I got this image shortly after portal was released. I think it sums up the eating yourself idea pretty well:

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/8612/portalllxf0.png

As far as the portal under the ocean concept, I'm actually hoping for dynamic fluid portalability being in the next incarnation of portal. Whenvever that is.

As for how high the chute of water would be, if the portal A was above sea level, and portal B was at the bottom of the ocean... Well, that would depend on how far down the bottom of the ocean is where the portal B is.

If it's 500 meters down, i'd think the gyser of water coming out portal A, would be equal or a little less than to the depth of portal A.

Of course, then we have to make the assumption that if you place a portal underwater, that the water would go through the portal at all.
I only say this, because i'm a geek, and watch a lot of stargate.
Not that it's nessesarily a way of proving or disproving anything, Stargate SG-1, Season 4, episode 7 (Watergate) shows them going to a world where the gate is underwater. They explain that when a constant pressure is being exerted at the event horrizon, that it would ignore that. That way, it prevents an atmosphere from leaking into space, or a world being flooded.

I would think the Apature scientists would also come to this conclusion. However, as I mentioned this isn't stargate. The rules may or may not be the same.

The Answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxBucbp53qM

Ryanocerous wrote:
The Answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxBucbp53qM

@ the character model

Lorithad wrote:
As for how high the chute of water would be, if the portal A was above sea level, and portal B was at the bottom of the ocean... Well, that would depend on how far down the bottom of the ocean is where the portal B is.

If it's 500 meters down, i'd think the gyser of water coming out portal A, would be equal or a little less than to the depth of portal A.

its not quite that simple. if the portal was 10 miles across then the fountain would only be small (height wise) but if the portal was reduced to only the size of a coin then the fountain would be HUGE

On the stargate note - I can think we can rule out portals working like that due to the fact they don't have a membrain across them, they are just 'gaps'

thadiusdean wrote:
However, whether or not portals can be moved relative to each other is the question.

They can, actually. Just think small, to molecular level. Unless the temperature is absolute zero, all molecules will vibrate and move slightly. Thereby moving the portal.

I was actually going to write a novella for NaNoWriMo a couple of years back involving portals as a fixed pair of objects (not something shot from a gun). In that world, it was illegal to smuggle foreign portals into cities/countries because of the potential to throw the other end into the ocean.

Sadly, I never finished it.

espen180 wrote:
They can, actually. Just think small, to molecular level. Unless the temperature is absolute zero, all molecules will vibrate and move slightly. Thereby moving the portal.

That's a very good point. I think we need to distinguish whether or not we're talking about the portals in the game (as Lorithad seems to be interpreting it) or whether we're hypothesizing about the properties of portals were they to occur in the real world (as you are.)

Anyone seriously interested in this might also want to dig up a copy of "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" by Larry Niven. It's an essay collected in All the Myriad Ways which attacks teleportation in many different aspects, the most rigorous being with a system with an "entrance" and an "exit" that mirrors the circumstances of Portal very closely.

He comes to some very interesting conclusions. For example, if you dropped anything into an infinite portal series (ex a portal on the roof and floor that line up), what you end up with is something that rapidly reaches terminal velocity. Remove the air and it continues to accelerate until it reaches a considerable fraction of the speed of light and begins to gain mass that eventually becomes gravitationally significant and throws the Earth out of rotation.

Of course, the only place this could be carried out would be the North or South Pole, because otherwise whatever was passing between portals would drift due to the Coriolis Effect and there would be no way to keep it going into the transmitter.

(Due to relativtity, nothing can travel at the speed of light. As an object accelerates closer to the speed of light, it gains more mass. As a result, a constant force could never accelerate an object to light speed. Basically, momentum is velocity times mass. So to have a force (e.x. gravity) acting on an object, therefore increasing its momentum, and if velocity can't reach the speed of light, then mass has to be the thing that increase.)

Hober wrote:
(Due to relativtity, nothing can travel at the speed of light. As an object accelerates closer to the speed of light, it gains more mass. )

Going to stop you there, you're close. Relativity says that nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of light.

Lorithad wrote:
I got this image shortly after portal was released. I think it sums up the eating yourself idea pretty well:
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/8612/portalllxf0.png

As far as the portal under the ocean concept, I'm actually hoping for dynamic fluid portalability being in the next incarnation of portal. Whenvever that is.

As for how high the chute of water would be, if the portal A was above sea level, and portal B was at the bottom of the ocean... Well, that would depend on how far down the bottom of the ocean is where the portal B is.

If it's 500 meters down, i'd think the gyser of water coming out portal A, would be equal or a little less than to the depth of portal A.

Of course, then we have to make the assumption that if you place a portal underwater, that the water would go through the portal at all.
I only say this, because i'm a geek, and watch a lot of stargate.
Not that it's nessesarily a way of proving or disproving anything, Stargate SG-1, Season 4, episode 7 (Watergate) shows them going to a world where the gate is underwater. They explain that when a constant pressure is being exerted at the event horrizon, that it would ignore that. That way, it prevents an atmosphere from leaking into space, or a world being flooded.

