Course Materials 

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Exams and Presentations

• Midterm Exam Review
• Class Presentation Guidelines - to be updated
• Final Exam Review- to be updated

Books

• The Science of Interstellar PDF

• Interstellar: The Complete Screenplay and Selected Storyboards Internet Archive

2014 version, 2008 version, epub

Introduction to the Universe (Ch 2-3)

• First Day Slides - (Herman PDF)
• When Black Holes Collide- (Herman PDF, 2020)
• Window to the Dark Side of the Universe - (Herman PDF, 2012)
• Michell, Laplace and the Concept of a Black Hole

Time and Space Warps, Tidal Waves (Ch 4)

• Time dilation and GPS
• Interstellar - Mega Waves 
• Surfing On 'Interstellar' Tidal Waves
• Ocean Tides Explained
• Action of Tides Video
• Extreme Time Dilation and more (26:10)

Blackboards

• Professor Brand's Blackboards on one page or a Google search

• Kip Thorne's Blackboards A B C
• John Wheeler's Blackboard
• Penrose's transparencies - video lecture

Black Holes (Ch 5)

• When Black Holes Collide - (Herman PDF)
  • Time Dilation Explained - (Herman PDF)
• Spinning Black Holes (10:13)
• Take a Journey INSIDE a Massive Black Hole!
• Building Gargantua (4:05)

• Wolfram Demo - https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/3DKerrBlackHoleOrbits/

Gargantua (Ch 6)

• The Science of Extreme Time Dilation in Interstellar (10:14)
• The Calculations
• Orbital period?
• Reproduce the calculations from Interstellar (26:05)

Gravitational Slingshots (Ch 7)

• How do spacecraft navigate in space ? (16:57)
• Cassini-Huygens Mission
• Cassini trajectory
• Routing Cassini through space to Titan - BBC (3:33)
• Cassini's final images (1:59)
• Cassini End of Mission Commentary (1:28:15)
• A lawsuit ...

Imaging Gargantua (Ch 8-10)

• History of Telescopes
  • 400 Years OF Telescopic Discovery.History to Present (11:29)
  • Hubble Telescope - What is it looking at now?
  • The 1995 Hubble photo that changed astronomy (5:26)
  • Hubble at 30 (54:46)
  • James Webb Space Telescope site
  • James Webb Space Telescope (11:26)
  • How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies TED Talk (15:25)
    by Natasha Hurley-Walker
  • The Story of the Very Large Array (24:23)
  • The VLA Site
  • Square Kilometer Array
  • Vera C. Rubin Observatory
  • The FIRST images from the RUBIN observatory! (19:38)
• Gravitational Lensing
  • Twin Quasar
  • Einstein Ring
  • Supernova Einstein Cross
  • The Strange Universe of Gravitational Lensing (13:31)
  • Wikipedia
• https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_event.html
• The Art and Science of Special Effects - TED Talk
• Visualizations
• NASA Visualization
• Double Negative Visual Effects,
  • Interstellar page
  • Gravitational Lensing
  • Paper on Imaging for Interstellar or here
    • Movies in Paper
• Riazuelo, Extreme black hole
• Black hole flight simulator
• Color Animation of a Black Hole with Accretion Disk (0.33)

Dust Bowl (Ch 11-12)

• Introduction to the Dust Bowl (5 min of Ken Burns Film)
• Dust Bowl - A 1950s Documentary (22:51)
• Black Sunday
• Woody Guthrie

Story Boards

• Storyboarder a tool

• Intro to Storyboarding (8:22)

• How to draw A-grade storyboards (13:35)

• Storyboarding For People Who Can't Draw (Like Me!) : FRIDAY 101 (6:31)

• Lessons From The Parasite Storyboards (7:49)

• Storyboard Examples in Film, More Examples

• Dr. Mann Docking (4:15)

• Dr. Mann is trying to kill Cooper. (3:09)

• Docking scene storyboards
• Storyboarding DUNE 2
• Interstellar Storyboard Art (6:11)

Interstellar Travel (Ch 13)

• Lightsail 2
• Bill Nye Explains the Science Behind Solar Sails (10:03)
• How to Sail on Starlight (11:38)
• Black Hole Zoom-Whirl Orbit (4,1,3) (4:27)
• Black Hole Zoom-Whirl Orbit (2,0,1) (1:30)
• Alpha Centauri
• Artemis Plan, Artemis Site
• NASA History Timeline, NASA TV
• Humans in Space
• Rotating Space Stations
• Centripetal Motion - 2001 A Space Odessey (2:15)
• Can We Create Artificial Gravity? (6:33)
• Coriolis Effect in a Rotating Space Habitat
• Living in Artificial Gravity
• The Von Braun Wheel (10:36)
• One Revolution per Minute Experience from the inside (6:21)
• What would it be like to live in a rotating space-station? (7:59)

2020 Nobel Prize (for Black Hole)

• Nobel Prize Press release
• Physics Today Article
• Sir Roger Penrose in Conversation with Janna Levin (1:18:54)
• Gravitational Collapse and Space-time Singularities Paper
• Andrea Ghez: The hunt for a supermassive black hole TED Talk (16:56)
• Interview with Reinhard Genzel (14:25)
• Q&A with 2020 Nobel laureate Roger Penrose (27:38)
• 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

Wormholes (Ch 14-15)

