Except in that scenario both portals are moving if they act like a moving hole. Imagine a hula hoop, except it’s 2 portals connected back to back. If I passed a hula hoop over you, you’d be going into the bottom at the same velocity that you are coming out the top, therefore momentum is preserved. You’re moving at the exact same velocity in reference to both of the portals
Unfortunately, this isn’t testable in Portal because portals can’t be affixed to moving surfaces.
I would assume the people just plop out fine since they would retain their momentum (which is nil), and the portal’s own momentum wouldn’t be applied to them. But God damn it I wish I could just make a Portal map with a moving portal and see.
If we assume local relativity, their momentum, which would then be relative to the orange portal (the one which they will interact with), wouldn’t be “nil”. It is pretty clear to me that both portals have different relativities, and therefore, would clearly lead to case B.
Think of a portal like a doorway or just a frame of one. Stepping through it seamlessly puts you on the other side. If you were standing still, and the door went around you, would any force be exerted upon you, causing you to move? That’s why I think it would be A. Nothing is applying any force to you, you’re just basically teleporting. You may not even actually fully emerge from the portal, being trapped on the threshold, since no force is moving you beyond the point where the two ends meet.
Then I could imagine a sport where you have a racquet with a portal on it, and you swipe at a suspended ball, with a target somewhere beyond the other portal.
Considering that portals are quite literally linked in a spatial manner, it would make sense that they physically cannot move independantly. Moving the orange portal would also move the blue portal. Or from a different perspective: the portals are always fixed in space, but their surrounds can move.
But that does not make the question shown here untestable. It just means the output portal will have a velocity of it’s own.
How to test: place 2 portals next to each other on a wall. Then apply propulsion gel in front of the orange portal. And finally move yourself at high speed through the orange portal.
If your speed is unchanged after exiting the blue portal, but your velocity has been inverted with respect to the direction that the wall is facing, we can conclude option B must hold.
Trouble is even if you could, all that would show is what would happen under the developer’s implementation of the concept in their simulation, not what would happen if portals were real and you tried this which is really the spirit of the question.
EDIT: Actually mate, if you want to know what the game does with it, looks like a few people actually managed to experiment with this www.youtube.com/watch?v=S85nudR6D-Y ages back. Disappointing result, again it just shows what the game would do though.
Here’s how I always phase it. Imagine you have a shovel and you are using that shovel to flick some dog shit into your neighbours garden.
With no portal the shit hits the shovel and you flick it, transfering the speed of the shovel into the turds. You stop the shovel and the turds fly away.
Now imagine the shovel has a big rusty hole in it. So it’s like a n shape. No portal yet. You go to flick the dog dumps but you just pass straight over them with the hole and the dumps go nowhere. The dumps have gained no momentum because nothing touched them and transferred that to them.
Now put a portal on the end of the shovel. As you sweep it over the cack has anything touched them? Has any object transferred it’s momentum to the dog eggs? No, so the dumps just gently tumble out of the other side of the portal.
But even in the image example, how would that work? The people have no momentum, they wouldn’t flop out, just fall back through, and then stay half in half not. According to you, air resistance wouldn’t even push them out because as soon as it goes through the portal the air is not moving relative to the people. I think your blatant lack of respect for relativity is unnerving and gets super confusing very quickly.
Imagine there being 2 portals on the shovel one on the front and one on the back Whatever passes through remains in the same place. THIS is the actual analoge for the rusty hole. Entering the first portal the shit gains the speed of the shovel but since the exit portal is also traveling with the same speed but facing the opposite direction, it effectively cancels out the previous speed gain. Imagine it like the first portal adding one unit of speed to it and the exit one adding minus one unit of speed because of the opposite direction.
So now with one portal on the shovel and the other somewhere on a wall the shit gets accelerated and you will feel a force acting on the shovel that decelerates it’s swing.
Velocity is relative and this is why it works. If velocity wasn’t relative then Einstein would be wrong and many of the effects we see in the real world could never happen.
I didn’t have a proper argument to begin with dude. It’s a meme about video game concepts and I’m talking about flicking shite with a shovel. What made you think this was a serious debate?
