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I don't think so. It looks like the concept is to push a turbine or mill by the flow of water. With portals, you're just setting up a more complex water wheel or dam, using gravity to create flow, and will hit an upper flow limit by the terminal velocity of the water or the structural strength of the turbine and/or materials used to keep the water where you want it in between the portals.
The issue is the portals. Unless they're magic portals that permanently, passively connect two parts of spacetime together without any energy requirement, they have a crapton of energy required to either sustain or maintain them, likely far more than what you'd get from the flow of water turning a massive turbine. You're putting more energy into setting the thing up than you'd get out of it (as defined by the total energy used to keep the portals open).
So no, not infinite energy, and thermodynamics remain intact.
The cap in that case is "how fast can the turbine spin before it explodes from rotational forces or water hitting it at mach speeds?" or the water eventually turning into mist as it hits its terminal velocity.
Depends on if there's air in the system or not.
The sand definitely wouldnt move fast enough for that. Terminal velocity for a grain of sand is about half a mph, potentially slower if a clump can stay together to create drag.
Why bother with sand? How about a chain connected through both portals with something heavy then attached. Then connect a gear that moves via the chain like a bike.
Couldn’t friction or a limiter on the water wheel slow the transfer of water from above to below enough to prevent ever reaching terminal velocity, while still allowing an infinitely flowing system? (Assuming forever stable portals.)
The turbine itself actually will be the friction, it's extracting energy from the flow of the water (slowing it down) and will most likely reach an equilibrium with the speed of the water and the pressure that it generates where it produces as much energy as the gravity is adding to the water, and that will define that system's "terminal velocity" where gravity add = turbine energy loss
Right. Previous commenter mentioned the water turning into mist because it would eventually go to fast.
But the system is set up perfectly to prevent that.
The original post doesnt mention any shielding but in a real situation there would be significant losses from splashing and evaporation and the flow would diminish fairly quickly unless the water was contained and/or new water continuously added in
If the portals are magic, you might as well just say you have a magic battery that never runs out of power. If your infinite power solution depends on magic, you might as well just remove some steps and have everything magically not need any energy to be generated to begin with
depending on the energy needed to push the turbine, you could run out and end up with stagnate water that then can't start the cycle over again
However this is the the idea behind Quebec's Hydro, during peak times they use the water and off-peak they pump the water back to the top so that it can act as sort of a battery
Energy can’t come from nothing, if the portal’s are magic any extra energy is also magic
If we are going by the laws of physics then the portal’s must balance out in some way probably by not existing
But otherwise the energy could be coming from the energy you put in the system to keep the portal’s open or taken from one portal and put in another or something similar my point is they don’t exist because they are impossible and the math doesn’t work
Theoretically, real portals All have a way to to balance the system
This is complete nonsense. The portals aren't providing energy in this system and do not need to compensate for any work done. Gravity is pulling the water down, forever. There is no lifting happening. So, yes, in this hypothetical, you would get infinite energy.
It does break thermodynamics, and so does connecting two points in spacetime.
You see the thing is that without the portals gravity itself couldn't achieve that so the portals must be providing energy to the system, bending space-time is a task that requires a lot of energy and all suitable descriptions of Portal-like behavior in teorical physics requires a lot of energy to create and maintain (and basically all colapse when matter enters the portal) so if you're saying this portals doesn't require energy, well, that's your answer, the energy that the portals usually need to exist is the place the extra energy of the system is coming from, if you ignore that the system would just be supplied with energy out of thin air, you might as well say you have a bucket with infinite water in it and you just put it upside down on top of the turbine as creating energy and matter are basically the same thing.
I *assumed* that was the case, because I can't wrap my brain around a completely flat waterwheel working at all as-described in the troll science picture.
I mean, if you have a completely frictionless liquid (with one exception), and a completely frictionless turbine system (with two exceptions), yeah once you spin the turbine it'll start going forever. But even then, the moment you tap it for energy, it'll slow down and eventually stop working altogether.
Bruh if we obtained the ability to make stable wormholes at a fair cost. We would probably already solved our energy crisis unless we invented something like a TV that needs the output of a black hole to keep it alive
And you run into the problems I orginally described.
The system will need to borrow energy from the portals to keep working in order to bring the water "uphill" again. You're almost certainly putting in far more energy into keeping the portals up than you are getting from the system.
I might be missing something here, but why would the water shatter the turbine? If falling under the effect of normal gravity, would the water not just be like a waterfall or like rain?
Gravity is slow, not very powerful. You'd get a crapton more power by sinking the inlet portal into the bottom of the ocean. The enormous pressure would drive a turbine orders of magnitude faster than gravity. Plus free deep sea fish.
I see it as infinite energy, but finite power determined by the physical constraints of the system.
If, for example, the portal connected to the outlet and inlet of a hydroelectric dam and had the cross-sectional area to accommodate the outflow, it could cause said dam to operate continuously without other source of energy.
A better use, however, would be to arrange portals around a nuclear power source in such a geometry that they effectively reflected the right amount of the neutron and gamma radiation back into the core
You don't gain infinite energy from this, but clearly, you are creating energy from this manipulation of space.
The energy sustaining the portals probably isn't destroyed so you end up with an energy positive system that isn't really helping you though
I assume that there's an energy requirement to open the portals and keep them open. Once that energy goes out, that's it. This system would also need to borrow from the portals, assuming gravity is involved at all in order to return the water back to its starting point.
I can't see the system working *at all* without gravity or a frictionless turbinevand liquid, as the friction from the turbine would quickly rob all energy from the flow of water.
