Follow Blame it on the Voices on Twitter | Blame it on the Voices on Facebook
If you liked this post, you can
subscribe to the Blame It On The Voices RSS feed and get your regular fix

Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
115 comentarii:
it could be a triangle fo all you know, how does a portal work anyways
first
and the answer is both a straight line and a circle, at the same time XD
the answer is, neither. nothing is 'real'. not even you. not even what i just told about nothing being real.
It's a circle. You tied both ends of the rope together.
The drawing is flawed. You cannot keep the rope taut and suspended in this scenario. There is nothing to support the weight of the rope.
Thus, it is not a straight line and can only be a circle.
Well as long as I am high and drunk, it can be whatever. I am reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally drunk and high right now..
yeah it should atleast fall down to the bottom part of the portal..
If you tilt the image 90°, you will realize that the rope could simply be falling through the portal. In this scenario, one could easily time a picture so that the knot would end up directly in between the portals.
Also, the rope is perfectly straight in the 3 dimensions. However its true shape is much more complex, as it has to do with how portals bend space around. I'd say its' true shape is a circle, but it is not apparent with dimensions we can observe.
what he said.
Neither. Space is folded between the two portals in either direction.
an infinite straight line can be considered as a circle with an infinite radius; thus the question is void.
an infinite straight line can be considered as a circle with an infinite radius; thus the question is void.
MrEvers blew my mind more than the picture.
In our, the third, dimension, it is a line while in the next (forth) dimension, it is a circle.
well in 3 dimensions its a line but portals work by using 4 dimensions (atleast in my mind) so a circle.
perhaps the ropes are only tied together on one end, and in each portal there are opposing teams playing tug of war
It is a straight line in 3D. The interesting question is: is it a knot?
Now think about trying to yank that rope out of both portals. I was like shiiii
@MrEvers
True, an infinite straight line will look the same as the boundary of a circle with infinite radius.
However, it seems to me that the idea is to create the above scenario with a rope of finite length where the length need only be greater than the distance between the portals and the length required to tie the knot.
So, are you positing that the circle in the higher dimension is of infinite radius but projects onto 3D as the length of the line? If so, why does the circle in the higher dimension necessarily have to be of infinite length?
Additionally, I don't see why the line is necessarily infinite even you consider traversal to be the correct perspective. An observer, even in 3D would see you traversing a finite distance in one direction repeatedly therefore you only traverse infinitely through the higher dimensional space (which holds for a circle of any size).
I would say (similarly to others) that it is a straight line in 3D of known length, and a circle in higher dimensions of unknown length depending on the curvature of space-time created by the hypothetical portals.
Thoughts?
The cake is a lie.
No, I'm saying that a straight line and a circle are the same thing in any dimension. (a finite line of course being a part of an infinite line, and thus a part of the circle, but seeing that this line is boundless because of the knot and the portals, to us, the viewers, it can be considered as infinite)
it is an endless straight line in the 3rd dimension and a 4th dimensional circle
its an infinit straight line and I have the erfect scientific explination I just dont want to say it. lol sorry
He could've tied a better knot or just spliced the rope
looking at a circle, edge on, it looks like a straight line. Looking down at a cone, with your eye at the apex, the cone can be cut cleanly, with a wavy line or jagged one, it will look like a circle. This thing looks like a straight line. What it really is is nothing. The game made up the physics to make these portals possible. Asking us to use real physics to describe it is non-sense, but fun. You should have put a stand in the center to hold the rope up. If it is taught, you'd only need one. Since you can't hold up a circle by only one point(a disk, but not a circle), but you could hold up a straight line that way, I'll vote straight line.
What if you replace the rope with a metal bar. (let's forget gravity for the moment) And you give the bar a push to the left for a moment then let go. The bar coming out the right is pushing the bar into the left. With a wheel, doing the same, the structure of the wheel will exert forces to change direction of any segment of the bar, summed as vectors these will totally cancell out and the wheel would keep spinning at the same rate. A bar with out portals would have nothing pushing one end and would just continue at the same rate. With this, each segment is pushed, and there are no spokes to change and eventually reverse the forces from the previous segment. Therefore this bar would accelerate forever. This system is impossible.
take the blue pill
who's to say gravity within the wormhole has any effect on the rope perhaps the rope will only sag in our dimension as it loops back through. On the other side of the event horizon maybe the laws of physics are different
Short answer: Neither [Skip to conclusion]
Long Answer:
Portals as demonstrated in 'Portal' the game (which this picture is obviously reffering to, as of blue/orage fuzzy portals) do not operate in the 4th dimention. In the game they are described as 'TRANS-dimentional portals' meaning they operate in NEITHER (3rd or 4th or n-th) dimention. In the coding of the game (how it REALLY works) it is simply 3dimentional space with object translation code while changing directins ONCE (eg. momentum when stepping through a sideways portal that comes from the ceiling).
