- I'm going to place on my glasses.
They're sunglasses and it helps me see.
Hopefully I look cool (chuckles).
(upbeat music)
Hi, I am Olympia LePoint,
an award-winning rocket scientist, author and Ted speaker.
I helped launch 28 NASA space shuttle missions into space.
And I love, love, love science.
As a rocket scientist,
we help launch the technology that we use today
within video conferencing, the internet,
the video games that you play, the streaming that you have.
It's all based
on the technology that we launched 20 years ago.
We're gonna see what's science fiction versus what's real.
And we're gonna start playing the game "Returnal."
(dramatic music)
I'm flying at a certain location here in "Returnal."
Oh.
It's really interesting about the engine.
Obviously this is a science fiction type of plane here.
We don't know the schematics of the plane
but we've seen a lot of real life plane crashes
with one engine going out.
There could be various reasons why an engine can go out.
Like for example, if an owl goes into an engine,
just a regular plane engine,
that could damage the engine in flight
and could cause a complete crash.
(dramatic music)
- [Selene] Astra, this is Selene.
I've crashed on Atropos.
I survived, but Helios did not.
- Okay, these jet packs are really cool.
I'm seeing how the jet packs are helping
to be able to jump quickly.
A lot of people don't know
that jet packs aren't just science fiction.
They're actually in real life.
There's jet systems that work as a propellant.
It's helping me jump up quicker.
Oh.
We assume these are plants that are safe
for her to run through, but we don't know
if these plants are actually safe or not,
or if they're poisonous.
It's really interesting, if people are on a foreign planet
they don't necessarily realize
that planets don't have the same type of botany
as what we would have here on Earth.
There's like eating plants (chuckles)
with electromagnetic fields of some sort.
In real life, there are plants that eat.
There's some human eating plants in rainforests.
I hope you know that this is actually here on Earth,
but they don't have this type of electromagnetic charge
to them that will zap you.
So that part is science fiction.
Well, what's really interesting to notice.
We don't know what's falling down.
We assume it's rain, but on this planet, rain is water
which is hydrogen and oxygen.
On this particular computer game, we don't know
if what's coming out of the sky is something different.
It could be like on some planets, liquid metal,
but I doubt that because if it were liquid metal,
it would be burning through her spacesuit.
- [Selene] Atropos: I have found
a deceased Astra scout here.
Checking identification on helmet.
It's.
(dramatic music)
- I don't think it was a good idea
that she touched the diseased decaying body.
She has no idea
if she's gonna be affected by that or not.
Oh.
Now these are some sort of alien creatures.
Oh.
This is nasty.
Okay (screams).
This looks like,
oh, these look like crossbreeding dinosaurs and snakes.
Oh, that's nasty.
There seems like there's some sort
of electro magnetic balls traveling in an arc,
all aligned that are going in this type of movement
that is potentially harming the person in "Returnal."
Now that's completely science fiction.
However, there are such ways to be able
to create electromagnetic forces out of machines.
And this is still a science development.
It is not something that is wide stream.
However, scientists right now,
and specifically physicists are looking at different ways
to create electromagnetic forces that would propel
and move and create charges in certain areas.
And it's not widely used or well known now
but I anticipate probably in the next 10 to 15 years,
we're gonna see more type of technology that will give
and propel this type of electromagnetic charge.
But I don't think it's going to be like dangerous,
like you see here in the video.
I think it's gonna be more
so of offering type of fast charging within technology,
in some of the computer systems that we see.
Oh.
Oh no, I think I'm dying.
Oh.
Okay.
Time seems to be rewinding.
What we just saw needs to be talked about.
"Returnal" has Selene able to see herself
from another time period.
Now, do you think
that's science fiction or do you think it's real?
The answer is both.
It's a theory
that uses Albert Einstein's quantum entanglement.
Each time Selene dies,
she goes back to the past and she has to start over.
Each time that she has to start it over,
she gets more pieces of her past.
So she's able to determine what happened.
Our brain is so amazing that when we look back on the past
and we observe ourselves from the past,
we see it in a new angle, at the same moment.
If you imagine exactly where you wanna go
in the next five years or 10 years, if you imagine yourself,
you then are seeing yourself in the future.
Your decision that you make this day
at this moment is dependent
on how you see yourself in the past
and how you see yourself in the future.
So she has artificial intelligence
that creates a three dimensional hologram.
This actually is in real life.
I'd say we can look at this type of virtual reality,
probably in the next five to 10 years
of looking at holograms of different things.
Instead of talking to someone on a video,
you may be talking to somebody in a hologram.
So I would give this an eight
in terms of the science of making decisions.
This game, "Returnal," is really interesting
because it deals with how you make decisions.
And each time you make a decision
and it doesn't turn out the way that you want it,
you can actually go back to the past in this game
and start over.
Our lives are very similar.
We can always want to go somewhere,
but if we don't go back to the past
and figure out what we've learned from it,
we can't go back to where we wanna go in the future.
So the question is, will I play this game again?
It's interesting because you
automatically play the game again and again in the game.
It's so fascinating.
"Returnal" has you replay the game and master it.