Heres an answer from minutephysics
Portal Paradox
Submitted 2 years ago by YoorWeb@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4689051c-72e9-406b-a436-4e0d03d9b1a7.jpeg
Comments
criitz@reddthat.com 2 years ago
Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I guess the question becomes if one portal is in a box, what happens to the box? Does the whole process just get blocked after the first few inches as the outside of the box collides with the inside; does it push itself open; do the portals just slice though and turn the pieces of box in the way into confetti?
ToxicWaste@lemm.ee 2 years ago
Just came here to check whether someone already posted the minutephysics video.
I think their explanation is rather good for passing portals through themselves. The box doesn’t add much to the equation: it is just physical objects smashed into eachother…
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 2 years ago
I love that video.
FartsWithAnAccent@kbin.social 2 years ago
Can't move portals.
Laticauda@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
Theoretically you can if they’re moving in a constant direction at a constant speed.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 years ago
That doesn’t work because gravity makes the game’s reference frame non-inertial. One of the big takeaways of general relativity is that idea a reference frame that’s inertial except for gravity is meaningless. Even ignoring relativity, everything is subjected to centripetal acceleration due to the Earth’s rotation (and the story canonically takes place on Earth).
I think the real answer is probably the least satisfying: the game’s physics just don’t correspond to real physics. Most portals appear to exist in a privileged reference frame that can be said to be motionless, but even that isn’t the real rule; the real rule is that portals can exist where the level designers want to allow them to exist. They try to make it feel like there’s a certain logic behind it, but they’ll bend the rules as necessary to make a cool puzzle work, and they keep the everything consistent within a single puzzle, but some subtleties of how portals appear to work are subject to change between puzzles.
MimicJar@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Except that one time in Portal 2.
When you cut the tubes to the big gas chambery thing.
ToxicWaste@lemm.ee 2 years ago
Toneswirly@lemmy.world 2 years ago
So how do you find a box that can fit a blue portal inside, but also itself fits through the orange portal; given that both portals are equal in size?
kebabslob@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
Turn it
Toneswirly@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Duh, that makes sense
_g_be@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Pivot
ReCursing@kbin.social 2 years ago
Move it really fast and let relativity do the rest
ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world 2 years ago
That’s only in direction of motion. The height still won’t fit. Of course, all hell breaks loose if they touch even if they don’t pass all the way through.
PunnyName@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Box moves 1 inch and the portal poofs due to an unstable surface.
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 2 years ago
This always bothers me when people argue what would happen if you pushed Portal portals into each other. You can’t. The moment the surface moves, it’s unstable and the portal pops. They’re quite specific about this in the games.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Portal surfaces can move. By nature everything is moving, we just happen to be in the same frame of reference.
Regardless, here is a video of a portal on a moving surface from portal 2. youtu.be/OrAHvenjZpA?si=VY5dRvUP8_LPgOPO (around the 1 minute mark)
Additionally shooting a portal on the moon also demonstrates that movement is allowed (since the moon is in a non synchronous orbit)
yesman@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Is their anything that can escape the “self referential” paradox?
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 years ago
Gödel and Russell would be very pleased. Or maybe dismayed. I’m not sure how they felt about their discoveries.
nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 years ago
It would repel or bounce the box as each portal acts as opposite like magnets.
veganpizza69@lemmy.world 2 years ago
it just turns the cosmos inside out like a
spoiler
sock
don’t do it.
oxideseven@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
I just assume as soon as one touches the other they fizzle out. I guess the top of the box gets cut a bit.
It’s like folding space. They basically occupy the same location. Its just two “sides” of a 2D plane. The portal can’t go into itself.
Worst case if it can it’s like bottle so they just flip positions and the whole thing reverses and the box just comes right out and the colors swap.
Nothing crazy.
SloganLessons@kbin.social 2 years ago
It will hit the lid
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Watch Rick and Morty season 5 episode 9
snooggums@kbin.social 2 years ago
No thanks.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Oh, okay. It has a scene where you have a portal go into a portal.
PlantDna@mander.xyz 2 years ago
Both portals should the same size. Fitting one in a box, means the box should be too big to fit in the other portal.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
They’re ellipses. You put one on its side and it fits through.
pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 2 years ago
If portals were circular, that would be true, but they’re oval.
nxdefiant@startrek.website 2 years ago
The box contains the oval, and by definition cannot fit inside the thing it contains.
mvirts@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Should have used circles, like a manhole cover
JakenVeina@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Portals can only move within planes parallel to each other.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 2 years ago
you open a rift to the astral plane.
exocrinous@lemm.ee 2 years ago
Portals cannot be moved. Try putting a portal on a moving surface in the game, it disappears.
Heavybell@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Explosion :P
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
Isn’t that how Stargates work?
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website 2 years ago
The real question is what would happen if you tossed a normal size gate into an Ori supergate that were connected.
We know they CAN connect, since that’s how they block the supergate from this side. And they never established whether a connected gate can move through space without losing a connection, just that you have to know where you are in space to dial out, and two gates can’t activate when close together.
fishos@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Didn’t they establish that a ship has to stop to connect? Wasn’t that a thing with Universe and the gate being ON the ship? So a gate can’t be actively moving while connected, I think. My memory is a bit fuzzy. And I feel like there’s still one time an exception is made, but it involves some one time use trickery.
MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.de 2 years ago
You cant move surfaces with Portals on them
sarmale@lemmy.zip 2 years ago
I think the box will pass thru
Stovetop@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I think you’d be able to get it in a little ways before top of the box pushes against its own lid, preventing it from going in any further. If the lid pops back open, then the top of the box will begin out of the box which will likely make it too wide to fit all the way through the wall portal.
But the rules of Portal is that the portals themselves break when moved by any substantial extent anyways so in the game it would just disable the portal altogether.
trainden@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 years ago
Except when the rules don’t apply
Amphobet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 years ago
It’s the scene with the lasers innit? So many “paradoxes” are solved with the answer of “portals cannot move relative to one another,” and then they do the bit with the laser. -_-
hikaru755@lemmy.world 2 years ago
The thing is, movement is relative. Everything on earth is constantly in motion if you’re observing from any other celestial body, so motion itself can’t be what breaks portals. What it might be, though, is acceleration. Those panels in the video seem to be moving at a constant speed, so aren’t experiencing any substantial acceleration, making a portal on them possible
Laticauda@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
They can move at a constant speed in a constant direction, but the acceleration would break them.
sploosh@lemmy.world 2 years ago
hikaru755@lemmy.world 2 years ago
You can pass two 2d ovals through each other in a 3D space no problem if they’re exactly the same size.