fuck it up and waste the first shot on a non-portal supporting surface
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Create infinite energy machine
This is the correct answer given time and thought, but nah, would rather pee from my bed
See, I don't think water is the way to do it. I think you do it with a massive lead pole with teeth to lock into a gear.
Fully contained, no spillage
Part of me is thinking: "But doesn't the water slow down each time it comes into contact with the cog?"
And the answer is the yes, but the answer is also, "it begins to accelerate again right after it falls off the cog."
And yet it's still fucking with me, and somehow I'm imagining water getting slower and slower and less energetic each time, as if gravity itself is being weakened
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.
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Make a drain hole at the bottom of a lake, that comes out above it. Put in a water wheel, free energy.
Never thought about it before, but I guess this makes portal guns impossible, since scenarios like this break conservation of energy.
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...
My first instinct would be that it would equivalent to putting another celestial body the mass of the earth at the distance from the earth is from each portal. Since gravity is a wave, it, in theory, would affect a region beyond what would considered "around" the portals.
So if you put one portal on the ground, and another 100 meters up, it would be similar to there being a second earth 100 meters from the surface of the earth, experienced by the entire earth (once the gravitational wave propagated.) How that would evolve over time is too complex for my basic understanding of physics, but a simulation of it would be a neat experiment.
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Maybe conservation of energy is wrong.
But you know itβs possible from firsthand experience. Whomsthβnβt reached terminal velocity by shooting the ceiling & floor and jumping in?
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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.
Love the idea, but (spoiler for the end of Portal 2) >!isn't that kind of what Chell did at the end of Portal 2 to defeat GlaDOS? The portal on the Moon causes the portal on Earth to suction everything out into space.!<
The portals would just need to be in a pressure equalizing chamber for that.
You put it inside a space station... Or out the earth side portal in an airlock.
Chell put it on the surface of the Moon.
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.
Granted. The portals immediately close when you try to move the plates.
As far as I remember in Portal, the portals could move if the plates moved.
So lore-wise it's not supposed to be possible, but that one room does indeed have moving portals. The explanation is supposedly that portals disappear when the object they are on is accelerated.
In Portal 2 there was a section with moving plates, but only one portal could be on them.
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.
Oh, see I was thinking a portal on the ISS, but absolutely you could place one against the other, plop in a MASSIVE pole with teeth to match a gear, and just constantly generate power.
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.
- But two sheets of plywood
- Portal on each
- ???
- Profit
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"
Read the instructions.
Sell it to a space agency that promises it to use it as a wormhole.
It needs to be aimed at our moon (Selene) and an exo-dwarf planet.
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.
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shoot one portal in my bathroom. Carry the emergency bathroom gun everywhere just in case. No emergency will ever actually be important enough to use it but the peace of mind is always there...
It would be a bad use of it, but probably pick a random road online and pick a random volcano. Whoever gets unlucky and doesn't notice the nightmare portal in the ground gets a free trip to the base of a volcano at no cost. Would obviously need the portal to be in a location where you cannot just easily return from, though. Gonna turn a random volcano and random street into quite the tourist attraction for no reason.
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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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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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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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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