Q 01/05

The gravitational waves Kip Thorne helped detect in 2015 were predicted a century earlier by which physicist?

A) Niels Bohr

B) Albert Einstein

C) Max Planck

D) Isaac Newton

Answer · why

B) Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein. He was convinced the waves were too faint ever to be measured; catching one took twin detectors able to sense a change thousands of t...

Q 02/05

Besides Interstellar, Thorne advised Christopher Nolan on the physics of which of these films?

A) Inception

B) Dunkirk

C) Tenet

D) Memento

Answer · why

C) Tenet

Tenet. Nolan had Thorne read the script and help with its ideas about time, while admitting that the film makes no claim to be scientifically accurate...

Q 03/05

Thorne won a famous bet with Stephen Hawking over whether which cosmic object was a black hole?

A) The Crab Pulsar

B) Sagittarius A*

C) Cygnus X-1

D) Quasar 3C 273

Answer · why

C) Cygnus X-1

Cygnus X-1. Hawking bet against the black holes he had spent years studying, calling the wager an insurance policy in case they proved not to exist, a...

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

Utah. At 13 he discovered George Gamow's popular-science classic One, Two, Three... Infinity, and by his own account the book made him decide to becom...

Q 05/05

The gravitational waves behind Thorne's Nobel Prize are ripples in what?

A) Dark matter

B) Magnetic fields

C) The solar wind

D) Spacetime

Answer · why

D) Spacetime

Spacetime. Modern physics treats gravity as the bending of space and time, so a violent enough cosmic collision sends waves out through them like ripp...