Visualizing Interstellar ’s Wormhole

Oliver James, Eugénie von Tunzelmann, and Paul Franklin

Double Negative Ltd, 160 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QA, UK

Kip S. Thorne
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
(Dated: 2 February 2015 – American Journal of Physics, in press)
Christopher Nolan’s science fiction movie Interstellar offers a variety of opportunities for stu-
dents in elementary courses on general relativity theory. This paper describes such opportunities,
including: (i) At the motivational level, the manner in which elementary relativity concepts underlie
the wormhole visualizations seen in the movie. (ii) At the briefest computational level, instructive
calculations with simple but intriguing wormhole metrics, including, e.g., constructing embedding
diagrams for the three-parameter wormhole that was used by our visual effects team and Christo-
pher Nolan in scoping out possible wormhole geometries for the movie. (iii) Combining the proper
arXiv:1502.03809v2 [gr-qc] 16 Feb 2015

reference frame of a camera with solutions of the geodesic equation, to construct a light-ray-tracing
map backward in time from a camera’s local sky to a wormhole’s two celestial spheres. (iv) Imple-
menting this map, for example in Mathematica, Maple or Matlab, and using that implementation
to construct images of what a camera sees when near or inside a wormhole. (v) With the stu-
dent’s implementation, exploring how the wormhole’s three parameters influence what the camera
sees—which is precisely how Christopher Nolan, using our implementation, chose the parameters for
Interstellar ’s wormhole. (vi) Using the student’s implementation, exploring the wormhole’s Einstein
ring, and particularly the peculiar motions of star images near the ring; and exploring what it looks
like to travel through a wormhole.

I. INTRODUCTION B. The status of wormholes in the real universe

Before embarking on these explanations, we briefly de-

A. The Context and Purposes of this paper scribe physicists’ current understanding of wormholes,
based on much research done since 1988. For a thorough
and readable, but non-technical review, see the recent
In 1988, in connection with Carl Sagan’s novel book Time Travel and Warp Drives by Allen Everett
Contact,1 later made into a movie,2 one of the authors and Thomas Roman.6 For reviews that are more techni-
published an article in this journal about wormholes as a cal, see papers by Friedman and Higuchi7 and by Lobo8 .
tool for teaching general relativity (Morris and Thorne3 ). In brief, physicists’ current understanding is this:

This article is a follow-up, a quarter century later, in • There is no known mechanism for making worm-
the context of Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar 4 holes, either naturally in our universe or artifi-
and Kip Thorne’s associated book The Science of Inter- cially by a highly advanced civilization, but there
stellar 5 . Like Contact, Interstellar has real science built are speculations; for example that wormholes in
into its fabric, thanks to a strong science commitment hypothetical
p quantum foam on the Planck scale,
by the director, screenwriters, producers, and visual ef- G~/c3 ∼ 10−35 m, might somehow be enlarged
fects team, and thanks to Thorne’s role as an executive to macroscopic size.6,9
producer. • Any creation of a wormhole where initially there
is none would require a change in the topology
Although wormholes were central to the theme of Con- of space, which would entail, in classical, non-
tact and to many movies and TV shows since then, such quantum physics, both negative energy and closed
as Star Trek and Stargate, none of these have depicted timelike curves (the possibility of backward time
correctly a wormhole as it would be seen by a nearby travel)—according to theorems by Frank Tipler and
human. Interstellar is the first to do so. The authors of Robert Geroch.7 It is likely the laws of physics for-
this paper, together with Christopher Nolan who made bid this. Likely but not certain.
key decisions, were responsible for that depiction.
• A wormhole will pinch off so quickly that nothing
This paper has two purposes: (i) To explain how Inter- can travel through it, unless it has “exotic matter”
stellar ’s wormhole images were constructed and explain at its throat—matter (or fields) that, at least in
the decisions made on the way to their final form, and (ii) some reference frames, has negative energy density.
to present this explanation in a way that may be useful Although such negative energy density is permit-
to students and teachers in elementary courses on general ted by the laws of physics (e.g. in the Casimir ef-
relativity. fect, the electromagnetic field between two highly
 2

conducting plates), there are quantum inequalities tional Renderer”, and the black-hole and accretion-disk
that limit the amount of negative energy that can images we generated with it, and also some new insights
be collected in a small region of space and how long into gravitational lensing by black holes that it has re-
it can be there; and these appear to place severe vealed. In this paper we focus on wormholes—which are
limits on the sizes of traversable wormholes (worm- much easier to model mathematically than Interstellar ’s
holes through which things can travel at the speed fast spinning black hole, and are far more easily incorpo-
of light or slower).6 The implications of these in- rated into elementary courses on general relativity.
equalities are not yet fully clear, but it seems likely In our modelling of Interstellar ’s wormhole, we pre-
that, after some strengthening, they will prevent tended we were engineers in some arbitrarily advanced
macroscopic wormholes like the one in Interstellar civilization, and that the laws of physics place no con-
from staying open long enough for a spaceship to straints on the wormhole geometries our construction
travel through. Likely, but not certain. crews can build. (This is almost certainly false; the quan-
tum inequalities mentioned above, or other physical laws,
• The research leading to these conclusions has been likely place strong constraints on wormhole geometries,
performed ignoring the possibility that our uni- if wormholes are allowed at all—but we know so little
verse, with its four spacetime dimensions, resides in about those constraints that we chose to ignore them.)
a higher dimensional bulk with one or more large In this spirit, we wrote down the spacetime metrics for
extra dimensions, the kind of bulk envisioned in candidate wormholes for the movie, and then proceeded
Interstellar ’s “fifth dimension.” Only a little is to visualize them.
known about how such a bulk might influence the
existence of traversable wormholes, but one intrigu-
ing thing is clear: Properties of the bulk can, at D. Overview of this paper
least in principle, hold a wormhole open without
any need for exotic matter in our four dimensional
universe (our “brane”).8 But the words “in princi- We begin in Sec. II by presenting the spacetime metrics
ple” just hide our great ignorance about our uni- for several wormholes and visualizing them with embed-
verse in higher dimensions. ding diagrams — most importantly, the three-parameter
“Dneg wormhole” metric used in our work on the movie
In view of this current understanding, it seems very Interstellar. Then we discuss adding a Newtonian-type
unlikely to us that traversable wormholes exist naturally gravitational potential to our Dneg metric, to produce
in our universe, and the prospects for highly advanced the gravitational pull that Christopher Nolan wanted,
civilizations to make them artificially are also pretty dim. and the potential’s unimportance for making wormhole
Nevertheless, the distances from our solar system to images.
others are so huge that there is little hope, with rocket In Sec III we describe how light rays, traveling back-
technology, for humans to travel to other stars in the next ward in time from a camera to the wormhole’s two celes-
century or two;10 so wormholes, quite naturally, have be- tial spheres, generate a map that can be used to produce
come a staple of science fiction. images of the wormhole and of objects seen through or
And, as Thorne envisioned in 1988,3 wormholes have around it; and we discuss our implementations of that
also become a pedagogical tool in elementary courses map to make the images seen in Interstellar. In the Ap-
on general relativity—e.g., in the textbook by James pendix we present a fairly simple computational proce-
Hartle.11 dure by which students can generate their own map and
thence their own images.
In Sec. IV we use our own implementation of the map
C. The genesis of our research on wormholes to describe the influence of the Dneg wormhole’s three
parameters on what the camera sees.
This paper is a collaboration between Caltech physi- Then in Secs. V and VI, we discuss Christopher Nolan’s
cist Kip Thorne, and computer graphics artists at Double use of these kinds of implementations to choose the pa-
Negative Visual Effects in London. We came together in rameter values for Interstellar ’s wormhole; we discuss the
May 2013, when Christopher Nolan asked us to collab- resulting wormhole images that appear in Interstellar,
orate on building, for Interstellar, realistic images of a including that wormhole’s Einstein ring, which can be
wormhole, and also a fast spinning black hole and its explored by watching the movie or its trailers, or in stu-
accretion disk, with ultra-high (IMAX) resolution and dents’ own implementations of the ray-tracing map; and
smoothness. We saw this not only as an opportunity to we discuss images made by a camera travelling through
bring realistic wormholes and black holes into the Holly- the wormhole, that do not appear in the movie.
wood arena, but also an opportunity to create images of Finally in Sec. VII we present brief conclusions.
wormholes and black holes for relativity and astrophysics Scattered throughout the paper are suggestions of cal-
research. culations and projects for students in elementary courses
Elsewhere12 we describe the simulation code that we on general relativity. And throughout, as is common in
wrote for this: DNGR for “Double Negative Gravita- relativity, we use “geometrized units” in which Newton’s
 3

