to a high degree, Nolan planted a full 500 acres of corn, and let the actors drive through the play recklessly. It also saved a huge amount of film budget.
3. Details determine success or failure
In order to truly meet the requirements of Kip Thorne's "absolute science", even the iterative formula for solving the gravitational equation written on the blackboard of old Professor Brand was written by Kip Thorne himself on the set.
4. Hypercube
Nolan built a one-to-one hypercube model and then extended it with special effects from Double Negative to form the scene in the movie.
(2) Double Negative Studio
This company has participated in the special effects production of Inception, has won the Oscar for best visual effects, and has a total of more than 2,000 employees worldwide. During the special effects production, Kip passed the simulation of the formula derived from the theory of relativity to Paul Franklin, Eugenia von Tenzelmann and Oliver James, who then converted it into computer values, which were used to produce IMAX Clear picture.
They made Gargantua.
6. The Gravity of Love
Interstellar can be huge, merging black holes, wormholes, and superbodies; it can be so small that only Cooper and Murphy are left.
"Your mother said a sentence before. I never understood it before. Now I understand. She said that when you have a child, you are the ghost of the child's future. Now we are the memories of the child in the future."
Cooper left Murphy for the sake of thousands of families, but he crossed half the universe and 10 billion light years. In the end, he still saw the former Murphy. Time is a pain.
"You once said that when you came back, you would be the same age as me, but today is my birthday, and today, I happen to be the same age as you left..."
He watched the scenes of the past, and watched himself make mistakes one after another, but he couldn't do anything. This may be the biggest torture to a person. He was terrified of time, terrified of never seeing Murphy again. Love, like gravity, transcends time and dimension; like a shadow, it cannot be erased.
"Maybe love is a physical quantity from a higher dimension? We love those who are far away, we love those who leave... Love is the only force that transcends time and dimension."
7. Please walk gently into the good night of science
Many people say that the scientific nature of interstellar travel is just the emperor's new clothes. I hope that readers will have a better understanding of this sentence after reading the following content. If there are any deviations in the content, please point out the readers. I will be grateful. do.
The scientific consultant of "Interstellar" - Nobel Prize winner in physics, astrophysics giant Kip Thorne, has made two requests before the film (I mentioned in the first part, but important needs Emphasis): The plot of the film cannot violate the established laws of physics, nor can it violate our well-established knowledge of the universe; conjectures about the not yet clear laws of physics and the universe originate from real science, conjectures The basis must at least be recognized. But there are also many people who question the science of interstellar travel, so we have to go deep into every detail and explore its scientific nature, but before understanding its scientific content, we may need to briefly understand the physics of relativity. If there are any deviations in the content, I also hope that you will point it out so that you can modify it. The author is very grateful. I can only try my best to make the following content easy to understand. If the reader still can't understand it after reading it carefully, it must be my fault for not explaining it clearly.
(1) Simple concepts of general relativity and superstring theory
Constrained by the space, the post owner can only briefly talk about its core.
1. General Relativity
"If you sit next to a very ugly woman, even for a while, it feels like a long time; on the other hand, if you sit next to a very beautiful woman, even for a long time, it feels like a long time. After a little while, that's the theory of relativity." (Einstein's joke about relative time in general relativity)
For the formula of the E=mc square, there must be no need to say more. Both the speed of motion and the mass of the object that is approaching affect the passage of time, but time in general cannot be reversed, because this is not allowed by relativistic physics (not considering quantum foams at microscopic angles). Our focus is on two places: spacetime and gravity & mass and time.
General relativity clearly states that time and space are intertwined in a complex form. To give a simple example, the "Viking 1" and "Viking 2" once launched into Mars orbit, their distance relative to the earth Always the same, every once in a while a signal is received from Earth and then sent back to Earth.
But strangely, the experimenters found that when the signal traveled close to the sun, the time interval between its reception increased by several hundred microseconds, which completely exceeded the error caused by the small change in the distance between the Viking and the earth. In other words, the fact that when a signal passes through the sun, its propagation path must have become longer for some reason, all point to the same conjecture - that time and space are intertwined with space-time that is distorted by massive objects, and all this Creation is gravity.
