In 2005, Interstellar was just a glimmer in the eye of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. Today, it’s a Christopher Nolan-helmed sci-fi epic, set in a landscape of wormholes, black holes, and tesseracts. Thorne and Nolan join Ira to talk about the process of bringing Thorne’s idea of a story set “on the warped side of the universe” to the big screen...without breaking the laws of physics. Read an excerpt from Thorne's book The Science of Interstellar here.

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Into the Wormhole: The Science of 'Interstellar'

Ryan Rykaczewski describes one of the most massive migrations on the planet, driven by the sun. Image by Tintinnidguy (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 

#ExplainTheSun  - The Largest Migration on The Planet

Once, there was the ordinary incandescent light bulb. It shone brightly, but wasted much of the energy put into it as heat. Then came the compact fluorescent. And as costs have dropped, consumers have increasingly been switching to light-emitting diode (LED) technology for many lighting applications, in an ongoing search for a more efficient bulb. Now, in work published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers report that nanophotonic devices may be able to breathe new life into old incandescent technology. Marin Soljačić and Ognjen Ilic, two authors of the study, explain how they’ve been able to “recycle” some of the incandescent bulb’s wasted heat and re-emit it as visible light, boosting efficiency.

For the Lowly Incandescent Bulb, a Ray of Hope

Science, technology, and other cool stuff from public radio's Science Friday. It's brain fun, for curious people. From WNYC Studios.

Into the Wormhole: The Science of 'Interstellar'

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