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[10ebbor10]

B) is also quite easy. The portal will be held up by the rod.

[i2amroy]

Listing the scenarios as A-D, where A, B, and C are in the first spoiler and D is in the second one.
Scenario A:
As noted, gravity would still be pulling on the rod. It would accelerate downwards until it reached terminal velocity, which due to not having any air directly beneath it to exert any direct forces (leaving only shear ones) would be very fast.

Scenario B:
If we were basing it off the game's physics the portal pair would instantly be destabilized as soon as you started to move the orange portal (since that's what happens to portals on moving platforms in the game). This would then attempt to force the rod out of the portal, and being unable to do so, would slice it at the portal locations. If we assumed that you could move the portal without it destabilizing, then the rod would essentially "run into" itself and the force of the portal moving would cause it to buckle and bend as much as necessary to keep the whole rod's length between the portals (this would likely cost no additional force on the platform holding the portal, since it would be tapping into the energy of you breaking the fabric of space itself). If the portals actually met each other, you would run into scenario 4. IMO it's unlikely that the portal's movement would be stopped by the rod. In this case we are bending the fabric of space itself, which could certainly exert a tearing or compressing force on the rod. This force is, by contrast, much stronger than any sort of backwards force that the rod could conceivably exert, and as such would be the same as if we were compressing the rod with infinite force at a given speed.

Scenario C:
As mentioned in the first part of scenario B, judging by the game the portal would first attempt to shove the rod out on whichever side held the "majority" of the portal when the first set of portals closed (since opening a new portal is just a very fast combination of a "close old pair" + "open new pair" where one of the new pair is at the same location as before the close). Upon failing this, one would only surmise that it would cut the rod at a molecular level along the boundary of the portal, slicing between the individual molecules (possibly pushing some of them back out the blue portal temporarily). In this case since we moved the top portal, the unsupported rod would immediately fall downwards, launching it out of the new orange portal at an angle. (Should the rod be moving quickly while you did this, such as from scenario A, it would probably annihilate whatever was standing outside of the new orange portal location). If we instead removed the bottom portal the rod would simply fall over, or in the case of a fast moving rod, slam into the floor at whatever velocity it was falling.

Scenario D:
We would first encounter the same thing as in scenario B, where the man would essentially "run into" himself and be squished. Should the portals continue to be pushed together, he would eventually be ejected as a very fine paste out from between the two panels, possibly at a rather high speed.

Edit: Small clarification to my reasoning.
On the non-imaginary note though, real wormholes/portals would actually have a distance in between the two ends. That distance might be measured in micrometers, but such a distance would exist.

[scrdest]

Depends on how the portal mechanics work; if it's an n-th dimensional bridge, then by soldering the ends you have created, essentially, the equivalent of bending the pipe into a C-shape then soldering the ends to create an O-shaped loop, except in extradimensional space.

Assuming that's the case, in B you are just crushing the lower part of the pipe with the upper one and vice versa. Essentially, the pipe would be uniformly crushed from above by its own mass until either it shortens enough to no longer be a continuous loop with the new setup, if it's contractible enough, or break otherwise, again breaking the loop. And if the portal was to fall freely to the top of the lower one, or at least low enough, you'd cause a nuclear explosion of the rod.

A) is that both parts accelerate until terminal velocity, as it's essentially falling through infinite space.

C) The exit of the blue portal would simply translocate to the new position, meaning the rod from the point of the original orange portal to the blue portal falls under its own mass and pushes the rod materializing at the orange exit out horizontally, causing it to fall out like a horizontal rod pushed with an increasing horizontal force.

D) The man gets crushed by his own body, essentially the same thing if you pressed his two identical clones to him from the sides. And again, if you push them too closely, you overcome the energy barrier to push the atoms closer than the van der Waals radius.

[forsaken1111]

Your conclusions are essentially the same as what I came to, I was just curious if I was missing something as when I saw these people seemed to have many varying opinions on the topic.

For scenario D assume also that the man cannot escape to the sides. Assume a tunnel of the same diameter as the portals. Scrdest says you'd eventually overcome the the energy barrier to push the atoms closer than the van der Waals radius. What would be the result of this? Portals are fun.

Also...

Assume a portal is opened at the bottom of the mariana trench, and another on the surface of the moon. Would the ejected water remain on the moon or would it have sufficient velocity to escape? Would it freeze? Boil? Knock the moon out of orbit?

[scrdest]

For scenario D assume also that the man cannot escape to the sides. Assume a tunnel of the same diameter as the portals. Scrdest says you'd eventually overcome the the energy barrier to push the atoms closer than the van der Waals radius. What would be the result of this? Portals are fun.