Therefore, we can know that the curvature of space-time will cause gravity and the passage of time to slow down, and what can cause the curvature of space-time? The answer is that a massive object, that is, the closer you get to a more massive object, the slower time passes.
For example, two professors at Harvard used the Mössbauer effect to conduct experiments. They placed two clocks at the bottom of the water tower and the top of the 23-meter-high water tower. time is faster (more than 130 times the experimental error, more precisely, the time difference between the two is 210 trillionths of a second per day), thus proving the existence of the phenomenon.
On Earth, the effect of slowing the passage of time is minimal due to the Earth's extremely small mass relative to other celestial bodies, but if you're close to a neutron star, a day is shortened by hours; if you're on the surface of a black hole, time stands still.
This is the beauty of relativity—the uncertainty of relative time. And this is also the soul of interstellar travel.
Simply define gravity in one sentence: Any object tends to move towards the point where time passes the slowest.
2. Superstring Theory
For the application of this theory in interstellar travel, only one thing needs to be understood, that is: the theory is based on the premise of the existence of hyperspace.
What is a super body? The superbody is the high-dimensional space outside the three-dimensional cosmic membrane in which we live. In the setting of interstellar travel, the super body is the five-dimensional space.
After the above popular science, we can start to discuss the science in interstellar travel.
(2) Gargantua - the giant in the black hole
Black hole, probably even if you are not a physics enthusiast, you can still understand the word, but here is a strange fact to popularize: a black hole is a three-dimensional "hole" (ie a sphere) composed of curved space and curved time. , and nothing else.
Before introducing Gargantua, I think it is necessary to introduce some popular content to readers, otherwise it will be like reading a book from heaven.
1. Black hole hairless law
The name of this law is extremely indecent in French (what I want to make up for everyone sitting here), it is still the name given by Professor John Wheeler, who is good at taking nicknames, but to be precise, it is not " A black hole has no hair", but "a black hole with two hairs". How did it come up with such a strange name? And listen to me speak...
After repeated studies on one of the solutions to the equations of general relativity (the Schwarzschild solution, any space with a curvature larger than the Schwarzschild solution will produce a black hole, which is just an extension here), astrophysicists We found an interesting thing - as long as we know the mass and spin rate of the black hole, we can deduce all other information about the black hole. These two data are the two "hairs" of the black hole. . It's as if you could know everything else about the ballet girl on stage just by knowing her weight and how fast she was spinning in circles (it's so easy).
The setting of the black hole Gargantua in interstellar crossing is based on the setting of the black hole, the "ermao", that is - first determine the mass and spin rate of the black hole, and then based on these two data Construct the details of Gargantua.
Since mass and spin rate are the basis for the structure of black hole Gargantua, why don't we focus on the two "hairs" of Gargantua first?
2. The structure of Gargantua
Before calculating its structural data, it is necessary to popularize the content related to the spin of the black hole.
Any black hole has a spin rate, which is ignored by many people. So why is there a spin rate limit? The reason is very simple, because according to the predictions of relativity, the speed of any object cannot exceed the speed of light or reach the speed of light, and the surface of black holes is the same (if there is a certain astrophysical basis, you will know that black holes and wormholes are spheres, For a detailed explanation, please refer to the analysis of wormholes later), that is to say, if the black hole reaches the maximum spin rate, the rotation speed of the equatorial surface of the black hole will be infinitely close to the speed of light. If it exceeds the speed of light, a naked singularity is created (I will stress this point several times).
During his research, Kip also discovered factors that affect the speed of the black hole's spin rate: when a black hole attracts an object in the same direction as itself, its spin speed will increase, but 98% of the maximum spin rate is a critical value. , when this critical value is reached, it is extremely difficult for the black hole to capture objects that rotate in the same direction as itself. On the contrary, it is extremely easy to attract objects that rotate in the opposite direction, which will cause its spin rate to drop. However, the theory does not indicate that the spin rate of the black hole cannot exceed 98% of the maximum spin rate, but that the possibility is extremely small.
