Interstellar is already available for download and will be out on Blu-Ray on March 31, and Paramount has kicked off a “Bite Size Science” website to celebrate and provide some insight into the fascinating, good-enough-for-real-scientists science behind the movie.
The site takes you on a guided tour of Interstellar‘s scientific background from what happened to our home:
All the way to outer space, wormholes, and black holes.
Before a movie takes some scientific liberties—which this one sure did—it’s best to lay a foundation of actual science for that suspension of disbelief to stand on, and Kip Thorne, theoretical physicist, professor, and buddy of Stephen Hawking, helped Interstellar do just that. Not only were the black holes extremely visually accurate based on current physics work, but all aspects of the movie, from the spaceships to the space suits and even the alien planets, had a ton of scientific research behind them.
There’s a whole lot more information over on the site itself, including non-science based tidbits about how they achieved the authentic look of locations like the movie’s ice planet:
To capture the look of an ice planet, the cast and crew of Interstellar shot on location at Iceland’s Svinafellsjokull glacier. Located in Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park, Svinafellsjokull is part of the largest ice cap in Europe.
Differing opinions on eventual weird pseudoscience/non-science aside, there was a lot of fascinating real science in Interstellar that helped make it the visual spectacle it was, so go take a look and marvel at just how long the already Nolan-long film could’ve been if they’d really gone further into the science.
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