Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out
E: I was just quoting GladOS… Not really thinking about the actual physics!
Yeah but the thing isn’t moving the portal is, and the energy has to come from somewhere if the portal makes the thing go fast.
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.
No moving objects are entering… lol
Then they can’t enter at all and have to be flattened by the portal, because they must have motion too exit the other portal
It needs to be 2. Otherwise all the people will materialize inside eachother. In fact, everyone will be deposited onto the 2-dimensional pane of the blue portal itself, like an infinitely thing coat of paint, absolutely smearing them.
Think about it. As your fingertips enter the orange portal, they materialize at the entrance of the blue portal. Then your wrist enters the orange portal, where does it materialize at the blue portal?
- If your fingers shift to make room, then that has imparted momentum and it’s option B.
- If you continue to materialize on the other side of the portal like a mirror image, then for all intents and purposes the blue portal is also moving at the same speed as the orange portal, even if orange ring appears still.
- If your fingertips don’t have momentum and your wrist materializes at the portal, then your wrist is occupying the same space as your fingertips. Congratulations, you’re now a paste.
For whatever reason I feel more willing to break conservation of momentum than I am to
Yeah I really think you’ve misunderstood some things. An infinitely thin coat of paint? Are you familiar with the mechanics of the Portal games?
It would be like dropping a hula hoop over a basketball. Regardless of how fast the hoop falls, the basketball still just sits there.
That is assuming both portals have speed. If the other portal was on the back of the train it would be like a hula hoop but if the other one is stationary you have the people going in really fast and coming out of the stationary portal at that speed.
Why?
Where does the energy even come from?
A hole/portal doesn’t create or generate energy it just passes things through.
Just think of it as a hole across space because that is exactly what a portal is.
It’s already established in Portal that energy can be created by changing elevation with portals. If the other portal is on the back of the train, you’d just fall out because you’d be shooting backwards at a speed that cancels out the speed of the back portal. If that portal were just sitting stationary you’d have to fly out at the speed you went in. The puzzle comes from people trying to apply ordinary physics to something that deliberately breaks them.
No energy is every transferred as a result of a portal
You fly in the air if you drop in one because you are carrying momentum downwards that suddenly translates to upwards
You are sat in the floor, a portal flies towards you. You are sat at the floor at the end, you had no momentum going in and no momentum going out
Exactly how fast do you think the people exit that portal? Train speed, less than train speed? What slows them down after they exit? If you blocked the stationary portal would you get hit by the people? If so, what force would cause that?
The people may be stationary relative to the area outside the first portal, but they already have velocity relative to the world outside the exit even before they go through
If there were no people on the track and you blocked the stationary portal, would you feel wind on your face?
Zero fast. There is no energy being transferred to the people, they would plop out and push into each other as they are forced through.
If you blocked the stationary portal then the portal moving would essentially just be a wall, no one would go though.
This whole relative thing makes no sense, energy isn’t just created because it’s observed by someone else, the door is moving not the people so them sitting there won’t suddenly be catapulted going through a moving portal, where is that energy created?
Your wind question is confusing.