The Problem With Interstellar's Black Hole that Everyone Ignores

I can’t get over how amazing Interstellar was as an experience. Still to this day, no other movie had as much of an impact on me than it did.

I think what i enjoyed most about movies like Interstellar and Gravity is that they make space very dangerous and creepy. No dramatic killer aliens involved.

I can't believe this movie is already 10 years old! It's one of my favorites!

I was very sleepy when this was recommended to me and I thought it said "The Truth about Orangutans" and my half-conscious mind believed there was some conspiracy regarding the existence of Orangutans.

It always bothered me that time dilation only began once they reached the planet and not the whole time growing as they approached the planet and it’s proximity to Gargantua.

Interstellar was one of the catalysts, that piqued (not peaked) my curiosity about space and time. Yes there are plenty of inaccuracies, but it's still a very powerful and beautiful movie

The time paradox mentioned at the end miss states the film’s plot. He doesn’t communicate the equations to his past self to let his craft leave earth. His craft leaves conventionally and is already built when he arrives at the NASA base . He communicate with his daughter giving her the equation so she can develop the ships that will lift all of humanity off earth to seek out the new planet, which she does as an adult while he is away off planet.

I always thought the scene where he falls into the black hole was supposed to be the beings from the future teleporting him to the 5D dimension (IIRC the robot even says that the beings were the ones to show him the 5D world), maybe because the beings were supernatural in nature or maybe because the beings were future humans or sympathetic aliens who were able to save him using advanced future technology only available thousands of years in the future. Because of the time dilation, those thousands of years would've passed already.

I always understood spaghettification as being a less significant issue with supermassive black holes, as the gravity increase as you get closer is more gradual over a greater distance than smaller ones. Is that true? That still doesn’t solve the deadliness of the hot plasma or the photosphere

Colonizing a planet in orbit of a black hole is unlikely to be a good idea simply because of the radiation present nearby, as their accumulation discs are incredibly violent - but other than that, if you live on such a planet, you're in a different timeframe than the rest of humanity, and while not entirely causally disconnected, it would inevitably turn into cultural disconnection.

This video 10 years late because of time dilation

Kip Thorne's written some brilliant books on the subject - one of the best is "Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" and another he wrote was on the science of this film which is also excellent. It's clear that one won't necessarily get spaghettified falling in towards the event horizon of a supermassive blackhole where the gravitational gradient is low enough, like those found at the centre of galaxies.

The first problem I thought of with the time dilation caused by the brief visit to Miller's Planet is this: If the gravitational change between the orbit of the main spacecraft, and the orbit of Miller's Planet is that extreme (20 years to 1 hour), how did the relatively small ship that visited the planet possibly have enough delta V capability to climb back up that gravity well?

Your narration is simply and absolutely delightful. I am almost always thinking about black holes, even in the back of my mind when I'm doing something else. Sometimes magnetars. Black holes have transformed the way I see everything, and I often imagine that we are all inside one more massive than I could ever truly understand. For me, the best part of Interstellar was the moment he decides to brave the black hole.

I adore this movie, it's probably in my top 5 of all time. Black holes have fascinated me ever since middle-school, so this movie's beautiful and terrifying portrayal of it was amazing.

I had a falling out with an old friend years ago. He loves watching Astrum and his favorite movie is Interstellar. While what happened between us is irreparable, I will always appreciate the positive impact he made on my life when I needed it most. I hope you’re doing well, buddy. Enjoy the video 👍

Kip Thorne gave a talk on the physics of Interstellar and his role in it, and he was asked to come up with a simulation of the wormhole transition scene. He did, but it was rather unspectacular, so Nolan took some artistic license.

6:14 should note here that Kip Thorne said that the scene of them going through the wormhole was extremely unrealistic. There's an hour long presentation of Kip explaining the science behind the movie on the channel 'Science & Cocktails' where he shows what the transit would actually look like.

Being on the surface of the water planet would be no different than being in orbit of it, since there would be very little difference in the distance to the black hole's event horizon, so time wouldn't be going any faster on the surface than it would be for the ship in orbit.

My main issue with Miller's planet is the characters' decision to visit it first. These guys are top-of-their field scientists who don’t take the time to do the math and realize that an observer on the surface would only have been there for a few hours/minutes. If they had, they would have concluded that the favorable report was only initial, and shouldn’t be trusted over the much more thorough survey of the second planet. They would also have known that for earth, it would be worth checking the third planet first, since any excursion to Miller's planet would take decades from Earth's timeframe. The point is that nothing about the time dialation at Miller's planet should have been a surprise to the characters. People like them should have suspected that phenomenon existed there, and they certainly had the know-how to mathematically check the potential consequences of going there.