Solar Smash: How to Explore an Update Like a Scientist

In his longest video ever, Eon digs through a new Solar Smash update — comparing every planet to what he remembers, grinding an achievement counter from 46 to 48, and running a real repeat-it-twice experiment to find out whether a giant snake eats a spaceship or cuts it in half.

A new update dropped in Solar Smash, and Eon turns it into what he calls "the longest video I've ever filmed" on his channel. The mission: figure out everything that changed. He opens on snow orbiting a Santa, says "that's really cool," and then starts the real detective work — flying past planet after planet muttering "nothing new here... nothing new here... oh, this planet!" Watch closely and this isn't just a kid blowing things up. It's exploring, counting, and experimenting — the same moves a scientist makes.

How do you find what's new in an update?

Eon already owned Solar Smash, so why is there fresh stuff inside it? That's what an update is: the makers add new planets, weapons, and effects to an app you already have, and the game quietly downloads them. The tricky part — nobody gives you a checklist. You have to hunt by comparing.

So that's exactly what he does. He flies past each planet and checks it against his memory: "this one we all saw like 10 years ago," he says about an old one, then perks up at a "machine world" that's "so dark." He even reads the data on screen — one planet has "41 million people living on it" while another shows "zero people... you can see it on the top of the screen." He spots a small but real clue too: some planets now glow gold because they have more achievements attached. "I see the planets gold." He's so careful that he checks the version number — "this is version 264.4... it's not updated" — to be sure what he's looking at. Noticing tiny differences is the whole skill of finding what's new.

Achievements: repeat until the counter ticks up

A big stretch of the video is Eon grinding achievements, and it's a perfect lesson in goals and counting. Solar Smash rewards you for destroying a target number of planets, and Eon can watch his count climb — he reads it out loud: 46, then 47, then 48.

His method is pure repetition. He keeps chanting "reset the planet... launch the planetary destroyer laser man... destroy the Earth," again and again. "I'm one away! I'm one away!" he yells when he's close — and then "YES, I DID IT! I did it again!" That's what an achievement is: a goal you reach by doing the same action enough times for the counter to hit its number. Earlier he learns that some weapons just don't fire ("it's not actually working... they're definitely not working") and has to switch to auto mode to make it go. Each milestone unlocks a new toy, including a dark lightsaber ("WHOA, YES, we did it!") and a rocket he nicknames "missiles 66."

Running the same experiment twice

The best science here is Eon's snake experiment. He spawns a giant space snake next to a spaceship and asks one clear question: "Is it going to cut it in half, or is it going to eat it?" The first time, the snake's head bites the ship and the rest of its body gets stuck floating in space — "the head is eating and the body is stuck forever."

Here's the smart move: he doesn't just move on. He says "I want to try that again" and sets it up the exact same way — snake first, then the spaceship — to see if the result repeats. Running the identical setup again to check your answer is real science. Then he starts changing one thing at a time. He fires the snake at a planet wrapped in a force field and notices the shield regenerates after every hit ("the force just regenerated"). And when he destroys the snake's mouth, the attack stops cold — "his head is no longer this... it would never move." Change one variable, watch what changes back.

Building a planet, then breaking it

Near the end Eon flips from destroying to creating in the custom-planet mode. First he flies a tiny spaceship straight into a sand planet — the Sahara — and is amazed by the sand particles: "I didn't see that 10 years ago." Then he paints continents like a mapmaker: "this is Africa... China right here... Japan... India... United States," even icing the south pole. Then comes the builder's "what if": "What if I cover the entire planet with island?" He swaps every ocean for land, recolors it until it looks "like Santa color" sand, layers on iron ("the hardest"), and floods it with people — "five billion... 15 billion!" — until the whole world is buried in them. Because it's a sandbox, nothing is wasted: it's one giant experiment in what happens when you change everything at once. He even toys with a brightness filter ("make space brighter") and a healing black hole he unlocks along the way. (He also finds a green Star Wars lightsaber he can actually spin — unlike the dark one that stays locked in place.)

Try it

Be a scientist the way Eon was: run something twice the exact same way, then change one thing. Roll a toy car down a ramp and mark how far it travels — then send it down again with the identical setup. Did it stop in the same spot? Now change one variable (a steeper ramp, or a heavier car) and predict out loud what will happen before you let go. Eon asked "cut in half, or eat it?" and tested it over and over — you can do the same with a ramp, a paper airplane, or a tower of blocks. The trick is to change only one thing at a time, so you always know what caused the difference.