Dear Nintendo,
I'm doped up on hydrocodone
From getting my wisdom teeth yanked out a few days ago.
And I'm spewing blood all over my microphone just
recording this, so let's cut the bullsh*t
Rat-ta-tat & bitter batter
And get this episode started.
I bought my WiiU to play new games,
so I can do new videos on new titles,
but it turns out that the damn thing is morphed into
essentially a glorified and expensive
emulator for me to play old titles
from previous generations
and Super Mario Maker, but I'm not sure
making a near-infinitely long level
filled with a bunch of invincibility stars so I can commit
genocide against goombas really constitutes
as good game design.
Anyway, like I said, hydrocodone.
OPIOIDS
I was actually working on a completely different topic for this week
when I stumbled across Super Mario Galaxy 2
while watching MatPat's video
on the Olympics in order to figure out
just how freaking tall Mario actually is
because, holy crap, that is
the debate of the century. So I decided to play it
while my jaw tried to figure out exactly how
it's supposed to work again, and as I was flying
around this mini-cosmos
murder-bashing my way through literal hordes
of enemies, it hit me, Nintendo
Sure, the world you created is fun, Nintendo,
in fact its probably one of my favorites
of yours. Colorful, unique,
and has some of your best game design
of the generation, but holy hell the
physics of this game are just nonsensical
and they have disastrous
implications that only get more unsettling
the deeper and deeper you penetrate
into their depths. So
let's stop wasting time
and get right to the meat
Super Mario Galaxy is Super Mario
and is essentially a loose justification
to play with some really weird mechanics,
which I can get behind.
Mario leap frogs from system to system
murdering everything in his path until he recuses the MacGuffin
with each little planet having its own set of rules.
FUN!
So before we get into the truly terrifying stuff,
let's talk about some things that Super Mario actually kinda sorta did right,
and surprisingly it's not what you'd think.
While there are tons of little micro-planets peppered throughout the cosmos
of Super Mario Galaxy,
you actually spend more time on more or less traditional platforming sections of the game
solving puzzles, avoiding hazards
and falling into obligatory bottomless pits of despair.
Somehow these platforms in space still have
gravity, which is complete nonsense,
right?
WRONG.
And in order to understand why
we're gonna have to, ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO,
talk about my buddy
Albert Einstein.
You know when people hear Einstein they
immediately think oh yeah the E=MC² guy,
which, you know, is fine. You're not
wrong, but to think of him as just the one formula
guy is to completely miss how utterly massive his contributions to science were.
You see, for decades and centuries
actually, the rules of the universe were defined by
Sir Isaac Newton.
The three laws of motion and his concepts of gravitation were absolutely key.
The problem is that when you start looking at the universe a bit more closely,
Isaac Newton starts to fall apart.
And nowhere is this more clearer than when you start to talk about light.
At the end of the day if you had to boil Einstein down,
you can say that he solved 2 big problems for us:
You see, our conception of gravity according to Sir Isaac Newton
is that it's this force that's exerted between two things of mass,
like all those "your momma's so fat she got her own gravitational" jokes are
technically true.
Your momma IS so fat that she has her own gravitational pull.
So do you and so do I.
Everything that exist and has mass has gravity,
which is a lot of weight to bear.
GET IT? Weight to bear! Okay
I'll just see myself out.
This falls apart when you start to talk about light, though.
Why?
Because light is affected by gravity, but light has no mass.
And don't you start in with your "but light has mass because E=MC²,
Austin" nonsense because
I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL LOSE MY FREAKING MIND.
Light bends when under the effects of gravity
and nobody, NOBODY could figure out why until Einstein.
And why is this important for Super Mario Galaxy?
Because of the Principle of Equivalence.
The Principle of Equivalence was a thought experiment conceived of by Einstein
to help himself parse through the logic of how the universe is structured,
and it goes like this:
you put one person in a box, and you put another person in another box
box A has a rocket strapped to the bottom of it
and is blasting off through the universe
accelerating at 9.8 meters per second squared
box B, on the other hand, is just sitting right here on our home planet
doing absolutely nothing.
Now since acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second,
presuming that there are no windows or any other way to tell where you are,
it'd be impossible to know just by the force of gravity
or by any measurements you can take
there whether you're in box A or Box B.
They're practically and exactly the same.
Hence, the Principle of Equivalence.
Why is this important?
Because its outlines the relationship
that velocity and speed have with space time,
but it also illustrates in a very simple way
why light curves when affected by gravity.
See if you were in box A accelerating through space
add you shined a light--
wait, is it shined or shone?
Alright, what's the internet say about it?
What the f*ck is an intransitive verb?
You see this is why people hate learning English.
[It doesn't matter if it's an intransitive verb, and it would be "shone", FYI]
Anyway if you flipped on a flashlight, the beam of light
would travel straight because that's what light does.
