Science of Interstellar

映画『インターステラー』を見る上では科学の知識はなくても楽しめました。宇宙船内での話はほとんどついていけないのですが、ストーリーを追うのに特に問題ありません。

ただ、映画を見ると宇宙への関心が沸きたてられます。我ながらミーハー丸出しですが理論物理学者のKip Thorneの本を読み始めました。理論的な部分を理解できている自信はまったくありませんが、エピソードや例も豊富で楽しく読み進めることができています。

Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program) (1995/01) Kip S. Thorne 商品詳細を見る

いろいろなメディアでもインターステラーの科学的な側面を説明してくれています。イギリスの科学雑誌New Scientistではネタバレなしで地球上の食糧供給から宇宙旅行まで、リンクも豊富に説明してくれています。

Spoiler-free guide to the science of Interstellar
17:36 30 October 2014 by Rowan Hooper

What is this "dust" that threatens the Earth's food supply?
The agent of destruction is a blight fungus. In the film, set on an Earth of the near future, the blight is sweeping across the world, and has already destroyed wheat and okra as a crop. In the real world, blight is indeed a serious threat – responsible for the Irish potato famine – and a different blight fungus, Ug99, now threatens wheat. Norman Borlaug, dubbed the father of the Green Revolution, said Ug99 "has immense potential for social and human destruction".

Nolan was influenced by the real-life ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl in 1930s North America, when the rich top soil essential to farming dried out and blew away, desolating vast areas and causing famine and mass human displacement – a situation that could yet happen again with the severe, ongoing US drought in the US.

But chin up people. Consider the movie's tagline: the end of Earth will not be the end of us.

GQの説明も科学初心者のYutaにも分かりやすい説明になっています。

A guide to the science behind Interstellar
BY CONRAD QUILTY-HARPER 30 OCTOBER 14

Black hole
One of the most prominent scientific features of Interstellar is the 'Gargantua' black hole. It's overwhelmingly beautiful to look at, and it's a giant pain in the arse for the film's characters. To bring the black hole to life the CGI team modelled a black hole using information from academic journals - covered in complex equations - provided by the film's scientific advisor, Kip Thorne. According to American Wired's feature on the process, it's possibly one of the most scientifically accurate black holes ever created in a sci-fi film.
What is it?
A black hole is a gravitational mass which is so large that not even light can escape from it. They're like the plug holes of the universe with a 'singularity' at the centre (instead of the plumbing) where gravity and space are infinite. They're formed when very large stars collapse at the end of their lives. There's a giant one at the centre of our galaxy, which has a mass equivalent to four million suns.

UniverseではなくMultiverseについて話してくれているTED動画も楽しめます。Steven Pinkerがオススメの作家としてあげていたBrian Greeneです。