Columbia - Floating city in the clouds
impossible feat of video game fiction
but not for the reasons you might expect!
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Hello internet. Welcome to Game Theory.
We're like Zoomin Games if you replaced
big breasted babes with big brained bros
Speaking of brainy. BioShock Infinite is one smart game.
I mean really any game whose plot consists of more than shoot this corpse,
or save this girl, or use this anthropomorphic glove to play with your
balls, deserves a good old tip of the cap. But BioShock Infinite is in a league of
its own
Having enough Glover fondled balls to tackle of all things
quantum physics. In fact it's their explanation for how the city of Columbia
manages to float above the clouds. [Elizabeth] "They - well, at least she - invented the
technology that allows the city to float." [Booker]"Giant balloons?"
[Elizabeth] "Quantum particles. Suspended in space time at a fixed height."
[Booker] "So, not giant balloons?"
Alright Bioshock. You talk a big game, but does your science hold up?
Is your city in the clouds actually possible? Back in episode... what, 12? of this show,
We found that the underwater city of Rapture was possible.
So, your track record's been good this far. But, what would life really be like in Columbia?
Would we want to live there?
Let's find out. What was it Elizabeth said again?
[Elizabeth] "Quantum particles suspended in space time at a fixed height" [Booker] "So.. not giant balloons?"
Before we get to the science --
Booker DeWitt's confusion about giant balloons is understandable.
I mean, looking at the way the city is designed... You see blimp sized balloons
attached to practically every floating island.
Some have propellers, and all of them actually have a gentle rise and fall
that would suggest being ballooned and not pinned in the air like she says.
So clearly the quantum physicist on Bioshock's research staff wasn't
communicating all that well the art team on that one. Butt! In theory, the quantum
particle explanation would work.
Prepare to see the coolest video you'll watch all week.
Wait, you're already watching the coolest video. The second coolest video you'll
watch all week.
So, what's with this magical illusion?
What we have here, is an example of flux pinning. Which all depends on deep penetration.
Penetration by magnets. So, a superconductor is a material that when
cooled below a certain critical temperature, is able to conduct
electricity with zero energy loss. In other words, if i added some electric
current into a superconducting wire and remove the power source,
the electricity would continue to run through the wire forever. Which is
awesome.
Unless you're a magnetic field. You see, the other property of superconductors is
that they expel any magnetic fields going through them.
This is called the Meissner Effect. But some superconductors, like this one are
so thin that magnetic fields are able to penetrate them. They just do so
incredibly tiny amounts called flux tubes. For a disc of this size
there are nearly 100 billion flux tubes able to hold seventy thousand times
the conductor's weight. At such low temperatures the flux tubes become pinned,
and can't move. Which is how the disc levitates in space.
[Rosalind] "Colleagues called my Lutece Field, Quantum Levitation. But in fact it was nothing of the sort.
Magicians levitate -- my atom simply failed to fold."
She has a point. It's not just levitating, but locking. The superconductor can be
locked into any angle by these flux tubes. Which means Columbia could just as
easily be an upside-down floating city as it is a right-side up one. Looks like
Dracula knew his quantum physics. Video games -
teaching you basic quantum mechanics since, uh, 2013, I guess.
So, if we wanted to know what it would take to keep Columbia afloat, we would need...
multiple degrees in theoretical math and physics. I mean, look at these equations.
I've said in the past that when you introduce Greek letters you're doing
some serious math. But when the entire equation is in Greek variables?
Well then, it's all Greek to me.
*disappointed trombone*
Suffice it to say, Columbia is theoretically possible. But were it to really exist
IRL, we would need enormous tracks of magnets on the ground and lots of liquid
nitrogen to keep the floating discs cool.
Which brings us to our other point - What would life in the clouds actually be like?
Well, first we need to answer how high in the air Columbia is. To do that ,I
took pixel measurements and triangulated against Wario's grossly inaccurate
height from the last ep - *laughter* just kidding.
For once ,the game made it easy on me.
