Physics facts to be known before watching "Interstellar"

   Editor's note: There are no spoilers in this post. In fact, we strongly advise you to read this before going to see the film.

Christopher Nolan's latest mind-trip "Interstellar" will be premiering in theaters across the country on Friday, Nov. 7. No doubt, the film is the strangest cinematic experience you will have had since Nolan's "Inception."

But unlike "Inception," the visually-gripping film "Interstellar" is based on real, scientific concepts like neutron stars, spinning black holes, and time dilation. And if you're not at least semi-familiar with these terms, you might end up feeling a little lost during the movie.

In the movie, a crew of space explorers embark on an extra-galactic journey through a wormhole. What awaits them on the other side is another solar system with a spinning black hole for a sun.

They must race against space and time to complete their mission. All this space travel can get a little confusing, but it relies on some basic physics principles. And if you understand these principles, then you'll spend less time guessing and more time enjoying.

Here's a brief guide to the five physics concepts you need to know in order to understand "Interstellar."

Artificial Gravity

Warner Bros. UK

Spaceship in 'Interstellar' film.

A big problem we, as humans, face with long-term space travel is the affects of zero gravity in space. We were born on Earth and therefore our bodies are adapted to thrive under certain gravitational conditions, but when we're in space for long period of time, our muscles degrade.

This is an issue for the travelers in "Interstellar," too.

To combat this, scientists have conceived different designs of installing artificial gravity on spaceships. One way is to rotate the spacecraft, like in the film. The rotation creates a force, called centrifugal force, that pushes objects to the outer walls of the spacecraft. This push acts similar to how gravity would, but just in an opposite direction.

You experience this same form of artificial gravity when you're driving around a tight curve and feel like you're being pushed outward, away from the central point of the curve. For a spinning spacecraft, your wall becomes the floor on which walk.

Spinning Black Holes

Interstellar Movie

Spinning black hole in "Interstellar"

At the center of every black hole is an extremely dense, massive, compact star called a neutron star. Astronomers have known for decades that certain neutron stars spin - some at a rate of thousands of times per second.

Spinning neutron stars, that are dense enough, produce spinning black holes, which astronomers have observed, albeit indirectly. What you need to know about spinning black holes is that they warp the space around them differently than stationary black holes.

This warping process is called frame dragging, and it affects the way a black hole will look and distort the space and, more importantly, the spacetime around it. The spinning black hole you see in the film is surprisingly scientifically accurate.

Wormholes

Warner Bros. UK

Wormhole in "Interstellar" film

Wormholes - like the one the "Interstellar" crew use - are one of the only physical phenomenon in the film that don't have any observational evidence to support their existence. They are purely theoretical but an incredibly handy plot device for any science fiction story looking to traverse cosmic distances.

This is because wormholes are essentially shortcuts through space. Any object with mass will create a divot in space, meaning space can be stretched, distorted, or even folded. A wormhole is a fold in the fabric of space (and time) that connects two, otherwise extremely distant, regions in space, which enables space explorers to travel long distances over a short period of time.

The official term for a wormhole is an Einstein-Rosen bridge because they were first theorized by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen in 1935.

Gravitational Time Dilation

CBM Trailers

Shot of Earth and spaceship from "Interstellar"

Gravitational time dilation is a real phenomenon that has been observed on Earth. It occurs because time is relative, meaning time runs at different rates for different reference frames. When you're in a strong gravitational environment time runs slower for you relative to people in a weak gravitational environment.

If you are near a black hole, like the one in the film, your gravitational reference frame, and therefore your perception of time, is different than someone standing on Earth. This is because the gravitational pull from the black hole is stronger the closer you are to it.

For you, a minute near a black hole will still last 60 seconds, but if you could look at a clock on Earth, a minute will appear to last less than 60 seconds. This means you will age more slowly than the people on Earth. And the stronger the gravitational field you're in, the more extreme the time dilation.

This plays an important role in the film when the explorers encounter a black hole at the center of another solar system.

Five-Dimensional Reality

MovieClipsTrailers

Shot from the film "Interstellar"

Albert Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life working out what physicists call a unified theory - which would combine the mathematical concept of gravity with the other three fundamental forces of nature: the strong force, weak force, and electromagnetic force. He failed to find one, as have countless physicists since Einstein.

