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
This has the interesting implication that the relative speed between the portals is “added” to whatever goes through it.
Example: the blue portal is on a train running with the same speed in opposite direction. The people-bundle would instantaneously be accelerated to twice the speed of each of the trains.
(This becomes a real headscratcher if you were able to put the portals in a particle accelerator)
Your entire comment is predicated off one singular assumption.
In fact, everyone will be deposited into the 2- dimensional pane of the blue portal itself
It just ain’t two dimensional. Ever.
They’re two halves of a hole. Neither are two dimensional. They are three dimensional. If one is open and the other isn’t, it doesn’t turn back to 2D. The third dimension is just blocked, like a cylinder that’s been filled to the brim. This is proven by the game itself and the ability to have an object “split” between the two portals. If you remove one portal it doesn’t split the object in half. It merely pushes it back out.
Removing the thought of it being two dimensional, which makes no sense to begin with, and you’re left with the argument OP made. Do they get fired out or just pushed out by simple momentum?
It’s two dimensional in the sense that the surface of the portal is a plane, through which things pass.
So as things pass through the portal, conservation of momentum is either preserved or it isn’t, with respect to a constant observer. What happens as they partly enter the portal in both of these situations?
If momentum is preserved, and they have zero momentum going in to the portal, then they are motionless as they exit the portal. There is nothing to cause your hand to move out of the way for your arm. Scaled down to the atomic level, you become a paste.
So you say that your hand moves out of the way because it is connected to your arm. The fact that it moves out of the way fast enough to make room for your arm means that it has velocity, and therefore momentum. The momentum means that it (and you) would get launched into the air, but conservation of momentum was violated.
There is no scenario where you exit the portal motionless but intact.
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?
For whatever reason I feel more willing to break conservation of momentum than I am to
Good explanation.
This has the interesting implication that the relative speed between the portals is “added” to whatever goes through it.
Example: the blue portal is on a train running with the same speed in opposite direction. The people-bundle would instantaneously be accelerated to twice the speed of each of the trains. (This becomes a real headscratcher if you were able to put the portals in a particle accelerator)
Your entire comment is predicated off one singular assumption.
It just ain’t two dimensional. Ever.
They’re two halves of a hole. Neither are two dimensional. They are three dimensional. If one is open and the other isn’t, it doesn’t turn back to 2D. The third dimension is just blocked, like a cylinder that’s been filled to the brim. This is proven by the game itself and the ability to have an object “split” between the two portals. If you remove one portal it doesn’t split the object in half. It merely pushes it back out.
Removing the thought of it being two dimensional, which makes no sense to begin with, and you’re left with the argument OP made. Do they get fired out or just pushed out by simple momentum?
It’s two dimensional in the sense that the surface of the portal is a plane, through which things pass.
So as things pass through the portal, conservation of momentum is either preserved or it isn’t, with respect to a constant observer. What happens as they partly enter the portal in both of these situations?
If momentum is preserved, and they have zero momentum going in to the portal, then they are motionless as they exit the portal. There is nothing to cause your hand to move out of the way for your arm. Scaled down to the atomic level, you become a paste.
So you say that your hand moves out of the way because it is connected to your arm. The fact that it moves out of the way fast enough to make room for your arm means that it has velocity, and therefore momentum. The momentum means that it (and you) would get launched into the air, but conservation of momentum was violated.
There is no scenario where you exit the portal motionless but intact.