However, you, in the box, are accelerating away,
not just moving. You're moving faster,
because that's what acceleration means.
So if you were to measure the position of a light relative to you,
it would be curving downward.
And since, according to this princple,
both box A and box B are the same, light
appears to bend in the presence of gravity.
But in actuality, it's following a straight line.
Mass, it seems, actually distorts time and space around it.
Pretty freakin' cool and kind of a huge explosion to your way of thinking
if you're trying to put it in Newtonian terms.
But why is this important for Super Mario Galaxy?
Because, for one, it shows us that these little platforming sections,
they're totally and completely feasible,
if you considered giant city-sized platforms with rockets strapped to the bottom of them
zooming through space to be feasible.
Nor is it explained exactly how there's atmosphere to breathe,
but at the end of the day I'm a nitpicker,
NOT A MONSTER.
As long as these platforms continue to accelerate through space
at a constant rate they'll have gravity,
and functionally be the same as any other planet
as far as running, jumping, climbing trees, and murdering goombas is concerned.
Of course, this would require an astronomical amount of fuel,
and eventually the space-time implications become a bit challenging,
but I'm willing to let that slide.
Just,
you know,
be aware that those bottomless pits are actually bottomless,
and if you fall off, you'll never,
ever, EVER, be seen or heard from again.
It's important to start with these platforms
so you get a taste of what this universe is like,
and how its rules work, and why
even if you throw the developers at Nintendo
this one simple little bone,
when you start peel back the rules of Super Mario Galaxy
and look more closely at the truth, you realize that the truth,
THE TRUTH IS
The source of this sinking terror
isn't in fact the platform that what you would think make no sense at all.
Nope! They come from a source you'd never, ever suspect.
The tiny, insignificant,
even adorable, little planets.
And makes these little planets so utterly mortifying?
That's right,
the thing we've been talking about the whole time:
As we said earlier,
gravity, or the effects of gravity,
can be created in 1 of 2 ways:
acceleration, which is the change of velocity over time
which utilizes inertia of anything it interacts with,
or
mass, which creates localized curves in space-time.
While we spent the first half of the video talking about the former, and the platforms,
the latter, mass,
is the one that we're most familiar with.
It affects our everyday lives here on this planet,
because the Earth is, you know,
massive.
And its huge mass in relationship to our own
is what allows us to do literally
everything it is that we do.
And what makes this so utterly,
Earth-shatteringly horrifying?
This thing.
Just look at this thing,
this little planet right here.
This little piece of crap.
Did you know that this thing is pulling Mario down at over
That's three and a half times the gravity of Earth.
All coming from this tiny little rock
the size of a tiny house.
"So what, Austin?"
you're saying to me.
"So what?
It's a tiny rock with a high density.
What's the big deal?
Not everything has to be the Earth, you know.
There's lots of space objects out there with different masses.
Why do you have to be so Earth-centric all the time, you bigot?"
Why is it a big deal?
WHY IS IT A BIG DEAL? I'LL TELL YOU WHY!
It's a big deal because of one
tiny thing that can ruin your entire day.
The Schwarzschild Radius.
The Schwarzschild Radius is a simple concept that can have disastrous consequences.
You see, gravity isn't just about mass.
Not all masses have the same gravitational pull on other objects
from all distances.
The space in which the mass is contained
matters a whole hell of a lot,
as does how far from the thing it's pulling is.
9.8m/s² is the amount of gravity you feel at the Earth's surface,
but if you're up in the International Space Station,
it's only 8.8m/s²,
with a huge drop-off the further away you get.
In order to escape off into the wild waste of the rest of the universe
from our planet, you have to overpower this gravitational pull.
You do this by going fast as hell.
11.2 k/s to be exact,
or over 25,000 mph.
If you go this fast, you will eventually say goodbye to the Earth
and be free to,
I don't know,
suffocate out in the vast distances.
Now mass and density don't tend to affect gravitational pull as much as distance does,
like if you were to replace the sun with, say, a smaller sun that had the exact same mass,
it wouldn't affect the rotation of the Earth around it.
But if you get closer,
things would start to get weird.
Specifically, since you could get closer to the center of mass than you could to our own sun,
the total escape velocity needed to leave the surface would be noticeably higher,
and this is where the Schwarzschild Radius starts to get ever-so sinister.
Imagine for an instant that you could crumple the Earth up as small as you wanted,
and as it gets smaller and smaller,
the faster you need to go in order to escape from the surface,
and eventually if you crumple it up small enough,
to approximately a little over a third of an inch,
or 9 mm, guess what happens?
The escape velocity reaches the speed of light.
At this density, the pull of gravity is so strong that the fastest things in the universe can't escape from its surface.
This space,
this 9mm, is the Schwarzschild Radius
for our planet:
the space in which the mass it takes to make our planet
would have to occupy in order to collapse inward on itself to form a black hole.
And once this happens,
there's no escape.
None!
