For what feels like forever we’ve been waiting patiently. Waiting and waiting for months on end, with no end in sight, while slowly losing our collective minds. But then just when we were about to give up all hope the seemingly impossible happened. Our salvation was delivered! No, I’m not talking quarantine ending and life returning to normal. I’m talking about something better. The return of Rick and Morty!
The Back to the Future parody, which follows the adventures of a mad scientist (Rick) and his impressionable grandson (Morty) as they traverse the Multiverse, has set a pretty high standard for itself after just four seasons. In fact, it may already be the greatest show of all-time, animated or otherwise.
It’s so great, in fact, that a book explaining how the science in the show actually works (a book aptly titled The Science of Rick and Morty) may, in fact, be the greatest book of all-time. Or at least one of my favorites as it deftly toggles between the plot lines in the show and informative explanations of how all the science and tech introduced in the show would work in real-life. That is, if it could even exist at all.
It’s with that in mind (and in honor of the show returning tonight) that I’d like to share with you some of my favorite scientific tidbits from the book. But be forewarned. What I’m about to share with you will likely scatter your brain more than an episode of Morty’s Mind Benders!
- Did you know that when you take into account all of the bacteria living in/on/among us that the number of nonhuman cells in the human body actually outnumber the human cells by a factor of 10 to 1. We like to think that our sense of self, our consciousness is really in control, calling the shots, giving us a sense of free will. But if we’re not even fully human and may in fact have our thinking influenced by the microbiome in our guts then how much control do we really have?!
- The Second Law of Thermodynamics (a law which must always be held true) states that disorder i.e. entropy always increases within a system. This would seem to counteract what we know about evolution since systems i.e. lifeforms (such as us) gain more order i.e. complexity as they develop. So what gives? Well as it turns out even though we are gaining complexity we wind up using that complexity to collect energy and matter i.e. food and break it down into simpler forms so at the end of the day the law still applies as living organisms act as entropy engines.
- Speaking of lifeforms how did life even get started in the first place? Divine intervention aside its likely that the cause was an inevitable consequence of chemistry with chemicals being naturally predisposed to arranging themselves to better absorb energy and then dissipate that energy as heat. A process known as dissipation-driven adaptation which would give hope to the idea that life is inevitable so long as the conditions are just right.
- I often wonder would have happened if an asteroid never hit the Earth and the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out. Would humans have evolved alongside dinosaurs? Or would humans never have existed paving the way for dinosaurs to evolve to the point where they invent their own dinosaur technology and live in their own dinosaur cities. Well, as it turns out it may actually have been possible for a certain kind of dinosaur to have evolved in a similar fashion to humans. A type of dinosaur known as Troodon.
- It may be theoretically possible for wormholes to exist but these would likely be microscopic wormholes too small to ever allow humans to travel through. Sadly, this means that Rick’s portal gun technology, the foundation upon which the show is built could never exist. However, this could explain how quantum particles communicate across vast distances – a process that we refer to as entanglement.
- Physicists have had a hard time trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics with Einstein’s theories of General Relativity in order to create a unified Theory of Everything that eloquently explains how the Universe works. That’s because of the difficulties in reconciling scale; the physics occurring at an atomic level are vastly different than the physics occurring at a human scale. This phenomenon may explain why we can’t figure out what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are. Since their effects occur on an infinitely larger scale (across the vastness of space) we can’t measure them from our vantage point at a much smaller scale comparatively.
- Gravity is the one fundamental force that we don’t yet fully understand. We hypothesize that its effects are carried out by a particle (the graviton) but we don’t actually know if gravitons exist yet. Could this be because gravity doesn’t actually originate from our Universe? Perhaps it is actually “leaking” here from another dimension, giving credence to the idea of a Multiverse that we are intertwined with.
- Here’s a fun fact. Rick and Morty hail from Earth dimension C-137 which is no mere coincidence. The number 137 is actual the Fine Structure Constant, the number which suggests that our Universe is actually fine-tuned for life.
- Neuroscience has always fascinated me and author Matt Brady provides some food for thought in the book. Namely the fact that we have an infinite amount of storage capacity when it comes to long-term memories and that contrary to popular belief most of our brain is actually mostly active while we sleep. He also points out that its the Hippocampus that is responsible for deciding what the brain should remember but the way that he said it puzzles me. Is it just sorting through stimuli in a very basic way? Or is actually deciding? Wouldn’t it need to be conscious to be making decisions? Does that imply then that we have a consciousness within our consciousness? And does it mean that quantum particles are conscious too?
- Did you know that dog brains actually have regions that are specifically attuned to human voices? After all this time man’s best friend is actually evolving alongside us.
- Technically, you should stop saying that you want to lose weight. What you want to lose is mass. To lose weight you would have to go somewhere with a different gravity.
- Speaking of gravity, finding a habitable exo-planet would be amazing but we can’t just look for a rocky Earthlife planet with water and an atmosphere in a solar system’s Goldilocks zone. We also have to look for a planet that has the same gravitational effects as Earth as well. Otherwise, we couldn’t live there.
- Stopping time in movies isn’t realistic as you would technically need to keep time moving in the atmosphere and in the electromagnetic spectrum if you wanted to stay alive. Just stopping time everywhere at once (the way it is portrayed in movies) wouldn’t work.
- Does time even exist? Well, according to Einstein there is no such thing as Universal time as time is relative to the observer. That being said time is programmed into all living things i.e. circadian rhythm and fertility cycles so is it possible that time does exist and if so why can’t we travel through it in multiple directions (back to the past and forward to the future) the way we can move through space in different directions (up, down, forward, backward). Maybe we can but just don’t know how to access these alternate time dimensions yet.
- The question of time is intimately connected to questions about free will and quantum physics. In short, there may only be two possibilities. Either a single non-branching timeline is true that means time travel is impossible or a timeline that branches off into new realities is true meaning that free will exists, time travel is possible, and the multiverse is real.
- Our ability to keep Moore’s Law going may be limited by the laws of physics due to the fixed size of atoms. At some point you wouldn’t be able make atoms any smaller due to how powerful the strong nuclear force is on an atomic scale. However, it may actually be powerful to change the size of an atom after all. By replacing electrons with muons of a different mass.
- It may be possible to use matter/anti-matter reactions as a space fuel.
- Most people know that our solar system resides within the Milky Way Galaxy. But did you know that the Milky Way is part of the Laniakea Supercluster?!
- It may be possible that we are living in a simulation. But if that’s the case we are most likely living in a leaf simulation (a simulation within a simulation within a simulation).
- With nanotechnology it one day may be possible to invent a computer system the size of a sugar cube.
And those are just a few of the many mind-blowing scientific facts and theories that Matt Brady discusses in the book The Science of Rick and Morty. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves the show Rick and Morty or for anyone who is just generally interested in science.
The Science of Rick and Morty will blow your mind.
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