gravitational constant G and the speed of light c are set r

equal to unity, so time is measured in length units, 1 s =
c×1 s = 2.998 × 108 m; and mass is expressed in length
units: 1 kg = (G/c2 )×1 kg = 0.742 × 10−27 m; and the 2ρ
mass of the Sun is 1.476 km.

II. SPACETIME METRICS FOR WORMHOLES, φ

AND EMBEDDING DIAGRAMS

In general relativity, the curvature of spacetime can FIG. 1. Embedding diagram for the Ellis wormhole: the
be expressed, mathematically, in terms of a spacetime wormhole’s the two-dimensional equatorial plane embedded
metric. In this section we review a simple example of this: in three of the bulk’s four spatial dimensions.
the metric for an Ellis wormhole; and then we discuss the
metric for the Double Negative (Dneg) wormhole that we
designed for Interstellar. value ρ. And when ` increases onward to a very large
value, r increases once again, becoming approximately
`. This tells us that the metric represents a wormhole
A. The Ellis wormhole with throat radius ρ, connecting two asymptotically flat
regions of space, ` → −∞ and ` → +∞.
In 1973 Homer Ellis13 introduced the following met- In Hartle’s textbook,11 a number of illustrative calcu-
ric for a hypothetical wormhole, which he called a lations are carried out using Ellis’s wormhole metric as
“drainhole”:14 an example. The most interesting is a computation, in
Sec. 7.7, of what the two-dimensional equatorial surfaces
ds2 = −dt2 + d`2 + r2 (dθ2 + sin2 θ dφ2 ) , (1) (surfaces with constant t and θ = π/2) look like when
where r is a function of the coordinate ` given by embedded in a flat 3-dimensional space, the embedding
space. Hartle shows that equatorial surfaces have the
form shown in Fig. 1—a form familiar from popular ac-
p
r(`) = ρ2 + `2 , (2)
counts of wormholes.
and ρ is a constant. Figure 1 is called an “embedding diagram” for the
As always in general relativity, one does not need to wormhole. We discuss embedding diagrams further in
be told anything about the coordinate system in order Sec. II B 3 below, in the context of our Dneg wormhole.
to figure out the spacetime geometry described by the
metric; the metric by itself tells us everything. Deducing
everything is a good exercise for students. Here is how
we do so: B. The Double Negative three-parameter
wormhole
First, in −dt2 the minus sign tells us that t, at fixed
`, θ, φ, increases in a timelike direction; and the absence
of any factor multiplying −dt2 tells us that t is, in fact, The Ellis wormhole was not an appropriate starting
proper time (physical time) measured by somebody at point for our Interstellar work. Christopher Nolan, the
rest in the spatial, {`, θ, φ} coordinate system. movie’s director, wanted to see how the wormhole’s visual
Second, the expression r2 (dθ2 +sin2 θ dφ2 ) is the famil- appearance depends on its shape, so the shape had to be
iar metric for the surface of a sphere with circumference adjustable, which was not the case for the Ellis wormhole.
2πr and surface area 4πr2 , written in spherical polar co- So for Interstellar we designed a wormhole with three
ordinates {θ, φ}, so the Ellis wormhole must be spheri- free shaping parameters and produced images of what
cally symmetric. As we would in flat space, we shall use a camera orbiting the wormhole would see for various
the name “radius” for the sphere’s circumference divided values of the parameters. Christopher Nolan and Paul
by 2π,
p i.e. for r. For the Ellis wormhole, this radius is Franklin, the leader of our Dneg effort, then discussed the
r = ρ2 + `2 . images; and based on them, Nolan chose the parameter
Third, from the plus sign in front of d`2 we infer that ` values for the movie’s wormhole.
is a spatial coordinate; and since there are no cross terms In this section we explain our three-parameter Double
d`dθ or d`dφ, the coordinate lines of constant θ and φ, Negative (Dneg) wormhole in three steps: First, a vari-
with increasing `, must be radial lines; and since d`2 has ant with just two parameters (the length and radius of
no multiplying coefficient, ` must be the proper distance the wormhole’s interior) and with sharp transitions from
(physical) distance traveled in that radial direction. its interior to its exteriors; then a variant with a third
Fourth, when
p ` is large and negative, the radii of parameter, called the lensing length, that smooths the
spheres r = ρ2 + `2 is large and approximately equal to transitions; and finally a variant in which we add a grav-
|`|. When ` increases to zero, r decreases to its minimum itational pull.
 4

2ρ where M is the black hole’s mass. Comparing the spa-

tial part of this metric (t =constant) withpour general
r wormhole metric (1), we see that d` = ±dr/ 1 − 2M/r,
which can easily be integrated to obtain the proper dis-
tance traveled as a function of radius, `(r). What we
want, however, is r as a function of `, and we want it
a in an analytic form that is easy to work with; so for our
Dneg wormhole, we choose a fairly simple analytic func-
tion that is roughly the same as the Schwarzschild r(`):
Outside the wormhole’s cylindrical interior, we chose
φ
2 |`|−a
 