So, Columbia is somewhere between 15,000 feet and 20,000 feet in the air. -
or between 4.5 and 6 kilometers above sea level.
At this altitude, things are going to get cold.
The average air temperature is between 5 and -12 degrees Fahrenheit, or
-15 to- 24 degrees celsius. So your baptism into the cult of
sky racists would be taking place in a frozen pool. And all that beautiful landscaping?
Yeah... no. Forget your jodhpers and petticoats, you merry band of clansmen.
You'd best be wearing parkas and snowshoes.
But perhaps the more fundamental question - Could you breathe?
Well, it depends. At sea level you have lots of air pressing down on you. But as
you get higher, there's less and less pressure.
Meaning less dense air with fewer molecules for a given volume. At 6,000
meters above sea level
this translates to about 50% less oxygen in the air. If you were
walking to this altitude, like say climbing up a mountain, your body would
slowly acclimate to the thinner air over time. But our dear friend Booker DeWitt
doesn't have the luxury of a slow ascent. In seconds he's transported up thousands of feet.
Meaning his body doesn't have time to adjust to the new atmosphere.
Booker's greatest enemy isn't a bird robot or a gun-toting revolutionary.
It's lack of oxygen. Anything above 8,000 feet runs a high risk of altitude sickness,
HAPE - an excess of fluid in the lungs, and HACE - fluid in the brain.
Upon stepping out of his rocket pod, Booker would feel shortness of breath.
within 10 minutes he would be unconscious, and in another 20 he'd most
likely be dead.
Sorry, no vita-chambers this time. So, assuming that we're given enough warm
clothing and time to acclimate to the high altitude.
Could anyone actually live in columbia long term?
Well, it's important to get some perspective. Colombia is certainly high
but at 20,000 feet in the air,
it's still 10,000 feet lower than the top of Mount Everest. And many
adventurers like you have made it to the top of that mountain summit.
But actually live there?
La Rinconada in the Andes is the highest permanent human settlement known, at
16,700 feet or 5,100 meters.
And there's documentation that humans have survived living at 19,520 feet or
just under 6,000 meters for up to two years. So it seems like Colombia is
right in that range.
What helps, is that people born in these high altitude societies tend to have
adaptations to aid survival.
Enlarged lung capacity, greater stamina, lower rates of obesity.
So. over time the population of Columbia would adapt to live there more
comfortably. And the 15 to 20,000 feet where Columbia is locked is well below
what's known as the Death Zone.
Yhat's the altitude at 26,000 feet or 8,000 meters where there's not enough
oxygen to sustain human life. In the end it's not the physics of building a city in the air,
the cold, or the lower oxygen levels, that makes Columbia an impossible place to live.
It's air sickness. Seriously. People living in Colombia would constantly need
a barf bag.
Why? Motion sickness results from one of three causes. Motion that is felt but not
seen, motion that is seen but not felt, and when both systems detect motion but
they don't match up. In Colombia you would constantly be faced with spatial disorientation.
Whether it's the floating platforms freely moving around and under you, as
they're depicted in the game, or if they're truly quantum locked in space
just the clouds flying past you, giving the illusion of motion. Your vestibular
system, or balance system, would constantly be fighting against your
visual system, and without anything stable in your line of sight,
there would be nothing to give you a firm sense of grounding. Resulting in
constant state of nausea. In short, in a scenario so impossible to believe. It's
the most mundane challenge that's the deal breaker.
A city in the clouds kept afloat by microscopic magnet tubes and voodoo
science? No problem! One that pushes the limits of high-altitude adaptation?
Piece of cake! But being constantly subjected to the equivalent of car sickness?
Nu-uh. And no amount of quantum physics can fix that.
But hey, that's just a theory. A Game Theory. Thanks for watching.
Welcome back to the super amazing end card tournament.
Last episode Nintendo won in a landslide against Genesis 40% to 10%.
Probably didn't help that I had it at the end of a video about a Nintendo character.
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