Surprisingly, astrophysicist Kip Thorne learned new things about black holes when he assisted director Christopher Nolan with the upcoming science-fi movie, Interstellar.

Thorne helped Nolan create the visual representation of a black hole in the film by using his astrophysics and mathematics knowledge. In a recent feature with Wired, Thorne said no movie has accurately depicted wormholes or black holes.

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Thorne and Nolan's depiction of these cosmic anomalies in the film are the most accurate simulation of what a black hole and wormhole could look like.

The problem was the computers' inability to render the anomalies the programmer wanted. Instead, Thorne teamed-up with visual effects expert Paul Franklin to create the visual representations using mathematical data and equations.

The visual effects team on the film took all of Thorne's well-researched data and came up with a realistic depiction of what a black hole would look like.

Nolan initially thought the black hole would be round. However, it ended up being depicted as a disk, and the only thing that can really be seen is the way it warps the starlight around it.

The team experimented with an accretion disc. It's a structure whose central body is a star and where gravity causes material in the disc to spiral inward towards the central body.

On placing this around the spinning black hole, they found the accretion disk was also warped.

For the first time, Thorne and company saw what a real black hole would look like. Instead of the accretion disk looking like Saturn's rings, the light created a halo around the black hole.

The glowing accretion disk appeared above, below and around the black hole. This is something Thorne didn't expect.

Interstellar will be the first film to truly depict what a black hole looks like in real life. It debuts in theaters on November 5. 

TagsInterstellar, Kip Thorne, Black Holes, Wormholes, Christopher Nolan, Wired