1、墨菲定律Murphy's law
片中男主角的女儿名为墨菲，而她总在抱怨自己的名字与不吉利的墨菲定律的联系。墨菲定律由上世纪中叶一名美国空军工程师爱德华·墨菲提出，包含四条原则，1、任何事都没有表面看起来那么简单；2、所有的事都会比你预计的时间长；3、会出错的事总会出错；4、如果你担心某种情况发生，那么它就更有可能发生。《星际穿越》的情节中多次体现了墨菲定律的正确性，但除了把事情搞砸，它也把任务引向好的方面，最后主角也在墨菲定律的作用下挽救了全人类的生途。从这个角度来理解，墨菲定律是一种对概率的诠释，本身并不指代吉凶祸福。
Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2、相对论Relativity、Relative Theory
相对论是关于时空和引力的基本理论，主要由阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦创立，依据研究的对象不同分为狭义相对论和广义相对论。相对论的基本假设是相对性原理，即物理定律与参照系的选择无关。狭义相对论和广义相对的区别是，前者讨论的是匀速直线运动的参照系（惯性参照系）之间的物理定律，后者则推广到具有加速度的参照系中（非惯性系），并在等效原理的假设下，广泛应用于引力场中。相对论极大地改变了人类对宇宙和自然的“常识性”观念，提出了“同时的相对性”、“四维时空”、“弯曲时空”等全新的概念。它发展了牛顿力学，推动物理学发展到一个新的高度。
Although Isaac Newton based his physics on absolute time and space, he also adhered to the principle of relativity of Galileo Galilei. This can be stated as: as far as the laws of mechanics are concerned, all observers in inertial motion are equally privileged, and no preferred state of motion can be attributed to any particular inertial observer. However, as to electromagnetic theory and electrodynamics, during the 19th century the wave theory of light as a disturbance of a "light medium" or Luminiferous ether was widely accepted, the theory reaching its most developed form in the work of James Clerk Maxwell. According to Maxwell's theory, all optical and electrical phenomena propagate through that medium, which suggested that it should be possible to experimentally determine motion relative to the aether.
The failure of any known experiment to detect motion through the aether led Hendrik Lorentz, starting in 1892, to develop a theory of electrodynamics based on an immobile luminiferous aether (about whose material constitution Lorentz didn't speculate), physical length contraction, and a "local time" in which Maxwell's equations retain their form in all inertial frames of reference. Working with Lorentz's aether theory, Henri Poincaré, hav.ing earlier proposed the "relativity principle" as a general law of nature (including electrodynamics and grav.itation), used this principle in 1905 to correct Lorentz's preliminary transformation formulas, resulting in an exact set of equations that are now called the Lorentz transformations. A little later in the same year Albert Einstein published his original paper on special relativity in which, again based on the relativity principle, he independently derived and radically reinterpreted the Lorentz transformations by changing the fundamental definitions of space and time intervals, while abandoning the absolute simultaneity of Galilean kinematics, thus avoiding the need for any reference to a luminiferous aether in classical electrodynamics.[1] Subsequent work of Hermann Minkowski, in which he introduced a 4-dimensional geometric "spacetime" model for Einstein's version of special relativity, paved the way for Einstein's later development of his general theory of relativity and laid the foundations of relativistic field theories.
4、虫洞Wormhole
虫洞这一名词诞生于上世纪50年代，是对“爱因斯坦－罗森桥”的一种通俗称呼，它指的是物理学中假想的一种天体，能从更高的维度连接两个遥远的空间点，因此可以使人类突破光速的临界，进行超远距离的宇宙航行。从上世纪80年代开始，归功于美国加州理工学院CIT物理学家基普·索恩的理论，虫洞被广泛用于幻想作品中的星际旅行，而索恩也正是《星际穿越》的科学顾问。科幻片中经常出现的术语，想必大家都不陌生了。所谓虫洞就是在三维空间中利用特殊技术形成的一个可在短时间穿过较远距离的空间隧道。如果起点终点是地图上的两个点，那么虫洞的原理就是把地图折叠起来，是这两点在一个平面（二维维度）上重合，使得从起点到终点的距离大大减少（其实也就只相隔一个平面而已）。影片中虫洞之所以是圆的，是因为虫洞在二维空间上是个连接两点的圆洞，到了三维空间，在上下左右前后三轴向上进行扩展而形成了球形。正如片中戏谑道：“为什么虫洞是球形而不是一个洞，以前的插画上都是画的一个洞啊”。
A wormhole, officially known as an Einstein–Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would fundamentally be a shortcut through spacetime. A wormhole is much like a tunnel with two ends, each in separate points in spacetime.
