I just saw the movie Interstellar today. Well the first hour of it. I watched til they got to the new system they were exploring. They had 3 possible planets to investigate. One of them was very deep in the gravity field of a black hole. It was so deep that there was a massive gravitational time dilation. Ok, that may be reasonable. But then comes the real question that I have. If it is that close to a black hole where does it get sun light to support life? Life requires energy. Here on Earth that energy comes from the Sun. But black holes don't shine. So I seriously question the possibility for life on such a planet.
Kip Thorne was science adviser for the movie. He is a black hole expert and the author of the book "Black Holes and TimeWarps". He has also written a book "The Science of Interstellar". I assume that they had a fairly good take on the physics of black holes, but I have no idea whether he addressed the bit about sunlight. I haven't read the book and don't intend to.
After that I thought about another problem. Early in the movie it is clear that they are living in a dust bowl environment. They even have a massive dust storm. But they are surrounded by fields of corn. The dust bowl of the 1930s was created because farmers stripped the land of its native vegetation to plant wheat. Then there was a drought and the whole area dried up and blew away. There was no vegetation to hold the soil. So how do they get a dust bowl when they have lots of vegetation?
Bill Gill
