Diary of a space entuisiast

14 she/her astronomy stuff I find cool

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Portal to a different dimension or just the Einstein-Rosen Bridge?

Otherwise known as wormholes, they are a theoretical structure formed when a black hole conjoins with another theoretical structure called a 'white hole' to create a tunnel that bends spacetime, which potentially allows us to travel between distant parts of the universe or entire universes as a whole.

Popularized by science fiction as a passageway to parallel universesand alternate dimensions, wormholes remain one of the most intriguing theories in modern physics.

Discovered my Einstein's theory of relativity; this concept is heavily theorized with mathematical formulas but has no solid evidence.

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J1407b or Super-Saturn

This exoplanet was discovered in 2012 and was famously given the name "Super Saturn" for its large rings, almost 200 times bigger than Saturn's. It is 433.8 light-years away from Earth, orbiting its star J1407.

Its existence is still debated, and it may instead be a brown dwarf or a disk of material rather than a true ringed planet.

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Did you know it's only been 1.7 hours on Miller's planet since Interstellar's release almost 12 years ago?

This stark difference is because of time dilation.

There are two types of time dilation—relative velocity time dilation and gravitational time dilation. What occurred on Miller's planet was gravitational time dilation.

Einstein said gravity is not just a “force pulling things.” Instead massive objects like planets and black holes bend space and time. This combined structure is called spacetime.

Think of spacetime as a flat, infinitely huge trampoline, and planets/black holes are like big balls causing a dent or dip in spacetime. That dip represents gravity.

Because of this idea, we know that time is not just a concept we use to measure change but a part of space and its structure, and gravity affects the rate of all physical processes, even the speed of atoms and clocks.

We know Miller’s planet is close to the supermassive black hole Gargantua. Because Gargantua has such enormous mass, it causes a very strong curvature in spacetime. This curvature means time runs more slowly compared to planets further away.

This effect is called gravitational time dilation, and it’s why time on Miller’s planet passes so differently from time elsewhere.