Passing A Portal Through Itself

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This video is about what happens if you try to pass a portal (like in the video game Portal or Portal 2) through itself - do you get a paradox? Infinite recursion? Impossibility? Contradiction? The end of the world? Collapse of the wavefunction? Ultimately it ends up looking beautiful and weird and recursive and... just watch the video :)
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Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute!
Created by Henry Reich

[@The2wanderers]

I can see why the game designers avoided dealing with this through the simple expedient of making the portal close if it's moved.

[@mt_xing]

Someone's been replaying Portal a lot haven't they?

[@AmoghA]

I'm convinced Henry is making real, working Portals and is posting videos of him testing new features for people to point out so he can fix it. Very effective debugging process.

[@ZackRappMusic]

It’s shocking how well you explained such a trippy and abstract idea in such a short amount of time

[@santiagodellarosa9405]

0:12

[@rebelgaming1.5.14]

I love how it's just generally accepted now that Portal's Portals are the only things we're allowed to use for diagrams with portals.

[@puzzLEGO]

Portal physics must be the thing that keeps this guy up at night and he had to explain it or he would die from curiosity

[@Marshall_ROBLOX]

This is a troubling thought that I had as a child ever since the release of Portal 2. Thank you so much for solving this 😊

[@ixelaria]

I love that you used the Companion Cube! The Portal references are amazing!

[@TamDNB]

Portals actually are everywhere, the problem is they're all back to back, with no way to separate them

[@DOGEKB]

Actual version:*

[@Marcin_Nyczka]

I'd love for you to make a similar video about a more general problem with so-called scaling portals, i.e. those that vary in size, and when something falls into one portal, it comes out of the other with a proportionally changed size. For example - the blue portal is 7 times bigger than the orange one, which means that if a 1.75 meter tall man entered the orange portal, a 12.25 meter tall giant would come out of the blue one. However, if the same 1.75 meter tall man entered the blue portal, a 0.25 meter tall dwarf would emerge from the orange portal. My question is - what would happen if you threw a smaller portal into a larger one, and would it be possible to throw a larger portal into a smaller one if they had the right shapes, and if so, what would be the effect. You will make me very happy if you make a film about it.

[@swivel_z1371]

Crazy how simple the explanation for this is, it really makes it feel like an actual science

[@Lunarcreeper]

i love how portal has completely changed how we interpret portals and we always see it as one orange and one blue one

[@EmceeJoseph]

An important detail here is that each portal must have a backing that blocks entry such that entry is possible only through the coloured fronts of the portals. Changing that changes so much.

[@wojciechsura]

Hey, the answer is easy. When you pass a portal through a portal, then the dust particles will start getting transported through the portals with increasing speed up to effectively becoming a plasma. This results in a thermonuclear reaction, which constantly gains power while being transmitted through crossing portals. Random new portals opens leading to the crossing ones, and potentially become crossed too, in effect creating new, exponentially growing thermonuclear explosions firstly on the planet, then on other planets in the solar system and finally in other systems. The self-multiplying energy starts to exceed the mass equivalent of the universe and creates paradoxes leading to other universes - spreading there the unending explosion. Finally the multiverse seizes to exist in a blob of super-heated plasma, ending the whole existence as we know it. And afterwards, most likely, a big bang 2 happens.

[@gpanag93]

Making this animation seems more difficult than making an actual portal. Very good job

[@reconbomb8464]

Glad to see Portal and Portal 2 are still iconic enough to be the way portals are drawn in 2022

[@JustAHuman-gb5go]

You're wrong, you just unlock the secret green portal.

[@modernmanueee_]

Basically a mirror, but reflects 100% of the reality that goes through and around it or its counterpart