2ξ
Z
r =ρ+ arctan dξ (5a)
π 0 πM
 
1
FIG. 2. Embedding diagram for the wormhole with sharp = ρ + M x arctan x − ln(1 + x2 ) , for |`| > a ,
transition, Eqs. (1) and (5). 2
where
1. Wormhole with sharp transitions 2(|`| − a)
x≡ . (5b)
πM
Our wormhole with sharp transitions is a simple cylin-
der of length 2a, whose cross sections are spheres, all (Students might want to compare thisR graphically
p with
with the same radius ρ; this cylinder is joined at its ends the inverse of the Schwarzschild ` = dr/ 1 − 2M/r,
onto flat three-dimensional spaces with balls of radius ρ plotting, e.g., r −ρ for our wormhole as a function of |`|−
removed. This wormhole’s embedding diagram is Fig. a; and r − 2M of Schwarzschild as a function of distance
2. As always, the embedding diagram has one spatial from the Schwarzschild horizon r = 2M .) Within the
dimension removed, so the wormhole’s cross sections ap- wormhole’s cylindrical interior, we chose, of course,
pear as circles rather than spheres.
Using the same kinds of spherical polar coordinates as r = ρ for |`| < a . (5c)
for the Ellis wormhole above, the spacetime metric has
the general wormhole form (1) with These equations (5) for r(`), together with our general
wormhole metric (1), describe the spacetime geometry of
r(`) = ρ for the wormhole interior, |`| ≤ a , (3) the Dneg wormhole without gravity.
= |`| − a + ρ for the wormhole exterior, |`| > a . For the Schwarzschild metric, the throat radius ρ is
equal to twice the black hole’s mass (in geometrized
units), ρ = 2M. For our Dneg wormhole we choose the
2. Dneg wormhole without gravity two parameters ρ and M to be independent: they rep-
resent the wormhole’s radius and the gentleness of the
Our second step is to smooth the transitions between transition from the wormhole’s cylindrical interior to its
the wormhole interior |`| < a (the cylinder) and the two asymptotically flat exterior.
external universes |`| > a. As we shall see, the smoothed We shall refer to the ends of the cylindrical interior,
transitions give rise to gravitational lensing (distortions) ` = ±a, as the wormhole’s mouths. They are spheres
of the star field behind each wormhole mouth. Such grav- with circumferences 2πρ.
itational lensing is a big deal in astrophysics and cosmol-
ogy these days; see, e.g., the Gravitational Lensing Re-
source Letter15 ; and, as we discuss in Sec. V C, it shows 3. Embedding diagrams for the Dneg wormhole
up in a rather weird way, in Interstellar, near the edges
of the wormhole image. We construct embedding diagrams for the Dneg worm-
Somewhat arbitrarily, we chose to make the transi- hole (and any other spherical wormhole) by comparing
tion have approximately the same form as that from the the spatial metric of the wormhole’s two-dimensional
throat (horizon) of a nonspinning black hole to the exter- equatorial surface ds2 = d`2 + r2 (`)dφ2 with the spa-
nal universe in which the hole lives. Such a hole’s met- tial metric of the embedding space. Doing so is a good
ric (the “Schwarzschild metric”) has a form that is most exercise for students. For the embedding space we choose
simply written using radius r as the outward coordinate cylindrical coordinates with the symmetry axis along the
rather than proper distance `: wormhole’s center line. Then (as in Figs. 1 and 2), the
embedding space and the wormhole share the same ra-
dr2 dial coordinate r and angular coordinate φ, so with z the
ds2 = −(1−2M/r)dt2 + +r2 (dθ2 +sin2 θ dφ2 ) ,
1 − 2M/r embedding-space height above the wormhole’s midplane,
(4) the embedding-space metric is ds2 = dz 2 + dr2 + r2 dφ2 .
 5

4. Dneg wormhole with gravity

r
Christopher Nolan asked for the movie’s spacecraft En-
durance to travel along a trajectory that gives enough
time for the audience to view the wormhole up close be-
W fore Cooper, the pilot, initiates descent into the worm-
2ρ hole’s mouth. Our Double Negative team designed such a
2a trajectory, which required that the wormhole have a grav-
itational acceleration of order the Earth’s, ∼ 10m/s2 , or
less. This is so weak that it can be described accurately
by a Newtonian gravitational potential Φ of magnitude
|Φ|  c2 = 1 (see below), that shows up in the time part
of the metric. More specifically, we modify the worm-
hole’s metric (1) to read
φ
ds2 = −(1 + 2Φ)dt2 + d`2 + r2 (dθ2 + sin2 θ dφ2 ) . (8)
The sign of Φ is negative (so the wormhole’s gravity will
be attractive), and spherical symmetry dictates that it
FIG. 3. Embedding diagram for the Dneg wormhole with be a function only of `.
parameters a/ρ = 1 (length 2a of cylindrical section equal According to the equivalence principle, the gravita-
to its diameter 2ρ) and M/ρ = 0.5, which corresponds to a tional acceleration experienced by a particle at rest out-
lensing width W/ρ = 0.715. side or inside the wormhole (at fixed spatial coordinates
{`, θ, φ} = constant) is the negative of that particle’s 4-
acceleration. Since the 4-acceleration is orthogonal to
Equating this to the wormhole metric, we see that16 the particle’s 4-velocity, which points in the time direc-
dz 2 + dr2 = d`2 , which gives us an equation for the tion, its gravitational acceleration is purely spatial in the
height z of the wormhole surface as a function of dis- coordinate system {t, `, θ, φ}. It is a nice exercise for stu-
tance ` through the wormhole: dents to compute the particle’s 4-acceleration and thence
its gravitational acceleration. The result, aside from neg-
Z `p ligible fractional corrections of order |Φ|, is
z(`) = 1 − (dr/d`0 )2 d`0 . (6) g = −(dΦ/d`) e`ˆ , (9)
0
where e`ˆ is the unit vector pointing in the radial direc-
By inserting the Dneg radius function (5) into this ex- tion. Students may have seen an equation analogous to
pression and performing the integral numerically, we ob- (8) when space is nearly flat, and a calculation in that
tain the wormhole shapes shown in Fig. 3 and Figs. 7 and case which yields Eq. (9) for g (e.g. Sec. 6.6 of Hartle11 ).
9 below. Although for the wormhole metric (8), with r given by
The actual shape of this embedding diagram depends Eqs. (5) or (2), space is far from flat, Eq. (9) is still
on two dimensionless ratios of the Dneg metric’s three true—a deep fact that students would do well to absorb
parameters: the wormhole’s length-to-diameter ratio and generalize.
2a/2ρ = a/ρ, and its ratio M/ρ. For chosen values of It is reasonable to choose the gravitational acceleration
these ratios, the wormhole’s size is then fixed by its in- g = |g| = |dΦ/d`| to fall off as ∼ 1/(distance)2 as we
terior radius ρ, which Christopher Nolan chose to be one move away from the wormhole mouth; or at least faster
kilometer in Interstellar, so with the technology of the than ∼ 1/(distance). Integrating g = |dΦ/d`| radially
movie’s era the wormhole’s gravitational lensing of our and using this rapid falloff, the student can deduce that
galaxy’s star field can be seen from Earth, but barely the magnitude of Φ is of order g times the wormhole’s
so.17 radius ρ. With a gravitational acceleration g = |g| < ∼2 10
m/s2 and ρ = 1 km, this gives |Φ| ∼ |g|ρ < ∼ 10 4
(m/s) ∼
In the embedding diagram of Fig. 3, instead of depict-
10−12 . Here we have divided by the speed of light squared
ing M, we depict the lateral distance W in the embed-
to bring this into our geometrized units.
ding space, over which the wormhole’s surface changes
Such a tiny gravitational potential corresponds to a
from vertical to 45 degrees. This W is related to M by18
slowing of time near the wormhole by the same small
amount, no more than a part in 1012 [cf. the time part
W = 1.42953... M (7) of the metric (8)]. This is so small as to be utterly unim-
portant in the movie, and so small that, when computing
We call this W the wormhole’s Lensing width, and we the propagation of light rays through the wormhole, to
often use it in place of M as the wormhole’s third pa- ultrahigh accuracy we can ignore Φ and use the Dneg
rameter. metric without gravity. We shall do so.
 6

