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In the movie Interstellar,

Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) enters a black hole and sends a message to Murph (his daughter). Later, he is found by rangers, but I don't understand how he gets out of the black hole?

As far as I know, nothing can get out of a black hole, as it has extremely high gravity.

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    You could probably expand on this (haven't seen the movie myself): How does his message get "out" (or more specific: "away") from the black hole? How do the black hole mechanics work in the movie?
    – Mario
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 7:50
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    If he wasn't "In" the black hole, how would he get the data and send it to his daughter which was necessary to solve the gravity equation? I think he was in the black hole, the only way of explaining this is that our current understanding of black holes is false, and there is an end to the black hole or a way to get out of the black hole, hence in the movie they keep saying “on the other side of the black whole”.
    – user16032
    Commented Nov 23, 2014 at 14:47
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    The gravity of a black hole is stronger than any force in the universe ... except for looooove.
    – Acccumulation
    Commented Sep 8, 2020 at 1:05

4 Answers 4

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He wasn't "in" the black hole. You can't go "into" a black hole. It's not a hole. It's a singularity. So, no, you can't "get out of a black hole".

But since he wasn't "in" it there's no problem. He had been transported into the tesseract, a three-dimensional representation of a five-dimensional world constructed by advanced future humans, for the purpose of allowing Cooper to send messages back in time by manipulating gravity waves.

Once done, they sent him back to the neck of the wormhole that they'd also created, just outside Saturn. We see him floating in space next to Saturn as a ranger comes to pick him up.

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    Why this is getting so many upvotes? A black hole isn't a singularity, a black hole contains a singularity. Being inside a black hole means being beyond the event horizon. When you're outside a black hole, you can't see inside (beyond the event horizon.) So I'm not sure what you're getting at. No other object in the known universe has a clearer distinction between the inside and the outside.
    – arkon
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 6:07
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    @b1nary.atr0phy: Be that as it may, the core point is that you can't get out (i.e. back through the event horizon), and that it doesn't matter because Cooper was instead transported elsewhere anyway, as described in the remaining 70% of this answer. That's why it's "getting so many upvotes".
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 14:28
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    @b1nary.atr0phy No other object in the known universe has a clearer distinction between the inside and the outside - I dunno, what about tupperware?
    – Grimm The Opiner
    Commented Jan 8, 2018 at 14:54
  • Who would the "advanced future humans" be? The people from Earth who managed to leave the planet?
    – MMalke
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 8:48
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    @b1nary.atr0phy furthermore a singularity is a mathematical anomaly and a physical impossibility. Hawking radiation prevents the final collapse into a singularity.
    – Skek Tek
    Commented Dec 6, 2018 at 18:18
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A black hole is an area of spacetime which exhibits a very strong gravitational field around it. The gravitational field is so strong that even light can't escape it.

There are two parts to a black hole. The center which is called the singularity. The Event Horizon, which is the boundary around the singularity till where no matter can escape.

In the movie, they need information from inside the black hole. When they say inside, they are talking about inside the Event Horizon. Cooper does cross over inside the Event Horizon after which he is safely transported to the tesseract.

It is important to note that the tesseract was inside the Event Horizon and not outside because that is the data that they need to solve the "Gravity Problem" back on Earth.

After transmitting the data obtained from inside the black hole (inside the boundaries of the Event Horizon) from tesseract, the 5d beings safely transport Cooper to the mouth of the wormhole near Saturn where he gets picked up.

(Apparently, "safely transport" has a warped meaning for the 5d beings, maybe they forgot that it's not very safe to just chuck a human into open space for a passing space ship to pick up ;) )

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    As a side note to your linked plot-hole list, points 3 (Cooper's survival) and 4 (his age difference to Amelia) have already been discussed here in related questions (and their nature as plot-holes refuted sufficiently enough for the movie), in particular here and here. But granted, at least your link didn't speak of any paradoxes where there were none. ;-)
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 12:11
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    @NapoleonWilson, oh yeah, that Bootstrap vs Predestination paradox thing hurts my brain :)
    – John
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 13:05
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    I like to think that they put him exactly where they knew a patrol ship would show up rather than just chucking him in the general direction of home and assuming he'd figure it out from there -- they knew he needed rescue from his own people (people that had the knowledge and ability to help him), so they placed him exactly where they knew he could get that help.
    – Johnny
    Commented Jun 4, 2015 at 19:30
  • @Johnny I agree with your premise however I'd have to argue against the term "exactly". The nature of the differences between our existence and the existence of the "bulk beings" didn't afford them a very precise interaction with us. That's why they had to build the wormhole, Gargantua, and the tesseract just to exploit the link between Cooper and Murph to save us. I think they probably executed their best effort to save Cooper but in the end it was blind luck that he was picked up by the Rangers.
    – Skek Tek
    Commented Dec 6, 2018 at 18:42
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As far as I know, nothing can get out of a black hole, as it has extremely high gravity.

(emphasis mine)

That is the key; Cooper in the movie postulates that the tesseract of memories was created by some future extra-dimensional descendant species of current-day humans... a species that could travel the dimension of time as easily as any of the 3 dimensions we are familiar with traveling through. So it seems that, in addition to:

  • being capable of creating this 4-dimensional construct out of only a single place covering every moment in time of said place's existence
  • drawing Cooper to it via an elaborate self-referential plot line, including:
    • sending messages to Murphy to prep her for interpreting Morse code messages through time warps which caused books to fall in a certain sequence, etc.
    • creating a wormhole to the correct galaxy and solar system (or black hole system, I suppose?)
  • being able to implement a trigger upon which the 4-d construct would deconstruct

They were also able to include some feature that not only teleported Cooper and Tars out of the tesseract safely, but also eject them back through the wormhole sitting who knows how many light years away from the

In other words, the people who built the darn thing are just far, far more advanced and knowledgeable about science/space than current-day humans.

There's also the whole weird "love" thing that Cooper goes on about, but that seems to only enable him to navigate memories within the tesseract. I suppose the tesseract could have also been designed to allow a person to "leave" the tesseract by teleporting them through space-time to the closest relevant point based on who they love most or something, similar to Captain Jack Sparrow and his magic compass from Pirates of the Caribbean.

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I have come to understand that Cooper was rescued by NASA rangers orbiting in another galaxy-probably hunting life sustaining planets but having their base at the Cooper station(transit point for human beings to go to next habitable planet)

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    And you've come to understand this because? Do you have anything to back up this claim?
    – Meat Trademark
    Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 7:50
  • The question isn't asking how he was secured after he magically reappeared next to Saturn, but how he was actually rescued from the black hole in the first place, which a bunch of NASA rangers certainly did not accomplish. The movie makes it clear that it were the "bulk beings" (or 5D superhumans from the future) who saved Cooper with the help of the tesseract.
    – Napoleon Wilson
    Commented Dec 2, 2014 at 11:39

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