I think that’s a very strong argument and a great metaphor, but you forget relativity.
All reference frames are valid - you could say the Earth and the people are moving and the train is stationary, you could say the train is moving and the earth and people are stationary, or you could say they each have a vector moving around the sun or anything else
But when you travel through a portal, the only valid reference frames are you and the entry portal. Your momentum relative to the Earth doesn’t matter - why would it? You can open a portal to the moon and jump through, and we see momentum is preserved. The Earth isn’t a special reference frame, it’s just the most noticeable one.
So let’s pick the reference frame of someone on the track. Let’s look through the portal and say there’s a sign on the other side - as it approaches, you’d see a sign approaching you through the portal. Relative to you, through the portal the sign is moving at 30mph. The portal passes over you - you haven’t moved, but you enter a new reference frame, a frame in which the Earth and everything on it is moving at 30mph
As the people on the track are moving at an accelerated speed of 0 m/s, normally a train would apply the full force of the train moving to the meat bags human ethic problems on the tracks.
As newton's first law states F = m*a, or Force = Mass * acceleration
F = x * 0 = 0 N of force
thus, they could just plop out as if falling after having a chair removed.
But how would the objects get on the other side then? The receiving side isn’t moving, so the objects essentially need to be pushed through the portal at the speed at which the train is moving, resulting in B. The only way A could work would be both portals moving at the same relative speed.
But with a hula hoop, both sides of the “portal” are moving at the same speed, so the momentum of the subject is unchanged. That’s not the case presented in this post
Except the momentum changes with portals most of the time anyway. Momentum is a vector, not just a scalar, meaning momentum has both a scalar and a direction component. And that direction component usually must be conserved as well. But portals change the direction of momentum all the time relative to the orientation of the entering and exiting portals. If the direction of the momentum of the object is relative to the orientation of the portal, then it makes as much sense that the scalar of the momentum would be relative to the velocity of the portal as well.
Energy is not conserved either, which is why the infinite falling box arrangement means the box keeps accelerating downwards gaining kinetic energy even though it started out with a much smaller, finite potential energy. Portals and conservation do not mix well.
Suppose the blue portal is instead aligned parallel to and facing the ground. Maybe a 18" off the ground, a little higher than a person is wide. Additionally, the person is standing upright on the track.
In the above scenario, with the ground rushing at the person, does it suddenly “stop,” with the person gently falling onto the ground? This is the same problem, I suppose, but from a different perspective.
Now, what if that blue portal is instead only 6" off the ground? Is the person embedded in the ground, or does the universe crash?
I think you would collide with the ground like you were falling face-down, and is there isn’t room you’ll simply remain half-in half-out. At that point, your front half is still relative to the ground, but the back half is moving with the train, that way your velocity is zero in relation to both portals.
Don’t even start with that “I read that as” “the hero we need” or any other reddit catchphrase bullshit. Go back to reddit if you are going to use those annoying af sayings. We don’t need it here.
The energy would come from the trolley. The people would launch out at approximately the same speed as the trolley interacts with them and the trolley would slow down in response to how much kinetic energy was transferred to the people.
This is correct. The motion of the people is relative to the Portal. It doesn’t matter if the trolley is accelerating the Portal towards them or something is accelerating them towards the Portal. Therefore they accelerate out of the other side with some retained momentum. Technically it probably resembles something in between pictures A and B.
This reminds me of the experiment about whether an airplane could take off from a treadmill.
Only if you assume the people will experience friction against the portal.
If they would accelerate to the speed of the train within the time it takes them to go through it, they’d experience very high pressure change against the due to one part of body accelerating faster than the other. This would cause the bodies to explode out the portal
Yes, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, the part of the body exiting the portal will experience inertia as it enters into the space outside the second portal and it will be forcefully pushed by the next part of the body heading into the first portal and thus imparting momentum to the parts ahead.
If this momentum has to be taken from anywhere its from the portal itself and by extension the train.
Has the trolley come to a complete halt, or even showed down? If not, then either no energy has been transferred to the people and they just flop out, or we’ve just invented perpetual motion.
