15 Things You Somehow Missed In Oppenheimer
8. The Black Hole "Plot Hole"
If you know much about black holes, you might well be aware that the term was coined in 1967 by Princeton physicist John Wheeler, many years after the primary events of the movie have concluded.
And yet, roughly 30 minutes into the film, when Oppenheimer's paper "On Continued Gravitational Contraction" is published in 1939, physicist Robert Serber (Michael Angarano) shouts to him, "Your paper on black holes is in!"
It would be almost another three decades before the term black hole was used, with scientists of the era typically referring to the phenomena instead as "completely collapsed gravitational objects."
In fairness, this is perhaps less a mistake on Nolan's part than an attempt to streamline the audience's understanding of the scene. All the same, it's technically incorrect (the best kind of incorrect).