Turns out this game about bee-men riding dinosaurs in space isn’t terribly realistic.
I hope you’re sitting down, because I’ve got some shocking news – it turns out the Mario Galaxy’s take on planetary physics wasn’t entirely accurate. If you need a minute to reassess some things, I’ll understand.
According to a real study from the University of Leicester’s physics department entitled “It’s-a-me, Density!”, Mario Galaxy is just packed with bad science. Here’s the introduction to this very serious scientific study…
“Super Mario Galaxy is a 2007 video game with an interesting take on planetary science. The various planets visited in the game appear to be approximately 100m in diameter. This leads to the curvature of their surfaces being not only visible but extreme, with Mario often walking around the whole circumference of a planet in a minute or two. His movement and jumping capabilities appear the same on each planet, as well as on Earth, leading to the assumption that they all have the same surface gravity. So how dense would these ‘baby’ planets need to be in order to generate the required gravitational force and is this theoretically possible?”
Basically, in order for the tiny planets in Mario Galaxy to have approximately the same gravity as Earth, they’d need to be as dense as a dwarf star, which would not work out well for the planet. I’ll let the men of science describe what would happen…
“The outcome of this discrepancy is that if constructed, the planet would survive for only a very brief moment before violently destroying itself and any short plumbers who happen to be running about on its surface.”
Hopefully this isn’t the University of Leicester’s last Mario-themed study. Personally I’m hoping the physics guys team up with biology department to answer the question of whether a turtle really will bounce back-and-forth indefinitely when kicked between two green pipes.
Via The Mary Sue