III. MAPPING A WORMHOLE’S TWO can treat the camera as at rest in the {`, θ, φ} coordinate
CELESTIAL SPHERES ONTO A CAMERA’S SKY system.
We can think of the camera as having a local sky,
A. Foundations for the Map on which there are spherical polar coordinates {θcs , φcs }
(“cs” for camera sky; not to be confused with celestial
A camera inside or near a wormhole receives light rays sphere!); Fig. 5. In more technical language, {θcs , φcs }
from light sources and uses them to create images. In this are spherical polar coordinates for the tangent space at
paper we shall assume, for simplicity, that all the light the camera’s location.
sources are far from the wormhole, so far that we can
idealize them as lying on “celestial spheres” at ` → −∞
(lower celestial sphere; Saturn side of the wormhole in the upper celestial sphere
movie Interstellar ) and ` → +∞ (upper celestial sphere; θcs
Gargantua side in Interstellar ); see Fig. 4. (Gargantua ez = − eθ̂
is a supermassive black hole in the movie that humans φcs
visit.) Some light rays carry light from the lower celestial
sphere to the camera’s local sky (e.g. Ray 1 in Fig. 4); ey = eφ̂
others carry light from the upper celestial sphere to the
camera’s local sky (e.g. Ray 2). Each of these rays is a
null geodesic through the wormhole’s spacetime.
On each celestial sphere, we set up spherical polar co-
ordinates {θ0 , φ0 }, which are the limits of the spherical
Wormhole’s
polar coordinates {θ, φ} as ` → ±∞. We draw these upper mouth
two celestial spheres in Fig. 5, a diagram of the three di- ex = e ˆ
mensional space around each wormhole mouth, with the
curvature of space not shown. Notice that we choose to Gargantua side
draw the north polar axes θ = 0 pointing away from each camera’s of wormhole
other and the south polar axes θ = π pointing toward local sky
each other. This is rather arbitrary, but it feels comfort-
able to us when we contemplate the embedding diagram
of Fig. 4.
We assume the camera moves at speeds very low com-
pared to light speed (as it does in Interstellar ), so rel-
ativistic aberration and doppler shifts are unimportant,
Therefore, when computing images the camera makes, we
lower celestial sphere

Upper Celestial Sphere Saturn side

of wormhole
2y
Ra

camera’s
local sky
Wormhole’s
lower mouth
ex = e ˆ
y2

φcs
Ra

camera’s e y = eφ̂
local sky
ez = − eθ̂ θcs
Ray

φ
1

θ=0

Lower Celestial Sphere

θ
FIG. 4. Embedding diagram showing light rays 1 and 2
that carry light from a wormhole’s lower and upper celestial
spheres, to a camera. The celestial spheres are incorrectly de- FIG. 5. The two sides of the wormhole, with a camera on
picted close to the wormhole; they actually are very far away, each side at θc = π/2 (equatorial plane), φc = 0, and `c > a
and we idealize them as at ` = ±∞. on the Gargantua side; `c < −a on the Saturn side.
 7

A light ray that heads backward in time from the cam- resides, as viewed from the Saturn side of the wormhole;
era (e.g. Ray 1 or 2 in Fig. 4), traveling in the {θcs , φcs } see below. But for this paper, and the book5 that Thorne
direction, ultimately winds up at location {θ0 , φ0 } on one has written about the science of Interstellar, we find it
of the wormhole’s two celestial spheres. It brings to more instructive, pedagogically, to show images of Saturn
{θcs , φcs } on the camera’s sky an image of whatever was and its rings as seen through the wormhole from the Gar-
at {θ0 , φ0 } on the celestial sphere. gantua side. This section is a more quantitative version
This means that the key to making images of what of a discussion of this in Chap. 15 of that book.5
the camera sees is a ray-induced map from the camera’s Figure 6 shows the simple Saturn image that we placed
sky to the celestial spheres: {θ0 , φ0 , s} as a function of on the lower celestial sphere of Fig. 5, and a star field that
{θcs , φcs }, where the parameter s tells us which celestial we placed on the upper celestial sphere (the Gargantua
sphere the backward light ray reaches: the upper one side of the wormhole). Both images are mapped from
(s = +) or the lower one (s = −). the celestial sphere onto a flat rectangle with azimuthal
In the Appendix we sketch a rather simple computa- angle φ running horizontally and polar angle θ vertically.
tional procedure by which students can compute this map In computer graphics, this type of image is known as a
and then, using it, can construct images of wormholes longitude-latitude map.20
and their surroundings; and we describe a Mathematica
implementation of this procedure by this paper’s compu-
tationally challenged author Kip Thorne.

