Thorne was born on June 1, 1940, in Logan, Utah. His father, D. Wynne Thorne (1908–1979), was a professor of soil chemistry at Utah State University, and his mother, Alison (née Comish; 1914–2004), was an economist and the first woman to receive a PhD in economics from Iowa State College.[11][12] Raised in an academic environment, two of his four siblings also became professors.[13][14] Thorne's parents were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and raised Thorne in the LDS faith, though he now describes himself as atheist. Regarding his views on science and religion, Thorne has stated: "There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God .... There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God."[15]
Thorne returned to Caltech as an associate professor in 1967 and became a professor of theoretical physics in 1970, becoming one of the youngest full professors in the history of Caltech at age 30. He became the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in 1981, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1991. He was an adjunct professor at the University of Utah from 1971 to 1998 and Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University from 1986 to 1992.[18] In June 2009, he resigned his Feynman Professorship (he is now the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus) to pursue a career of writing and movie making.[citation needed] His first film project was Interstellar, on which he worked with Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan.[8]
Throughout the years, Thorne has served as a mentor and thesis advisor to many leading theorists who now work on observational, experimental, or astrophysical aspects of general relativity. Approximately 50 physicists have received PhDs at Caltech under Thorne's personal mentorship.[8]
Thorne is known for his ability to convey the excitement and significance of discoveries in gravitation and astrophysics to both professional and lay audiences. His presentations on subjects such as black holes, gravitational radiation, relativity, time travel, and wormholes have been included in PBS shows in the U.S. and on the BBC in the United Kingdom.[citation needed]
Thorne and Linda Jean Peterson married in 1960. Their children are Kares Anne and Bret Carter, an architect. Thorne and Peterson divorced in 1977. Thorne and his second wife, Carolee Joyce Winstein, a professor of biokinesiology and physical therapy at USC, married in 1984.[19]
Research
Thorne in 1972
Thorne's research has principally focused on relativisticastrophysics and gravitation physics, with emphasis on relativistic stars, black holes and especially gravitational waves.[8] He is perhaps best known to the public for his controversial theory that wormholes can conceivably be used for time travel.[20] However, Thorne's scientific contributions, which center on the general nature of space, time, and gravity, span the full range of topics in general relativity.
Gravitational waves and LIGO
Thorne's work has dealt with the prediction of gravitational wave strengths and their temporal signatures as observed on Earth. These "signatures" are of great relevance to LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory), a multi-institution gravitational wave experiment for which Thorne has been a leading proponent – in 1984, he cofounded the LIGO Project (the largest project ever funded by the NSF[21]) to discern and measure any fluctuations between two or more 'static' points; such fluctuations would be evidence of gravitational waves, as calculations describe. A significant aspect of his research is developing the mathematics necessary to analyze these objects.[22] Thorne also carries out engineering design analyses for features of the LIGO that cannot be developed on the basis of experiment and he gives advice on data analysisalgorithms by which the waves will be sought. He has provided theoretical support for LIGO, including identifying gravitational wave sources that LIGO should target, designing the baffles to control scattered light in the LIGO beam tubes, and – in collaboration with Vladimir Braginsky's (Moscow, Russia) research group – inventing quantum nondemolition designs for advanced gravity-wave detectors and ways to reduce the most serious kind of noise in advanced detectors: thermoelastic noise. With Carlton M. Caves, Thorne invented the back-action-evasion approach to quantum nondemolition measurements of the harmonic oscillators – a technique applicable both in gravitational wave detection and quantum optics.[8]
On February 11, 2016, a team of four physicists[a] representing the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, announced that in September 2015, LIGO recorded the signature of two black holes colliding 1.3 billion light-years away. This recorded detection was the first direct observation of the fleeting chirp of a gravitational wave and confirmed a prediction of the general theory of relativity.[23][24][25][26][27]
While studying for his PhD at Princeton University, his mentor John Wheeler assigned him a problem to think about: find out whether or not a cylindrical bundle of repulsive magnetic field lines will implode under its own attractive gravitational force. After several months wrestling with the problem, he proved that it was impossible for cylindrical magnetic field lines to implode.[28]: 262–265
Why won't a cylindrical bundle of magnetic field lines implode, while spherical stars will implode under their own gravitational force? Thorne tried to explore the theoretical ridge between these two phenomena. He eventually determined that the gravitational force can overcome all interior pressure only when an object has been compressed in all directions. To express this realization, Thorne proposed his hoop conjecture, which describes an imploding star turning into a black hole when the critical circumference of the designed hoop can be placed around it and set into rotation. That is, any object of mass M around which a hoop of circumference can be spun must be a black hole.[28]: 266–267 [29]: 189–190
As a tool to be used in both enterprises — astrophysics and theoretical physics — Thorne and his students have developed an unusual approach, called the "membrane paradigm", to the theory of black holes and used it to clarify the Blandford–Znajek mechanism by which black holes may power some quasars and active galactic nuclei.[28]: 405–411
Thorne has investigated the quantumstatistical mechanical origin of the entropy of a black hole. With his postdoc Wojciech Zurek, he showed that the entropy of a black hole is the logarithm of the number of ways that the hole could have been made.[28]: 445–446
With Igor Novikov and Don Page, he developed the general relativistic theory of thin accretion disks around black holes, and using this theory he deduced that with a doubling of its mass by such accretion a black hole will be spun up to 0.998 of the maximum spin allowed by general relativity, but not any farther. This is probably the maximum black-hole spin allowed in nature.[8]
Wormholes and time travel
A wormhole is a short cut connecting two separate regions in space. In the figure the green line shows the short way through wormhole, and the red line shows the long way through normal space.
