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From: Warp
Subject: Two theories about Portal
Date: 16 Feb 2012 13:05:38
Message: <4f3d4572@news.povray.org>
1) Consider this: Both Black Mesa and Aperture were developing
teleportation technology. On one side, Black Mesa's teleportation
was in its early infancy. The teleportation test device was an
enormous several-stories-high thing that required enormous amounts
of energy, special materials, and barely worked. In one of the tests
it failed spectacularly, causing the resonance cascade. No actual
applications of this prototype teleportation device have ever been
shown.

  On the other side Aperture's version of the teleportation was
centuries ahead technologically. A small, light-weight portable
teleportation device which is safe to use and has never been seen
to fail, and which can create teleports over enormous distances
(even as far as the Moon). The applications are humongous.

  Yet it's established in the Portal universe that the government
chose Black Mesa over Aperture for developing their teleportation
technology for military purposes. This seems inconceivable.

  My theory: The Half-Life games and the Portal games are happening
in different universes. In the Half-Life universe there is a company
named Aperture, but it's not the same as the one in the Portal universe,
and vice-versa. In the Portal universe Black Mesa is at least as advanced,
if not even more, than Aperture. In the Half-Life universe Aperture is
less advanced than Black Mesa.

  (Of course Episode 3, if it ever comes, will probably contradict this
theory, but until then...)


  2) Consider Chell in Portal 1:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090504190860/half-life/en/images/0/0a/Chell-crouch.jpg

  And in Portal 2:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110509203944/half-life/en/images/8/80/Portal_2_chell.jpg

  My theory: Wheatley commissioned some extensive plastic surgery on her
while she was in stasis.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Orchid Win7 v1
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 16 Feb 2012 14:05:16
Message: <4f3d536c$1@news.povray.org>
On 16/02/2012 18:05, Warp wrote:
>    1) Consider this: Both Black Mesa and Aperture were developing
> teleportation technology. On one side, Black Mesa's teleportation
> was in its early infancy. The teleportation test device was an
> enormous several-stories-high thing that required enormous amounts
> of energy, special materials, and barely worked. In one of the tests
> it failed spectacularly, causing the resonance cascade. No actual
> applications of this prototype teleportation device have ever been
> shown.
>
>    On the other side Aperture's version of the teleportation was
> centuries ahead technologically. A small, light-weight portable
> teleportation device which is safe to use and has never been seen
> to fail, and which can create teleports over enormous distances
> (even as far as the Moon). The applications are humongous.

To be fair, Black Mesa managed to teleport over distances slightly 
larger than just to the moon. (We have no idea where Xen actually is - 
particularly, whether it exists in the same space as us. The notion of 
"distance" may not be well-defined.)

>    Yet it's established in the Portal universe that the government
> chose Black Mesa over Aperture for developing their teleportation
> technology for military purposes. This seems inconceivable.

You haven't worked with large government bodies before, what you? ;-)

Then of course there's the self-evident fact that the people at Aperture 
are stark, raving mad. Would /you/ want to do business with them?!

And finally, the Aura Borealis. You say Aperture teleportation has never 
malfunctioned, but EP2 claims that this ship and part of the dry dock 
vanished inexplicably. That's a pretty frigging big malfunction...


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 16 Feb 2012 14:47:47
Message: <4f3d5d63@news.povray.org>
Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And finally, the Aura Borealis.

  No Aura.

> You say Aperture teleportation has never 
> malfunctioned, but EP2 claims that this ship and part of the dry dock 
> vanished inexplicably. That's a pretty frigging big malfunction...

  The Borealis incident probably happened in the 1970's (at least deducing
from Borealis' dock being the 70's section of the old Aperture complex),
while the Black Mesa incident happened in 2003 or so.

  What I meant is that the portal gun seems to function flawlessly,
while Black Mesa has never been seen with any kind of reliable
teleportation technology.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 16 Feb 2012 20:58:03
Message: <4f3db42b$1@news.povray.org>
On 2/16/2012 11:05, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> And finally, the Aura Borealis. You say Aperture teleportation has never
> malfunctioned, but EP2 claims that this ship and part of the dry dock
> vanished inexplicably. That's a pretty frigging big malfunction...

That ship started out (or at least had docked) at Aperture, ya know. (I 
don't know enough about EP2 to know what they say about it there.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 16 Feb 2012 20:59:17
Message: <4f3db475$1@news.povray.org>
On 2/16/2012 11:47, Warp wrote:
>    What I meant is that the portal gun seems to function flawlessly,
> while Black Mesa has never been seen with any kind of reliable
> teleportation technology.

I would argue that g-man has reliable teleportation technology. It's just 
that nobody else in the complex does. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   People tell me I am the counter-example.