B. Our DNGR Mapping and Image Making

To produce the IMAX images needed for Interstellar,

at Double Negative we developed a much more sophisti-
cated implementation of the map within within a com-
puter code that we call DNGR12 (Double Negative Grav-
itational Renderer). In DNGR, we use ray bundles (light
beams) to do the mapping rather than just light rays.
We begin with a circular light beam about one pixel in
size at the camera and trace it backward in time to its
origin on a celestial sphere using the ray equations (A.7),
plus the general relativistic equation of geodesic devi-
ation, which evolves the beam’s size and shape. At the
celestial sphere, the beam is an ellipse, often highly eccen-
tric. We integrate up the image data within that ellipse
to deduce the light traveling into the camera’s circular
pixel. We also do spatial filtering to smooth artifacts and
time filtering to mimic the behavior of a movie camera FIG. 6. (a) The image of Saturn placed on the lower celes-
(when the image is changing rapidly), and we sometimes tial sphere of Fig. 5. [From a composition of Cassini data by
add lens flare to mimic the effects of light scattering and Mattias Malmer19 .] (b) The star-field image placed on the up-
diffraction in a movie camera’s lens. per celestial sphere. [Created by our Double Negative artistic
Elsewhere12 we give some details of these various “bells team]. These images are available in high resolution, for use
and whistles”, for a camera orbiting a black hole rather by students, at http://www.dneg.com/dneg_vfx/wormhole.
than a wormhole. They are essentially the same for a
wormhole.
However, fairly nice images can be produced without
any of these bells and whistles, using the simple proce- A. Influence of the Wormhole’s Length
dure described in the Appendix, and thus are within easy
reach of students in an elementary course on general rel- In Fig. 7 we explore the influence of the wormhole’s
ativity. length on the camera-sky image produced by these two
celestial spheres. Specifically, we hold the wormhole’s
lensing width fixed at a fairly small value, W = 0.05ρ,
IV. THE INFLUENCE OF THE WORMHOLE’S and we vary the wormhole’s length from 2a = 0.01ρ (top
PARAMETERS ON WHAT THE CAMERA SEES picture), to 2a = ρ (middle picture), to 2a = 10ρ (bottom
picture).
For Christopher Nolan’s perusal in choosing Interstel- Because Saturn and its rings are white and the sky
lar ’s wormhole parameters, we used our map to make around it is black, while the star field on the Gargantua
images of the galaxy in which the black hole Gargantua side of the wormhole is blue, we can easily identify the
 8

1
2 3
4

FIG. 8. Light rays that travel from Saturn, though the Dneg
wormhole, to the camera, producing the images in Fig. 7.
[Adapted from Fig. 15.3 of The Science of Interstellar 5 .]

carried by light rays that travel on the shortest possible

paths through the wormhole from Saturn to camera, such
as the black path in Fig. 8. There is also a very thin,
lenticular, secondary image of Saturn, barely discernable,
near the left edge of the wormhole mouth. It is brought
to the camera by light rays that travel around the left side
of the wormhole (e.g. path 2 in Fig. 8)—a longer route
than for the primary image. The lenticular structure at
the lower right is blue, so it is a secondary gravitationally
lensed image of the blue star field that resides on the
FIG. 7. Images of Saturn on the camera sky, as seen through camera’s side of the wormhole.
the wormhole, for small lensing width, W = 0.05ρ and vari- As the wormhole is lengthened (middle of Fig. 7), the
ous wormhole lengths, from top to bottom, 2a/ρ = 0.01, 1, 10. primary and secondary images move inward and shrink
The camera is at ` = 6.25ρ + a; i.e., at a distance 6.25ρ in size. A lenticular tertiary image emerges from the
from the wormhole’s mouth—the edge of its cylindrical inte- mouth’s right edge, carried by rays like 3 in Fig. 8 that
rior. [Adapted from Fig. 15.2 of The Science of Interstellar 5 , wrap around the wormhole once; and a fourth faint,
and used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. lenticular image emerges from the left side, carried by
TM & c 2015 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s15), and
rays like 4 that wrap around the wormhole in the oppo-
Kip Thorne. Interstellar and all related characters and ele-
ments are trademarks of and c Warner Bros. Entertainment site direction, one and a half times.
Inc. (s15). The images on the right may be used under the As the wormhole is lengthened more and more (bottom
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- of Fig. 7), the existing images shrink and move inward
NoDerivs 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. Any further dis- toward the mouth’s center, and new images emerge, one
tribution of these images must maintain attribution to the after another, from the right then left then right... sides
author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. of the mouth.
You may not use the images for commercial purposes and if For a short wormhole, all these images were already
you remix, transform or build upon the images, you may not present, very near the wormhole’s edge; but they were
distribute the modified images.] so thin as to be unresolvable. Lengthening the wormhole
moved them inward and made them thick enough to see.

edge of the wormhole mouth as the transition from black-

and-white to blue. (The light’s colors are preserved as the B. Influence of the Wormhole’s Lensing Width
light travels near and through the wormhole because we
have assumed the wormhole’s gravity is weak, |Φ|  1; In Fig. 9 we explore the influence of the wormhole’s
there are no significant gravitational frequency shifts.) lensing width on what the camera sees. We hold its
Through a short wormhole (top), the camera sees a length fixed and fairly small: equal to its radius, 2a = ρ.
large distorted image of Saturn nearly filling the right For small lensing width W = 0.014ρ (top), the tran-
half of the wormhole mouth. This is the primary image, sition from the wormhole’s cylindrical interior to its
 9

sees.

V. INTERSTELLAR’S WORMHOLE

After reviewing images analogous to Figs. 7 and 9, but

with Saturn replaced by the stars and nebulae of Inter-
stellar ’s distant galaxy (the galaxy on the Gargantua side
of the wormhole; Fig. 10), Christopher Nolan made his
choice for the parameters of Interstellar ’s wormhole.
He chose a very short wormhole: length 2a = 0.01ρ as
in the top panel of Fig. 7; for greater lengths the multi-
ple images would be confusing to a mass audience. And
he chose a modest lensing width: W = 0.05ρ also as in
the top panel of Fig. 7 and in between the two lensing
widths of Fig. 9. This gives enough gravitational lensing
to be interesting (see below), but far less lensing than
for a black hole, thereby enhancing the visual distinc-
tion between Interstellar ’s wormhole and its black hole
Gargantua.