Now don't you see what makes the Super Mario Galaxy universe so terrifying?
There's unmitigated,
unchecked planets with huge masses
just strewn about willy-nilly
with gravity several times stronger than the Earth.
What the hell?!
Nintendo what are you guys even doing over there?!
Like, take this thing,
this tiny little thing.
There's no way that thing isn't a black hole.
With the gravitational acceleration on Mario of 32m/s² over a distance of 5.54m,
using Mario's canon height as a frame of reference,
we can determine that this thing has a mass of 14.8Pg,
or over 3 times the amount of food consumed by the human race every year,
all squashed into the space of a hummer.
Popping in our numbers into this handy fornula
2Gm over c²,
where G is the gravitational constant,
invented by some smart guy,
m is the mass of the planetary body,
and c is the speed of light,
we can prove conclusively
this world of Super Mario Galaxy
is littered with blackholes
AND
Wait what?
The Schwarzschild Radius of a mass of 14.8 Pg
Is 22fm [fenta meters..?]?
Like 22 protons,
one of the smallest particles in existence lined up in a row?
No.
Well that kinda,
you know,
the whole point of this video was to point out that Mario was leaping from black hole to black hole,
right? Like, well this kinda puts me in a bit of a weird spot.
I mean,
I was getting ready to yell at everything and now I have all this
bottled up energy and nowhere to put it,
and I'm all stopped up.
I mean I guess I could talk about how this much mass at these densities
would definitely be undergoing fusion reactions,
and Mario is effectively hopping around on neutron stars, but I don't think any one really cares about--
WHAT? WAIT A MINUTE!
WHAT THE F*CK IS THAT THING?
[Black holes exist in this game. Get over it.]
Is that how these planets are working?
They're just crusty shells hovering over black hole pits?
OH MY GOD! THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE!
Let's ignore for a second that Mario,
not a small mass in the scheme of things,
whenever he lands on the surface, would be pushing this little rotating shell
precariously closer to the event horizon of these black hole cores.
There is a much, MUCH bigger problem here.
It was bad enough that these little planets were essentially as dense as neutron stars,
the densest, not black hole things that there are,
but it appears that the folk at Nintendo are trying to circumvent this by making it
so that these little planets and platforms are utilizing black holes
for their gravity.
Gravitationally speaking, this isn't hugely problematic.
Remember: earlier I said if you were to replace the sun with a smaller sun of the same mass,
the Earth wouldn't go anywhere.
But that doesn't mean that all life on Earth would be okay.
People think of black holes as inescapable traps that just endlessly suck mass into themselves,
which is pretty true,
especially when you're talking about black holes that form from collapsed stars,
but as you saw before with the Schwarzschild Radius,
any mass can become a black hole if you squeeze it down tightly enough,
and these smaller masses are the ones that you have to watch out for,
because they emit a ton of what's called Hawking Radiation.
Theorized by Steven Hawking,
these black holes actually emit more radiation than they take in.
This happens because of a really complex interaction between particles and anti-particles at the very edge of the event horizon.
Ironically, the larger the back hole,
the less Hawking Radiation it emits.
But something this size of this mass?!
This thing is truly, mind-blowingly dangerous.
We're talking about face-evaporating temperatures
of 8.2 million Kelvin,
nearly as hot as the center of the sun!
This thing wouldn't just be a dark hole,
this thing would be emitting more light than the brightest stars in the sky.
If you found yourself standing on surface of this thing,
you'd be wishing you were on a surface of a Neutron star,
because this thing would be turning you into powdered toast in a fraction of a second.
This just proves in my mind that Super Mario Galaxy
never really happened in all the Mario canon.
Forget the truth behind Rosalina.
The only way that Super Mario Galaxy makes any sense
is if it's some sorta Bob Fossean Fever Dream Death Sequence.
For all those years of downing strange mushrooms,
flowers, and feather power-ups
and punching bricks for money,
(more on that later,)
has finally had a lasting permanent effect on Mario's health.
What we see in Super Mario Galaxy is last gasps of Mario synapses
piecing together his life in a semi-lucid sequence
as his body unravels and he drifts off to oblivion
while Peach and Bowser sit by his bedside
weeping uncontrollably for their friend who was lost.
Who is going to save the princess now that Mario is dead?
Who's going to belittle Luigi and keep him demoralized and in his place?
Who's going to abuse Yoshi for his own amusement?
*sigh*
Or this is just the opioids talking?
[Probably, yes.]
Thanks for watching my science video on Super Mario Galaxy!
If you have any other video game science questions you want answered,
things that make no sense to you,
I promise I won't be on narcotics next time. [Thank goodness that's true.]
Shoot me questions in the comments section,
or find me on twitter @arhourigan,
and be sure to subscribe to the channel yet if you haven't,
'cause there's more of this and Game Theory,
and all sorts of good stuff!
BYE
Ah, my throat feels like sh*t...
UGH.