I would think the Apature scientists would also come to this conclusion. However, as I mentioned this isn't stargate. The rules may or may not be the same.

Exactly, and the image does a good job to show that off, poor little guy.

Shmitz wrote:
I was actually going to write a novella for NaNoWriMo a couple of years back involving portals as a fixed pair of objects (not something shot from a gun). In that world, it was illegal to smuggle foreign portals into cities/countries because of the potential to throw the other end into the ocean.

Sadly, I never finished it.

Hahaha wut??? A Soap Opera? With Portals?

msleeper wrote:
Going to stop you there, you're close. Relativity says that nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of light.

Easy there killer. That's what we call nitpicking.

If I understand what you're trying to say, you're attempting to draw a line between traveling faster and traveling at c. Not only is this immaterial to the matter at hand, I'm not convinced your conclusion is entirely true. I can't find any statements either way off hand.

Nice try, though.

Wow, this thread has a lot to think about.

This isn't what I actually think would happen, but its fun to think it out.

OK, so assuming that one portal can go through another, if I place a portal on the wall in front of me and another portal of the same size on my own chest:
I would place one hand at the top of the wall portal and the other hand at the bottom and start to pull myself sideways through the wall portal out of my own chest. So now I have my head through the wall portal and I'm looking out of my chest sideways and then I see my own head going into the wall portal. Then I look back through the portal on my chest and I see another of my own head coming out of my chest. This is truly disconcerting because I can reach for any of the three heads and each time I feel my own hand touching my head. Lets see what happens next. I pull myself through even farther and I have more and more of me coming out of my chest, but it doesn't seem to effect my balance. Then I get so far in that I have to squirm into a weird position to try and get my regular body and the head and torso coming out of my chest through the wall portal. This is difficult because every time I move my body to a better position the head and torso mimics it and so I have a hard time finding the right angle that lets both of me fit through at the same time. Finally I get the right angle and I try to force myself with my head and torso through the wall portal and then I realize that if I pull the me that's coming out of my chest through the wall portal again then I won't have a chest to come out of in the room that I started in. Maybe I have to get the right angle so that the me coming out of my chest is staying in the original room no matter how far the rest of me is through the wall portal. Maybe this would actually work better if I went in feet first.

If this works I'm going to set up an infinite loop and then shoot the ceiling portal onto my chest after reaching terminal velocity!
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
If I actually tried that and didn't die then I'd definitely get all scraped up by skidding across the floor. OUCH!

msleeper wrote:
Going to stop you there, you're close. Relativity says that nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of light.

Going to stop you there. What you're saying doesn't make sense. Acceleration and velocity does not share the same units and as such you cannot say that nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of something other. It's apples and oranges.

Footnote: Acceleration is measured as distance per time per time (SI unit m/s^2) where as velocity is measured as distance per time (SI unit m/s).

Welcome to the nerdiest topic in the known universe.

lol I forgot I posted in this thread.

Player1 wrote:
Going to stop you there. What you're saying doesn't make sense. Acceleration and velocity does not share the same units and as such you cannot say that nothing can accelerate faster than the speed of something other. It's apples and oranges.

This is clearly correct, and very perspicuously stated. You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.

As to the matter under discussion, perhaps I can elucidate. The Theory of General Relativity states that no mass can be accelerated to a speed beyond that of light because it would require an infinite amount of energy, which the universe does not contain.

The reason is this. Matter and energy are opposite sides of the same coin. One can be converted to another, but neither matter nor energy is ever created or destroyed.

As matter accelerates to near-lightspeed, it has more energy. That is essentially what acceleration is: taking energy from one system and applying it to another in order to produce a change in velocity. (This could be potential-to-kinetic or kenetic-to-kenetic transfer, doesn't matter -- in each case energy is added to the system from outside of it.) As it takes on more energy, it becomes more massive. The total amount of mass/energy in the system is increasing, but please note that it is not being created. That mass/energy is being added to the system from without (that is, from the surrounding universe). As it becomes more massive, it requires exponentially more energy in order to accelerate any further.

The amount of energy required approaches an asymptote at infinity. Since the universe does not contain infinite matter/energy, no further acceleration is possible, and the lightspeed barrier remains unbroken.

Est-ce que c'est clair?

Of course you could always find something that is faster than light and travel at it's speed, or you could slip into subspace, or just bend space-time.

Among other things.

taco wrote:
Of course you could always find something that is faster than light and travel at it's speed, or you could slip into subspace, or just bend space-time.

The latter two, yes, true. (Supposing that by "subspace" you mean "extra dimension(s) other than those observable in our universe.")

The first part is flawed in at least two ways. How does "finding something that is faster than light" -- an impossible supposition to begin with, as I have just explained -- mean that you could magically "travel at its speed"? Makes no sense.

Tachyons in special relativity for instance, or anything with a negative mass.