Gravity refuses to cooperate, and some physicists think that one way to solve this outstanding mystery is to treat our universe as if it actually functioned in five dimensions, instead of the four-dimensional universe Einstein developed in his theory of relativity, which couples three-dimensional space with one-dimensional time, a.k.a. spacetime.

Nolan toys with this idea that our universe has five dimensions in the film and gravity's important role in it all.

Movie Time

That wasn't too bad, right? Now it's time to test what you've learned and go see the movie. Let us know in the comments below if this post was helpful.

Here's the official movie trailer by Warner Bros. UK.

Little Big Black Hole

Astronomers have discovered the smallest supermassive black hole lurking in the center of a dwarf galaxy around 340 million light-years away. Small it may be, but it could help to unlock some pretty hefty black hole mysteries.

NEWS: Baby Universe Spawned Weirdly Monstrous Black Hole

The black hole was discovered in the dwarf galaxy RGG 118. It's the smallest supermassive black hole discovered to date, but it still “weighs in” at a whopping 50,000 times the mass of our sun. However, it is less than half the mass of the next-smallest supermassive black hole discovered to date and 100 times less massive than the supermassive black hole that lives in the center of our galaxy.

As we’re comparing, RGG 118′s black hole is 200,000 less massive than the biggest supermassive black hole known to exist.

Size comparisons to one side, this latest black hole discovery is extremely important to astronomers trying to understand the perplexing evolutionary processes that dominate supermassive black holes, which are known to reside in the majority of galaxies, and how they relate to their host galaxy’s evolution.

ANALYSIS: Star ‘Mass Grave’ Surrounds Our Galaxy’s Black Hole

“It might sound contradictory, but finding such a small, large black hole is very important,” said Vivienne Baldassare of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in a NASA news release. “We can use observations of the lightest supermassive black holes to better understand how black holes of different sizes grow.”

RGG 118 was originally discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Baldassare’s team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the 6.5-meter Clay Telescope in Chile to characterize the surprisingly small supermassive black hole. They were able to study the motion of cool gas in the center of RGG 118 in optical light using the Clay Telescope. They also zoomed in on the X-ray emissions from the hot, swirling gas in close proximity to the black hole using Chandra. Both of these measurements proved that RGG 118′s black hole acts in a similar way to other supermassive black holes in the centers of other galaxies.

The velocities of stars surrounding the black hole in the core of the galaxy also supported this finding.

A Sloan Digital Sky Survey image of RGG 118, a galaxy containing the smallest supermassive black hole ever detected. The inset is a Chandra image showing hot gas around the black hole.

NASA/CXC/UNIV OF MICHIGAN/V.F.BALDASSARE, ET AL; OPTICAL: SDSS

“We found this little supermassive black hole behaves very much like its bigger, and in some cases much bigger, cousins,” added co-author Amy Reines of the University of Michigan. “This tells us black holes grow in a similar way no matter what their size.”

One of the biggest mysteries in modern astrophysics is the existence of seriously massive, billion-solar mass supermassive black holes that must have existed in the universe less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Astronomers hope that through the discovery of this smaller example that black hole evolution models may be refined.

NEWS: Plus-Sized Black Hole Busting Out of Skinny Galaxy

Currently, it is theorized that supermassive black holes are either seeded by the rapid collapse of vast gas clouds with masses of up to 100,000 times that of our sun or they are formed by the collapse of massive stars. Now we have the opportunity to see which model is more likely in the case of RGG 118.

“We have two main ideas for how these supermassive black holes are born,” said Elena Gallo, also of the University of Michigan. “This black hole in RGG 118 is serving as a proxy for those in the very early universe and ultimately may help us decide which of the two is right.”

is it a comet????...or.....a planet!