FIG. 9. Images of Saturn on the camera sky, as seen through

a wormhole with fixed length equal to the wormhole radius, A. Interstellar ’s Distant Galaxy
2a = ρ, and for two lensing widths: W = 0.014ρ (top) and
W = 0.43 (bottom). [Adapted from Fig. 15.4 of The Science
of Interstellar 5 , and used by permission of W. W. Norton For Interstellar, a team under the leadership of authors
& Company, Inc. TM & c Warner Bros. Entertainment Paul Franklin and Eugénie von Tunzelmann constructed
Inc. (s15), and Kip Thorne. The images on the right may be images of the distant galaxy through a multistep process:
used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- The distant end of the wormhole was imagined to be
NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. in the distant galaxy and closer to its center than we are
Any further distribution of these images must maintain at- to the center of our Milky Way. Consequently the view
tribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal of the surrounding galaxy must be recognisably different
citation and DOI. You may not use the images for commer- from the view we have from Earth: larger and brighter
cial purposes and if you remix, transform or build upon the
nebulae, more dense dust, with brighter and more nu-
images, you may not distribute the modified images.]
merous visible stars. This view was created as an artistic
task.
Nebulae were painted (by texture artist Zoe Lord), us-
asymptotically flat exterior is quite sharp; so, not sur-
ing a combination of space photography and imagination,
prisingly, the camera sees an exterior, blue star field that
covering a range of colour palettes. These were combined
extends with little distortion right up to the edge of the
with layers of painted bright space dust and dark, silhou-
wormhole mouth.
etted dust channels, to create a view of the galaxy with
By contrast, when the lensing width is larger, W =
as much visual depth and complexity as possible.
0.43ρ (bottom), the external star field is greatly distorted
Star layout was achieved by taking real star data as
by gravitational lensing. The dark cloud on the upper
seen from Earth and performing various actions to make
left side of the wormhole is enlarged and pushed out of
the view different: the brightest stars were removed from
the cropped picture, and we see a big secondary image
the data set (to avoid recognisable constellations) and
of the cloud on the wormhole’s lower right and a ter-
the brightnesses of all the other stars were increased and
tiary image on its upper left. We also see lensing of the
shuffled. The result was a believably natural-looking star
wormhole mouth itself: it is enlarged; and lensing of the
layout which was unrecognisable compared to our famil-
image that comes through the wormhole from the Saturn
iar view of the night sky from Earth.
side. The lenticular secondary image of Saturn near the
mouth’s left edge is thickened, while the primary image Figure 10 is one of our distant-galaxy images, showing
is shrunken a bit and moved inward to make room for a nebulae, space dust and stars.
new tertiary image on the right.
Students could check their wormhole imaging code by
trying to reproduce one or more images from Figs. 7 and B. View through Interstellar ’s Wormhole
9, using the images in Fig. 6 on their celestial spheres.
Having done so, they could further explore the influence When we place this distant-galaxy image on the upper
of the wormhole parameters on the images the camera celestial sphere of Fig. 5 and place a simple star field on
 10

FIG. 10. An image of stars and nebulae in Interstellar ’s dis-

tant galaxy (the galaxy on the Gargantua side of the worm-
hole), created by our Double Negative artistic team. This
image is available in high resolution, for use by students, at
http://www.dneg.com/dneg_vfx/wormhole.

the lower celestial sphere, within which the camera re-

sides, then the moving camera sees the wormhole images
shown in Interstellar and its trailers; for example, Fig.
11.
FIG. 12. A close-up of Interstellar’s wormhole. The long,
streaked stars alongside the Einstein ring are a result of mo-
tion blur: the virtual camera’s shutter is open for a fraction
of a second (in this case, approximately 0.02 seconds) during
which the stars’ lensed images appear to orbit the wormhole,
causing the curved paths seen here. [From Interstellar, but
cropped. Created by our Double Negative team. TM & c
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s15). This image may be
used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Any further distribution of these images must maintain at-
tribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal
citation and DOI. You may not use the images for commer-
cial purposes and if you remix, transform or build upon the
images, you may not distribute the modified images.]

Students can create similar images, using their imple-

mentation of the map described in the Appendix, and
putting Fig. 10 on the upper celestial sphere. They could
be invited to explore how their images change as the cam-
era moves farther from the wormhole, closer, and through
it, and as the wormhole parameters are changed.

FIG. 11. An image of the distant galaxy seen through Inter- C. The Einstein Ring
stellar ’s wormhole. The dotted pink circle is the wormhole’s
Einstein ring. [From a trailer for Interstellar. Created by
our Double Negative team. TM & c Warner Bros. En- Students could be encouraged to examine closely the
tertainment Inc. (s15). This image may be used under the changing image of the wormhole in Interstellar or one
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- of its trailers, on a computer screen where the student
NoDerivs 3.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license. Any further dis- can move the image back and forth in slow motion. Just
tribution of these images must maintain attribution to the outside the wormhole’s edge, at the location marked by
author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. a dotted circle in Fig. 11, the star motions (induced by
You may not use the images for commercial purposes and if camera movement) are quite peculiar. On one side of
you remix, transform or build upon the images, you may not the dotted circle, stars move rightward; on the other,
distribute the modified images.]
leftward. The closer a star is to the circle, the faster it
moves; see Fig. 12.
 11

The circle is called the wormhole’s Einstein ring. This lens. In the visual grammar of filmmaking, this tells the
ring is actually the ring image, on the camera’s local sky, audience that we are zooming in for a closer look but we
of a tiny light source that is precisely behind the worm- are still a distance from the wormhole; in reality we are
hole and on the same end of the wormhole as the camera. travelling through it, but this is not how it feels.
That location, on the celestial sphere and precisely op- It was important for the audience to understand that
posite the camera, is actually a caustic (a singular, focal the wormhole allows the Endurance to take a shortcut
point) of the camera’s past light cone. As the camera through the higher dimensional bulk. To foster that un-
orbits the wormhole, causing this caustic to sweep very derstanding, Nolan asked the visual effects team to con-
close to a star, the camera sees two images of the star, one vey a sense of travel through an exotic environment, one
just inside the Einstein ring and the other just outside it, that was thematically linked to the exterior appearance
move rapidly around the ring in opposite directions. This of the wormhole but also incorporated elements of pass-
is the same behavior as occurs with the Einstein ring of ing landscapes and the sense of a rapidly approaching
a black hole (see e.g. Fig. 2 of our paper on black-hole destination. The visual effects artists at Double Nega-
lensing12 ) and any other spherical gravitational lens, and tive combined existing DNGR visualisations of the worm-
it is also responsible for long, lenticular images of distant hole’s interior with layers of interpretive effects animation
galaxies gravitationally lensed by a more nearby galaxy.21 derived from aerial photography of dramatic landscapes,
Students, having explored the wormhole’s Einstein ring adding lens-based photographic effects to tie everything
in a DVD or trailer of the movie, could be encouraged in with the rest of the sequence. The end result was a
to go learn about Einstein rings and/or figure out for sequence of shots that told a story comprehensible by a
themselves how these peculiar star motions are produced. general audience while resembling the wormhole’s inte-
They could then use their own implementation of our rior, as simulated with DNGR.
map to explore whether their explanation is correct.

