Communicating Science Through the Arts: Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Interstellar Dr. Kip Thorne

Please join us on Thursday, May 12, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. to hear Kip Thorne — Communicating Science Through the Arts: Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Interstellar in Musco Center for the Arts. This is part of the Bensussen Visting Artist Lecture Series.

Kip Thorne will describe his remarkable experiences conveying the essence of science to the general public through collaborations with artists, musicians, and filmmakers.  These include Christopher Nolan’s 2014 blockbuster movie Interstellar, for which he was executive producer and science advisor; a forthcoming book that describes “the warped side of the universe” through poetry by Thorne and paintings by Chapman University’s Professor Lia Halloran; and live multimedia performances explaining the recent discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes – a collaboration between Thorne, Oscar-winning visual effects guru Paul Franklin and his team at Double Negative Ltd in London, and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer and his band.  While describing these collaborations, Thorne will also explain some of the most fascinating and weird phenomena that humans have ever encountered.

About Professor Thorne:
Thorne is the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at Caltech, where he has taught and carried out research for nearly a half century.  His research has focused on Einstein’s relativity theory and astrophysics, with emphasis on stars, black holes, and especially gravitational waves. He was co-founder (with R. Weiss and R.W.P. Drever) of the LIGO Project, which made the breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves arriving at Earth from the distant universe on September 14, 2015, thereby opening up a whole new way to explore the universe. His current research is on the nonlinear dynamics of curved space-time and he is co-author, with Roger Blandford, of the textbook Modern Classical Physics (to be published in late 2016).

Thorne is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Swiss Albert Einstein Medal, the UNESCO Niels Bohr Gold Medal, California Scientist of the Year, and National Space Society’s Space Pioneer Award for Mass Media for his book, The Science of Interstellar.

This event is free. Tickets are required for entry & can be found at muscocenter.org. For further information, please call: (714) 997-6729.