Could the Tesseract from 'Interstellar' Be Real?

A famous scene from the 2014 film 'Interstellar' (above) and M.C. Escher's iconic 1955 lithograph print 'Convex and Concave' (below) 

To know where the Tesseract in "Interstellar" is located is to understand the esoterica of higher dimensions. 

"Interstellar" was director Christopher Nolan's valiant attempt to visualize how this geometrical concept would look like on our puny, two-dimensional flat screens. Understand that Nolan didn't pull this stuff out of nowhere; he had help from theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Kip Thorne to keep the science on point. 

A tesseract, also known as a hypercube, is the four-dimensional analog of a cube. Now we're not talking about your favorite 4DX theaters—this is about spatial dimensions beyond our everyday experience. 

It is said that we live in three spatial dimensions, a world limited by length, width, and height. To us 3D creatures, we could see all sides of a box while poor little two-dimensional beings could only perceive a line or slice of the box. 

To beings in a fourth spatial dimension, we become those poor little creatures quickly, like fish stuck in a pond. A four-dimensional object, akin to a person above the pond, would be largely incomprehensible to us. 

Theoretically, you get some kind of godlike powers in this dimension. A 4D being would not only see all sides of a box at once but also right into the box. 

It was mathematician Charles Howard Hinton who first conceptualized the idea of a tesseract. Later, in his groundbreaking "Theory of Relativity," Albert Einstein thought of space as three dimensions, plus one temporal dimension, forming what we now call spacetime. In that context, time is often referred to as the fourth dimension. 

Enter String Theory, the idea that everything in the subatomic universe is an endless rhapsody of vibrating strings. Depending on the version, String Theory suggests that the universe could have as many as 26 dimensions. If beings were to exist on these planes, they’d experience reality in ways we could hardly imagine. 

Matthew McConaughey's character, Cooper, credits the creation of the Tesseract to such intelligent, time-hopping beings, who are never shown onscreen. 

Now, could something like the Tesseract really exist inside a black hole? It could be plausible. In fact, it neatly covered a potential plothole in "Interstellar." 

Thorne said that Nolan originally wanted Cooper to return to Earth not through a wormhole but by faster-than-light travel, which violates the law of physics. Nolan's science clearly wasn't science-ing, so Thorne proposed that Cooper fall into the event horizon and end up on the surface of a multi-dimensional sphere that acts like a spacecraft, traveling through spacetime and eventually finding a shortcut to Earth. 

Nolan liked the idea but instead of a sphere, he chose a different visual: a cube, which ultimately became the Tesseract we see onscreen. 

To visually represent the Tesseract, Nolan mined something earthlier, such as the work of graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher. His mind-boggling prints and woodcuts, known for depicting infinite connections and surreal buildings, inspired the artists behind "Interstellar" to create the labyrinth that is the Tesseract. 

In the boundless maze that is our spacetime, some things remain universal. At the end of "Interstellar," love prevails, a force stronger than gravity, binding the characters together. 

Thorne has the formula to back up all the science in the movie. He breaks it down elegantly in his book "The Science of Interstellar," which you can find here.