Here in the Kurzgesagt labs
we only work on
the most important scientific problems like
"What if we nuke stuff"
or "how about
we make this elephant explode"
or
who could forget
"look at this thing.
It's really big."
Continuing this proud tradition,
let's explore the scientific mystery of what
would happen to you,
if Earth suddenly turned into gold!
The “Midaspocalypse”,
based on the ancient tale of King Midas
who was cursed
so everything he touched
turned into gold
Before we can explore this scenario
with science,
we'll first define the premise.
Midas's curse is a very special phenomenon,
called magic,
which allows us to modify physics.
So what happens when midas touches
something and it turns to gold?
[Music]
An atom of gold has 79 protons and 118 neutrons in its nucleus
The electric force of the protons on the electrons around them
shapes the atom
and gives gold its chemical properties,
like that it doesn't rust,
and that it's kind of shiny and bendy.
So, to make not-gold into gold,
we have to change atoms.
Let's say Midas touches a duck.
All the light elements like hydrogen,
carbon, and oxygen
gain electrons and protons and neutrons
to become gold.
Not only is the duck
suddenly 33 times more massive
it's also much too dense.
The gold atoms are far
closer together than they like
and repel each other violently
causing the golden duck to explode with
the energy of half a ton of TNT,
leaving only gold dust
and a very dead Midas.
This is clearly not a very good way for
Midas' power to work.
So what if instead
Midas' power uses the
atoms that are already present
and simply rearranges all particles in
the matter he touches, into gold.
No matter is created or destroyed,
instead atoms dissolve and the protons,
neutrons, and electrons are reassembled
to make gold
however gold is very dense,
about 20 times denser than a duck.
Without adding any matter
the gold duck
would be a very awkward kind of foamy gold
with lots of tiny microscopic gaps,
this is funky and doesn't explode,
which is progress.
Now that we've established a sort of
magic that works,
what would happen if Midas stumbles,
what if he touches Earth itself?
Let's freeze time for just a moment,
and rearrange
all the matter in the Earth.
Just like the duck,
the Earth is now solid gold,
but with many tiny atomic-scale gaps.
While these gaps weren't a huge deal for the duck,
they're a big problem for the Earth.
A spongy planet is not a thing that can exist,
as gravity compresses Earth,
squeezing it together to close up the gaps.
As a result,
the Earth contracts,
shrinking to two-thirds of its radius.
If you're standing on Earth's surface,
you'll suddenly find yourself in free fall,
like on a roller coaster,
as the ground sinks away beneath you.
But since the ground is falling too,
it doesn't move away from you,
it feels like someone turned off gravity
and you and everything else would begin to float
but the ride doesn't last forever,
it takes only 10 minutes for everything to
crash down,
and a weird 10 minutes it is indeed.
And then,
as abruptly as it started,
it stops.
The collapsing earth has reached its desired size
and gravity is suddenly turned back on for you.
Hopefully you enjoyed your minutes of floating
because the ground and you with it
crash into the planet
at 30,000 kilometers an hour,
making your body spatter like a water balloon
as it hits.
In one instant basically all
of humanity gets smashed into red puddles.
This is only the start of our problems though,
since Earth imploded supersonically.
the kinetic energy of the implosion is basically
equivalent to detonating a planet made of TNT.
Crushed together under incredible forces,
Earth's core
reaches a million degrees celsius
a temperature closer to the core of a star
than anything we're used to finding on Earth.
As the earth 'crashes into itself'
it generates an enormously powerful shockwave
which plows upwards,
catapulting the atmosphere up and off.
The earth’s surface temperature
reaches hundreds of thousands of degrees,
and everything on it is instantly vaporized
to a fluffy plasma cloud that starts to expand,
but not by much
many of the atoms that may have been new
you get mixed into this cloud,
while others boil off, escaping from the atmosphere.
The golden plasma outshines the sun
while the enormous radiation lifts tons
of material off into space.
Over the coming days
the plasma cloud cools,
and eventually freezes into a shiny
little golden ball.
Okay,
maybe this type of magic doesn't work
so if replacing atoms made the Earth so
over dense that it exploded
and disassembling and reassembling atoms
made the earth so under dense that it imploded,
there must be a sweet spot where the Earth does neither
what if Midas power is such that an object
is suddenly replaced by an object
with the same volume
made from solid gold.
That magic is a little bit more magic,
and cuts a few extra corners
but let's see where this leads us
so Midas stumbles again,
Even though our new
pure gold Earth is not expanding or
contracting,
it's suddenly much more massive.
The density of gold
is three and a half times greater than the earth,
meaning the earth
is going to get three and a half times more massive!
For starters,
everyone now has to contend
with surface gravity
that is more than three times stronger,
so if you're not a champion weightlifter
who's used to carrying around a few
times your body weight on your shoulders,
you're probably going to be slammed to
the ground by your own weight.
Depending on where you were
when earth turned into gold,
this alone could seriously hurt or even kill you.
Trees and artificial structures collapse
under stress they were never meant to sustain
while birds and planes and all things
that were able to fly or float
splash to the ground all around you.
And you’re not the only thing weighed down by the greater gravity.
The weight of the atmosphere,
and also atmospheric pressure,
nearly quadruples,
which is a bad thing if you like living.
On its own, this won’t kill you
scuba divers can comfortably breathe
air at these pressures for a while,
but unfortunately squeezing the
atmosphere this much raises its
temperature to 150 degrees Celsius,
which is like the insides of an oven.
The entire earth's surface bakes,
roasting anything and everything.
There is no escape.
Gold may be a metal
but it is about three times weaker than steel,
and also very malleable,
which makes it very bad mountains material
the tallest mountains that can be supported are now only about two kilometers high.
so whole ranges compress
as their own weight basically crushes their base.
it's hard to say what happens here
We're probably in for giant earthquakes and landslides
as the planet is squeezed into a new shape.
And it's not just mountain ranges
the differences between the continents
and the ocean floor level out,
causing the ocean basins to overflow,
sending massive tidal waves over the
Earth's surface.
What remains is a planet made from gold,
entirely covered by an ocean 3 kilometers deep,
a super hot atmosphere
and a lot of dead people.
Hmm ok,
there may be a lesson to take away here
but we're not sure what it is!
We did all the maths though,
it's in our sources document if you want to take a look.
If you learned anything in this video
let us know what it was.
So as you might know, the things we sell in our shop
are the reason we're able to publish videos for free
but it's way more than that for us.
Here's a short story
and a making of...
A while ago we posted
this image on social media,
just to post something nice looking,
immediately a lot of people were quite
upset about it
because it was wrong
and you guys take what we put out that seriously
so we've deleted it
and contacted experts to make something new and better.
We spent hundreds of hours on research and illustration
and created this new extensive map of evolution,
a new visualization of the relationships between living things
that didn't exist before.
And while this was obviously a lot of work and stress
it sort of exemplifies why working on this channel is so satisfying
because you people care,
and this makes us work harder
and learn things we didn't know before.
So,
thank you for supporting our crazy ideas,
and our sometimes crazy merch.
because of you we can continue to release our videos for free for everyone
and drop hundreds of hours into new concepts.
We are super grateful for that!
You can check out the new evolution poster,
among many other things made with love
in our shop