Make a drain hole at the bottom of a lake, that comes out above it. Put in a water wheel, free energy.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Asklemmy
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Never thought about it before, but I guess this makes portal guns impossible, since scenarios like this break conservation of energy.
But you know itβs possible from firsthand experience. Whomsthβnβt reached terminal velocity by shooting the ceiling & floor and jumping in?
Well, the videogame kind are definitely impossible, but if the gravitational field could travel through the portal then it would probably still conserve energy. The gravitational interactions around vertical portals would be exceptionally weird. If they were close enough, you'd probably experience weightlessness while in between them, but I can't wrap my head around what would happen as they move further apart. That makes me hope someone tries to make a mod that models that in Portal...
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Maybe conservation of energy is wrong.
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I mean, genuinely, this would be infinite energy. I was thinking of somehow using magnets and induction to generate power, but it would be excessively high frequency and would be antithetical to multi-phase power.
that looks just like me lol
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Moon.
How fast would this suck up all of our atmosphere? Hours? Days?
Probably years, if not more. XKCD's "What If?" has a nice explanation on a similar question, but in that case it was a portal at the bottom of the mariana trench and the question was about draining the oceans. The answer is that you probably wouldn't notice in all your lifetime.
I remember that video, but Iβm not sure it is comparable β air might flow faster than water [citation needed] and there might be less of it [citation needed].
I'm pretty sure there is much more air. At least volume wise. Sphere volume goes up by radius cubed.
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One at the white house, one at the sun.
Be carefully secret service is now on to you. Maybe add /s so they know you're joking and not intending any harm to dumb animals there
He meant to say "In portal"
I'm going to be really sad when I fire my first shot from my single use portal gun only to find out the surface needed to be coated with moon dust.
Iβve always wanted to fuck my own ass.
Won't work, as you thrust your ass will pull away. Only way I could think of is having the portals on platforms that would move with you.
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fuck it up and waste the first shot on a non-portal supporting surface
Put the other portal in a geostationary space station: free access to orbit.
The single most (energy) expensive thing humans do is put things in orbit.
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Take advantage of the free energy and build a power plant around it.
"You're given a money printing machine. What do you do?" "Uh, print some really cool art?"
Like, I can only shoot two portals ever? Single-use would imply only being able to shoot one portal, but that doesn't seem very useful.
Also wasn't portal travel hella toxic? To the point that it killed Cave Johnson? I sure as hell won't be using it to save time on my commute or anything.
I think I'd have to use it for violence, like sending a war criminal off a large building, but you couldn't even really have fun with it. Everyone fantasizes about launching a billionaire straight into space, but you'd need multiple portals to get them into a situation where they're building momentum first.
Also, if there's no material emancipation grids, are the portals just there forever? The portal gun doesn't have an off switch or a way to deactivate existing portals.
Portal travel isn't toxic. However, ground up moon rocks, which are an almost perfect portal conductor, are very bad for you.
"The bean counters told me we literally didn't have $7 to buy moon rocks with, let alone $70 million. Bought 'em anyway! Ground them up, mixed them into a gel. And guess what? Ground up moon rocks are pure poison!"
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The dust is actually really sharp irl, afaik. It never has been ground down by weather or wind. So it actually is terrible for equipment and people, lol.
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I didn't think it was portal travel that killed him, it was breathing in the moon dust
I would think about buying a house out in the middle of nowhere and link up a closet with one in my house. Free extra square feet in my house.
Realistically, I'd link up my house with a family member's house that we need to fly to.
Your houses would become an extremely valuable trade route.
- But two sheets of plywood
- Portal on each
- ???
- Profit
Best use would be to get two steel plates or something, of apropriate dimensions for portals and shoot them there. Now I have two portals I can move as I please and where I please
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One on my butt, one in the toilet, never need to poop again!
Bonus points if someone finds the toilet π
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I would contact NASA and tell them to launch a robot to mars that can shoot it. I'd shoot it at the ground, then put it on the robot, then have a portal to mars.
Watching the atmospheres of Earth and Mars try to reach equilibrium right when the portal opened up would be pretty interesting!
If you set one end up in an air-tight room with an airlock, it would be just like a door from a mars station.
For safety's sake, it might be better to put that on a space station, though. Better to wreck Mars than equalize Earth and Mars.
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Reverse-engineer it and build an unlimited-use portal gun, of course!
Reverse engineer it
I would make one portal in Tokyo or some busy city and other in another busy city and i will sell tickets to ride between the two. Or i will put them on some sheet of something that i can move so i can change destinations but in game if i move the surface under portal it will dissapear
I will nationalize your service for free to everyone
The good answer is to create some kind of perpetual motion machine.
The cool answer is to create some kind of roller coaster that just keeps going and going
The fun answer is to create some chaos. Put one behind a door or something and the other in some unexpected place.
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Save it. I don't have anything currently that I would want to use a portal gun on given that I can only use it once. I might use it to get myself out of a sticky situation, or wait to see if I ever move into a relatively permanent home and I could make a portal from my house to another location for convenience.
So it'll be just like the bag full of Maximum Heal potions when the credits roll, except I imagine you could pass it on to someone with a message not to wait for the perfect moment.
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Assuming there is only one, sell my single use for ludicrous amounts of money to some Corp that has merchandise to move.
Put portals on two boards. See what happens if I put one board through the other portal.
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Shoot the portal on two moveable plates. Move the plates as needed to ship goods. For instance, I imagine making a lot of money shoving sea ice into a portal exiting Lake Powell.
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