army1987 comments on Open thread, July 21-27, 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: polymathwannabe 21 July 2014 01:15PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 28 July 2014 08:56:28PM 0 points [-]

The point is, I don't think the topology of the portals even allows for things like "conservation of momentum" to make sense (anyone can correct me here).

That's what I immediately thought, but on further thought I think it might, if you assume portals move things through some kind of force rather than by folding space itself, though something yadda yadda Dirac delta function yadda yadda, but we can assume the portals are very much heavier than the object so... Well, I'd have to work it out.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 July 2014 09:12:24PM 0 points [-]

Yes, I think it can work, if when the object passes the portals the portals gets displaced by -m/M times their distance, where m is the mass of the object and M is the combined mass of the portals. (By “work” I mean it doesn't need there to be a privileged frame of reference for it to be described.)

(I'm assuming Galilean relativity; I'm not sure it can be made to work in special relativity as well.)