Use of theoretical spatial editors to reach red-letter speeds.

Posted by timotheus on December 7th, 2007 filed in editorial

In case anyone is curious, assuming we had a device like the portal gun in Portal, and set up one portal on top of another to allow an object to free fall indefinitely, starting from zero velocity, it would take the object:

30,591,067 sec == 509,851 min == 8,497 hr == 354.06 days == t

to reach the speed of light (2.998 X 10^8 meters). (Assuming no wind resistance, etc) During that period of free fall, it would travel:

4,585,485,605,800,090 meters == 2.84 trillion miles

I found it interesting that it takes 97% of a year to reach that speed. I thought it wouldn’t take nearly that long.


3 Responses to “Use of theoretical spatial editors to reach red-letter speeds.”

  1. Uncle Mike Says:
    December 8th, 2007 at 7:55

    If I stumble out of my kitchen portal it takes my approximately 2.1 seconds to reach floor level creating 3.79 kilowatts of kinetic energy upon impact: based on my current weight this creates enough energy to power our Christmas tree for nearly 4 hours. Were I able to reach terminal velocity we could several our ties to the power company.

  2. maiki Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 4:08

    Are you so sure that gravity would “pull”? I always imagine the way to create a containment “field” is to open a series of portals like that, each on opposite sides of an object. Then gravity would be equal on all sides.

  3. timotheus Says:
    December 9th, 2007 at 14:11

    I think it would still pull downwards. I consider the portal to be totally inert, and it’s not until an object crosses the boundary that the forces are felt.

    So, assume I had a portal in space that connected to a portal 10 feet above my house. Lets say we push a 1 meter long rod into the portal that is in space. Once one end of it crosses the portals threshold, now that section of rod is on the earth side, and gravity is pulling that section. There is nothing on space side to pull back, as it were, so it would slowly pull the rod in. However, if we positioned the rod right in front of the portal without crossing the threshold, it would never get pulled in. Gravity isn’t an issue until the threshold is crossed.

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