Let's take a look at the mass of the black hole. From the mass, the equatorial length of the black hole can be inferred, thereby obtaining the radius of the black hole.
We now infer Gargantua's mass and spin rate using Miller's planet's "one hour in the sky, seven years on Earth" setting. If only the mass is considered and the spin rate is zero, Miller's planet will be directly sucked into Gargantua; if the mass is not enough, the increase in the spin rate will cause Miller's planet to escape from Gargantua's. The black hole will be thrown away due to gravity (gravitational slingshot effect), or the black hole will exceed the maximum spin rate, so we need to find a neutralizing value (the calculation process is omitted here, it is too complicated and will take up a lot of space) but this value very extreme --
The mass of Gargantua is 100 million times that of the sun, and the spin rate is one hundred trillionth less than the maximum spin rate, which can meet the setting of the movie "One time in the sky, seven years on the earth", but even if the data No matter how extreme it is, as long as it is allowed within the theoretical limits, there is a certain chance that it will happen.
We can deduce that the equatorial length of Gargantua is 1 billion kilometers according to the "black hole hairless" law, that is to say, its radius is about 150 million kilometers - almost the distance from the sun to the earth! That's why Gargantua is so shocking.
3. Visualization of Gargantua
In order to understand the content of this part of the film, we need to do a lot of foreshadowing and popular science. I will give a very detailed explanation in this part so that readers can digest this part of the content as quickly as possible to understand the following film. So, let's continue our brain-burning journey now.
(1) Gravitational lensing effect of black holes
• Gravitational lensing of spin-free black holes
To understand the effect of gravitational lensing on out-of-shadow stars, and to understand how the star moves with the motion of the camera, let's start with a spinless black hole and see how it affects the light emitted by a single star.
In the image below, two rays of light travel from the star to the camera. In the curved space around a black hole, each ray follows the straightest path, but because the space is curved, its path is deflected.
One curved ray travels from the left side of the black hole, and the other ray travels along the right. Both rays of light reaching the camera will form a star image there. In the image, the lower left panel shows two images of the star captured by the camera, which we have marked with red circles to distinguish them from other stars in the background. Note that the image on the right is closer to the black hole's shadow than the one on the left because its light travels closer to the black hole's event horizon.
All other stars also appear twice in the picture. The two images are always on either side of the black hole. Can readers find several other pairs of stars? In the figure, the shadow of the black hole represents the direction of travel of all light that cannot reach the camera. In the upper right corner of the figure, there is a triangular area marked as shaded. All the light that "wanted" to enter the shadow was caught and swallowed by the black hole. As the camera follows its orbit to the right, the pattern of stars on the camera's negative will change as shown -
Two stars are highlighted in the image: one is marked in the red circle (i.e. the star in the image) and the other is marked with a yellow diamond. We can see two images of each star: one inside the pink circle and one outside. This pink circle is called the "Einstein Ring".
As the camera moves to the right, the image of the star will follow the yellow and red curves.
The star image outside Einstein's ring (we call it the "main image") moves in the direction most people expect: As the star moves smoothly from left to right and passes the black hole, its main image is deflected to Stay away from shaded places. However, the way the image inside the Einstein ring (we call it the "secondary image") moves in an unexpected way. They emerge from the right side of the shadow, travel outward along the ring between the Einstein ring and the shadow, then move to the left, and fall back to the edge of the shadow. (The diagram will help you understand this phenomenon.) Light traveling from the right is closer to the black hole, so the image of the star on the right is closer to the shadow. At earlier moments, when the camera was positioned closer to the left, light traveling from the right would need to be closer to the black hole than it is now, and its path would be more curved to reach the camera. Therefore, the star on the right is then imaged closer to the edge of the shadow. Conversely, the light on the left at an earlier time traveled farther away from the black hole. At this time, the propagation path of the light is almost a straight line, and the image formed is further away from the black hole.
