BlackHole Weekend : Interstellar and Theory of Everything.

This weekend is all about black holes in Hollywood with Christopher Nolan's wormhole sci-fi Interstellar and the the movie about Stephen hawking, The Theory of Everything.

Stephen Hawking is, of course, the pre-eminent authority on black hole physics in the last few decades. His life is among the more interesting and should definitely be an interesting watch. Even though my wife thinks he is an asshole for leaving his wife of many years who stuck with through his disease to marry his nurse. I might agree if I was not distracted by his vastly more important contributions to science. The movie is probably going to be all about love but hopefully they can capture some inspiration and make science look cool for at least an hour.

At first glance, I almost dismissed Interstellar as standard sci-fi movie hollywood churns out every now and then. Then I found out it was directed by Christopher Nolan... hmm... mild intrigue. Amazing memories of the Dark Knight said "oh yeah" but then blocked out memories of the Dark Knight Returns snuck in and whispered "slow down". But then I read this greatly illuminating post by Quantum Information boss, John Preskill, on the awesome Caltech blog Quantum Frontiers. The post details how big names from Caltech staff played a role in the brainstorming and fleshing out the story of the Interstellar, from way back when Spielberg was at the helm, and later when the Nolans took charge. I won't go through all the details spelled out in the post but do check out Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne's book The Science of Interstellar which goes on sale the same day. Kip Thorne is an executive producer for the movie and was the "science consultant" (how can I get that job?). So now, my mild intrigue has grown to intrigus maximus.

Definitely looking forward to watch both these movies.