Gliese 436 b

Extrasolar planet		List of extrasolar planets
Size comparison of Gliese 436 b with Neptune
Parent star
Star		Gliese 436
Constellation		Leo
Right ascension	(α)	11h 42m 11.0941s[1]
Declination	(δ)	+26° 42′ 23.652″[1]
Apparent magnitude	(mV)	10.68
Distance		33.4 ± 0.8 ly (10.2 ± 0.2 pc)
Spectral type		M2.5 V[1]
Mass	(m)	0.41 ± 0.05 M☉
Radius	(r)	0.42 R☉
Temperature	(T)	3318 K
Metallicity	[Fe/H]	-0.32
Age		7.41–11.05[2] Gyr
Orbital elements
Semimajor axis	(a)	0.0291±0.0004[3] AU (4.35 Gm)
		2.85 mas
Periastron	(q)	0.0247 AU (3.70 Gm)
Apastron	(Q)	0.0335 AU (5.01 Gm)
Eccentricity	(e)	0.150±0.012[3]
Orbital period	(P)	2.643904±0.000005[4] d (0.00723849 y)
		(63.4537 h)
Inclination	(i)	85.8+0.21 −0.25[4]°
Argument of periastron	(ω)	351±1.2°
Time of periastron	(T0)	2,451,551.716 ±0.01 JD
Semi-amplitude	(K)	18.68±0.8 m/s
Physical characteristics
Mass	(m)	22.2±1.0[3] M⊕
Radius	(r)	4.327±0.183[3][5] R⊕
Stellar flux	(F⊙)	29.5 ⊕
Density	(ρ)	1.51 g cm−3
Surface gravity	(g)	1.18 g
Temperature	(T)	712±36[3]
Discovery information
Discovery date		August 31, 2004
Discoverer(s)		Butler, Vogt, Marcy et al.
Discovery method		Radial velocity, Transit
Discovery site		California, USA
Discovery status		Published
Other designations
Ross 905 b, GJ 436 b,[6] LTT 13213 b, GCTP 2704.10 b, LHS 310, AC+27:28217 b, Vyssotsky 616 b, HIP 57087 b, GEN# +9.80120068 b, LP 319-75 b, G 121-7 b, LSPM J1142+2642 b, 1RXS J114211.9+264328 b, ASCC 683818 b, G 147-68 b, UCAC2 41198281 b, BPS BS 15625-0002 b, G 120-68 b, 2MASSJ11421096+2642251 b, USNO-B1.0 1167-00204205 b, CSI+27-11394 b, MCC 616 b, VVO 171 b, CSI+27-11395 b, HIC 57087 b, NLTT 28288 b, Zkh 164 b, CSI+26-11395 b, [RHG95] 1830 b, GCRV 7104 b, LFT 838 b, PM 11395+2700 b

Discovered in August 2004, Gliese 436b orbits a red-dwarf star located in the constellation Leo, around 33.4 light-years away and has a very 

The planet has an orbital period of just 2.6 Earth days and a mass approximately 23 times that of our home planet. It is categorized as a warm Neptune because it is much closer to its star (just about 4 million km away) than frigid Neptune is to the Sun.

Gliese 436b has an atmosphere leaves behind a gigantic trail of hydrogen, which is about 50 times the size of the parent star, Gliese 436. A phenomenon this large has never before been seen around such a small planet.

“What we can see is a large cloud of hydrogen gas absorbing the light from a red dwarf star as its exoplanet, Gliese 436b, passes in front. The cloud is created as of result of X-rays emitted from the red dwarf burning off Gliese 436 b 's upper atmosphere,” explained Dr Peter Wheatley of the University of Warwick, UK, a co-author on the study published in the journal Nature.

“The cloud forms a comet-like tail as a result of UV light coming from the star pushing on the hydrogen and causing it to spiral outwards.

Because the atmosphere of our planet blocks most UV light, the team needed a space telescope with Hubble’s UV capability and exquisite precision to find the Gliese 436b’s comet-like tail.

“You would have to have Hubble’s eyes. You would not see it in visible wavelengths. But when you turn the UV eye of Hubble onto the system, it’s really kind of a transformation, because the planet turns into a monstrous thing,” said study lead author Dr David Ehrenreich from the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

He added: “this cloud of hydrogen is very spectacular. Although the evaporation rate doesn’t threaten the planet right now, we know that the star was more active in the past. This means that the planet’s atmosphere evaporated faster during its first billion years of existence. Overall, we estimate that it may have lost up to 10 percent of its atmosphere.”

“Around 1,000 metric tons of hydrogen are being burnt off from Gliese 436b’s atmosphere every second; which equates to only 0.1 percent of its total mass every billion years,” Dr Wheatley said.

The same process may explain the disappearance of atmospheres observed on terrestrial exoplanets, which rotate very close to their star and are extremely hot, such as the so-called super-Earths.