For a simplified notion of a wormhole, visualize space as a two-dimensional (2D) surface. In this case, a wormhole can be pictured as a hole in that surface that leads into a 3D tube (the inside surface of a cylinder). This tube then re-emerges at another location on the 2D surface with a similar hole as the entrance. An actual wormhole would be analogous to this, but with the spatial dimensions raised by one. For example, instead of circular holes on a 2D plane, a real wormhole's mouths could be spheres in 3D space.
5、黑洞Black Hole
宇宙空间内存在的一种超高密度天体，由于类似热力学上它是完全不反射光线的黑体，故名为黑洞。于1969年由美国物理学家约翰·阿提·惠勒命名（以上来源于百度百科）。黑洞最主要的影响就是其巨大的引力作用使包括光线在内的一切物质被吸引到起中心，而这巨大的引力也在这中心附近造成了时空的扭曲，也就是所谓的相对论。
如何理解这个时空的扭曲呢？我们可以把一个水池中的排水孔比作黑洞。当水池装满水时打开排水孔放水，在远离孔的水面附近，一切没有变化，而在水下靠近排水孔的地方，水流速度开始增加，水流方面也开始变化。在这样的速度下，水分子移动定距离花的时间远小于书面附近水分子移动相同距离花的时间。这个距离就相当于时间流动过程中的两个点，比如2000年和2014年，原本在水面附近需要14年时间，而在排水孔附近，只需要几小时就可以让时间从2000年跨越到2014年。这就类似于黑洞对时空产生的扭曲，这也就是为什么黑洞附近一小时，黑洞外7年。
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which grav.ity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although crossing the event horizon has enormous effect on the fate of the object crossing it, it appears to have no locally detectable features. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is on the order of billionths of a kelvin for black holes of stellar mass, making it all but impossible to observe.
7、引力弹弓The Slingshot Effect
引力弹弓其原理就像一块磁铁可以吸引周围的金属一般。就是利用行星的重力场来给太空探测船加速，将它甩向下一个目标，也就是把行星当作“引力助推器”。利用引力弹弓使我们能探测冥王星以内的所有行星。在航天动力学和宇宙空间动力学中，所谓的引力助推（也被称为引力弹弓效应或绕行星变轨）是利用行星或其他天体的相对运动和引力改变飞行器的轨道和速度，以此来节省燃料、时间和计划成本。引力助推既可用于加速飞行器，也能用于降低飞行器速度。
198.9年，美国航空航天局通过阿特兰蒂斯号航天飞机在太空中施放了伽利略号探测器。伽利略号最初计划使用赫曼转移轨道法，但由于挑战者号航天飞机的事故，伽利略号的“半人马座”推进火箭不再被允许通过航天飞机运至太空，取而代之的是一种功率较小的固态燃料推进火箭。在这种情况下，伽利略号在其轨道上一次飞掠过金星，两次飞掠过地球，计划1995年12月到达木星。伽利略号的工程师调查后认为（但是无法证实）在飞掠过程中飞行器与金星的长时间接触，使伽利略号上的主天线的润滑剂失效。该技术故障迫使伽利略号使用功能较差的后备天线。在其后伽利略号探测木星卫星的过程中，也多次使用引力推进法，从而延长了燃料的使用时间，也增加了其与木星卫星近距离接触的机会
The slingshot effect is used to accelerate a spacecraft in a planetary flyby. NASA calls this a grav.ity assist, and exploits it to save fuel in missions to outer planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. The planets continue in their orbits unaffected, and so at first sight this seems like something for nothing, a cosmic perpetual-motion trick.