It is defenitly not a circle as it does not have any rotational center; whether reffer to it as being a straight line is another question.
The Cord is not infinitly long as there is only one instance of it that has finite lenght but it is reffering to itself and therefore can be reffered to as a loop. BUT it is not a physical 'hoop' kind of loop; more of a loop in terms of a function that calls itself. (if that makes it clearer [this is programmers talk])
======Conclusion:======
It is NOT a circle, it is a line that changes Place and direction ONCE and it is NOT infinitly Long.
It can be described as a Loop.
The Cake is a Lie.
If you seriously disaggree and have a good point mail me(logicall raplacing the []s): dominikschmid93[@T]Gmail[D0T]com
well if you think about portal (the game) its a lot easier to visualise this. if you stand in-between the two portals, one to your back and one in-front of you, you will see your back in-front of you, and then an endless copy of ourself repeated as far as you can see (depending on the angle you look at it in)
now because the rope has been tied between the two ends, it has formed an endless line which could be described as a circle. but in multi dimensional physics it would be described as an infinite ark id guess.
Who's to say its one piece of rope?! it could easily be two of more pieces tied together
'or x=1
Based on geometric definition, it would be classified as a line (as opposed to a line segment, which has finite length. As objects pass through one of the twin portals, they spontaneously pass through the other of the twin portals. Ergo, as described by the picture, the rope has no discernible end, and is not composed more than one piece.
The argument against it being a circle is simple. The rope, representing the circumference, would have to be pi radii of the center of the circle. Since the rope is infinite, the radius of the circle is also infinite. However, this is irrelevant when realizing that the portals created are not affected by any entities' mass, and therefore present the model of linear subspatial travel. Ergo, it is not a circle.
Correction on the last post: The rope may have a knot in the middle, but there are no other discernible ends. Conventionally and theoretically, this picture is impossible in the first place.
A circle has a radius and a calculable area therefore this is not a circle. It is a finite length of rope which appears to loop infinately in the portals.
As it has been said gravity will make the rope fall.
the real question is what will happen when both ends of the rope reach the edges of the wormhole?
Sorry to be a bastered but. Noting will happen. Its like your tieing mutiple peices of rope to poles (where the portals are.
:P
OH GOD MY HE- *splode*
My input is that it is a circle with a diameter of 0 units as it's simply looping back on itself through a hole in the fabric of reality. And a circle of diameter 0 would be best actualized by a line segment. So there you have it. But wait, as people have said gravity would act on it and cause it to fall, it would not, however, simply fall out. As has been stated it would simply hang from the portal as if it were poles. So our line segment is now a finite arc.
There, the answer is it is a finite arc.
I'd also like to point out that it's obviously not infinite. You can see the entire rope; that's all of it. The rope does have two ends, they're just tied together. Stand in between the portals with a length of rope. Throw one end of the rope through the portal. Tie the end that just came flying through the other portal to the end of the rope still on the ground. Voila.
This is not complicated and you don't have to take any extra- or trans-dimensionality into consideration. The problem is one of definition. A circle is a 2-d representation and we're dealing with a 3-d object. This is a problem for topology and topologically, if you count the knot as a splice, it's a toroid. I suppose you could call that a circle if you really really wanted to.
who cares?
Here's a question: What would happen if you took two portals, one blue and one orange, and lined them up next to each other so they are on the same plane. Then you fed a rope through one portal and someone took that end of the rope from the portal it came out of, and you had a tug-of-war with the rope? The setup would look like this:
.____.........____
/....\......./....\
|....|.......|....|
|....|.......|....|
\..../.......\..../
...^...........^....