If the reader's brain hasn't exploded, then it's time to explode, and we'll learn about Gargantua's gravitational lensing effect in what follows—
• Gravitational lensing of high-spin black holes
Around Gargantua, the stellar flow exhibits two Einstein rings (see image). We mark them with pink rings. Beyond the outer ring of Einstein's ring, the star moves to the right (such as along the two red curves), which is similar to the situation around the spinless black hole shown in the previous image. But the swirling space-time gathers the stream of stars into high-speed motion and wraps around a narrow band at the edge of the black hole's shadow. Then, the narrow band suddenly bends near the black hole's equator. At the same time, space gyrations also produce swirls of stellar streams (closed red circles).
Secondary images of each star appear between two Einstein rings. The trajectory of each secondary image is a closed curve (as shown by the yellow closed curve in the figure), and the movement direction of the secondary image is opposite to the direction of the flow of stars marked in red outside the outer ring of Einstein's ring. Without gravitational lensing, Gargantua's sky would have two very special stars: one above Gargantua's north pole and the other just below its south pole. They can be compared to Earth's North Star, a star that is exactly on Earth's north pole axis. We marked the main images of the south and north stars of Gargantua with red pentagrams and their secondary images with yellow pentagrams. On Earth, all the stars in the sky seem to move in a circular motion around the North Star because humans move on Earth as the planet rotates.
Similarly, all the main images of stars around Gargantua move in a circular motion around the main images of the red South and North stars, but their circular motion trajectories (such as the two red closed curves) are convoluted by space and gravitational lensing The effect is strongly distorted. Also, all secondary images will make a twisted circular motion around the yellow pentagram (e.g. along two yellow closed curves)
Why for a spinless black hole the secondary image would emerge from the black hole's shadow and eventually sink back into the shadow, instead of orbiting in a closed curve as around Gargantua? ?In fact, around the spinless black hole, the motion of the subpolar image does form a closed path, but the inner side of the closing curve is very close to the edge of the black hole's bright shadow, so it cannot be seen by the naked eye. Gargantua's spin creates a spatial gyration that moves the inner ring of the Einstein ring outward, making it visible, as well as revealing the full secondary image (yellow curve in the figure).
Inside the Einstein ring, stellar flow patterns are more complex. If it is said that all the constants in the universe are outside the outer ring of the inner ring of Einstein’s ring, and the secondary bamboo images are between the two rings, then what is gathered between the inner rings is the tertiary or higher-level images of stars. In the figure, we are in 5 small orbits, the red curve marks the equatorial plane. The black circle represents the black hole, the dashed purple line represents the orbit of the camera, and the red curve marks the path of the light rays that give the camera images of stars, which are indicated by blue arrows in the upper image. At this point, the camera travels counterclockwise around Kagan Dudua.
If you've made it this far, it's time to breathe a sigh of relief, we've tackled the hardest part of the black hole visuals, let's talk about Gargantua's "Halo" - Fire Shell
(2) Fire Shell - Imprisoned Light
Gravity is so strong near the black hole Gargantua, and space and time warp so strongly that light (photons) would be trapped in orbits beyond the event horizon, going round and round the black hole for a long time Then you can escape. These imprisoned light orbits are unstable because light eventually escapes from them. (By contrast, photons trapped within the event horizon will never escape.)
Many readers reading this may say that in popular science books, it is written: "The gravitational force of black holes is so strong that even light cannot escape." However, this has a premise, that is, the linear motion trajectory of photons needs to be related to the black hole's gravitational force. When the angular momentum reaches a certain critical value, in words that normal people can understand, the photon needs to rush towards the black hole almost directly before it has a 100% possibility of being absorbed by the black hole. why?
Taking the most common example, the photons around the black hole are like the skirt of a skirt. There are two factors that determine whether the skirt can float (ignore the quality of the skirt here): one is the length of the skirt (the relative is The distance between the photon's path and the black hole), and the second is the speed at which the girl is wearing a dress in circles (that is, the black hole's spin rate). The shorter the skirt and the faster the circling speed, the higher the skirt floats, so you know that centrifugal force is strongest at this time. In other words, the closer the photon’s motion path is to the black hole, the faster the black hole’s spin rate (provided that the photon and the black hole spin in the same direction, otherwise the visual effect will be just the opposite), the easier it is for light to break free from the black hole’s gravity.
