Thread: If portal 2 were real...

If there was a way to manufacture 2 linked portals such that walking into one meant coming out of the other (quantum tunneling device - or wormhole) - could you solve the world's energy problems?

You could for instance put one hole on the ceiling and one on the floor. Then you pore a lot of water into it and you'll have an infinite waterfall that would be used to spin a turbine. If you did the same, but inside a tube that's a vacuum, the water could go past terminal velocity and generate a lot more energy. Of course the sheer force would heat up the water molecules thus causing them to evaporate.
Assuming a closed system though you might be able the run a cooling apparatus along the tube to keep the water in liquid form...Or maybe you don't use water at all but some liquid with a very high boiling point.

The biggest issue would probably be the energy consumption of the portals themselves, which I imagine would be greater than the energy generated as per the first law of thermodynamics. This device would basically be a perpetual motion machine, thus violating the second law of thermodynamics as well.




Meh, I might be over-thinking it. Thoughts? What else could be done with such a device? Free hydrogen from the sun? Terrafom mars on the cheap? Harvest the moon's resources?

I think the energy a portal would need/wormhole would be so great it would take all the power of our sun or many stars that if we could create one we wouldn't need the energy that the portal created. by the way that game kicks some serious ass the online co-op is amazing.

LoL good point! It might require a lot more than that! Plus I don't think anything could survive the journey through it.

Which reminds me - wouldn't the portal device allow for time-travel if it did use a wormhole principle?

Agreed! Some of the coop was sections were a work of art!

there more another ideas the easier than yours, and we can use sun energy wind energy.
the world seeking for the easier and the cheaper energy.
there a very good idea in Japan there are A Metro Station build the ground of the station to generate energy by walking on it, every step generate energy, count how many people walk on the metro station ,,,,,

There are a good number of ideas like that. Transferring kinetic energy is not new - there are some watches that functions on this principle (powered my your arm movements) but applying it on a large scale is a good idea.
The U.S had a similar idea where all new roads would have electricity generating potential! Imagine that!

Lol; if portals were real, we'd probably have already solved the problem of infinite renewable energy.

Yeah but it's just a thought experiment. My question was more along the lines of mechanisms: what mechanism can be used to generate the power? Would liquid water be best? Steam? Would it even be worth it - how much energy can a waterfall the size of those portals generate?
What else could be done? Could you heat air so that it climbs, then when it reaches the top it's at the bottom again and needs to climb again and somehow use that? Could you build a Large Hedron Collider with only a few thousand dollars (infinite tunnel)?

Things of that nature

I'd think using water with our current vertical turbine generator systems would be one of the more effective methods.

Steam wouldn't work with the portals situation, because you wouldn't be using gravity... you're using heat. And you can't get heat energy from portals, you can just perpetuate gravity.

It would definitely be worth it if the portals used no energy; we could create multi megawatt hydro generators in every city and power the world without damming rivers.

I would put one in my fridge and the other on my end-table. can you say bedsores?