Film Theory: The Dark Science of Rick and Morty's Portal Gun! ft. Neil deGrasse Tyson

hello Internet welcome to film theory the show that aims to put the science back into science fiction but first I wanted to take a minute to just talk about excuse me no I don't think this is universal we wanted Rick well look at what we have here folks it seems like some rogue visitors may have just opened up a transdimensional gateway into my living room can I help you uh we're looking for dimension c-130 - you wouldn't happen to know where that is located sorry guys our universes classification number is D 27:31 but while we're on the topic you're technically using the word dimension incorrectly you see dimensions define elements of physical space I'm sure you're familiar with the elements of height with potentially depth the hue seem to be just as flat as I am whereas oh we got a talker here you know what just just stop don't point that at me I'm just trying to help you guys sorry not sorry for trying to be helpful oh my god shut up this guy never stops talking just just just just just get out of the spaceship oh and by the way no one over the age of 7 thinks the animatronics are scary either so so take that well that was rude now the question is how do I get home Oh Rick and Morty's portal gun shoot this thing at any surface and you open up a green circular portal to practically any location oh here I come second time's the charm this has got to be just a coincidence okay it does not take a big brain to Rick and Morty fan to understand that this thing might be a little bit broken so I guess I gotta figure out how this thing works but how do you fix a piece of technology like this I mean the science contained in this thing is so sought after that the Galactic Federation infiltrated Rick's brain in the hopes of uncovering its secrets I guess in that respect then I'm a little like the Galactic Federation because today is gonna be all about me trying to figure out how Rick's portal gun actually works let's start by picking apart what we do know about the portal gun our first real glimpse into the detailed workings of the portal gun happens during the audience's first encounter with the council of ricks where we learn that much like your internet browser the portal gun keeps a detailed list of all the locations its users visited come on don't look at another man's portal gun history we all go to weird places later in the series and elsewhere in the Citadel we learned that the portal gun relies on some sort of fluid I want a portal gun with enough fluid to take me off this prison a fluid that if replaced with an incorrect bootleg tends to create portals with some unfortunate side effects this fluid may in some ways be connected to the number of times that the gun can actually be used to create portals in both the show's pilot episode as well as the episode get schwifty rick outright mentions it having a limited charge I spent so much time there my interdimensional portal device it's got no charge left there's only so much charge left in this thing if we portal home from here and back we're not gonna have enough charge left to get offworld then again it could all be lies because Rick is lazy about the charge you were just being lazy see told you but by far the most interesting property of the portal gun is its ability to open portals to well just about anywhere not just within our own universe but between universes Rick seems to use his portal gun to travel within the universe pretty frequently for example in the episode raising desorbs orb Rick and summer used the portal gun to teleport to the planet gazorpazorp but after the portal gun gets smashed on the planet they're forced to use spaceship to travel back to earth this proves that gazorpazorp and earth are in the same universe far apart though they may be but throughout the series various Rick's use their respective portal guns to visit other parallel universes and it's that second property that seems to set Rick's portal gun apart from all the other existing Galactic Federation technology we get confirmation of this in the season 3 premiere Rick shank redemption when it's revealed that the Federation is using a brain eliezer on Rick to discover the secrets of interdimensional travel should we go straight to the moment I discovered interdimensional travel whoa your little flappy doodles are twitching again the key word here is interdimensional interdimensional travel is travel between dimensions while intron dimensional travel would be travel within a dimension the Galactic Federation already has teleporter technology it's the blue portal that we see in the pilot episode what they want is the ability to travel to other universes the green portal technology and heck life wouldn't they want this when you open up one of these babies literally anything can fall out of them you know I remember when that used to be fun see hey that diet I was on it seemed to be working wait a minute you you look familiar you're Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist I uh I would love to continue this totally real conversation that is in no way a forced narrative construct to explain your presence on the show right now but you see I have a malfunctioning portal gun here that I need to repair in order to get home you think you could help me out here Neil sure but only for a short while my quantum stability in this universe is weak and getting weaker by the minute no is that really true nah it's just a line I use to get out of conversations that are running too long Matt that how did you know my name narrative construct remember Yeah right now if you hope to use those portals to get back home the first thing you have to do is to clarify whether you're invoking a true multiverse or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics the many-worlds interpretation asserts that whenever an event occurs that could have multiple outcomes the universe branches into as many copies as are necessary to enable all outcomes at the same time Oh kind of like in that episode of Rick and Morty Rick potion number nine which shows our dynamic duo entering new universes that are extremely similar to their own in this case they escaped from their original universe when rick is unable to cure a genetic epidemic by going into a brand new universe where rick does manage to create the cure two worlds branched out from one core decision correct but only if you needed it to explain that one scene in rick potion number nine but it wouldn't explain lizard morty or hammer head morty you get that from the multiverse hypothesis which states that there are many perhaps infinitely many big bangs that each started their own universes they all coexist and because they each had their own beginning they could have completely different laws of physics or completely different Morty's as opposed to many worlds where you're always starting with the same base rules and regulations so well the many-worlds interpretation could explain similar earth-like worlds like we see in rick potion it wouldn't explain some of the other universes that we see in the show like pizzas that sit in chairs