Well, let’s stop talking about the idle articles, let’s go back to these rays of light that are temporarily imprisoned by the gravity of the black hole (presumably all the male compatriots are in good spirits).
Kip called these temporarily imprisoned rays "fire shells." Fireshell played an important role in the computer numerical simulation of Gargantua's visual effects for the film Interstellar.
For a spinless black hole, the fire shell is a sphere with a perimeter of the largest cross-section that is 1.5 times the perimeter of the event horizon. The trapped light circles around the sphere in great circles (similar to meridians on Earth), some of which leak out into the black hole, while others leak out and out of the black hole.
If a black hole is already spinning, its fire shell extends inward and outward, occupying a finite volume rather than just a sphere. In the case of Gargantua, due to its enormous spin rate, in the equatorial plane (see top), the fire crust would extend from the red circle below to the red circle above. The extension of the fire shell covers Miller's planet and its orbit, as well as a much wider area. On the lower red circle, a beam of light (photon orbit) circles around Gargantua in circles in the same direction as Gargantua spins (forward orbit). On the upper red circle, a photon can orbit the black hole in an orbit opposite to that of Gargantua's spin (reverse orbit). Obviously, due to the gyration of space, the light in the forward orbit can be closer to the black hole than in the reverse orbit without falling into the black hole.
The figure depicts the area of space occupied by the fire crust above and below the equatorial plane, which is a large annular area. This image omits the curvature of space, which would prevent the full view of the three-dimensional fire shell from being revealed.
The complex warping of space-time by black holes can make the orbits of the fire shell extremely complex. Kip shows us the orbits of some photons temporarily trapped in the fire shell in the figure below.
The black hole is at the center of these orbits. The orbit shown on the far left wraps round and round the equatorial region of a smaller sphere, always forward, in the same direction as Gargantua's spin. The second orbit is wrapped around a slightly larger sphere, and the orbits are almost identical, only going slightly in the positive direction. The third orbital wraps around a larger, almost entirely poloidal surface, going only slightly in the opposite direction. The orbit on the far right wraps almost completely around the equator, but runs in the opposite direction. The tracks actually overlap each other and are drawn separately to make it easier for the reader to see.
Photons that are temporarily trapped in the fire shell eventually escape. Some photons will leave Gargantua in a whirl. The rest of the photons swirl inward, toward Gargantua and trapped in its event horizon. The photons that were temporarily trapped but eventually escaped had a major influence on the visual effects of Gargantua in the film, they marked the edge of the shadow of Gargantua as seen by the crew of the Eternal, and would form at this edge A thin bright line: a "ring of fire".
And all of this made Gargantua.
(2) Accretion disk
• Where did the accretion disk come from?
By far the most accepted theory in the scientific community is that stars occasionally come very close to a quasar's black hole. At this point, the tidal force of the black hole rips apart the star. Much of the gas that was torn apart by the star was captured by the black hole, forming an accretion disk, but some escaped.
• Gargantua's accretion disk
A typical accretion disk and its jets both produce radiation: X-rays, gamma rays, radio radiation, and visible light. The radiation is so strong that it will roast everyone nearby. To avoid this damage, Nolan and Paul endowed Gargantua with an extremely inert accretion disk.
"Inactive" here is not relative to humans, but relative to the accretion disk of a typical quasar. Compared with the high temperature of hundreds of millions of degrees in the typical quasar accretion disk, the temperature of the Kagantua accretion disk is only a few thousand degrees, which is close to the surface temperature of the sun, so its radiation is concentrated in the optical band, only emitting Not even X-rays and gamma rays are emitted at all. The gas is so cold that the thermal motion of the atoms becomes too slow to expand the accretion disk. So, Gargantua's accretion disk is thin, essentially confined to the equator, with only a slight bulge.
