Christopher Nolan’s movie ‘Interstellar’ as a bridge
Recently, many people have shown an interest in the new sci-fi movie ‘Interstellar.’ It is quite normal that people are showing this much attention to the film because of the built up expectation from past successful films by Nolan. Not only is Nolan directing the film, award winning actor Matthew McConaughey and actress Ann Hathaway are starring. Many movie fans awaited for ‘Interstellar’ long before the release date. However, there is something more than just the fame of the film crew that’s causing the hype around the film. It’s the novel scientific discovery the ‘Interstellar’ team has made while filming the movie. To show realistic images of the space, Nolan looked for an advice from an influential theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. Collaboration of the two maestros have achieved something that has never been done before. With Kip’s expertise in astrophysics, the cutting-edge computer graphics technology of Nolan’s film crew could render the most scientifically accurate image of black hole. We can view this event in graph theory. Consider Kip Thorne as an influential node, part of a strongly connected component representing the astrophysics community, and Christopher Nolan as a node in the film community. Then, their collaboration ‘Interstellar’ acts as a bridge connecting the two communities. This bridging brought synergy effect allowing the ‘Interstellar’ team to make an outstanding accomplishment. Moreover, now that there is a bridge connecting the astrophysics community and film community, many more connections will be made through triadic closures and other graphical properties. I hope to see more collaborations and interactions between not only the two communities, but also many other combinations of fields.
Reference: http://news.discovery.com/space/interstellar-black-hole-is-best-black-hole-in-sci-fi-141029.htm