• Instructions for Building a Wormhole
• Flight Through a Wormhole
• Visualizing Interstellar's Wormhole
• What A Trip Through A Wormhole Would Look Like (1:24)
• AJP Paper, Visualizing Interstellar's Wormhole
• Morris and Thorne paper, Wormholes in spacetime and their use for interstellar travel ...
• Wormhole Simulations

Gravitational Waves (16)

• Listening for Einstein's Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe - (Herman PDF)
• Also in When Black Holes Collide - (Herman PDF)
• Hulse-Taylor Pulsar PSR B1913+16 (2:54) *
• What the Binary Pulsar Can Tell Us (5:53) Panel Discussion
• The Hulse-Taylor binary neutron stars explained by Joseph Taylor (2:48)
• Exploring Binary Pulsars - Hulse/Taylor (11:18)
• LIGO, Virgo, (Sites)
• Merger of two massive black holes July 2025, 225 solar mass
• The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves (9:06)
• LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory (7:31) Interferometer
• EPISODE 1 - LIGO: A DISCOVERY THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (11:44) *
• Weber Gravitational Wave Observatory relic (1:05)
• John Wheeler - Thoughts on gravitational radiation. Joseph Weber (4:11) [Part of a collection]
• Black Hole Harmonics (14:18)

First Image of a Black Hole

• Inside the black hole image that made history TED Talk (11:29)
• First Image of a Black Hole (5:28)
• Press Conference (52:36)
• The Event Horizon Telescope
• Is the famous black hole image "wrong"? (23:11)

Surounding Gargantua (Ch 17-20)

• Miller's Planet
• Mann's Planet
• The Endurance, Ship Breakdown (9:45)

The Fourth Dimension (Ch 21-22)

• The Ends of Time - 7 min talk on What is time? (Herman - PDF)
• Is Time Real or an Illusion? - Expanded Talk (Herman - PPT)
• Interstellar Dimensions (Herman PDF)
• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions - html book
  • Sequels and other sources like Sphereland
  • TED-Ed 5 minute story
• Flatland - The Film (1:38:07) The Movie Trailer, A Review
• Flatland 2: Sphereland (1:57) and the movie
• Scientist of the Day - Edwin Abbott Abbott
• The Time Machine (1960), movement in the fourth dimension, (3:52)
• Tesseract Rotations (5:00)
• Flatland & the 4th Dimension - Carl Sagan (9:41)

Deep into Interstellar (Ch 23-26)

• How Holograms are Created (3:55)
• The illusion of third dimension : the universe as a hologram Brian Greene (5:26)
• What is the Holographic Principle? Leonard Susskind (9:17) and AdS/CFT (7:25)
• AdS/CFT Correspondence Demystified (15:30)
• Gravity Brane Picture
• Are there Extra Dimensions? Lisa Randall (10:30)
• Extra Dimensions Explained PhD Comics (8:11)
• Kip Thorne
• Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:43:05)
• The Physics of the Cult Movie Interstellar Kip Thorne (1:25:09)
• Modern Anomalies
• Professor Brand's blackboard
• Of singularities and breadmaking
• Roger Penrose: the origins of the singularity

The Tesseract (Ch 29)

• Wikipedia Entry
• Landing in the Tesseract (2:52)
• Across all Dimensions and Time- Interstellar Extras (9:01)
• Tesseract Rotations (5:00)
• 4th Dimension - Tesseract, 4th Dimension Made Easy - Carl Sagan (9:29)
• Interstellar: Ending Explained (20:48)

Assorted Topics

Particles and String Theory

• Particle Slides (Herman PPT)
• String Theory - Brian Greene (19:09)
• Michio Kaku - Are there Extra Dimensions? (11:32)
• What are the Strings in String Theory? (16:37)
  • Why String Theory is Right (16:47), or
  • Why String Theory is Wrong (18:38)
• Superstrings (8:20)
• Making sense of string theory | Brian Greene
• PBS 2003 - Brian Greene - Based on the book
  • The Elegant Universe Part 1 
  • The Elegant Universe Part 2
• Calabi–Yau Manifold
• Feynman Diagrams

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

• Precession of Mercury
• Galaxy Rotation Curve
• Coma Cluster
• Bullet Cluster from Chandra X-Ray Observatory
• The Search for Dark Matter - TED (15:43) - 2020
• Shedding Light on Dark Matter TED (16:09) - 2008
• Cosmic microwave background (CMB)
• Discovering the Cosmic Microwave Background with Robert Wilson (21:55)
• What was Bell Labs?
• Karl Jansky, Radio Telescope
• The Wow! Signal - from Sagittarius, SETI - Are We Alone? (1:10:13)
• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), Images

Miscellaneous

• Tidal Bores
• Qiantang River Bore
• Resonance (9:49)
• 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse (from TWC's Weather Caught On Camera) (6:03)
• A better description of resonance (12:37)
• Astrophysical Black Holes in the Physical Universe (PDF)
• Brian Greene Interview (11:34)
• Alcubierre Drive: Warp Speed - Star Trek fantasy or plausible? (12:00)

In the Movies

• Movie Night with a Physicist (21:27)
• Mathematics in the Movies
• Time Travel Feature Films
• Science and Film
• Turning Science to Movie Magic
• Interstellar Explained - Did they get it right?

Online PDF

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

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