World Science Festival - Greatest Mysteries of Gravity | Brian Greene & Kip Thorne

Nobel laureate Kip Thorne joins Brian Greene to trace a story that runs from the trenches of World War I to the rise of gravitational-wave astronomy—a journey that eventually carried black holes to Hollywood in Interstellar through Thorne’s work with Christopher Nolan.

He revisits the improbable path from Einstein’s equations to the moment LIGO—an experiment he helped imagine and that contributed to his Nobel Prize—captured the sound of two black holes colliding more than a billion light-years away. Along the way, he explores puzzles that stymied generations: the nature of horizons and singularities, the mathematical insights of Schwarzschild and Penrose, and the profound divide between what an outside observer sees and what a falling observer experiences.

The conversation also turns to the human side of deep physics—Einstein’s doubts, Wheeler’s battles, Oppenheimer’s arguments, the Soviet school’s skepticism—revealing the messy, exhilarating way the field actually moves forward.

This program is part of the Rethinking Reality series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Participant: Kip Thorne
Moderator: Brian Greene

00:00:00- Introduction: Black Holes, Gravity & Film
00:01:12- Early Theories of Black Holes (Michell & Laplace)
00:02:48- Schwarzschild in the Trenches: The First Exact Solution
00:07:40- Oppenheimer–Snyder Collapse & Singularities
00:13:09- Two Perspectives on Falling into a Black Hole
00:14:41- What Happens Inside a Black Hole
00:15:35- Reconciling the Two Perspectives of Infall
00:21:50- Hawking Radiation & Evaporating Black Holes
00:32:07- Wheeler, Misner & Writing Gravitation
00:34:58- Wheeler’s Influence & The Bill Press Story
00:41:04- The Origin of the Term “Black Hole
00:53:58- Joseph Weber and the First Gravitational-Wave Searches
01:00:21- Ray Weiss and the Interferometer Idea
01:08:37- Building LIGO: Committees, Leadership & Design
01:33:38- Advanced LIGO, Sensitivity & the First Detection
01:51:09- Quantum Non-Demolition & Future Detectors
02:04:43- Big Bang Observer & Future Space Missions
02:06:56- Christopher Nolan, Interstellar & Scientific Visualization
02:14:12- Wormholes, Exotic Matter & What Might Be Real
02:26:30- A Scientist’s Motivation: Wonder, Curiosity & the Role of Beauty
02:29:52- Credits