The rope..|...and out
goes in...|...this one
this one..|.........
it would be a straight line, the "end" of the portal is a zero point wormhole that it attached directly to the other portal, so it would be stretched tight in a straight line.
if the rope is pulled tight enough, i don't think gravity pull it to the bottom of the portal, the rope is receiving tension from both ends (imagine two people holding a rope from either end) if the rope was simply lain through the portals, it would be at the bottom, but because it is being pulled (by itself) it should stay where ever it was put
new question, what would happen if you were to grab the rope by the knot and throw it through one of the portals? ..i'd have to assume it'd keep cycling through, pretty cool visual imo
It is neither because it is an impossible shape. Portals of this kind don't currently exist so there has been no reason to name a shape that is formed through their use.
So basically call it what you want.
What if you were to do the same thing but on the floor and ceiling so it would be falling forever but tied together
The only thing Portals do is sending matter trough space and visualise its destination. The rope exist between those portals beeing staright line with two ends marked by two portals (in 3d space). If we want to think of its shape in higher dimension taking that portals bends spacetime it'd become sphere (in 4d). Same situation happens when we draw line on paper and fold it to connect both its ends - we get a circle in 3d space.
I only got 1/2 way through the comments, so it may have gotten better...
But to 99% of you trying to explain real physics, you need to stop immediately. You have no idea what you are talking about and are only making other people like you even dumber.
here's a problem. if you were to shift the angle the rope is facing, it would be severed.
ie: if the rope was angled from teh top of the left portal to the bottom of the right, and you moved it towards one portal or the other, it would come out cut
"if the rope was angled from teh top of the left portal to the bottom of the right"
That wouldn't be possible; the two "ends" of the rope entering the portals are one and the same. If one was at the top and the other at the bottom it'd have to already be cut.
"But to 99% of you trying to explain real physics, you need to stop immediately."
No, thought experiments are both fun and useful. If you can't be bothered to sift the wheat from the chaff then continue to ignore it.
I still think it's a mistake to bring extra dimensions into the discussion. There are only 3 spatial dimensions at play here. All the portal does is fold one back onto itself. Anybody ever play Asteroids? When you go to one side of the screen and come out the other; that's exactly what's going on here. It's one rope with it's ends tied together. You can call it a circle, a square, a torus, whatever. It's a freaking rope with it's ends tied together. Stop letting the portals confuse you.
If you had that same setup stated in the article but you let go of the rope so it fell, would it just hang limp at the bottom edges of the portals (assuming the portals are suspended in the air), or would it be "cut" and fall to the ground? If neither of those would happen, what would?
Depends on how the edges of the portals act; whether it's a solid boundary or not. These things obviously don't exist, so who knows? They don't seem to cut anything in the game so I'm inclined to say it'd just hang from the bottoms of the portals.
On the other hand, the only way to hold open a wormhole in the real world (assuming they're possible to begin with) is to use some form of (very, very theoretical) exotic matter with negative energy density that would almost certainly be extremely dangerous in myriad and unexpected ways.
THE CAKE IS A LIE!!!!
... a mobius?
It's just an infinite line... well, an cylinder with infinite X and Y dimensions
The rope is not infinite. It's only a couple feet long from the looks of it; you can see the entire thing right there. That's all of it. When you look through the portals you aren't seeing an infinitely long rope but an infinite number of the same length of rope. Just like there are an infinite copies of you, there are an infinite number of lengths of rope. It's just going to look like one single infinite length because you tied it together.
For the length to be infinitely long, it's bulk would have to exist somewhere (obviously). Since the rope occupies but one narrow hallway, from whence comes infinite rope? Those copies in the portal aren't discrete unto themselves, you're just seeing the contents of that one narrow hallway over and over again. It's all the same hallway, it's all the same short length of rope.
I'd also like to say this is hardly a new or trivial problem. Topologically identical thought experiments were used extensively in the early days of general relativity. Minkowski and De Sitter spring to mind immediately.
it's a mobius rope!!!
Youve drown 2 portals and a tied rope... i dont see a line or a circle... portals are oval, arent they? YOU SUCK
The Cake is a Lie.
yes, i know the cake is a lie...
but will there be cake?
Now you're thinking with portals!
Neither because PORTALS ARE NOT REAL
um...how about a line. because realistically speaking those are probably two holes, not portals. and it doesn't have to be one rope, it could just be two tied together. honestly all this portal talk is ridiculous lol.
