Put portals on two boards. See what happens if I put one board through the other portal.
Make a drain hole at the bottom of a lake, that comes out above it. Put in a water wheel, free energy.
Never thought about it before, but I guess this makes portal guns impossible, since scenarios like this break conservation of energy.
Maybe conservation of energy is wrong.
Well, the videogame kind are definitely impossible, but if the gravitational field could travel through the portal then it would probably still conserve energy. The gravitational interactions around vertical portals would be exceptionally weird. If they were close enough, you’d probably experience weightlessness while in between them, but I can’t wrap my head around what would happen as they move further apart. That makes me hope someone tries to make a mod that models that in Portal…
My first instinct would be that it would equivalent to putting another celestial body the mass of the earth at the distance from the earth is from each portal. Since gravity is a wave, it, in theory, would affect a region beyond what would considered “around” the portals.
So if you put one portal on the ground, and another 100 meters up, it would be similar to there being a second earth 100 meters from the surface of the earth, experienced by the entire earth (once the gravitational wave propagated.) How that would evolve over time is too complex for my basic understanding of physics, but a simulation of it would be a neat experiment.
Maybe entering the portal takes as much energy as it would take to climb the long way? If the other end is on the moon you have to enter at 10km/s or something else you fall right back out.
But you know it’s possible from firsthand experience. Whomsth’n’t reached terminal velocity by shooting the ceiling & floor and jumping in?
The trick would be finding the tallest vertical line of sight you can. Just making portable plates and flying one would be hard to beat, but failing that maybe a mineshaft.
Does it fire through water in the game?
No. The only water in the game is toxic (i.e. you die if you fall in) and you can’t fire the gun through it.
Moon.
How fast would this suck up all of our atmosphere? Hours? Days?
As long as I’m the first one through, the rest is set dressing.
Easy solution for that, you fire the earth portal on a wall inside some sort of specially constructed airlock.
That hard part would be getting the moon portal in a useful place, you’d probably need to go up there and find a good solid cliff face or something. On the plus side having done that you could be home again in a few seconds.
Pretty sure the game theorists channel on youtube did that one several years back. It’s been a minute since I watched it but a search should pull it for you.
This one? https://youtu.be/0Hwjmek0Uvw It more addresses survivability in space, but unfortunately not the „drain earth of its atmosphere“ thing. Then again, in game the portal was closed quickly again.
Probably years, if not more. XKCD’s “What If?” has a nice explanation on a similar question, but in that case it was a portal at the bottom of the mariana trench and the question was about draining the oceans. The answer is that you probably wouldn’t notice in all your lifetime.
I remember that video, but I‘m not sure it is comparable — air might flow faster than water [citation needed] and there might be less of it [citation needed].
I’m pretty sure there is much more air. At least volume wise. Sphere volume goes up by radius cubed.
there’s more water than air (mass-wise).
Above you, atmosphere scale height is 8 km, with a density of 1.25 kg / m³.
That makes 10^4 kg of air above your head per m² surface area.
To get the same mass of water per surface area, it would only have to be about 10 m deep. But the ocean is kilometers deep in most places.
Unless the pressure differential causes it to escape the moons gravity well it would probably stabilize at some point before dumping the whole atmosphere, right?
Like, I can only shoot two portals ever? Single-use would imply only being able to shoot one portal, but that doesn’t seem very useful.
Also wasn’t portal travel hella toxic? To the point that it killed Cave Johnson? I sure as hell won’t be using it to save time on my commute or anything.
I think I’d have to use it for violence, like sending a war criminal off a large building, but you couldn’t even really have fun with it. Everyone fantasizes about launching a billionaire straight into space, but you’d need multiple portals to get them into a situation where they’re building momentum first.
Also, if there’s no material emancipation grids, are the portals just there forever? The portal gun doesn’t have an off switch or a way to deactivate existing portals.