Such disks are common around black holes that haven't been "fed" for a long time (haven't ripped apart stars in the last few million years). The vast majority of the magnetic field in the plasma initially confined to the accretion disk may be lost, along with the jets previously powered by the magnetic field. This is Gargantua's accretion disk: thin, with no jets, and relatively safe for humans. Note, only relatively safe.
Gargantua's accretion disk is very different from the pictures of thin disks you see on the web or in some astrophysics papers, because those pictures ignore an important feature: the gravitational lensing effect of black holes on the accretion disk (My brain starts to heat up when I see the word), but Interstellar doesn't ignore this feature, because Nolan insists on the accuracy of the visual effects.
Without the gravitational lensing effect, the accretion disk would look like the inset in the upper left panel. But gravitational lensing made a big difference (see main image). You might expect a portion of the accretion disk to hide behind the black hole. But that's not the case. Gravitational lensing creates two images: one above and one below the Gargantua black hole.
As you can see from the image below, light from the upper surface of the accretion disk behind Gargantua first propagates upwards, then bypasses the black hole and enters the camera, creating an image of the accretion disk surrounded by the black hole's shadow in the picture. A similar mechanism also produces images of the accretion disk surrounded by Gargantua's shadow.
Inside these primary images, we can see narrow secondary images of the accretion disk, which curve above and below the shadow near the edge of the shadow. If we make the image a lot bigger than it is now, then you can see the tertiary and higher images, which are closer to the shadows.
All of this, this cold and hard-core science, can create such a tender and shocking scene.
Take another look at Gargantua! Check out its gravitational lensing effect on the cosmic background! Check out its charming fire shell! Check out its magnificent accretion disk! All of this is almost magical!
And Gargantua's science goes beyond visuals.
3. The Internal Structure of Gargantua
(1) Three singularities
Maybe, many readers will think that the author is fooling people when they see this title, but the BKL singularity has actually been proved to be just a singularity in a black hole in the 1990s (refer to Eric Poisson and Werner Israel's paper). If you fall into a black hole that spins like Gargantua, inevitably many things will fall after you, like gas, dust, light, gravitational waves, and so on. From the outside of the black hole, these things take millions or even billions of years to fall in. But from the inside of the black hole, that's only a few seconds or less, because your time will be extremely slow relative to me. As a result, you see these things all piled up on a sheet that will fall toward you inside the black hole at or near the speed of light. This sheet can generate strong tidal forces and warp the surrounding space. And, if it touches you, you will be twisted too.
The tidal force will gradually increase to infinity, forming a falling singularity. However, tidal forces grow so rapidly that if they act on you, they will only deform you a limited amount the moment you reach the singularity. The force you feel will change over time, with a net stretching force in the up-down direction, and a squeezing force in the north-south and east-west directions. When you hit a singularity, there is a finite amount of squeezing or stretching you feel, but an infinite rate of change at which you are stretched or squeezed. These infinite velocities mean infinite tidal forces, so singularities do exist.
When you reach the singularity, it is possible (with a certain chance) that you will still be alive because only part of your body has been disintegrated by tidal forces. In this case, the falling singularity is much "gentle" compared to the BKL singularity. If you're really alive, what happens after that can only be explained by a theory of quantum gravity.
The third singularity was not proven until 2012.
Outer flying singularities are created by matter (gas, dust, light, gravitational waves, etc.) falling into the black hole. A tiny fraction of those things will bounce off the curved spacetime in the black hole and fly toward you, just as sunlight is reflected off of curved, smooth ocean waves, giving us a picture of the waves.
The bouncing matter is compressed into a layer like a sonic boom (a "shock front") due to the extremely slow passage of time inside the black hole. The tidal forces created by the gravitational pull of these materials would grow to infinity, becoming an outlying singularity. But like falling singularities, the tidal forces generated by outgoing singularities are mild: they grow very rapidly and suddenly, so if you hit them, you also experience a finite amount of net shape at the moment of passing through the singularity. , not infinite.
And these three mild singularities make Cooper's survival after falling into the black hole possible.
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