Straight line. A portal is an ad-hoc tunnel through physical space - thus, there is no curvature.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Whatever, it's a straight line due to the knot. A Circle has neither a beginning nor an ending. The addition of the portal to the line does not change this as the knot denotes both/either.
not enough information.
This was a triumph
I'm making a note here:
Huge Success!
But the bigger question is, what on Hell's heart holds the rope in the air?
By our limited 3 dimensional perspective it is linear. However, on a higher dimensional perspective I believe it is warped by the topological surface that is the portal.
Wonder why people think it's stupid to look at this pic and wonder about it...
"this is the biggest useless thread there is. neither, bc its a fucking cartoon"
And I suppose that watching a film that involves stuff that didn't happen shouldn't provoke thought either? You know what, I'm actually disgusted. To fuck with that poster, and the other ones like you.
On another note, all this cake talk is making me peckish :S
who tied the rope?
You've made a cake.
the rope is a lie.
nice. if you think of the portals as one door, one side painted blue and the other painted orange, then it's a circle
now i want some cake
So tell me, is the length of the circle/line finite or infinite?
Suppose the rope falls. What would happen?
Someone said that the rope houldn't be taut, yet it is. Think about it. The rope is tied tightly to something: itself. it is keeping itself suspended. Impossible, or just a paradox?
Now you're thinking with portals. 8D
its a circle in the fourth dimension and a straight line in the third....
watch "the ten dimeonsions" in youtube:)
This is a trick question. This is in fact part of Aperture's new four portal system. On each side of the rope there are pieces of cake hanging from the ceiling (in zero gravity to avoid any issues you bastards have with this) and you just have to pull on the very long rope to get your cake.
(bwahahahahahahahaahahahahaahahaha, there isn't a four portal system)
And yeah, there is no gravity in the picture causing the rope to just stay there. (there was a lot of patience required for it to look perfect like that.
Quantum at its best. It exists as both.
It's a line >.> There is not a curve, it's just a line that goes on forever.
Well... what would happen if you tied a string to itself WITHOUT portals... it would make a circle. It's exactly the same thing. The portals are just making the other end of the string come out from another point in space. The geometry of tying the string to itself is the same.
What you have really done is made an infinite amount of rope, and as such you have created a universe destroying black hole spawned by rope.
It would be a straight line. The theory about it being a circle with an infinite radius is impossible, as you would be unable to find the boarder of said circle if the radius is infinite, meaning the circle will be always expanding, never stopping.
The portals being placed across from one another would bring the rope through in one straight line, if you were stand with the rope parallel to your eyes, looking down the length like an iron sight, it would travel continuously in a straight line. If you were able to see down the length of the rope for 10 miles, or 10 billion miles, the rope will continually be traveling in a straight line.
What you did in that picture my friend, was create an infinite length of rope.
Grade 7 mathematic's:
------> is refer'd to as a "Ray". It has a starting point and continues outward, signified by the ">".
What we have here is <------> an infinite line, which since you used portals to create, technically has no "start" point as you would see yourself tying the rope together at the knot in both portals, and every portal past them for as far as you can see.
Thats just what I think, and it makes sense to me.
Yes.
On the subject of the rope being suspended by the tension exerted upon it by itself. . . That would not happen. While there is tension holding it straight, there is nothing holding it up. There is nothing exerting any upward, gravity negating, force on the rope. . Thus, it would not stay suspended, it would fall. It would, however, remain taunt.
Btw, its a line. :P The portals don't take you around corners or around curves to arrive at the end of the "tunnel". You are just there. There is no curvature.
Unless you put the rope through at an angle, having it enter the orange portal at the top and exiting the blue portal at the bottom, then you would have your upwards force which would solve all the problems of gravity.
And the rope is of finite length. It only appears to be infinite because you are seeing reflections of it in the portal an infinite amount of times.
And Beast is correct, there are no curves in portals, the ending point just becomes the starting point of the next portal.
@Mateous Actually, that would be impossible. If the rope were to enter one portal at the top, it would come out of the other portal at the top, not the bottom. Besides Which, how would that solve the problem of the gravity? Unless you have some physical object supporting the weight of the rope it is going to fall.
