but assuming that our current non-quantum picture of spacetime can be trusted, this stretching would become infinitely strong as one approaches the singularity. There are also effects where the direction of the stretching might jump around chaotically, causing a kind of violent mishmash as the singularity is approached. One of my former students, Ben Lemberger ’14, researched this phenomenon in an honors project at Oberlin last year. Is there any scientific basis to the lead character’s ability to manipulate past events from within the black hole? The idea they put forward in the movie is that information can be carried in the gravita- tional field (through an effect called gravitational radiation that both I and my Oberlin colleague Dan Stinebring spend a great deal of time studying) along paths that exit the four-dimensional universe, then traverse the five- dimensional bulk universe (where our “time” dimension acts as a space dimension, and is hence traversable in all directions), and then land back in the four-dimensional universe at an earlier time. This is an extremely specula- tive idea, but it is rooted at least qualitatively in the Randall/Sundrum models, where gravity is the only field that is allowed to propagate freely into the five-dimension- al bulk universe. As a theoretical physicist, what is your take on the film’s question of love as a force? Does love have a role to play in the laws of the universe, as the film implies? Or is that just Hollywood being Hollywood? Well, it’s important when communicating these subtle and sometimes arcane concepts that they be embedded in a human story. That was part of the original vision for this movie, going all the way back to 2006. A compelling human story is important for the drama, obviously, but it’s also important for fully communi- cating the science. So often, when we learn and lecture about these deep physics concepts, we treat it as a story of “person A” interact- ing with “person B,” as if we’re just working through a series of mathematical theorems and formulas. If we give a little more context than just the one-letter signifiers, we can emphasize that this isn’t just about mathematical formulas, and it isn’t just about a set of phenomena that one hears about in a physics class and then promptly forgets. It’s about our world—my home and yours. It’s about how that world works, and about what we’re experiencing when we experience it. Physics is about the structure of our experi- ences, and when we clothe our discussion in human terms, it helps us to more fully come to terms with it. As for love being one of the fundamental forces in the universe, well yes, sometimes Hollywood just can’t help itself. n To read the entire interview, please visit http://news.oberlin.edu/ articles/science-behind- movie-interstellar/ A visually accurate computer-generated image of a wormhole in front of Saturn’s rings. The image is distorted because the wormhole bends light rays around it. The exterior wormhole images in Interstellar were similarly accurate, but used wormholes that produced less visual distortion. Graphic created by Rob Owen. OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2015 / SPRING 11