Would it work in the outside world, or is there something inside Aperture Science that causes it to work?

Don't forget their original purpose:

I honestly couldn't say. You could go back and forth - it might need a power source that ap sci can provide, but you could always acquire one outside. It might need certain surfaces that ap sci has readily but you could find some in the real world. It might kill you from the radiation or you could wear a lead suit.

It's still a research model in Portal, so there may well be a dead man's handle-type thing (like pinging something in AS and if it gets no reply within X seconds, self-destruct. Although Spigot 37's maps kinda shoot this down) to stop people (Black Mesa in particular) stealing it and reverse-engineering it.

Then again, the labs in Portal 2 look pretty busted. I'd doubt the pinged device could have survived for that long, yet the portal gun works perfectly.

Pilchard123 wrote:
Although Spigot 37's maps kinda shoot this down)

...Custom maps are never cannon. Ever. So while Spigot 37 does destroy your idea, that doesn't really matter because in the portal universe, that never actually happened. Besides, black mesa is too preoccupied to care about the portal gun.

hanging_rope wrote:
Pilchard123 wrote:

Although Spigot 37's maps kinda shoot this down)

...Custom maps are never cannon. Ever. So while Spigot 37 does destroy your idea, that doesn't really matter because in the portal universe, that never actually happened. Besides, black mesa is too preoccupied to care about the portal gun.

Actually, AP don't know about the incident in the "outside". They don't know about the black mesa incident.

Based on what she says at the end of the game, GLaDOS probably has some idea. Not the details and not who caused it, but definitely that there is some sort of cataclysm going on.

"I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and even I don't know what's going on out there." IIRC

Nightgunner5 wrote:
"I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and even I don't know what's going on out there." IIRC

EXACTLY!

SL89 wrote:
Nightgunner5 wrote:

"I have an infinite capacity for knowledge and even I don't know what's going on out there." IIRC

EXACTLY!

There's a big difference between hearing about events and knowing enough to put them together. For instance, imagine I'm sitting in my house and suddenly my kitchen window is blown in by an explosion. Out another window, I hear someone yelling "The Pineapple is loose! The Pineapple is loose!" And finally, I hear the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" booming at 125dB from my basement.

Now, I certainly know about the events that I can sense. However I have absolutely no clue as to what is actually going on--i.e. what is causing those three events.

So, in short, GLaDOS knew that apocalyptic events were occurring outside. However, she didn't know the cause or the root of the events.

Nightgunner5 wrote:
Would it work in the outside world, or is there something inside Aperture Science that causes it to work?

As far as I can tell, portals can be placed on 3 surfaces:
Concrete
Conversion Gel (or the moon)
and certain types of tile (ie; during portal 1 escape)

this applies outside of the facility as well. I know this thanks to the fact that Chell was able to shoot a portal on the moon

Keep in mind what the conversion gel was made out of too.

There is a bit of insight as to why the portal gun was never released outside the lab within the game. I don't think there is anything specific that would prevent it from working beyond what yinyangyan points out. That means the uses are limited in an organic world. In the early 1950s area in test shaft 09, you see a poster showing that the test shaft is meant for people testing a very early version of the portal gun. Cave Johnson also comments a little later that he will "release it when it is good and ready". My own thinking is that Aperture Science had a couple of these huge scientific leaps that simply never got released due to Johnson being a massive perfectionist. By the time he died, GLaDOS was coming online, caused problems and was testing for the sake of testing, rather than trying to release the portal gun to the world. In a sense, Portal is actually making fun of developers like themselves, 3D Realms and Blizzard.

I read in The Final Hours of Portal 2 that they were going to have puzzles where you have to bring canisters of antimatter from Point A to Point B without breaking it or letting it touch the floor. And the word "quantum" gets thrown around a lot in-game when talking about the portal gun, perhaps Aperture has an antimatter power generator and they use quantum entanglement (simple english wikipedia linked because it has a less complex explanation of what QE is) to bring some of that power to the portal gun?

Yeah, I heard and read "Quantum" a few times in Portal 2.
Points to be made:

1: The reason why the Portal Gun wasn't released is because GLaDOS killed everyone and GLaDOS is obsessed with product testing so she won't think about releasing it.

2: The only surface that I've seen that doesn't like portals is Metal. There could be more surfaces that could or couldn't work.

3: There isn't any inside resource keeping the Portal Gun functioning. (As MaxPM said)

MasterLagger wrote:
2: The only surface that I've seen that doesn't like portals is Metal. There could be more surfaces that could or couldn't work.

Like glass, fluids...

MasterLagger wrote:
2: The only surface that I've seen that doesn't like portals is Metal.

or wood or glass...

Well, before Portal 2 it wasn't so obvious, but after completing Portal2's single mode: Chell placed a portal in the moon at the end scenes of Portal 2; this means that, at least 1 of the portals can be placed outside... though still the other was placed inside AS... hmmm... interesting point of view...

DaMaGepy wrote:
MasterLagger wrote:

2: The only surface that I've seen that doesn't like portals is Metal.

or wood or glass...

I can remember that you can put a portal on a wooden surface. Not many maps use this, though, but I can recall one map for Portal 1 which was all about flinging under the sky and there were wooden surfaces everywhere.

I'll admit that I never shot a portal at glass.

Actually there is one more surface that works that wasn't added: Brick Walls. In the 1950's Aperture area in Portal 2 there are some doorways that have been sealed off with a brick wall painted white. I don't think it was Conversion Gel on the door because they were in the areas before the Conversion Gel was introduced. Anyone else recall seeing those?