With Mike Morris and Ulvi Yurtsever, he showed that traversable wormholes can exist in the structure of spacetime only if they are threaded by quantum fields in quantum states that violate the averaged null energy condition (i.e. have negative renormalized energy spread over a sufficiently large region).[32] This has triggered research to explore the ability of quantum fields to possess such extended negative energy. Recent calculations by Thorne indicate that simple masses passing through traversable wormholes could never engender paradoxes – there are no initial conditions that lead to paradox once time travel is introduced. If his results can be generalized, they would suggest that none of the supposed paradoxes formulated in time travel stories can actually be formulated at a precise physical level: that is, that any situation in a time travel story turns out to permit many consistent solutions.[citation needed]
Relativistic stars, multipole moments and other endeavors
With Anna Żytkow, Thorne predicted the existence of red supergiant stars with neutron-star cores (Thorne–Żytkow objects).[33] He laid the foundations for the theory of pulsations of relativistic stars and the gravitational radiation they emit. With James Hartle, Thorne derived from general relativity the laws of motion and precession of black holes and other relativistic bodies, including the influence of the coupling of their multipole moments to the spacetime curvature of nearby objects,[34] as well as writing down the Hartle-Thorne metric, an approximate solution which describes the exterior of a slowly and rigidly rotating, stationary and axially symmetric body.
Thorne has also theoretically predicted the existence of universally antigravitating "exotic matter" – the element needed to accelerate the expansion rate of the universe, keep traversable wormhole "Star Gates" open and keep timelikegeodesic free float "warp drives" working. With Clifford Will[35] and others of his students, he laid the foundations for the theoretical interpretation of experimental tests of relativistic theories of gravity – foundations on which Will and others then built. As of 2005[update], Thorne was interested in the origin of classical space and time from the quantum foam of quantum gravity theory.[citation needed]
Publications
Thorne has written and edited books on topics in gravitational theory and high-energy astrophysics. In 1973, he co-authored the textbook Gravitation with Charles Misner and John Wheeler;[36] that according to John C. Baez and Chris Hillman, is one of the great scientific books of all time and has inspired two generations of students.[37] In 1994, he published Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, a book for non-scientists for which he received numerous awards. This book has been published in six languages, and editions in Chinese, Italian, Czech, and Polish are in press.[when?] In 2014, Thorne published The Science of Interstellar in which he explains the science behind Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar; Nolan wrote the foreword to the book. In September 2017, Thorne and Roger D. Blandford published Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics, a graduate-level textbook covering the six major areas of physics listed in the title.[38]
Thorne's articles have appeared in publications such as:
In Larry Niven's novel Rainbow Mars, the time travel technology used in the novel is based on the wormhole theories of Thorne, which in the context of the novel was when time travel first became possible, rather than just fantasy. As a result, any attempts to travel in time prior to Thorne's development of wormhole theory results in the time traveller entering a fantastic version of reality, rather than the actual past.[59]
Thorne played himself in the episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled "The Laureate Accumulation".
Thorne is featured in an episode of the documentary series The Craftsman entitled "Science, Art & Inspiration".
Partial bibliography
Misner, Charles W., Thorne, K. S. and Wheeler, John Archibald, Gravitation 1973, (W H Freeman & Co)
Thorne, K. S., in 300 Years of Gravitation, (Eds.) S. W. Hawking and W. Israel, 1987, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press), Gravitational Radiation.
Thorne, K. S., Price, R. H. and Macdonald, DM, Black Holes, The Membrane Paradigm, 1986, (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press).
Friedman, J., Morris, MS, Novikov, I. D., Echeverria, F., Klinkhammer, G., Thorne, K. S. and Yurtsever, U., Physical Review D., 1990, (in press), Cauchy Problem in Spacetimes with Closed Timelike Curves.
Thorne, K. S. and Blandford, R. D., Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics, 2017, (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
^Grant Kimm, Webmaster- The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University. "Plaza of Heroines at Iowa State University". Las.iastate.edu. Archived from the original on August 14, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
^"Dr. Alison Comish Thorne". Legacy.com. The Salt Lake Tribune Obituaries. October 26, 2004. Retrieved September 7, 2016.
^Rory Carroll (June 21, 2013). "Kip Thorne: physicist studying time travel tapped for Hollywood film". Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved October 30, 2014. Thorne grew up in an academic, Mormon family in Utah but is now an atheist. "There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God."
^"LIGO: The Search for Gravitational Waves". National Science Foundation. Archived from the original on September 15, 2016. Retrieved September 9, 2016. LIGO is the largest single enterprise undertaken by NSF, with capital investments of nearly $300 million and operating costs of more than $30 million/year.
^V. Frolov; I. Novikov (December 6, 2012). Black Hole Physics: Basic Concepts and New Developments. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN978-94-011-5139-9.
^Thorne, Kip S.; Will, Clifford (1971). "Theoretical Frameworks for Testing Relativistic Gravity. I. Foundations". The Astrophysical Journal. 163: 595–610. Bibcode:1971ApJ...163..595T. doi:10.1086/150803.
^Misner, Charles W.; Kip S. Thorne; John Archibald Wheeler (September 1973). Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. ISBN0-7167-0344-0.
^"A Guide to Relativity books". John Baez, Chris Hillman. Department of Mathematics, University of California at Riverside. 1998. Retrieved June 19, 2016.
^Kip S. Thorne and Roger D. Blandford (2017). Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity, Relativity, and Statistical Physics. Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-69115902-7.
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