Q 01/05

Kip Thorne shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to which detector?

A) LIGO

B) Hubble

C) Kepler

D) IceCube

Answer · why

A) LIGO

He shared it with Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish for the observation of gravitational waves.

Q 02/05

Thorne was a scientific consultant on which 2020 Christopher Nolan film about time inversion?

A) Inception

B) Dunkirk

C) Tenet

D) Memento

Answer · why

C) Tenet

He later coached Cillian Murphy for Nolan's Oppenheimer as well.

Q 03/05

Thorne advised which novelist on the physics for Contact?

A) Arthur C. Clarke

B) Carl Sagan

C) Isaac Asimov

D) Larry Niven

Answer · why

B) Carl Sagan

Sagan wanted his heroine to cross the galaxy plausibly; Thorne's answer launched a whole research programme.

Q 04/05

Thorne was born in 1940 in Logan, in which state?

A) Idaho

B) Colorado

C) Nevada

D) Utah

Answer · why

D) Utah

His father was a professor of soil chemistry at Utah State University.

Q 05/05

Thorne's mother Alison was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in which subject from Iowa State College?

A) Chemistry

B) Mathematics

C) Sociology

D) Economics

Answer · why

D) Economics

Two of his four siblings also became professors.