For decades filmmakers have imagined what a black hole looks like and have usually come up with a similar visual: a round dark centre surrounded by swirling, glowing matter.
Portrayals of the cosmic phenomenon rarely deviate significantly from one another mostly because that was how Albert Einstein had described black holes (and there are only a number of ways to depict a hole that is black, after all).
Now thanks to an international team of scientists, an image of a real black hole was unveiled this week – and it turns out Einstein was pretty close to the mark.
We look at five sci-fi movies that feature these singularities to see how accurate they were in their depiction.
High Life (2018)
High Life is the first science fiction film – and first English-language film – by French art-house director Claire Denis.
The film focuses on a group of prisoners on a space mission to a black hole in hopes of finding an alternate energy source.
Physicist Aurélien Barrau is listed as a “Cosmic Companion” of the movie, while French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy and astronaut instructor Laura André-Boyet were also science consultants to the movie cast and crew, according to website Sloan Science and Film.
The black hole featured in the film is pretty close to the real image released by the scientists this week.
Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan, Interstellar follows a small group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humanity.
The film is noted for its scientific accuracy and its imagining of a black hole, called Gargantua, has since become iconic. Nolan even brought famous US physicist Kip Thorne on board to help with the depiction.
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The movie’s glowing circle with a line running around the middle might not look the same as the image released this week, but Kazunori Akiyama, the researcher who led the team that unveiled the image, said it was almost correct.
He told tech website Gizmodo that the image the team took might have been taken from an angle where such a ring was not visible – just like how Saturn’s ring would not appear the same way when the planet is viewed from the top or bottom.
Star Trek (2009)
The 11th film in the Star Trek franchise, the 2009 movie follows the USS Enterprise as it combats an extraterrestrial humanoid species from the future which threatens their planets by creating artificial black holes.
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The black hole in the film was depicted as having a bright white crackling border resembling a sort of lightning field.
Event Horizon (1997)
Starring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne, Event Horizon was set in 2047 and followed the crew of a spaceship on a rescue mission after the mysterious appearance of a missing spaceship around Neptune.
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With the tagline “Infinite Space, Infinite Terror”, Event Horizon was not one for the faint of heart. Its black hole started as a burst of light before the hole appears surrounded by swirly, cloudlike borders, before disappearing as quickly as it appeared.
The Black Hole (1979)
Released 40 years ago and directed by Gary Nelson, The Black Hole was the first movie from Disney to receive a PG rating.
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In the movie, a research vessel finds a missing ship commanded by a mysterious scientist on the edge of a black hole that looks like a blue whirlpool in space.
