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What Mass Effect taught us about physics

Will the technology that powers Bioware's RPG series one day be science instead of fiction?

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When we think of Mass Effect we don't just think of a video game, nor that we're sitting on a couch playing a fictional adventure. The truth is that this series is one of only a handful that have made us feel as if we were on another world, that has made us live its story as our own, and the reasons for this aren't to do with the quality of its graphics, nor with its spectacular art direction or the extra-terrestrial architecture.

It doesn't matter that the game plays out in the third-person, because for us, it feels as if we were reviving a dream, and the reasons for this are simple. The first and most obvious is that the story itself and the way you make decisions within that story have a very significant level of emotional involvement; you aren't a person with a controller in your hand, you are Shepard. You're a human, a second-rate being who tries to prove that he or she deserves the respect of all the Council races, and you are saving the galaxy. You get so involved that you even imprint your own personality. We really wanted to convince the Council and the galaxy that humanity is a race full of goodness, strength, and intelligence, and we did just that. We celebrated the victories as if they were our own, we could feel the tension in battles as if we could really die, and we cried more than once along the way.

Emotions aside, what made us believe that Mass Effect was true, and that's what matters here, is the possibility that the technologies that are imagined in this series could very well become a reality in the near future. We're talking about interstellar travel through mass relays, biotic powers, force fields, dark energy... all things that are based on completely plausible scientific theory.

What Mass Effect taught us about physics
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In fact, even NASA announced that they had been inspired by Mass Effect when they recently discovered the Trappist-1 solar system, which is 40 light-years away and has Earth-sized planets that meet the necessary conditions for life. "Good art not only inspires us as individuals, it can inspire and improve our society as a whole," said Jeff Norris of NASA's propulsion laboratory at the DICE Summit, referring to the Bioware trilogy. Fabrice Condominas, the game's producer, also told Gamereactor that Andromeda's choice for the continuation of the saga had been "really scientific," days after demonstrating the game at the European Space Agency. In fact, he points out that they collaborate with all kinds of researchers: "We're working with those guys; space agencies, engineers, xeno-biologists who verify how we animate the aliens. Are they actually credible, could it be real? And at the same time we already have aliens, we have spaceships. So again it's not about reality, it's about credibility."

Will we be able to travel through the galaxy in a mass relay?

From a scientific point of view, interstellar travel is a controversial topic, but it's this technology that is the star - pun intended - of most works of science fiction. Although we must bear in mind that, when it comes to mass relays, there's a lot of science and physics involved.

First of all, just in case there are any newcomers, we will explain the concept. Mass relays are huge structures that are spread throughout the galaxy, and their job is to create portals between two points that are many light-years away, places that would take us centuries to get to if we traveled in a conventional manner. In order to be able to travel those distances in a short time, then, we need what in Mass Effect is known as "element zero". This element reacts to electric currents in a way that emits a field of dark energy that increases or decreases the mass of all the objects that are placed nearby. In this way, dark energy "denies" the mass of a ship, and this allows it to travel faster than light (FTL). This is what is known as "mass effect" in the game, and it naturally is what gives the name to the title.

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What Mass Effect taught us about physics

Reality or fiction? The fact is that dark energy is not something that the franchise has invented; it's a scientific reality. This is the term used for naming the force that should exist in order to justify that galaxies move away from each other, even if gravity is supposed to do just the opposite. In fact, astrophysicist Tamara Davis has already explained to Scientific American in an interview regarding Mass Effect in 2010, that it's "not completely implausible" to use dark energy in video games, since it's "everywhere" and "it would change slightly in the presence of matter, but we don't know how."

However, we still don't know any element that can reduce the mass of objects, so it would be totally fictitious if we compare it with our current understanding of physics. What happens is that mass effect is based on the fact that the only particles that can reach the speed of light are photons, because they have no mass. Therefore, they have created a system so that objects can behave in the same way as light, and even so, scientifically speaking, they couldn't travel faster than photons, so it would be impossible for humans to travel at this speed, because if we were to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in a ship at the speed of light, it would take about 50,000 years.

That said, for Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist specialising in string theory, mass fffect could be real, and he identifies it with negative energy, which for him, is the same as dilithium crystals in Star Trek, or melange ("the spice") in Dune. "When you put negative matter into Einstein's equations, then space and time curl up into knots, time wraps up into a pretzel, and so it may be possible to build gateways, we're not sure how stable these gateways would be... I would not wanna be the first to go through," said the scientist in an interview with Gametrailers.com.

But what this American physicist also mentions is what we know as "wormholes," and we have already seen them in many other classics such as Stargate, in which gateways opened tunnels to reach other planets that also have their own gateways. However, wormholes are strictly theoretical and speculative, and we don't know whether they exist or not, just like multiverses. Both are great ideas to play around with in sci-fi video games and other media, though.

What Mass Effect taught us about physicsWhat Mass Effect taught us about physics

Could we get telekinetic powers like the biotics?

Mass Effect's biotic powers also have something to do with dark energy. With these abilities, a person who has survived exposure to element zero in their mother's womb can stop bullets, create gravitational fields, throw objects, and even opponents, just like when Darth Vader uses the power of the Force. However, in Star Wars there is a metaphysical and omnipresent energy field that covers the entire universe and everything in it, keeping it together, whereas in Mass Effect we're talking about manipulating dark energy, which is believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe.

Bioware wanted to incorporate dark energy into the game because we don't know too much about it, and this is a way of incorporating credible elements without offending people who know their science. In fact many scientists, such as the aforementioned astrophysicist Tamara Davis, are studying this energy to find a way to manipulate it. "I sort of like the idea of having people who could sense [dark energy] and manipulate it" she said to Scientific American when she was asked about the power of biotics. "One of the roles of video games and science fiction is to stretch what we know by using our imagination."

On the other hand, in the same publication, the physicist Sean Carroll was more skeptical and said that he would like to think that what it is used in the game is rather a force that looks like dark energy but is not that energy, because "there's a small amount of dark energy in every cubic centimeter of the universe, but it's not powerful enough to do the things described in the game." However, it's "fun" and interesting to incorporate something as complex as dark energy into a video game, because this is the best way for people to get interested in physics. "Someone might hear that term as part of a game and then hear it again in a more scientific context, and that might help them ultimately gain a better understanding of what it is. There's a tremendous untapped potential in games for incorporating cool science," he said.

What Mass Effect taught us about physics

It's precisely these words from Sean Carroll and Tamara Davis that make Mass Effect the game that it is: they make it almost real. It revolves around something that we like to call 'credible science'; it's not true, it cannot be real, but it uses real theories that make technology and physics move into the future, because they inspire researchers to go one step further, and they also help people who don't have knowledge in these areas, to get interested and involved. The truth is that if Mass Effect had fallen into our hands when we were still going through high school, we may well have wanted to become a scientist. Liara T'Soni would have been a role model to follow, to aspire too. In the century we live in we cannot be Shepard, but we can be Liara, we can even be Tali, a genius of mechanics. Besides, how cool is it that these two brainiacs are women? Mass Effect is a game that not only teaches science and technology, it also teaches us what equality and respect are and should be.

Eva Mosquera Rodríguez (you can find her here on Twitter) is a scientific journalist that specialises in astrophysics, robotics and space missions. In addition, she is a mentor for STEM Talent Girl within the Science For Her programme.



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