“Finding the cloud around Gliese 436b could be a game-changer for characterizing atmospheres of the whole population of Neptunes and super-Earths in UV observations,” said co-author Dr Vincent Bourrier, also from the Observatory of the University of Geneva.

The astronomers suggest that evaporation such as this may also have happened in the earlier history of the Solar System, when the Earth had a hydrogen-rich atmosphere that dissipated.

It is also possible that it could happen to Earth’s atmosphere at the end of our planet’s life, when the Sun swells up to become a red giant and boils off our remaining atmosphere, before engulfing our planet completely.

Gliese 436 b /ˈɡliːzə/ (sometimes called GJ 436 b^[7]) is a Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 436.^[8] It was the first hot Neptune discovered with certainty (in 2007) and was among the smallest known transiting planets in mass and radius until the much smaller Kepler exoplanet discoveries started coming in by 2010.

In December 2013, NASA reported that clouds may have been detected in the atmosphere of GJ 436 b.^{[9][10][11][12]}

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Discovery
• 2 Physical characteristics
• 3 Orbital characteristics
• 4 See also
• 5 References
• 6 Selected media articles
• 7 External links

Discovery[edit]

The radial velocity trend of Gliese 436, caused by the presence of Gliese 436 b

Gliese 436 b was discovered in August 2004 by R. Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and University of California, Berkeley, respectively, using the radial velocity method. Together with 55 Cancri e, it was then the first of a new class of planets with a minimum mass (M sini) similar to Neptune.

The planet was recorded to transit its star by an automatic process at NMSU on January 11, 2005, but this event went unheeded at the time.^[13] In 2007, Gillon led a team which observed the transit, grazing the stellar disc relative to Earth. Transit observations led to the determination of Gliese 436 b's exact mass and radius, both of which are very similar to Neptune. Gliese 436 b then became the smallest known transiting extrasolar planet. The planet is about 4000 km larger in diameter than Uranus and 5000 km larger than Neptune and a bit more massive. Gliese 436b (also known as GJ 436b) orbits its star at a distance of 4,000,000 km or 15 times closer than Mercury's average distance from the Sun.

Physical characteristics[edit]

Possible interior structure of Gliese 436 b

The planet's surface temperature is estimated from measurements taken as it passes behind the star to be 712 K (439 °C).^[3] This temperature is significantly higher than would be expected if the planet were only heated by radiation from its star (which had been, in a Reuters article from a month prior to this measurement, estimated at 520 K). Whatever energy that tidal effects deliver to the planet does not notably affect its temperature.^[14] Its discoverers allowed for a temperature increase due to a greenhouse effect.^[15]

Its main constituent was initially predicted to be hot "ice" in various exotic high-pressure forms,^[15][16] which remains solid because of the planet's gravity despite the high temperatures.^[17] The planet could have formed further from its current position, as a gas giant, and migrated inwards with the other gas giants. As it arrived in range, the star would have blown off the planet's hydrogen layer via coronal mass ejection.^[18]

However when the radius became better known, ice alone was not enough to account for it. An outer layer of hydrogenand helium up to ten percent in mass would be needed on top of the ice to account for the observed planetary radius.^[3][4] This obviates the need for an ice core. Alternatively, the planet may be a super-earth.^[19]

Observations of the planet's brightness temperature with the Spitzer Space Telescope suggest a possible thermochemical disequilibrium in the atmosphere of this exoplanet. Results published in Nature suggest that Gliese 436b's dayside atmosphere is abundant in CO and deficient in methane (CH₄) by a factor of ~7,000. This result is unexpected because, based on current models at this temperature, the atmospheric carbon should prefer CH₄ over CO.^{[20][21][22][23]}

Formation of a helium atmosphere on ahelium planet, possibly like Gliese 436 b.

In June 2015, scientists reported that the atmosphere of Gliese 436 b was evaporating, resulting in a giant cloud around the planet and, due to radiation from the host star, a long trailing tail 14×10⁶ km (9×10⁶ mi) long.^[24]

Artist impression of Gliese 436b shows the enormous comet-like cloud of hydrogen bleeding off.^[25]

Orbital characteristics[edit]

One orbit around the star takes only about 2 days, 15.5 hours. Gliese 436 b's orbit is likely misaligned with its star's rotation.^[22]

The eccentricity of Gliese 436 b's orbit is inconsistent with models of planetary system evolution. To have maintained its eccentricity over time requires that it be accompanied by another planet.^[3][26]

See also[edit]

The star that put a ring on it.