I think it has to be A. You figure that if it were B, the people on the track would suddenly be traveling at a high velocity, but the train’s velocity wouldn’t be impacted at all, since there was no impact between the train and the people. Wouldn’t this mean that the portal had created energy, which is impossible?
This is how I always look at it. The portals don’t actually move what is behind them, they are just a portal to that place, so there is no momentum to impart
I mentioned this elsewhere but this line of reasoning may have a huge flaw, and that flaw is that energy has to be spent to maintain the portals operation. We do not currently know what the relationship is between the amount of mass that is moved through a portal and how much energy it takes to keep the portal operational.
So when you take into account the total entropy of the system you also have to include the entropy of the earth and the entropy of the power systems that maintain the portals.
As I said earlier, if you were to put a magnet inside of a vacuum tube that was welded to itself through the portal and then wrapped coils around that tube to drain the electromagnetic energy from the falling magnet, the energy that you were extracting from the system would come from either converting the mass of the planet into energy or it would be a total net loss as the amount of energy needed to maintain the portal would be greater than any amount of energy you could extract from the system no matter how fast the magnet inside of it was moving or how perfectly configured your coils were.
After all, as the magnet approaches the speed of light eventually its mass would be come equal to or greater than the mass of the planet, and that would cause the portal to lift the Earth towards itself.
However, coils on electromagnetics exert electromotive braking Force, and when you account for e that Force you can prevent the magnet from reaching luminal speeds, but I still don't think you're going to have an over-unity device.
No way, the portal displaces space meaning it just allows gravity to work unimpeded adding more kinetic energy to the object. The potential energy during a “falling cycle” is infinite but infinitely removed when the spacial disruption is broken.
By moving an object laterally into the portal falling loop, you would do no work and increase the potential energy of the object to effectively infinity. You would be creating energy.
I wouldn’t consider that the portal, itself, imparting the energy, though. It’s just facilitating an environment where an object can fall infinitely. The portal is outputting the same momentum that is inputted to it. The actual increase of energy happens while the object is falling between the portals.
The portal teleports an object to a position in space with high potential energy, while apparently spending no energy of its own. This action creates energy.
Think of a portal as a door, if someone brings an open door up to you (idk maybe it’s on wheels or something) and you go through it, you don’t suddenly fly through the frame.
If the door is moving 1 meter per second, you are relatively moving 1 m/s towards the door even if you are stationary on the ground. You pass and, although you are still stationary to the ground, you are still moving 1 m/s in the same direction relative to the door. The door is the frame of reference, not the ground.
But that would signify there is an impact? And that you are crashing at 1m/s, if you don’t enter in contact? If I’m in my house, I am not moving at 130km/h from the highway near my house?
If you are looking at someone through the portal, they will appear to be standing on a parade float. They are standing still on a surface, but that surface is coming at you.
You won’t feel any change in momentum as the portal passes around you, but the ground will be suddenly moving under you.
Yes but relative to you the door is moving away and you’re stationary. In this example of the portal coming towards you, therefore upon paasing through the other side of the frame, the other portal, is moving away from you.
In this diagram, it’s assumed that the person is the frame of reference, therefore I believe A to be the correct outcome.
Another violation is that they conserve speed, not velocity. Put 2 portals 90° apart. Travel into the first perpendicular to the surface. You’ll exit the second perpendicular to its surface. That means you accelerated to change direction, which takes energy. Portals don’t conserve momentum or energy.
The matter has to move through the portal at the speed of the train, and it won’t suddenly lose all momentum when it’s done being pushed through. B imo.
In classical physics you would be right, but in modern physics there is no standard frame of reference. It’s equally correct to think that the people are still and portal is moving as it is to think that portal is still and people go in it immn fast speed.
Regardless, people and portal have large speed difference going in, so there will be large speed difference going out.
I’ve seen this debate about the outcome of the moving portal. I’m pretty certain that because of inertia, and the people aren’t moving, they will just plop out the other side. Think of it like moving a hoola hoop through the people. That’s basically what the portal is.