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From: Le Forgeron
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 17 Feb 2012 07:34:54
Message: <4f3e496e$1@news.povray.org>
Le 16/02/2012 19:05, Warp a écrit :
>   My theory: Wheatley commissioned some extensive plastic surgery on her
> while she was in stasis.


Remember in portal 1 they used tramps to perform the tests. For a
sandwich...

The pictures are the difference between an hungry tramp and a well-feed
citizen.


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 17 Feb 2012 10:23:03
Message: <4f3e70d7@news.povray.org>
Le_Forgeron <lef### [at] freefr> wrote:
> Remember in portal 1 they used tramps to perform the tests. For a
> sandwich...

  You are confusing it with the Aperture of the 70's/80's, as hinted in
the second game.

> The pictures are the difference between an hungry tramp and a well-feed
> citizen.

  It's established (especially in the second game) that Cell is the
daughter of one of the scientists.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 25 Feb 2012 06:46:24
Message: <4f48ca10@news.povray.org>
How about this theory:

  Make one portal on the ground and the other on the ceiling right above it.
Then take a metallic rod that's exactly the same length as the height of
the room, pass it vertically through the portal, and then weld its ends
(iow. the rod gets welded to itself).

  Now the rod can be moved horizontally and vertically, but it cannot be
turned around a horizontal axis (because it stops itself from being turned).
It's effectively an infinite rod. Now let the rod go.

  The rod will start falling. There's nothing stopping it or slowing it
down (even air resistance is virtually inexistent because the rod is
perfectly vertical and falling straight down). At some point it will
reach relativistic speeds, so we get a paradox similar to the so-called
Ehrenfest paradox.

  Putting that paradox aside, when the rod has gained enormous speed
(and consequently a humongous momentum, being a heavy metallic rod and
all), move the portal on the ceiling to another location, eg. a wall.
What happens?

  The only possibility is that we get a so-called portal cut (iow. moving
one end of the portal to another direction causes the rod to be cut),
and the rod will be flung from the new portal at a humongous speed and
with such a tremendous momentum that when it hits something the amount of
energy released can probably be measured in kilotons of TNT (ie. the same
as a nuclear bomb).

  Where is all this energy coming from? Clearly the portal technology itself
must supply this energy in order to transfer matter from one portal to
another, and it was supplying all these kilotons to the rod when it was
falling down. But where does the portal gun get all this energy from?

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 26 Feb 2012 10:07:09
Message: <4f4a4a9d@news.povray.org>
Am 25.02.2012 12:46, schrieb Warp:
>    How about this theory:
>
>    Make one portal on the ground and the other on the ceiling right above it.
> Then take a metallic rod that's exactly the same length as the height of
> the room, pass it vertically through the portal, and then weld its ends
> (iow. the rod gets welded to itself).
>
>    Now the rod can be moved horizontally and vertically, but it cannot be
> turned around a horizontal axis (because it stops itself from being turned).
> It's effectively an infinite rod. Now let the rod go.
>
>    The rod will start falling.

Why should it? Downward motion won't put the endless rod into a state of 
lower potential energy, so it will not happen.

To the contrary, every coaxial acceleration of the rod would impose an 
ever so slight length contraction due to relativistic effects, leading 
to buildup of internal stress (and hence internal energy - not sure how 
the expert would call this type), while deceleration would reduce the 
internal stress, so deceleration is likely to happen spontaneously while 
acceleration would require external energy input (and I mean energy 
input, not just some force). So even if the rod was falling in the first 
place, given sufficient time its motion will actually /stop/.

(You /could/ force it into motion by heating it up though: As the 
material would try to expand in all directions, again internal stress 
would be induced, and as any increase in speed - whether up- or 
downwards - would reduce this stress due to length contraction, a tiny 
push /would/ eventually get it up to relativistic speed - provided the 
rod doesn't melt long before due to air friction. Or at least that's how 
the thought experiment goes - maybe there's a flaw in it as well.)


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Two theories about Portal
Date: 26 Feb 2012 11:35:00
Message: <4f4a5f34@news.povray.org>
clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Why should it?

  Because gravity points down at all points in the rod. There is no force
in the opposite direction counteracting gravity.

  If the rod were not welded to itself, it would definitely fall (until
it collides with the borders of the portal or whatever), no? Welding it
to itself doesn't change this. (Basically the only thing the welding
achieves is that it stops the rod from tilting.)

> Downward motion won't put the endless rod into a state of 
> lower potential energy, so it will not happen.

  The rod is not literally endless. It's just that the parts that go
thrown the portal on the floor are transported to the portal on the ceiling.
(From a physics point of view this would mean that the energy required to
transport matter adds to the potential energy of said matter if the endpoint
is higher than the startpoint.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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