Astronomers have spotted a rare picture of a nebula that looks uncannily like an engagement ring.

Captured using using ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile spotted planetary nebula PN A66 33 was created when an aging star blew off its outer layers.

The bubble is, by chance, aligned with a foreground star, and bears an uncanny resemblance to a diamond engagement ring. 

'This cosmic gem is unusually symmetric, appearing to be almost circular on the sky,' said the European Space Agency, which revealed the image.

This image, captured by ESO¿s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the remarkably round planetary nebula Abell 33, located roughly 2500 light-years from Earth. Being perfectly round is uncommon for these objects, say astronomers, usually something disturbs the symmetry and causes the planetary nebula to display irregular shapes.

On the way to this final phase of their lives the stars throw their atmospheres out into the space and create planetary nebulae, colourful glowing clouds of gas surrounding the small, bright stellar relics.

The remnant of Abell 33’s progenitor star, on its way to becoming a white dwarf, can be seen just slightly off-centre inside the nebula, visible as a tiny white pearl.

This wide-field view shows the sky around the planetary nebula Abell 33, which appears as the ghostly blue circle near the centre of the picture. The bright orange star at the top is Iota Hydri, which is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

It is still bright — more luminous than our own Sun — and emits enough ultraviolet radiation to make the bubble of expelled atmosphere glow.

Abell 33 is just one of the 86 objects included in astronomer George Abell's 1966 Abell Catalogue of Planetary Nebulae. 

Abell also scoured the skies for galaxy clusters, compiling the Abell Catalogue of over 4000 of these clusters in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the sky.

Hubble finds a gem in the sky

Planetary nebula NGC 6818 (α=19^h 44^m, δ=-14° 09′ J2000) lies 6,000 light-years away in Sagittarius. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

This colourful bubble is a planetary nebula called NGC 6818, also known as the Little Gem Nebula. It is located in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), roughly 6,000 light-years away from us. The rich glow of the cloud is just over half a light-year across — humongous compared to its tiny central star — but still a little gem on a cosmic scale.

When stars like the Sun enter “retirement,” they shed their outer layers into space to create glowing clouds of gas called planetary nebulae. This ejection of mass is uneven, and planetary nebulae can have very complex shapes. NGC 6818 shows knotty filament-like structures and distinct layers of material, with a bright and enclosed central bubble surrounded by a larger, more diffuse cloud.

Scientists believe that the stellar wind from the central star propels the outflowing material, sculpting the elongated shape of NGC 6818. As this fast wind smashes through the slower-moving cloud it creates particularly bright blowouts at the bubble’s outer layers.

Hubble previously imaged this nebula back in 1997 with its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, using a mix of filters that highlighted emission from ionised oxygen and hydrogen. This image, while from the same camera, uses different filters to reveal a different view of the nebula.

to know more about this gem nebula:wikipedia

Is this the largest feature in the universe?

  Astronomers have found what may be the largest feature in the known universe: a ring of nine gamma ray bursts - and hence galaxies - five billion light years across.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous events in the universe, releasing as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime.

They are thought to be the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes. Their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies. The GRBs that make up the newly discovered ring were observed using a variety of space- and ground-based observatories.

They appear to be at very similar distances from us - around 7 billion light years in a circle more than 70 times the diameter of the full Moon, researchers said.

This implies that the ring is more than 5 billion light years across. There is only a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance, said Professor Lajos Balazs of Konkoly Observatory in Budapest who led the Hungarian-US team of astronomers which made the discovery.

Most current models indicate that the structure of the cosmos is uniform on the largest scales. This ‘Cosmological Principle’ is backed by observations of the early universe and its microwave background signature.

Other recent results and this new discovery challenge the principle, which sets a theoretical limit of 1.2 billion light years for the largest structures. The newly discovered ring is almost five times as large, researchers said.

“If the ring represents a real spatial structure, then it has to be seen nearly face-on because of the small variations of GRB distances around the object’s centre.

An image of the distribution of GRBs on the sky at a distance of 7 billion light years, centred on the newly discovered ring. The positions of the GRBs are marked by blue dots and the Milky Way is indicated for reference, running from left to right across the image.