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This episode contains spoilers to Interstellar, a film that came out over a decade ago.

You've been warned.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Short Waver is Regina Barber here.

And Emily Kwong, and about a month ago, I asked Gina what I thought was an innocent question.

Simply, have you seen interstellar?

We must confront the reality of interstellar travel.

The movie about a dying Earth and NASA's plan to find humanity a new home in another galaxy.

This Christopher Nolan movie has haunted the astrophysics field for the past decade.

Yeah.

The tiniest synopsis I can give of Interstellar is that Christopher Nolan learned about relativity.

That is Aaron McDonald.

She's an astrophysicist who has studied space time and how it bends.

Now, Aaron is the official scientific

advisor for the Star Trek franchise. Dream job. So she knows a thing or two about movie representations

of physics. Yeah. And Gina, until recently, I had no idea this was a Christopher Nolan movie and

that he and his brother, Jonathan Nolan, consulted with astrophysicist Kip Thorne, who was an executive producer

on the movie. Yeah, Kip Thorne, like he's a big deal in the field. He contributed to the

...