An Astrophysicist Tries to Make Sense of Rick’s Portal Gun from ‘Rick and Morty’
Rick’s portal gun is the key to so many of the classic adventures on Rick and Morty. With it, Rick can instantly travel to anywhere in the universe as well as visit parallel realities. Its power isn’t infinite, however, as it clearly relies on the use of a mysterious green portal fluid that can run out whenever the plot calls for it.
Still, it’s among the most impressive creations in the history of science fiction, which is why I reached out to an actual, non-animated astrophysicist to try to make sense of its every element.
Inter-Dimensional Travel The primary function of Rick’s portal gun is to travel to other parallel realities where he crosses paths with lots of other Ricks. Kevork Abazajian, a professor of physics and astronomy as well as the director of the Center for Cosmology at the University of California, Irvine, says that alternate realities are “a common science-fiction theme these days. I think it’s inspired by the fact that, in cosmology and particle physics, there is a real possibility of multiple universes existing — it’s a necessary outcome of some interpretations of quantum mechanics.” There are a couple of different theories as to where these other universes are. One is that they’re on some other plane of existence, the location of which is undefined. Another, which makes more sense for Rick and Morty, is that they’re very, very, very far away. As Abazajian explains, “Because of the finite nature of the speed of light, we cannot see beyond a certain distance, which is called the cosmic horizon. But in standard cosmology, we have infinite space beyond our horizon, and if you have infinite space, that means you have other universes out there beyond that distance.” He says that most universes will be wildly different than ours and may even have different laws of physics, but because there are infinite possibilities, some will resemble our own almost exactly, which are generally the kinds of other universes the characters in Rick and Morty, Into the Spider-Verse and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness visit. Getting into the interdimensional travel of Rick’s portal gun, Abazajian says, “You could have tunneling between multiverses if you (make use of) extra dimensions and were able to create wormholes.” To illustrate what a wormhole is, Abazajian does pretty much the same thing Sam Neill’s character does in Event Horizon when he takes a piece of paper, pokes a hole in the top and the bottom and then folds the paper so the two points meet. Traveling across space to get from one point to the other is too far to ever accomplish, but a wormhole creates a bridge between those two points, which is what Rick’s gun is doing. “Traveling beyond our cosmic horizon is too far, but if you have an extra dimension, you can connect between them in this way. That’s one plausible way to travel across disconnected areas,” says Abazajian. “That said, there is no known mechanism for creating this kind of wormhole.” Teleportation In addition to interdimensional travel, Rick’s portal gun provides for plenty of intra-dimensional travel too, where he’ll travel to another planet in his own universe or just another room in his house. Abazajian says the same physics are involved here as with interdimensional travel, just at a smaller distance. Portal Fluid Regarding the aforementioned green portal fluid, it still makes portals without the gun, like in the episode where Morty spills some and ends up with a portal on his hand. “I would guess that (the portal fluid contains) the energy that’s needed to create a wormhole,” says Abazajian, who explains the portal fluid would also need to contain “the special kind of matter that could stabilize the wormhole.” It’s not clear that such matter exists, but there is a name for it: exotic matter. The fluid would have to stabilize the wormhole in a few different ways. For one, a wormhole is either two black holes merged together, or a black hole into a white hole (which are still hypothetical). “A white hole is a black hole, but it’s emitting matter as opposed to swallowing it,” Abazajian explains. Rick’s portals would likely be black holes into white holes, because you can pass freely through either end of them, and there’s no suction pulling you in, as there would be with two black holes merged together. Essentially, the portal fluid creates wormholes so stable that it accounts for this property. It would also have to account for curvature. This is a bit harder to explain, but lemme give it a try: If you were to jump into a black hole, you’d get “spaghettified,” or super stretched out like a long strand of spaghetti in order to get through it. For you to pass safely through a black hole without spaghettifying, the black hole would have to be “very, very big,” says Abazajian. “It’d have to be a billion times our sun’s size.” Rick’s portals are about six feet in diameter, and so, they must have little or no curvature to them as a result of the portal fluid’s use of exotic matter to stabilize things. Besides curvature, Abazajian says you’d still die if you head into a black hole because “you’re heading toward the singularity, and it’s not clear what you would see because the nature of space and time gets confused. Time actually becomes space, and that’s a very weird thing once you get into a black hole.” But again, in Rick’s case, the portal fluid stabilizes things enough that he can walk in and out of a portal like a simple doorway. Gun Controls As for why the portal fluid requires a gun, Abazajian says that a very small percentage of alternate realities would resemble our own, so it makes sense for the gun to be able to locate those dimensions, then harness the raw power of the portal fluid to reach them. Admittedly, how Rick controls the gun is inconsistent in the show. Sometimes he fiddles with the dials before pulling the trigger; other times he just blasts it, and it takes him to precisely where he wants to go. Now, Rick has all kinds of mechanical enhancements in his body — he even once referred to himself as “Inspector Gadget” — so, to reconcile this inconsistency, Rick might have some kind of chip in his brain that can control the portal gun, but occasionally it malfunctions or he wants to control the gun manually. Time Travel (Or Lack Thereof) All that said, if Rick’s portal gun can do so much, why can’t he use it to travel through time? Because, as all Rick and Morty fans know, Rick never deals in time travel. Abazajian’s answer: “Because bad things happen when you travel through time. You get very weird causality problems. There are ways of traveling through time in certain solutions of general relativity, but they’re very, very specific things that involve structures we don’t know to exist called cosmic strings. The key difference is that the portal gun does spacial travel, not time travel.” So time-traveling is a totally different thing than interdimensional travel. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. Or Strawberry Smiggles with a Plumbus.
