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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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As much as I hate the movie Interstellar and the magic woo woo it tried to pass off as science, one thing it did get right was the Black Hole visualisation. They generated the visualisation by using detailed, highly accurate models and data to show what a black hole actually looks like, before we'd ever seen one. The movie version isn't 100% accurate, because they dumbed it down for the movie, but even so it was still very accurate, and they also had the more accurate non movie version as a result, which generated scientific papers of its own!
Edit - Also, not a scientist, just a passionate nerd
Ah, I loved that movie, but yeah. Reality is even cooler, actually!
How about Chernobyl? That movie?
Unfortunately the visualization was the only thing it got right, there was so much other stuff about the black hole and the setting around it that it got wrong that I would not rank Interstellar as a remotely realistic movie. It really bothers me how much of a pass it gets for its huge volume of nonsense just because one or two things looked realistic.
As I said, I didn't like the movie, and that's exactly why. It tried to pass itself off on its scientific authenticity. It certainly lured me in with that, and then it sprung an endless stream of hand wavey science fiction woo.
Oh, I wasn't disagreeing or thinking you were saying otherwise, I just wanted to make clear that it was more than just the woo woo that was unrealistic. The "love is a force that transcends causality" thing was obvious but the actual physics stuff was just as silly for the most part.
For example, if the black hole's accretion disk was putting out enough light and heat to keep orbiting planets habitable, then trying to fly down to the event horizon would be basically the same as trying to land on the Sun. But the plot needed that to happen so down they went.
Oh, I include all of that in the woo! And the time dilation planet, where the time dilation was more intense than that found on the surface of a neutron star...
It's all woo!