8 Bits Of Science You Didn’t Know Ruin Iconic Video Game Scenes
1. A Hole To Space Wouldn't Suck You Through - Portal 2
Portal 2’s finale is as brilliant as it is insane. With adorkable idiot turned unhinged tyrant Wheatley seconds away from bringing Aperture Science down around everyone’s ears, the game has you place a portal on the Moon, creating a howling windstorm that leaves both Wheatley and protagonist Chell dangling by a metal thread. Enter reluctant hero GLADOS, who cuts Wheatley loose and saves Chell, averting disaster.
It’s hugely entertaining stuff. The only problem is, it wouldn’t have happened that way.
As explained on this episode of Because Science, create a hole between a high pressure area and a low pressure vacuum and the pressure differential will create a flow from high to low, and while it is true that air would flow rapidly near the hole the same is not true at even a relatively close distance. Ergo, Chell, lying five meters or more away, would have stayed firmly put.
What if she was pushed out? Would she have been able to cling on? Astrophysicist Jillian Scudder tackled the question and found that while Chell could breathe, the air around her would be flowing at a screaming 920 miles per hour (1480 km/h), a speed no human grip can withstand. Wheatley, on the other hand, anchored to sturdy steel cabling, would have survived.
Sucked into the vacuum or left at Wheatley’s mercy, either way Chell is dead. Sometimes science makes for a seriously downer ending.