VI. TRIP THROUGH THE WORMHOLE

VII. CONCLUSION
Students who have implemented the map (described in
the Appendix) from the camera’s local sky to the celes- As we wrote this paper, we became more and more
tial spheres could be encouraged to explore, with their enthusiastic about the educational opportunities pro-
implementation, what it looks like to travel through the vided by our Interstellar experience. The tools we used
Dneg wormhole for various parameter values. in building, scoping out, and exploring Interstellar ’s
We ourselves did so, together with Christopher Nolan, wormhole—at least those discussed in this paper—should
as a foundation for Interstellar ’s wormhole trip. Because be easily accessible to fourth year undergraduates study-
the wormhole Nolan chose to visualize from the outside ing relativity, as well as to graduate students. And the
(upper left of Fig. 7; images in Figs. 10 and 12) is so movie itself, and our own route to the final wormhole
short and its lensing width so modest, the trip was quick images in the movie, may be a strong motivator for stu-
and not terribly interesting, visually—not at all what dents.
Nolan wanted for his movie. So we generated additional
through-the-wormhole clips for him, with the wormhole
parameters changed. For a long wormhole, the trip was
like traveling through a long tunnel, too much like things
seen in previous movies. None of the clips, for any choice
of parameters, had the compelling freshness that Nolan
sought.
Moreover, none had the right feel. Figure 13 illus-
trates this problem. It shows stills from a trip through
a moderately short wormhole with a/ρ = 0.5 — stills
that students could replicate with their implementation.
Although these images are interesting, the resulting ani-
mated sequence is hard for an audience to interpret. The
view of the wormhole appears to scale up from its center,
growing in size until it fills the frame, and until none of
the starting galaxy is visible; at this point only the new
galaxy can be seen, because we now are actually inside
that new galaxy. This is hard to interpret visually. Be-
cause there is no parallax or other relative motion in the FIG. 13. Still frames of a voyage through a short wormhole
frame, to the audience it looks like the camera is zooming (a/ρ = 0.5) with weak lensing (W/ρ = 0.05), as computed
into the center of the wormhole using the camera’s zoom with our DNGR code.
 12

Appendix: The Ray-Induced Map from the For the general wormhole metric (1), the superhamil-
Camera’s Local Sky to the Two Celestial Spheres tonian (A.2) has the simple form
" #
2 2
In this appendix we describe our fairly simple proce- 1 p p φ
dure for generating the map from points {θcs , φcs } on the H= −p2t + p2` + θ 2 + . (A.4)
2 r(`) r(`)2 sin2 θ
camera’s local sky to points {θ0 , φ0 , s} on the wormhole’s
celestial sphere, with s = + for the upper celestial sphere Because this superhamiltonian is independent of the
and s = − for the lower. time coordinate t and of the azimuthal coordinate φ, pt
and pφ are conserved along a ray [cf. Eq. (A.3b)]. Since
pt = dt/dζ = −pt , changing the numerical value of pt
1. The Ray Equations
merely renormalizes the affine parameter ζ; so without
loss of generality, we set pt = −1, which implies that ζ is
As we discussed in Sec. III A, the map is generated by equal to time t [Eq. (A.6) below]. Since photons travel
light rays that travel backward in time from the camera at the speed of light, ζ is also distance travelled (in our
to the celestial spheres. In the language of general rela- geometrized units where the speed of light is one).
tivity, these light rays are null (light-like) geodesics and We use the notation b for the conserved quantity pφ :
so are solutions of the geodesic equation
b = pφ . (A.5a)
d2 xα α dxµ dxν
+ Γ µν =0. (A.1)
dζ 2 dζ dζ Students should easily be able to show that, because we
α
Here the Γ µν are Christoffel symbols (also called connec- set pt = −1, this b is the ray’s impact parameter rela-
tion coefficients) that are constructable from first deriva- tive to the (arbitrarily chosen24 ) polar axis. Because the
tives of the metric coefficients, and ζ is the so-called affine wormhole is spherical, there is a third conserved quantity
parameter, which varies along the geodesic. for the rays, its total angular momentum, which (with
This form of the geodesic equation is fine for analytical pt = −1) is the same as its impact parameter B relative
work, but for numerical work it is best rewritten in the to the hole’s center
language of Hamiltonian mechanics. Elsewhere22 one of p2φ
us will discuss, pedagogically, the advantages and the B 2 = p2θ + . (A.5b)
underpinnings of this Hamiltonian rewrite. sin2 θ
There are several different Hamiltonian formulations of By evaluating Hamilton’s equations for the wormhole
the geodesic equation. The one we advocate is sometimes Hamiltonian (A.4) and inserting the conserved quanti-
called the “super-Hamiltonian” because of its beauty and ties on the right-hand side, we obtain the following ray
power, but we will stick to the usual word “Hamiltonian”. equations:
The general formula for this Hamiltonian is22,23
dt
= −pt = 1 , (A.6)
1 dζ
H(xα , pβ ) = g µν (xα )pµ pν . (A.2)
2
which reaffirms that ζ = t (up to an additive constant);
Here g µν are the contravariant components of the met- and, replacing ζ by t:
ric, xα is the coordinate of a photon traveling along the
ray, and pα is the generalized momentum that is canoni- d`
= p` , (A.7a)
cally conjugate to xα and it turns out to be the same as dt
the covariant component of the photon’s 4-momentum. dθ pθ
= , (A.7b)
Hamilton’s equations, with the affine parameter ζ play- dt r2
ing the role of time, take the standard form dφ b
= 2 2 (A.7c)
dxα ∂H dt r sin θ
= = g αν pν , (A.3a) dp` dr/d`
dζ ∂pα = B2 3 , (A.7d)
dpα ∂H 1 ∂g µν dt r
=− α =− pµ pν . (A.3b) dpθ b2 cos θ
dζ ∂x 2 ∂xα = 2 . (A.7e)
dt r sin3 θ
In the first of Eqs. (A.3), the metric raises the index on
the covariant momentum, so it becomes pα = dxα /dζ, an These are five equations for the five quantities
expression that may be familiar to students. The second {`, θ, φ, p` , pθ } as functions of ζ along the geodesic (ray).
expression may not be so familiar, but it can be given as It is not at all obvious from these equations, but they
an exercise for students to show that the second equation, guarantee (in view of spherical symmetry) that the lat-
together with pα = dxα /dζ, is equivalent to the usual eral (nonradial) part of each ray’s motion is along a great
form (A.1) of the geodesic equation. circle.
 13

These equations may seem like an overly complicated 5. Compute the incoming light ray’s canonical mo-
way to describe a ray. Complicated, maybe; but near menta from
ideal for simple numerical integrations. They are stable
p` = n`ˆ , pθ = rnθ̂ , pφ = r sin θnφ̂ (A.9c)
and in all respects well behaved everywhere except the
(it’s a nice exercise for students to deduce these
poles θ = 0 and θ = π, and they are easily implemented
equations from the relationship between the covari-
in student-friendly software such as Mathematica, Maple
ant components of the photon 4-momentum and
and Matlab.
the components on the unit basis vectors). Then
compute the ray’s constants of motion from

