We don’t know what triggered the big bang, nor what, if anything, existed before it. But somehow the universe emerged as a vast sea of ultrahot gas, … - Kip S. Thorne

singularities, he asserted, “are a place in which the fiery marriage of Einstein’s relativistic laws with the quantum laws is consummated.

The first planet that Cooper and his crew visit is Miller’s. The most impressive things about this planet are the extreme slowing of time there, gigantic water waves, and huge tidal gravity. All three are related, and arise from the planet’s closeness to Gargantua.

[B]y reason of its faster and faster infall [the surface of the imploding star] moves away from the [distant] observer more and more rapidly. The light is shifted to the red. It becomes dimmer millisecond by millisecond, and in less than a second is too dark to see . . . [The star,] like the Cheshire cat, fades from view. One leaves behind only its grin, the other, only its gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction, yes; light, no. No more than light do any particles emerge. Moreover, light and particles incident from outside ... [and] going down the black hole only add to its mass and increase its gravitational attraction.” Black hole was Wheeler’s new name. Within months it was adopted enthusiastically by relativity physicists, astrophysicists, and the general public, in East as well as West — with one exception: In France, where the phrase trou noir (black hole) has obscene connotations, there was resistance for several years.