this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Where will the energy that accelerates the people come from?
The train.
As the object enters the first portal then the inertia of the far end of the object that is forced to pass through will need to be accelerated in the space outside the second portal to pass through, acceleration which is induced by being pushed by the other end of the object still outside the first portal.
In other words, pushing a portal onto an object pushes that object with half the speed of the portal. This will likely require energy put into the portal itself to maintain it, which needs to come from the train.
That was an idea I'd floated above as well.
The train never touches the people.
The portal touches them first, moving where the people are.
The portal is moved by the train
The hole in space between the portals.
That hole has momentum? I'm not even sure it exists since by definition a portal is two points without intervening space.
It takes energy to maintain the portal, that is significantly less than it takes to move the people.
Does it? In the games portals last indefinitely with no external energy source. It's an intriguing idea though because it would explain why portals collapse if the surface they're on moves. Any matter that goes through the portal would pull energy from it and cause it to collapse. Matter that goes through a portal that's standing still, otoh, rather famously experiences no change in momentum and therefore does not pull any energy from the portal. So the portal is stable as long as it stands still.
Were talking about a quantum level of energy. Wormholes are not proven to exist but if you were to calculate the energy it takes to travel X distance, the amount of distance you save by using the wormhole has been generated by simply traveling through it, and can even mean you have "generated" energy if he amount saved us greater than the amount spent overall.
That honestly sounds like an accounting trick to preserve newtons laws than an actual measure of energy in. Though I suppose it would be an answer to the problem of a water wheel between two portals