• lycanrising@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    my brother came up with a great analogy - say you’re falling and there’s a portal below you also falling, just slightly slower than you. when you eventually fall through it - do you come out falling slowly or quickly?

    it would have the be quickly. even though you and portal are moving slowly relatively to each other, your individual momentum is conserved, the movement of the portal is irrelevant.

    • EchoCT@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      By that logic you have to account for the earths speed as it moves through the universe… That doesn’t sound accurate.

    • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Except there is no concept of “individual momentum,” it’s all relative to something. Not to mention, technically speaking, any specific reference point that isn’t the blue portal will actually show it has infinite speed as it instantly moves from one spot to another. I think the most intuitive answer is to imaging standing in front of the blue portal, and look through it. From your perspective, the victims are being hurled at you, propelled by the ground. As soon as they go through the portal, no linger being in contact with the ground, they are effectively projectiles. By no means a hard proof, but this video has a compelling argument for that interpretation.

      • lycanrising@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        in my interpretation of how portals work - by joining space together - moving through a portal doesn’t involve infinite speed because you haven’t moved - the portals have just changed the space you occupy.

        a bit like the inertialess/ Alcubierre drive where you travel faster than light without breaking any laws because you’re not moving at all in your space, it’s just that the space you occupy changes.

        in the reasoning the people hurling towards the portal only appear to do so, once they pass through the portal they’ll be as immobile as they were before entering it.

        the minute physics video is fun though. love their stuff.