2. Procedure for Generating the Map b = pφ = r sin θnφ̂ ,

p2φ
It is an instructive exercise for students to verify the B 2 = p2θ + = r2 (n2θ̂ + n2φ̂ ) . (A.9d)
sin2 θ
following procedure for constructing the map from the
camera’s local sky to the two celestial spheres: 6. Take as initial conditions for ray integration that
at t = 0 the ray begins at the camera’s loca-
1. Choose a camera location (`c , θc , φc ). It might best tion, (`, θ, φ) = (`c , θc , φc ) with canonical momenta
be on the equatorial plane, θc = π/2, so the coor- (A.9c) and constants of motion (A.9d). Numeri-
dinate singularities at θ = 0 and θ = π are as far cally integrate the ray equations (A.7), subject to
from the camera as possible. these initial conditions, from t = 0 backward along
the ray to time ti = −∞ (or some extremely nega-
2. Set up local Cartesian coordinates centered on the tive, finite initial time ti ). If `(ti ) is negative, then
camera, with x along the direction of increasing the ray comes from location {θ0 , φ0 } = {θ(ti ), φ(ti )}
` (toward the wormhole on the Saturn side; away on the Saturn side of the wormhole, s = −. If
from the wormhole on the Gargantua side), y along `(ti ) is positive, then the ray comes from location
the direction of increasing φ, and z along the direc- {θ0 , φ0 } = {θ(ti ), φ(ti )} on the Gargantua side of
tion of decreasing θ, the wormhole, s = +.

ex = e`ˆ , ey = eφ̂ , ez = −eθ̂ . (A.8)

3. Implementing the map

Here e`ˆ, eθ̂ and eφ̂ are unit vectors that point in
Evaluating this map numerically should be a moder-
the `, θ, and φ directions. (The hats tell us their ately easy task for students.
lengths are one.) Figure 5 shows these camera basis Kip Thorne, the author among us who is a total klutz
vectors, for the special case where the camera is in at numerical work, did it using Mathematica, and then
the equatorial plane. The minus sign in our choice used that map—a numerical table of {θ0 , φ0 , s} as a func-
ez = −eθ̂ makes the camera’s ez parallel to the tion of {θcs , φcs }—to make camera-sky images of what-
wormhole’s polar axis on the Gargantua side of the ever was placed on the two celestial spheres. For image
wormhole, where ` is positive. processing, Thorne first built an interpolation of the map
using the Mathematica command ListInterpolation;
3. Set up a local spherical polar coordinate system for and he then used this interpolated map, together with
the camera’s local sky in the usual way, based on Mathematica’s command ImageTransformation, to
the camera’s local Cartesian coordinates; cf. Eq. produce the camera-sky image from the images on the
(A.9a) below. two celestial spheres.
4. Choose a direction (θcs , φcs ) on the camera’s local
sky. The unit vector N pointing in that direction ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
has Cartesian components
For extensive advice on our wormhole visualizations,
Nx = sin θcs cos φcs , Ny = sin θcs sin φcs , we thank Christopher Nolan. For contributions to DNGR
Nz = cos θcs . (A.9a) and its wormhole applications, we thank members of the
Double Negative R&D team Sylvan Dieckmann, Simon
Pabst, Shane Christopher, Paul-George Roberts, and
Because of the relationship (A.8) between bases,
Damien Maupu; and also Double Negative artists Zoe
the direction n of propagation of the incoming ray
Lord, Fabio Zangla, Iacopo di Luigi, Finella Fan, Tristan
that arrives from direction −N, has components in
Myles, Stephen Tew, and Peter Howlett.
the global spherical polar basis
The construction of our code DNGR was funded by
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., for generating visual
n`ˆ = −Nx , nφ̂ = −Ny , nθ̂ = +Nz . (A.9b) effects for the movie Interstellar. We thank Warner Bros.
for authorizing this code’s additional use for scientific re-
search and physics education, and in particular the work
reported in this paper.
 14

1
Carl Sagan, Contact (Simon and Schuster, New York, model in general relativity”, J. Math. Phys. 14, 104–118
1985). (1973).
2 14
Contact, The Movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis ( c Fifteen years later, Morris and Thorne3 wrote down this
Warner Bros., 1997). same metric, among others, and being unaware of Ellis’s
3
Michael S. Morris and Kip S. Thorne, “Wormholes in paper, failed to attribute it to him, for which they apolo-
spacetime and their use for interstellar travel: A tool gize. Regretably, it is sometimes called the Morris-Thorne
for teaching general relativity,” Am. J. Phys. 56 395–412 wormhole metric.
15
(1988). Tommaso Treu, Philip J. Marshall and Dou-
4
Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan, screenplay by glas Clowe, “Resource Letter GL-1: Gravi-
Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan ( c Warner Bros, tational Lensing,” Am. J. Phys. 80, 753–763
2014). (2012); http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.0791v1.pdf and
5
Kip Thorne, The Science of Interstellar (W.W. Norton https://groups.diigo.com/group/gravitational-lensing.
16
and Company, New York, 2014). This is the same as Eq. (7.46b) of Hartle,11 where, however,
6
Allen Everett and Thomas Roman, Time Travel and Warp our ` is denoted ρ.
17
Drives (University of Chicago Press, 2012). See the technical notes for chapter 15 of The Science of
7
John L. Friedman and Atsushi Higuchi “Topological cen- Interstellar,5 pages 294–295.
18
sorship and chronology protection,” Annalen Phys. 15, From the embedding equation (6) and dr/d` =
109–128 (2006). (2/π) arctan(2`/πM)
√ [Eq.
√ (5b)], it follows
√ that W/M =
8
Francisco S. N. Lobo “Exotic solutions in general relativ- − ln[sec(π/2 2)] + (π/2 2) tan(π/2 2) = 1.42053....
19
ity: traversable wormholes and ‘warp drive’ spacetimes,” Mattias Malmer, http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041225.html
Classical and Quantum Gravity Research 5 Progress (Nova .
20
Science Publishers 2008), 1–78. J. F. Blinn and M. E. Newell, “Texture and reflection in
9
Michael S. Morris, Kip S. Thorne, and Ulvi Yurtsever, computer generated images,” Communications of the ACM
“Wormholes, time machines, and the weak energy condi- 19, 542–547 (1976).
21
tion,” Phys. Rev. Lett., 61, 1446-1449 (1988). M. Bartelmann “Gravitational lensing,” Class. Quant.
10
See, e.g., chapter 13 of The Science of Interstellar 4 . Grav. 27 233001 (2010)
11 22
James B. Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein’s Richard H. Price and Kip S. Thorne, “Superhamiltonian
General Relativity (Addison Wesley, 2003). for geodesic motion and its power in numerical computa-
12
Oliver James, Eugénie von Tunzelmann, Paul Franklin, tions,” Amer. J. Phys., in preparation.
23
and Kip S. Thorne, “Gravitational lensing by spinning Section 21.1 of Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne and John
black holes in astrophysics, and in the movie Interstellar ”, Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation (W. H. Freeman, 1973).
24
Class. Quant. Grav., in press (2015). The polar axis is arbitrary because the wormhole’s geom-
13
Homer G. Ellis, “Ether flow through a drainhole: a particle etry is spherically symmetric.