Err... Nuclear fusion, although I'd rather someone fact-checked me on that.

[forsaken1111]

For scenario D assume also that the man cannot escape to the sides. Assume a tunnel of the same diameter as the portals. Scrdest says you'd eventually overcome the the energy barrier to push the atoms closer than the van der Waals radius. What would be the result of this? Portals are fun.

Err... Nuclear fusion, although I'd rather someone fact-checked me on that.

Nuclear fusion confined to the space between portal apertures, so... an even distribution of energetic plasma?

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I need to find the portal self modivation picture I saw on google where it was supposed to be a poster inbetween chambers that gave the instructions incase you got discouraged.
1-stand in a small corridor
2- place portals across from eachother on the wall.
3-look to your left, look to your right, notice the infinite number of others in your position.
4- extend both hands and hold the hands of those in the wall portals
5-feel confidence in knowing that you are not alone and they believe in you as you believe in them.
6- close portals and continue testing



What would happen if you did that but instead of hold hands you got out a .50 cal snippet rifle and fired it into a portal? Would you end up with human blood slurrie as the bullet continued to fly through you and it's weight and force behind it tearing apart and ripping off bits that the bullet didn't even touch or something else?
E: heavy bullets can rip off limbs if they graze them correct? That's what I've heard from several sources.

[Furtuka]

Well that escalated quickly

[i2amroy]

Also...

Assume a portal is opened at the bottom of the mariana trench, and another on the surface of the moon. Would the ejected water remain on the moon or would it have sufficient velocity to escape? Would it freeze? Boil? Knock the moon out of orbit?

If we put the portal on mars instead of the moon, you'd be looking at an exact copy of http://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ and http://what-if.xkcd.com/54/.

[miauw62]

I need to find the portal self modivation picture I saw on google where it was supposed to be a poster inbetween chambers that gave the instructions incase you got discouraged.
1-stand in a small corridor
2- place portals across from eachother on the wall.
3-look to your left, look to your right, notice the infinite number of others in your position.
4- extend both hands and hold the hands of those in the wall portals
5-feel confidence in knowing that you are not alone and they believe in you as you believe in them.
6- close portals and continue testing



What would happen if you did that but instead of hold hands you got out a .50 cal snippet rifle and fired it into a portal? Would you end up with human blood slurrie as the bullet continued to fly through you and it's weight and force behind it tearing apart and ripping off bits that the bullet didn't even touch or something else?
E: heavy bullets can rip off limbs if they graze them correct? That's what I've heard from several sources.

Well, I assume it would basically be as if an infinite number of humans were standing in a row and you shot at them. Idk how far such a bullet could penetrate. Nothing very special would happen, though.

[Sergarr]

It would probably stop after 5-6 penetrations. Or ricochet off some random bone out of the portal area.

[TheDarkStar]

You would die and then the bullet would hit the ground after a few seconds. The "other people" aren't copies of you; they ARE you. It's like looking into facing mirrors: you see yourself and the things around you copied many times even though there's only one of you.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Miauw62: no it wouldn't do that because it's not really infinite people, it's like standing in a small room with walls made of mirrors, it looks like there are endless lines of people but it's really just a reflection of you. So once it passed through and hit you the first time then all the people ('reflections') would have the same wound as the one standing in the hallway because they all are you just viewed from a different point. I was wondering how much damage the bullet would do ((note that this is a bullet capable of penetrating weak (and depending on what type you use, strong) tank armor)  and that this bullet is also capable of lethal impacts from more than a mile away))

[Descan]

Fire a .50 caliber rifle into water (thank you Mythbusters) and it shreds itself and stops in a few meters.

Fire a .50 caliber rifle into a never-ending line of "people" (which is what a portal-conga-line basically is, even if it's the same person) and it'll go through maybe.... 2, 3 people? Based on the water thing, which is basically the same density as the human body apparently...? Anyway, based on that, just a few people.

Or in the portal case, it'll go through the portal a few times before it's too degraded and spread out (not to mentioned slowed down) to do much more damage.

[Sergarr]

The thing about people, though, is we have a habit of shredding, tearing etc. Water doesn't shred. A .50 calibre round would probably hit us, tear off a limb, hit us again as we're heading to the floor, and do that until either we're a fine mist, it's slowed down/broken, it hits the floor or we do.

The .50 cal bullet's energy isn't enough to fine mist anything that much bigger than itself. It's not fine misting humans by several orders of magnitude and it's ridiculous to even think so.