Hey there, and welcome to Play Noggin. I’m Julian, your brain’s Player Two. I have fond memories of playing the original
Gameboy. You know, the optometrist’s nightmare that
was like a portable NES if every NES game’s color palette consisted solely of black and
green? The Gameboy was a revolutionary product, and
a ton of really, really great games were made for it. One of those games, and one that managed to
grow into a sturdy franchise of its own, was Kirby’s Dream Land. Kirby is an interesting character. Not so much in terms of personality, because
he’s really only got two modes: Happy and Hungry. It’s hard to say just what it is about him
that’s so appealing, beyond the obvious cute factor. He’s a pink ball of… I was going to say fluff, but I can’t really
tell what he’s made of. I wanna say… rubber? But he definitely does have a certain appeal,
and a big part of it is the crazy things he can do. He can puff up with air and fly like a morbidly
obese pigeon; he can swallow almost anything; and he can absorb the powers of almost any
foe he eats. I wondered: Just how unlikely is Kirby? I mean, what would need to change here in
order for something like Kirby to exist in the real world? Would we even want to live in a world where
every time you ate a steak, you gained the ability to moo and chew cud? Let’s break this down by power, beginning
with flight. One thing Kirby has been able to do from the
very beginning is suck in a bunch of air, puffing his round body up to twice its size,
and fly. What’s that all about? If we take it at face value that his flight
ability is activated by drawing in air, that raises a couple of questions. One, why don’t you and I take off into the
stratosphere every time we inhale? And two, in what way could this even make
sense? In order to float upward like he does, Kirby
would have to be taking in a ton of gas that’s lighter than air. Yeah, air alone won’t do it, because the
only way to rise through air is to have less density than air. Kirby must have the ability to filter the
heavier particles out while trapping only the lightest gases. Helium is one gas that could work. There is a very small amount of helium in
our atmosphere -- about 5.2 ppm. In contrast, nitrogen is the most prevalent
gas in the atmosphere, 780,840 nitrogen molecules float around in every million particles of
air. Kirby’s height and weight are hard to pin
down, but we know he must be denser than water because he sinks, so he weighs more than a
kilogram per liter of volume he takes up. Since it takes 900 liters of helium just to
lift one kilogram, Kirby would have to balloon to over 900 times his volume to fly, and filter
through an ungodly amount of air to do it. Obviously he doesn’t get that big in the
game or your screen would be filled with pink so that’s not accurate, but his ability
to suck that much air fits in nicely with another power of his. Aside from his ability to float around like
a 3 day old birthday balloon, Kirby eats a lot. And he doesn’t seem to gain any weight. What’s his secret? Kirby’s really lacking in table manners. No knives or forks or folded napkins for him. He turns himself into a super-powered vacuum
cleaner and sucks up everything in sight. When Kirby goes into vacuum mode, he draws
everything that isn’t nailed down into his gullet. Enemies, blocks… Well, in the world of Kirby those are pretty
much the only two things, but you get the idea. How would Kirby be able to do this? Most likely, Kirby is somehow able to create
a vacuum, but like a deep space one, not a dirt devil, although I guess they operate
on the same principle. Vacuums work the way they do because in situations
where there are pressure differentials, everything is drawn toward the area of lowest pressure. A perfect vacuum is one in which there is
literally no matter present. It’s also pretty much impossible to achieve. Even deep space has a handful of hydrogen
atoms per cubic meter. But we’ve all seen enough science fiction
films to recognize that in the vacuum of deep space, nothing is immune from getting sucked
away. If Kirby can turn his insides into something
close to a perfect vacuum, all matter would be drawn to him. And it’s not super likely that anything
could survive the experience. If you were Kirby’s latest victim, you’d
quickly find the air in your lungs expanding due to the extremely low pressure, and your
lungs are guaranteed to be shredded. Water and gas in the blood would form bubbles
in your veins, blocking blood flow. Essentially, you’ve got a minute, maybe
two, for Kirby to change his mind and spit you out if you hope to survive. But even then, everything he spits just turns
into a projectile star, so I think you’re screwed either way. So, we know how Kirby gets stuff inside his
belly, but have you ever wondered how he can eat so much? It must mean that he has a killer metabolism. In the real world, the creature with the fastest
metabolism is the hummingbird. Like Kirby, not only do they fly, but they
eat, and eat, and eat, well beyond the point that eating ceases to be a fun activity. If you’re a hummingbird, taking a break
from chowing down could prove fatal. They have a very high surface-area-to-volume
ratio, and so they lose a ton of heat off their bodies. If they don’t refuel constantly, they’re
in trouble. Even sleeping is dangerous. To put it in perspective: Hummingbirds consume
between 5 and 10 calories per day. Considering the kernel of popcorn I have stuck
in my teeth right now is close to that amount, it doesn’t seem too impressive. But remember that hummingbirds weigh under
three grams. The equivalent daily caloric needs for a human
would range between 150,000 and 250,000, or up to a hundred times more than a recommended
intake of an adult man. If Kirby’s metabolism is like a hummingbird’s,
though, he would not be able to cruise through a level without eating anything -- no pacifist
runs for him. And while he’s sucking in every creature
in sight, he might just gain their power to turn into a ball of fire or a spikey urchin. Like the humming bird’s metabolism, there’s
actually a precedent in nature for eating foes to gain their strength. Nudibranch are tiny colorful sea slugs, and
some of them have an amazing secret weapon. They prey on creatures like jellyfish and
sea anemones that sting most other animals with microscopic poisonous harpoons called
nematocysts. But Nudibranchs don’t care. They chow down anyway because they can keep
the nematocysts from firing. More than that, they can actually save some
and store them on their back in case anything if foolish enough to try and eat them. Kirby’s body could operate on a similar
principle, hijacking whatever biological process his prey has for a defense and coopting it
for himself. All that to say: If Kirby were to somehow
exist in our world, he would be a pink blob with the ability to filter helium from the
air while possessing the potential to create a super-powerful vacuum in his gut that would
suck in all the forest animals in his path, giving him new ways to kill but never satisfying
the insatiable hunger that burns within him. Oh my god, Kirby is terrifying. Maybe it’s best to keep Kirby in Dream Land
where he belongs. Thanks for watching. If you enjoy our explorations of video games
and science, be sure to Like and Subscribe, and check out some of our other videos here. Have an idea for a game or a topic we should
cover? Leave us a comment below. And don’t forget to keep on playing.
