Video: It’s the kind of thing you wonder after having too many doughnuts and margaritas: what would happen if you were stuck inside the two portals that a Portal gun shoots out? The answer: shit gets weird, man.
YouTuber CrowbCat decided to take the whole “I’m doing science” thing to a whole ‘nother level by smushing Portal heroine Chell into a wormhole. It’s basically like 2001: A Space Odyssey in there.
Comments
14 responses to “Smash Two Portals Together, Enter A Glitch Netherworld”
This question was doing rounds recently, I remember seeing a few different forums discussing it. Not what would happen in the game engine, but what would actually happen if portals existed. In the latter case, Chell would have been crushed against herself – as the platform comes down, eventually it would reach a point where her feet (hanging out of the top portal) would touch her head (poking out of the bottom portal) and any further reduction in space would crush the two together.
Crush might be a bit strong a word depending on how fast the platforms were moving. Do it slow enough and eventually you’d be standing on your own head…go a bit further and you bend your knees etc. Plenty of warning signs before you get to the “crushing” stage.
Wouldn’t it depend on how the gun worked? If it bends space-time so that the 2 portals essentially occupy the same space, then yes you would be crushed.
On the other hand, if it functioned like a Stargate, wouldn’t you just wouldn’t be reconstituted on the other side, but form a continuous loop as energy until there was physical space for you to emerge on the other side.
In terms of lore, from memory there are some explanations about how they create direct apertures between the portals. In-game, with certain arrangements of the portals you can see yourself entering from the other side. It doesn’t seem to wait until you’re completely in before moving across or anything.
That could still happen with a stargate-style portal though, couldn’t it? Light would pass through the portal, so in effect you’d be seeing through it just like you would if it was the same point in space-time.
Gonna fly my geek flag here: I know in SG:A there was an episode where replicators fired a high powered laser through the stargate, and there have been plenty of instances of energy weapons firing through them, so the light-through-the-stargate thing is plausible. Yes, I realize that the Portal and Stargate universes are totally unrelated, but we’re discussing the physics of a freaking video game so just roll with it 🙂
From the explanations given, I believe the Stargate works quite differently to the way portals work. The Stargate doesn’t physically prevent a traveller from entering the origin even if the destination is blocked (eg. by the iris), but a portal whose other side is blocked will not allow an object to pass through (when you look into the portal, you see a wall immediately on the other side), and if there’s only a confined space on the other side the object will only partially pass through. You can test that easily enough using your choice of Weighted Storage Cube or Weighted Companion Cube =)
… you win this battle, zombie jesus! But would you beat robot hitler?
http://13flamesempire.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Jesus-vs-Robot-Hitler-244990701
I’m disappointed that I can’t find a copy of the comic anywhere in the 5 minutes I spent looking, but I guess it’s for the best. I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending to the real fight when it happens next month.
http://13flames.com/
My God it’s full of stars!
By coincidence, I was listening to Paranoid Android while watching this. Wow.
That reminds me of an experiment I did in the first game where I shot a portal on either side of a corner (concave) and then stood between them. It didn’t result in anything this trippy but it basically creates a clone of yourself and you stare into your own eyes.
Enter the void.
Seems like a good way to become one with the world.