The hoola hoop has inertia and is moving, but it doesn’t actually come in contact with the people, so it passes right around them. There’s no way for the people to have instant acceleration because the porta did, otherwise it’d be like them hitting a brick wall and they would probably explode
Fully disagree on concept. The thing with the portal is solid matter moves through at a constant rate.
If you have a portal moving towards you, at say 2 MPH and you are holding your arm out, From the other side of the portal, they would see your arm coming out at 2mph. Any other result would involve compressing or stretching your arm.
Lets say further here. a man dangling his legs off the back of a moving cart. Man is moving 20mph forward, portal trolley is chasing him at 22MPH. As his feet pass through the portal, they would start coming out the other end of the portal at 2mph.
As a result I concur that the only logical exiting of a portal. |travler velocity - Entry portal velocity| + exit portal velocity = objects exit velocity.
Now the real physics debate would be what happens if 2 portals were moving forward and someone was in the path of one. The only logical conclusion that fits my mind there, is instant compression
Yeah, the imparted momentum has to be something like the averaged vector between the two, which does cause compression if you enter a pair of portals both moving your direction.
Momentum is relative.
If you say the portal is stationary, and the person is moving then B makes sense. However, this is just changing the frame of reference from following the tram to following the person.
Changing the frame of reference (from tram to person, or from person to tram) doesn’t change the velocity/momentum/energy (it’s just the person is moving towards the tram or the tram is moving towards the person).
The acceleration the person would experience is likely similar to if the person just gets hit by the tram, however in Portals canon it is nonexistent.
Because, as you say, the person is accelerated. However, the acceleration when using the tram as the frame of reference is still 0 when you account for the rules of physics a portal would break. Even changing the direction of travel would be acceleration.
Like, if the in-portal and the out-portal were back-to-back where there was absolutely 0 distance between them, anything passing through the portal would experience 0 acceleration - no change in direction, it might as well be a standard hoola-hoop.
If the portals were side-by-side facing the same direction, anything passing through the portal would experience twice the acceleration of running into a wall - like bouncing a ball off a wall. Once going into the portal (forward motion) and once coming back (backwards motion), because the object has to completely reverse it’s velocity.
And considering that things going into portals do not get damaged (and chel doesn’t lose health) it’s fair to consider that objects observe 0 acceleration.
But portals moving is outside of the Portals canon because it highlights that an object experiences acceleration when passing through a portal. And the acceleration is (or is near) instantaneous. And the object does not suffer from this.
The problem with your hoola hoop example is that it keeps moving after you go through it so that you have the same relative velocity. However, in the portal example, the exit portal is stationary, so in order to stay the same relative velocity to it when you exit is to speed up yourself, as in B.
But the orange portal is moving. The game code works more like A (it bugs out and the object bounces off the portal surface, but it uses a world-fixed coordinate frame that would match A for behavior). A (Newtonian) relativistic coordinate system would match B. For everything with non-moving portals A & B are equivalent.
Yeah, most game engines like Portal’s uses absolute speed relative to the coordinate system (which doesn’t change when the coordinate values change), in addition Portal technically doesn’t actually implement “wormhole type” portals and instead superimpose a clone of the polygons near both portals behind the other (to preserve expected object collision behavior around the portal) plus doing tricks with virtual cameras, so if you fixed the bugs with moving portals then it would be A.
But if you implemented proper relativistic physics with proper wormhole type portals you’d get B.
The game code works more like A (it bugs out and the object bounces off the portal surface, but it uses a world-fixed coordinate frame that would match A for behavior).
Ah, I see what you are saying. They apply the velocity of the object again after teleporting rather than the difference between the velocities of the portal and the object. Thus the velocity of the train would be ignored. Well, B is wrong simply because the game engine doesn’t rotate characters in the teleport because that would ruin character physics. So B is wrong twice.
The train is not moving. The rest of the world is moving underneath it. Therefore, by the principle of “speedy thing go in, speedy thing come out”, the people will be launched.
Yes, that is called running extra fast. And then falling, with the same momentum. Unless there are two grounds, with different relativities. Like with a treadmill: you run relatively to the treadmill, but you are stationary relatively to the ground under it, because you run at exactly the same speed as the treadmill moves in the other way (hopefully for you…).
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