[HN Gopher] Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Ast...
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Gravitational Lensing by Spinning Black Holes in Astrophysics, and
Interstellar
Author : susam
Score : 35 points
Date : 2021-06-15 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| java-man wrote:
| Unfortunately, the movie preferred pretty picture over scientific
| accuracy. The image of the black hole lacked the frequency shift
| as well as intensity variance described in the paper.
| wumpus wrote:
| In my group and collaboration, we frequently discuss how
| difficult it is to do outreach because you'll get constantly
| criticized by fellow scientists about every single
| simplification.
| f6v wrote:
| The number of people who'd appreciate such accuracy would be
| minuscule.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| But those souls believe it ruins interstellar
| Retric wrote:
| Accuracy is great because it's both consistent and changes
| expectations. Everyone expects explosions in movies to be
| giant fireballs so we get more silly giant fireballs. Movies
| that go for realistic explosions end up feeling shockingly
| gritty by comparison.
| java-man wrote:
| I would have preferred more scientifically accurate movies.
| Judding by the comments, many more prople who prefer
| otherwise.
|
| I hope once day, there will be a movie that accurately
| portrays the reality. I know I am not alone. There are
| dozens of us! Dozens!
| jfengel wrote:
| Sometimes, an audience can feel accuracy even when they don't
| know it.
|
| A film that has a deep, complex internal consistency can
| engage audiences and them feel like they want to know more.
| They don't have to understand the details, but they like to
| feel that you do.
|
| Reality is a rich source of such consistent details. In
| historical films, for example, few audience members will
| really appreciate that you got all of the costumes correct
| down to the specific year, but the film can feel better than
| one that mixes Georgian with Victorian with French Court
| styles.
|
| Getting the physics right won't automatically make a story
| better. It can constrain the story too much. But if you
| choose to go down that route, and can still tell a good
| story, the audience will benefit even when they don't know
| what they're looking at.
|
| It's why actors like to go into "back story" for a character
| even when the audience doesn't know what that back story is,
| and why they work on physicality (walking like the character,
| holding a fork like the character, etc.) even when nobody
| will notice. One beautiful example of that: look at the way
| people moved chess pieces in Queen's Gambit. Even if you
| don't play, you knew that the actors knew it (and indeed, it
| came as no surprise to me that they were trained by Gary
| Kasparov). It's a little thing, but it was just one of a
| million things that helped that project go right.
| talkischeap wrote:
| I would argue that the examples don't all apply the same.
| The successful examples you listed are all about human
| actions, subtleties about how people are acting and
| behaving. Humans are just naturally very good at sensing
| these things, unconscious or not. But something like black
| holes? The overwhelming majority of people have almost no
| context and even less intuitive understanding of such an
| alien thing. I doubt that miniscule details would affect a
| sense of reality when the subject in question is so foreign
| from the viewer that it is essentially no different to them
| than something completely fabricated.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| In Kip Thorne's book about Interstellar he talks about what
| they had to do to make something that would work for a movie.
| They had to choose a specific mass and rotation speed that
| doesn't really exist in nature or the image would not be
| something that would be intelligible to the viewer and work for
| the story. This includes the tidal effect in the film. In the
| end they were making a science fiction film and not writing a
| scientific paper.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I agree with you. The fact that the visuals of the black hole
| didn't include the frequency shift and intensity variance was
| perhaps the smallest artistic license that was taken and
| didn't really prevent my suspension of disbelief.
|
| If they wanted to create something physically accurate, then
| all we'd have seen is a blinding white globe as the accretion
| disk of a black hole emits tremendous amounts of energy and
| couldn't be resolved to the iconic shape in the movie by the
| naked eye.
|
| The hapless astronauts would've likely received a fatal dose
| of ionizing radiation in minutes (if not seconds), and
| Matthew Mcconaughey would've been shredded by tidal forces
| long before he entered the event horizon of a stellar mass
| black hole.
|
| The movie took some liberty with physics, but managed to
| capture the imagination of so many people. I much prefer it
| this way. Those who want to dig deeper can either watch an
| actual documentary or read some books on the topic.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| > they had to do to make something that would work for a
| movie
|
| Here's an article that includes a picture of what they
| thought it would really look like: https://www.newscientist.c
| om/article/dn26966-interstellars-t...
|
| I think that would have worked perfectly fine. Maybe throw in
| some more stuff circling it further out.
| hawk_ wrote:
| To me the bigger issue with the movie was that it pretended
| that Love is a fundamental force in the universe at the level
| of gravity, electromagnetism etc...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It didn't pretend that at all. At best it suggested it. It is
| a fantastic, moving film - my top 5 all time.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| Indeed, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak
| forces are all emergent consequences of Love, but that would
| have confused modern scientistic audience so I don't blame
| them for glossing over that.
| Simon_says wrote:
| It sure confused me.
| dschuetz wrote:
| Yes, because it's a movie, not a documentary.
| dTal wrote:
| They hired a physicist to run simulations to get it "as
| accurate as possible". I think comments about the achieved
| fidelity are warranted.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Rather, it's an example of "No good deed goes unpunished".
|
| You suggest that had they done no effort at asking
| scientists about the theories, no criticism would be
| warranted, but since they did and cherry-picked what would
| best support the narrative, they deserve scrutiny.
|
| And I disagree.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Z4oy6mnkyW4?t=966 details and interview with
| Tunzelmann on Stand Up Maths, whole video is good if you've the
| time
| steve76 wrote:
| I wish movies would respect their audience. They tend to dumb
| things down. It would be fun to see someone really go after it,
| and let the public catch up. Here's what I think when I see this:
|
| Interesting to see the edges of a black hole. Nothing gets more
| powerful than that. Why build bigger and bigger colliders if you
| can get accurate data with something on a cosmic scale.
|
| Interesting to see what particles of spacetime do there. A string
| is a particle with one dimension. Why is it constricted like
| that. And what applications exist in manipulating that
| constricted degree of freedom.
|
| If we are imaging black holes, and manipulating instruments in
| the plasma of stars, and there's no consequences, at what point
| is everything out there a refraction pattern controlled by our
| actions. A star or a galaxy leaves our ability to view it. We
| still know about it through black hole imaging. No way nature
| could do that. We manipulate that distant celestial object to
| rely on our ability to image a black hole, and then suddenly
| stop. What happens?
| noobermin wrote:
| The last author on this, Kip Thorne, was a scientific consultant
| for Interstellar. He is one of the most well-known experts in
| gravitation, one of the co-authors of the famous classic general
| relativity textbook _Gravitation_ often lovingly denoted as MTW
| for the authors (Meisner, Thorne, and Wheeler)[0].
|
| EDIT: forgot to mention he shared the 2017 Nobel prize after LIGO
| detected gravity waves.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_(book)
| teraflop wrote:
| Thorne is also the author of _Black Holes and Time Warps_ ,
| which is a much more approachable book on the weird
| consequences of general relativity for non-physicists.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| What's more he gave a talk[1] and has even written a book[2]
| about the science behind Inter Stellar.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM-N0tbwBB4
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-
| Thorne/dp/03...
| jpmattia wrote:
| If you are a fan of podcasts: Sean Carroll's interview with Kip
| Thorne was worth a listen.
|
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/26/epis...
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