and use their phones to order people or phones that sit on pizza and use their people to order chairs or chairs who sit on people and use their pizzas to order phones right exactly and in the multiverse hypothesis each of those parallel universes coexist with our own universe but since the laws of physics can be different it would be extremely dangerous to visit them the molecular forces that hold your body together could be compromised in the presence of different physical laws you might just spontaneously collapse into a pile of goo so does that mean rick's portal gun is all fiction and no science we'll never be able to visit alternate universes well we can't say it's impossible to reach other universes because we're limited by our own understanding of the laws of physics last year you might have seen the headline scientists are attempting to open portal to a parallel universe just some over-the-top clickbait right clickable yes over-the-top no it's less step through a gate into an evil alternative universe where there copies of us with evil mustaches and more like set up a magnetic field to see if we can capture neutrons that had briefly traveled through an alternative universe what does that even mean though well there are a lot of strange things going on in our universe that might possibly be explained by the existence of other universes in this particular case the scientists are looking at why certain neutrons are decaying at different speeds than expected so it may be possible to enter alternate universes but how I'm sorry Matt Pat but my quantum state is weakening good bye good bye what adapter I hate when quantum states give bad reception stupid flat Pat why did you ask the important questions first curse my propensity for a long gating watch time all right I guess that means I got to solve this one myself unless the portal gun has one more charge in at show me Bill Nye no okay all right what would this be how would portal guns work it's got to be wormholes right I mean in science fiction it is always wormholes and honestly it's something that we already see consistently throughout this series in the world leaderly conspiracy Rick and Jerry's trip back to earth involves a hop through a large ship sized wormhole when I say trip and really mean trip then in the more recent episode never ricky morty we briefly see rick working in a lab and in the background there's a blackboard that has a diagram of various wormholes that has got to be yet see one of the things that albert einstein changed about our understanding is that space and time are bendy and inc machine sorry no stay focused matt or universe can be conceived of like a large flat flexible plane if that sheet were bent in the right way it would be possible for a wormhole to connect two points that are at very different points in space a major shortcut allowing you to reach places across the plane faster than if you had to go the normal route faster than even the way that light travels this shortcut in effect allows you to travel faster than the speed of light but these same bends in the fabric of space described by Einstein's theory of relativity could in principle also create a wormhole connecting two separate universes in the multiverse I've done it I am a genius the gods a weap as they look down upon me home here I come but wait that that's just the principle of how it could potentially happen in theory in quantum physics theory but but not actually how it happens in practicality sure Rick's portal gun could be creating wormholes that connect his current point in the fabric of space with other points in our verse or other universes but how would it be able to do this it must have something to do with the portal fluid that's what's giving it the energy or charge that it needs to open up these massive rifts in time and space portal fluid obviously isn't the thing in real life though so what in space could potentially have enough energy for folding the fabric of reality enough and punching holes through it concentrated dark matter concentrated dark matter concentrated hot right the Galactic Federation isn't the only group of aliens trying to get information from Rick's genius brain the Zygerrians are also trying to get information from him and what they're looking for might actually be the same thing as what the Galactic Federation is looking for in the episode M night Shyamalan concentrated dark matter is explained as being necessary for accelerated space travel the fuel for accelerated space travel that makes it sound like some kind of fuel that you'd be using to power a spaceship but what is inner Universal travel if not really really accelerated travel through space using a wormhole as a shortcut to get from one point of space to another and whereas Dark Matter may be full of energy concentrated dark matter would be even more powerful more energy dense could be that portal fluid is just a form of dark matter that rick has somehow been able to harness I mean 85% of our universe is dark matter and dark matter is the stuff in our universe that we can observe - it's certainly possible that this matter unseen by us humans could have all sorts of unusual properties properties that could yield us limitless amounts of energy there it is forgot my hot cocoa Neil I figured it out the answer is concentrated dark matter but what exactly is dark matter can it be concentrated and why is so much of our universe made up of it well I'd love to answer all those questions for you I'm well my quantum signal is still weak at least until I've had my morning hot cocoa so if you and your viewers want the recipe to Rick's secret concentrated dark matter you're just going to have to come over to my Startalk channel and while they're there can you encourage them to subscribe we're really close to a million subscribers a number you guys passed long ago but it'd be nice to get that gold YouTube play button by the way nearly all the gold in Earth's crust came from metallic meteorites that bombarded the planet 200 million years after it formed so your million subscriber YouTube play button is actually a little piece of space hanging on your wall very cool let's go I'll break the fourth wall right now to encourage them to click the box that they see on screen right now to show our other video that we did together all about concentrated dark matter I'll also put a link in the description to our video together so they can follow us on over there watch our video together on Rick and Morty's dark matter and while you're over at the start auction I'll hit the subscribe button let's push Neil over a million subscribers he's already almost there and if we were able to do it for him it would probably make him think that we're really cool and he'd probably be more inclined to reveal all the secrets of the universe just for us well I'm sure he'd probably want to reveal them to everyone but let's just say just for us and remember when it comes to Rick and Morty and even some astrophysics it's all just a theory a film theory and hopped through the portal on screen right now for more Rick and Morty action with an even more dynamic duo meal and Matt Pat you