Nonsense. True at first it would pop out at the top but due to gravity and having no upwards force being supplied it would fall to the bottom of the portal, then you would just tie them together. And since there is no energy loss in portals that upwards tension would never stop.
Its a line segment. A line is unending in both directions. This is not the case in the photo. Also, though the line loops back on its self, as a circle would, it simple does not make a circle due to the fact that the bends just are not there. It is a line segment, because we know the rope is in finite amount, therefore unending, and is laid in a straight line (segment)
Adding to my last statement directly above, a it is a straight line, and to diverge off of that would create an angle, which circles have none.
A circle is defined as a set of points in a plane which are equidistant from a single point on the plane, called the Center.
We have to bend this definition to call anything in the real world a circle, but the idea of all parts being equidistant from a single point is what gives something a "circular" shape.
There is no point which is the same distance from every bit of the rope. What you are looking at is a LINE SEGMENT.
well technically its a real line not a line segment because it kind of extends infinately. but, if you choose a point and go in one direction you will reach that point again (a circle) so it depends on how you look a it
What if you were to put the blue portal on the floor and the orange portal on the ceiling in a vacuumed room and then tied the rope together? Would gravity pull the rope downwards at a constant acceleration and eventually reach the speed of light and maybe even faster despite physics telling us that this is impossible?
It is spiral
in one dimension it does not exist.
in two dimension it is a strait line and only a straight line.
in three dimensions it is a cord.
in four it is a cord operating in time.
in five dimensions it it is a spiral, this is the dimension through which the portal acts, as it moves in X Y or Z it is( as we perceive it from our perspective) bent through 360 degrees but by the time the A point (the knot) this and all the other matter has moved creating a spiral,
This person has obviously never played portal....
"Anonymous said...
It's a circle. You tied both ends of the rope together.
The drawing is flawed. You cannot keep the rope taut and suspended in this scenario. There is nothing to support the weight of the rope. "
http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/mindblownp1.gif
two circles and a straight line
Sorry children. It's not a circle.
cir·cle/ˈsÉ™rkÉ™l/ A round plane figure whose boundary (the circumference) consists of points equidistant from a fixed center.
The passing of what we perceive as time. Thought by some to be our fourth dimension. would not make the rope a circle either. Just a straight line over time. perhaps by the 5th or 6th dimension it could be a circle. But you would also be a circle. If you even existed there.
Forgot to mention. most of us are taking this too seriously. all we can do is speculate. Nothing any of you said was fact, just as nothing i did was.
save the circle definition. everything is just theoretical. portals, dimensions, ropes.
technically a circle
because portals are a form of wormholes
since the portals are facing each other, the wormholes the rope go through, the rope would be squeezed infinitly tight to defy the fabric of space
but since they are facing each other the wormhole would have to go around to get to the second opening
so, it's a circle
ergo this is a pointless exercise as the drawing/sketch is but a 2d representation of bullshit shennanigans.
We mustn't let the fact that we can see through portals confuse us. As soon as a part of the rope hits the blue portal, that physical part of the rope is 'teleported', if you will, to the orange portal. Also, how, in any way, can this be a circle? The portals are directly parallel to each other, there is no curve at all. Therefore, the rope is a line. Finally, if you have ever actually played portal, as it seems a lot of you haven't, you'll notice that you can stand on the edge of portals, so when the rope falls due to gravity it will rest on the bottom edge of the portals.
Adding to my above comment, remembering that the physical part of the rope is 'teleported' even if the portals aren't parallel, the rope is still a line. Even if the rope has physical 'waves' in it, its just a wavy line. Always.
may be this one is the other reflection of the same side of the rope which is exactly the one and only..neither a circle nor a line! aha buldum cevabı :D
the rope is a lie
Now you're thinking in portals...
For science.
definitely a straight line if anything. there is no center, where all points are equidistant so a circle is impossible. I think it does follow the properties of the straight line though.
neither because the knot makes the "straight line" bumpy
The very existence of the rope is paradoxical.
In this position, both ends of the rope simultaneously enter and exit both of the portals. This condition would not be possible, since the exiting end will conflict with the entering end.
This is why we never see an object entering and exiting the portals at the same time in the game.
A circle with infinite circumference.
Wouldnt it be impossible to pull the rope out unless you untie it? therefore its a circle.
There's no fourth dimension coming into play here, just the third dimension bent back on itself.