Life could better in the new film Interstellar. Set in the distant future, the film follows four astronauts as they explore distant planets in their quest to find humanity a new home. The movie is already a blockbuster, in part because a lot of thought and attention went into making a film based deep in science and theory. 

But just how much of the movie is really true to what we know about the universe? And how much of it is, say… creative license? To find out, Curious Stardust — a new blog presented by the Kavli Institutes, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and The Kavli Foundation — sent three astrophysicists into the darkness of their neighborhood theaters. And now, on Wednesday, November 26, from 12:00-12:30pm PST (15:00-15:30 EST; 20:00 – 20:30 UTC), Mandeep Gill, Eric Miller and Hardip Sanghera will separate Interstellar’s science from its fiction. They will also answer viewer questions in the live Google Hangout. 

MANDEEP GILL is an observational cosmologist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, located at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. His research focuses on gravity’s bending of light and the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

ERIC MILLER is a research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, where he studies diffuse gas to understand the structure of mass and how galaxies interact with their surroundings. He is a member of science and instrument teams for the Chandra and Suzaku X-ray Observatories. 

HARDIP SANGHERA is a member of the Cambridge Planck Analysis Centre, based in the Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge. He supports the European Space Agency’s space-based Planck observatory, which recently completed mapping the universe’s earliest light.

Questions can be submitted ahead of and during this webcast by email to info@kavlifoundation.org or send a message on Twitter with the hashtag #KavliSciBlog.  

 

Contact:

James Cohen

Email: cohen@kavlifoundation.org

Tel: +1 805-278-7495 

http://kavliblog.org/2014/11/18/live-google-hangout-the-science-in-interstellar-yes-the-movie/