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 3,465,540

Rating: 4.8868546 out of 5

Keywords: rick and morty, neil degrasse tyson, rick and morty season 4, rick portal gun, rick and morty portal gun, portals, dark matter, and morty season 4 episode 6, rick and morty season 4 episode 7, rick and morty season 4 episode 8, rick and morty season 4 episode 9, rick and morty trailer, rick, morty, rick and morty season 4 episode 6 full episode, rick and morty season 4 episode 7 full episode, rick and morty theory, film theorists, film theory, matpat, rick and morty episode

Id: FHcaQo4fmdM

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020

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A few criticisms/potential mistakes:

1. Rick and Morty are described as going through interdimensional customs in the pilot episode. Now it's later a large plot point that the federation *doesn't * have that technology, so this a probably a continuity error in the show but still worth mentioning.

2. I know I'm arguing with Neil deGrasse Tyson here, so I'm probably wrong, but how does the appearance of lizard morty or hammer morty refute the many worlds theory? They just come from a branch that differed from our universe very early. They aren't from a world with different physics, just one where evolution played out differently, assuming that hammer morty has organs in his hammer head and its shaped in a weird way and reinforced with metal.

Now the pizzas and chairs are harder to explain this way, but since the rest of the world and furniture there is habitable to rick and morty and behaves like on earth, I'd argue that it's still part of many worlds and pizzas appearance is similar to our pizzas but different when it comes to internal structure.