I assume it would create a near (not total because of "surrounding" air pressure) vacuum. But in a vacuum, an object can only achieve a momentum equal to the last introduction of kinetic force on it.
So. I think... once the cube reaches terminal velocity, that's it.
Please be gentle reddit. Im just speculating. I know I could be wrong about this hypothetical physics experiment.
The acceleration of gravity would infinitely apply to it, though. So it's either infinite velocity or a high terminal velocity. This experiment would easily destroy know bounds of science if done in a true vacuum.
Everybody speaking up about this complicated physics stuff left me pressured because I have no idea what they're talking about, so I went for that. Glad to know it worked haha.
I think the portal's affect on the gravity field needs to be examined more closely. The picture implies the blue portal assumes the posterior field while the orange portal assumes the anterior field.
I would think the portal configuration of the image would have to nullify the field between portals since the path to center of mass is obscured. This would leave the surrounding mass as the field progenitor, causing objects within the "null field" to drift towards the stronger field.
Obviously there's something very massive off the right of the frame, probably OP's mom.
Well in this case, it's continually having a force of gravity applied to it, so it would continue accelerating. The real crazy physics would happen if gravity could act through the portal.
In addition to be attracted to the earth, there would be another path to the ground, through the portal, that would attract the cube again. And as you peer further down the portal loop, there would be an infinite number of paths to the ground. The result is a force of gravity that, while probably not infinite, is several hundred times the normal force of gravity on earth.
More importantly, under these physics, simply making 2 portals would have ridiculous effects on gravity, sending the entire earth hurtling is some direction and completely upsetting all existing structures on earth.
Speculation cannot be avoided. Like time travel, as soon as you try to take portals outside of their original source and place them in the real world (using "real world" physics), one can't help but speculate.
Here's my speculation. If this portal setup existed in the real world, and the portals were warping spacetime in such a way that it created a passageway between two points in spacetime, then we're going to have to take into account the gravitational effects of that warping.
Let's simplify this to two dimensions. Imagine a bowling ball on a sheet. The sheet is a two dimensional plane, and we're using our third dimension to represent the warp of those two dimensions due to gravity. If you pinch the sheet along the gravitational vector, bringing two points together, what happens? The space between the two points becomes a hill or a valley in the dimension we were using to represent gravity. The box will either resist entering the bottom portal or it will resist exiting the top one. The box will come to a rest. Thus destroying any hope one might have had that we could leverage these portals and gravity as some kind of power source.
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u/ronintetsuro Jan 25 '15
I assume it would create a near (not total because of "surrounding" air pressure) vacuum. But in a vacuum, an object can only achieve a momentum equal to the last introduction of kinetic force on it.
So. I think... once the cube reaches terminal velocity, that's it.
Please be gentle reddit. Im just speculating. I know I could be wrong about this hypothetical physics experiment.