How does Rick's Portal Gun work?

Rick and Morty is arguably the best show on television right now. The show, created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, follows the adventures of Rick, the smartest, drunkest person in the multiverse and his grandson Morty as they get into into all sorts of mishaps and wild escapades in other worlds and alternate dimensions. It’s brilliant, plain and simple. And for the uninitiated who have yet to watch it, make sure you do, it’s worth the time investment.

One aspect of Rick and Morty that makes it such an entertaining show is that the titular characters have the ability to travel throughout the entire universe, and through infinite dimensions, allowing for endless possibilities for where they can end up.

Usually, they accomplish this by using Rick’s portal gun, which allows them to travel between any point in space to another instantaneously. This forms the core of the show.

But this made me question, how does Rick’s portal gun actually work? What sort of tech might we find in his portal gun that allows him to travel between universes? And could it exist in the real world? Well that’s what we’re going to find out today.

It’s important to point out that within the show itself we don’t get much insight into how Rick’s portal gun really works. It is not explicitly explained how Rick’s portal gun works at any point, so we’ve had to do a lot of theorising and guessing about how it works. Having said that let’s begin with what we know for sure about Rick’s gun.

Rick’s portal gun is a small, self-contained, grey gun with a black dial above the grip. The dial is used to select a destination as shown on a red LED display. It also contains a green energy core which we will explore a bit later. A small hatch on the handle opens up to reveal that the gun has a self-destruct button in the finale of season 2.

Interestingly the gun can be remotely hacked and has a history which logs where the user of the portal gun goes, both of which we find out when Rick gets confronted by the Council of Ricks. It is also clear that Rick’s portal gun technology is highly sought after, as we see in episode 1 of series 3 when the Gromflomite interrogating Rick wants to be taken to the exact moment when Rick discovered the Portal Gun formula which makes interdimensional travel possible. This formula, coupled with this green energy core, holds the key to interdimensional travel.

When shot, Rick’s gun shoots green portaIs which emanate from this energy core. The colour of the portal appears to be significant since in the pilot episode Rick alters the teleporter at interdimensional customs to get him and Morty home by forming a large green portal. So what type of portal is this?

The first conclusion one might come to is that the portal creates 'worm-holes' in space. Worm-holes are theoretical passages through our universe that shrink distances to allow quick passage between two disparate locations across the universe. The key word to note here is “our”….our universe.

Rick’s portal gun can act as a simple teleporter within one universe; Rick uses it this way in the episode “MortyNight Run” to reach Morty, and the Ship from Blips and Chitz for example. But Rick’s portal gun can also allow travel to other dimensions and universes, not just within the same universe. So Rick’s portal gun doesn’t create worm-holes.

And since this isn’t interstellar blackholes are out too because...well because that would literally make no sense at all.

So how else might the portal gun work?

So with worm-holes out, let’s get even more abstract. Quantum. Even just saying the word quantum makes my head hurt. Incase you didn’t know Quantum is the smallest we can get and the laws of physics at this size break.

Rick’s portal gun formula may describe how quantum theory can be used, along with huge amounts of energy, in order to facilitate interdimensional travel. It may even go further than that.

The search for a unified theory of quantum mechanics and general relatively stumped the great Einstein and eludes physicists today still. Is it possible that Rick has developed a unified theory reconciling these disparate fields of physics? Absolutely, this is Rick after all.

So this may explain what Rick’s portal gun formula is - a formula that reconciles general relativity and quantum theory to facilitate interdimensional travel. Either way, I believe this is what the formula must relate to.

There are two ways Rick’s portal gun could work from a quantum perspective. Rick's portal gun may use a combination of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Tunneling to physically transport himself to wherever he wants to go.

Quantum mechanics observes matter changing mass, teleporting and just popping into existence every second. The portals would seem to be solid as they constitute walls of universes, held only together by Quantum particles. The energy core could be nuclear, or an even more powerful power source used to manipulate the Quantum realm.

This would allow Rick to transfer physical objects between dimensions using quantum tunneling, where the particles tunnel through a barrier that it classically could not surmount. However it is possible that, rather than transferring the objects themselves, only the information is transferred between dimensions pertaining to the physical objects. Let me explain.

What we are talking about here is Rick’s portal gun serving as a quantum teleportation device. This theory is more rooted in science...kinda.When atoms are teleported by scientists they are destroyed with a copy rebuilt from the data. Physicists at the California Institute of Technology first teleported a single photon back in 1998 a mere three feet using this method. So information transfer, rather than physical transfer, is another possibility.

Of course this would have to be information transfer in the quantum realm, which is where quantum teleportation rears its head.

Quantum teleportation is essentially the transmission of Qubits between two different locations. It’s tied to entanglement — the notion that two particles in spacetime are actually connected, and the movement or behaviour of one will affect the movement or behavior of the other, even if they aren’t near one another.

Physicists who discuss quantum teleportation do so not in the service of teleporting physical objects, but as a way to communicate — by sending along Qubits from one place to another without having to attach information to a physical particle. The quantum states of single atoms have actually been teleported in real world experiments.

A 2004 study using optical fiber successfully completed quantum teleportation across 600 meters. It’s incorrect to say an atom itself has been teleported, but its Qubit — the information encoded into the electronic state of the atom — has been moved across distances. It is possible that the information is transported between dimensions and this information is used to repurpose atoms in the new dimension.

This would allow multidimensional travel to occur, which all sounds great, however surprise surprise we have an issue with quantum based theories, and a pretty big one at that.

In order for this to work both dimensions involved in the interdimensional travel would have to have the same Quantum Laws. In an infinite multiuniverse with infinite possibilties is this likely? No.

However, could the central finite curve referred to by the Council of Ricks in the episode “Close Rick encounters of the Rick kind’ refer to the set of universes where the laws quantum physics are the same, meaning interdimensional travel is only possible within these universes in the central finite curve? It’s a possibility. Fundamentally, we don’t know enough about Quantum Mechanics for this theory to have any kind of strong scientific basis, or at least I don’t.

So where does this leave us? Well so far we’ve been focusing on Rick’s portal gun in the context of it’s technology and physics. But perhaps this isn’t the right way to think about this.

What if Rick’s portal gun isn’t subject to the laws of physics, but is subject to something much more profound - the laws of screenwriting. There has been a theory which has been circulating forums about Rick’s awareness that he’s in a tv show, which there is ample evidence for in the series such as Rick’s many fourth wall breaks.

This was even confirmed in an interview with the show creators who said that it’s no secret that Rick is aware he’s in a tv show.

This means his portal gun is a plot device used to move the story forward. It works because the writers allow it to, not because of any logical or scientific reason. The green energy core, rather than being an energy core that’s nucleur or some other powerful energy source, is actually powered by narrative requirement. The portal gun formula is not one of how worm-holes, black holes or quantum mechanics works, it’s a formula that describes how the presence infinite possibilities for adventure leads to infinitely imaginative and compelling storylines. Rick’s portal gun doesn’t need to obey the laws of physics or even need to be explained how it works. It works because it works...in the end it’s as simple as that.