I didn’t think it was portal travel that killed him, it was breathing in the moon dust
Portal travel isn’t toxic. However, ground up moon rocks, which are an almost perfect portal conductor, are very bad for you.
“The bean counters told me we literally didn’t have $7 to buy moon rocks with, let alone $70 million. Bought 'em anyway! Ground them up, mixed them into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison!”
I’m deathly ill.
The dust is actually really sharp irl, afaik. It never has been ground down by weather or wind. So it actually is terrible for equipment and people, lol.
Like the silica storms on mars?
Or am I just misremembering from a sci-fi movie?
I would presume not since a storm would actually weather them down. The dust on the moon is like if sand was actually shards of glass.
I would think about buying a house out in the middle of nowhere and link up a closet with one in my house. Free extra square feet in my house.
Realistically, I’d link up my house with a family member’s house that we need to fly to.
Your houses would become an extremely valuable trade route.
Upon receiving it I would spend the first god knows how many hours trying to convince myself not to use it for sex things.
Beyond that, I think I’d definitely have to consider permanently renting a storage room in a country I want to visit often, and storing a portal in there.
I’ve always wanted to fuck my own ass.
Won’t work, as you thrust your ass will pull away. Only way I could think of is having the portals on platforms that would move with you.
Maybe it would just double the friction.
I appreciate your in depth analysis of this situation.
Uhh huh huh… you said depth.
Or potentially, you could just move one of the portals relative to the other.
Assuming there is only one, sell my single use for ludicrous amounts of money to some Corp that has merchandise to move.
Reverse-engineer it and build an unlimited-use portal gun, of course!
Take advantage of the free energy and build a power plant around it.
“You’re given a money printing machine. What do you do?” “Uh, print some really cool art?”
I would contact NASA and tell them to launch a robot to mars that can shoot it. I’d shoot it at the ground, then put it on the robot, then have a portal to mars.
Why put one on the robot? Am I missing something?
It’d be a waste of time to send a human to mars.
So if the robot shoots the portal on the ground and then itself, what good does a set of portals that are both on Mars do?
You shoot one portal on earth, then attach it to the robot.
Oh you mean the ground here. Lol it makes a lot more sense that way 😂
Just misinterpreted the wording. Carry on.
Watching the atmospheres of Earth and Mars try to reach equilibrium right when the portal opened up would be pretty interesting!
If you set one end up in an air-tight room with an airlock, it would be just like a door from a mars station.
For safety’s sake, it might be better to put that on a space station, though. Better to wreck Mars than equalize Earth and Mars.
I’m wondering if the people suggesting it for planetary travel have played Portal 2. It uh…it doesn’t end too well when they try.
Just put a door on it
Best use would be to get two steel plates or something, of apropriate dimensions for portals and shoot them there. Now I have two portals I can move as I please and where I please
In the game if a wall moved the portal would evaporate.
Except that one room.
Smartest answer by far.
How thick are the plates? Are they bendable? What happens if you bend one of the portals? What happens if an object goes through a bent portal?
o_O
I imagined it being thick enoug to not bend easily. But I guess if it could, either the portal would somehow prevent it or expire
One at the white house, one at the sun.
Be carefully secret service is now on to you. Maybe add /s so they know you’re joking and not intending any harm to dumb animals there
He meant to say “In portal”
Take a portal to a black hole, keep the portal open for funsies.
Save it. I don’t have anything currently that I would want to use a portal gun on given that I can only use it once. I might use it to get myself out of a sticky situation, or wait to see if I ever move into a relatively permanent home and I could make a portal from my house to another location for convenience.
So it’ll be just like the bag full of Maximum Heal potions when the credits roll, except I imagine you could pass it on to someone with a message not to wait for the perfect moment.
Maybe, but I don’t particularly feel the need to use a portal gun. If I never end up using it I don’t think I’d have particular regrets, but if I used it to save my ass during a high-stakes situation then I’d be quite glad.
