Kip S. Thorne

A companion piece to the incredible 2014 sci-fi film Interstellar, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne's book is more than a few degrees of difficulty above your usual popular science book. Deeply involved in the development of the film, Thorne goes into great detail (often technical) about how he ensured the science used in the film was feasible. He created complex equations that kept the filmmakers honest (the equations on Michael Caine's blackboard in the film are real ones created show more by Thorne and written by him personally on set) and in this book he delves into fearsomely complex concepts such as fifth dimensions, wormholes, black hole accretion disks and tesseracts.

Thorne's endeavours helped ensure that Interstellar became one of the most visionary, awe-inspiring and intellectually-stimulating creations ever put to film, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit unmanned when reading his book. There are scientists out there better able to get complicated ideas across to the general reader, whereas Thorne too easily gets technical and the book can be tough going. Nevertheless, the raison d'être of the book is 'show your working', and Thorne certainly does this. It is a great achievement and adds its considerable academic weight to the creative force that is Interstellar. show less

The central argument of this book is undoubtedly true. We have lost our sense of wonder, especially in the last 20-30 years.

I watched the first images of that black hole in 2019 (*) in awe wondering how many cosmic phenomena are there yet to discover, but then I grew up in the shadow of the moon landing when the assumption was we would be living on Mars and in space stations by now. I don’t want to over romanticise that period because it was overshadowed by the Cold War and Nuclear War. show more Many seem to forget that we still live in the shadow of Nuclear War but, unlike the 70s, we no longer live under the occasional sunbeam of hope that we might overcome our problems that formed the narrative of Star Trek and even Star Wars to a lesser degree. Today we are only encouraged to see that Britain has Got Talent rather than the Universe contains wonders. Don’t get me wrong Britain has got Talent is a good watch but does any of it really matter as much of it seems like an attempt to escape from the boredom of everyday life in fleeting pleasures, whereas greater understanding of the cosmos can give yet greater pleasure: purpose, imagining that we too, or our ancestors, may progress to a point where we overcome our problems and will be unable to travel to that black hole much as our ancestors looked up and wondered about the moon. I sometimes feel like many politicians and entrepreneurs don’t want us to look to the sky above but keep our eyes firmly fixed on them as if they can stand comparison with the sheer majesty of this black hole. A sense of awe and curiosity is, in my opinion, one of things that made us even capable of seeing this black hole ( consider the existence of the black hole was ‘discovered’ by someone working with paper and pencil; refined by someone considering those theories; then worked on by a team over a century later to film its existence). If we don’t see the majesty and possibilities this picture shows us; if we fail to learn the lessons of Einstein’s work i.e. we mustn’t stop imagining, pondering beyond the observable but basing our theories on the observable. There is an irony that this vision of what until now may be considered one of the deadliest phenomena in the universe also is a confirmation of possibilities of the continued life of our species as it reflects our greatest qualities: our ability to dream; to work hard on our dreams as a team; and then our ability to start all over again when new possibilities appear.

Give me an unassuming Einstein who, for all his many human failings, strove through hard work he didn’t need to advertise every day, to raise all our understanding so we could all get something out of it and not just feel small and stupid next to him.



NB: I can't speak for anyone else's sense of wonder in relation to Sagittarius A*'s image, but I found it fascinating. I know there is something in the middle, and I have a fairly good grasp of what it is. That's a pretty bloody astonishing thing. To see an actual image of it, with the light cutting off at the event horizon, and that fucking whopping monster of a thing being flat out invisible in the middle of that firestorm. If you aren't amazed by it, you probably haven't got a clue what it represents. Although it is pretty “crappy” image quality (this image is a result of using data from eight radio telescopes sited on Earth and the black hole is 55m light years away from Earth, so we cannot really complain about “crappy” images). It'd look a lot more impressive from one light year away. If you could survive, which you probably couldn't. show less

Kip Thorne’s name is practically synonymous with the modern era of gravitational physics. A former graduate student of living legend John Wheeler, Thorne and his research group have been leading participants in the renaissance of general relativity which began during the early 1960s and continues to this day. The hugely influential 1973 text book "Gravitation", co-authored with Charles Misner and Wheeler, introduced the modern view of general relativity to an entire generation of show more physicists. And Wheeler spent time during his early years working in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr. The lineage is long and distinguished.

Black Holes and Time Warps is more technical than Clifford Will's "Was Einstein Right?", and more personal. Thorne does not shy away from presenting fairly solid physics, and some readers may struggle with concepts such as Finkelstein’s reference frame for a star collapsing to a black hole, in which observers near the star are in free fall. But even those who skim over such details cannot help but come away with a greater understanding of black hole dynamics, and readers who have some grounding in physics will find their understanding consolidated and enhanced. Thorne has devoted much of the latter part of his career to experimental techniques for detecting gravitational waves, and the theoretical possibility of wormholes and time machines, and gives a good introduction to both topics. Even if – like me – you find it a little hard to swallow the idea of holding a wormhole open by stringing together just the right amount of exotic matter with a negative energy density, this line of research is invaluable for probing the limits of just what does happen when spacetime curvature becomes extreme.

Many readers will enjoy the personal glimpses Thorne offers of his own research efforts, and of colleagues such as Wheeler (to whom the book is dedicated), Chandrasekhar, Hawking, Penrose, and their Russian counterparts such as Vladimir Braginsky, Lev Landau, Igor Novikov, and Yakov Zel’dovich. Thorne describes his own stunned reaction on first hearing Novikov lecture at a 1965 conference, and realising the breadth and power of what was happening in Cold War Russia. He subsequently developed strong collaborative links with Novikov and other Soviet physicists, and draws some interesting contrasts between the US and USSR during this period. show less

A great companion to the movie, with interesting discussions of how he was able to rationalize the most implausible bits. You will learn a lot of interesting physics (depending on how much you already know) even if you read it without having seen the movie.

It was not enough to make the movie feel believable to me, though.