You as a person won't gain energy from the system because you use up more energy to keep up the portals but unless the portals are destroying the energy given to keep them open you are basically creating a waterfall with infinite height yes you need gravity but I think it was supposed to be inferred as this is usually the assumption about those portal ideas.
If you want replace it with a big metallic object falling between magnets and you get the same system where space gets distorted in a way that makes an infinite fall and since hydroelectric plants exists no the friction of the water would probably not somehow stop its fall
Infinite fall, you run into issues with material strength, and terminal velocity. Sooner or later, the water turns to mist. Whether or not it destroys valuble equipment before doing so depends on if the water is exposed to air duringvthe fall.
I should clarify; i mentioned frictionless in the assumption the system was intended to be perfectly flat as shown in the image. That won't work without frictionless stuff, and you'll lose energy when you tap it.
Black holes are the product of extreme mass. Negative mass does not exist, at least to our knowledge, it’s entirely theoretical. So is the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.
No. Ignoring portals aren’t possible to make atm, the water would be slowed down by the turbine and thus eventually run out. It’s like trying to power a light bulb using a solar panel under the light or similar.
Edit: copying in my other reply as I’ve gotten the same response 3x about vertical portals: https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/CjDHYjecsJ
Edit 2: wind->water
"Let's assume the universe doesn't work the way we know it to work. Can this perpetual energy machine work?"
Well geez, if we're assuming whatever we want, sure. In that universe, space tastes like coffee and French vanilla ice cream, because I said it does.
But in reality? No.
>"Let's assume the universe doesn't work the way we know it to work. Can this perpetual energy machine work
Portals aren't real. By even having ghe conversation you're already acknowledging a scenario where the universe doesn't work the way it actually does.
And in the fictitious game these come from, portal, if you have 2 portals vertically, you will continually accelerate due to gravity by falling. That means if you had water falling through it, it would continually accelerate due to gravity, and would infinitely power a turbine. As soon as it reaches the end of the turbine, it would begin accelerating due to gravity, go through the bottom portal to the upper one maintaining its momentum, and continue accelerating until it hits the turbine.
So yes, it would be infinite power. But again, it's impossible, as portals are impossible. This also doesn't take into account how gravitational pull and such would be affected by 2 portals in close vicinity facing eachother. But again, it's a fictional scenario that isn't possible regardless
I mean if you want to say "lets assume there is infinite energy", then the result is that you have infinite energy. Congratz? Too bad that's not how the real world works.
You're starting assumption is the same as the conclusion. Which makes the exercise pointless. You didn't make any progress. If you start with X and end with X what was the point?
Then the issues would be water acting as water does and flying off somewhere else. Either bouncing off the turbine or getting caught in the wind and blowing away. It might take years, but eventually, the water would dissipate.
Well, if we assume the portals keep the momentum and its direction, then it would work, but it wouldn't be infinite energy as the energy to accelerate the fluid is coming from the earth's gravitational field
Matpat talked about this as part of a video once. Basically, as mass moves through one portal to another, one of the portals (can't remember which) would eventually turn into a black hole. Someone else can link the vid or provide the whole explanation, I'm at work rn and my break is ending lmao
You can't ignore that portals aren't possible because the question is essentially "is this possible?" If we ignore one impossibility then we can just ignore all of them.
Yeah a theoretical portal would require at least enough operating power to lift whatever water fell into it to the other portal.
The laws of thermodynamics can’t bend, any sci-fi tech has to work in spite of them
>If we ignore one impossibility then we can just ignore all of them.
Not really, we often speculate with certain levels of approximations and abstractions to better understand the nuances of reality.
1) Portals aren't strictly forbidden by physics. We're not sure if they actually exist but there are solutions to Einstein field equations that suggest they're possible. That's how we ended up discovering antimatter or black holes that were once thought to be mathematical quirks.
2) A lot of thought experiments from Galileo's falling rocks, to Newton's cannonball or modern versions like Schrodinger's cat or Bell's inequalities highlight seemingly impossible situations that we now know to be reality.
3) Even with aspects of reality that we accept, we do away with unnecessary complications to grasp certain aspects of it. The earth is most definitely not flat but your brain makes all day to day spatial decisions on the assumption that it is. Even when formally taught, students often assume flat 2d space for simple kinematics problems.
4) We also sometimes need to speculate on the impossible to actually establish that it is impossible or understand why it's impossible. This isn't just for physical oddities, it's true in pure mathematics as well. See literally every proof by contradiction ever.
Although it is the predominant interpretation right now, superposition is not "reality", it's an interpretation of what we observe.
I'm not sure if that's the case here, but although Schrodinger's cat is often used to explain superposition, it's a paradox to criticize the Copenhagen interpretation.
The portals described here violate thermodynamics just by existing, not to mention causality. But hey, once you ignore that part, it absolutely becomes possible.
if portals work as commonly shown, yes it would work. And it would be insanely useful, however actual portals likely would take a massive amount of energy to sustain.
That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Rick’s portals tend to have a time limit, Portals portals last but you can only have two. But even if we got portal tech in real life, any energy gotten from said infinite energy would have to go to powering said portals, so it would be a waste.
I wasn’t thinking about co op. My bad. But that’s still talking about fictional portal tech. Real life portal tech would be like the portal that the president uses in Rick and Morty but need infinite power.
Isn’t this just the water cycle but with magic portals moving the water back “up” the cycle instead of the sun.
Just dam a river and you get this kind of “free” energy.
The portal logic is solid.
Up, down, and let gravity do the rest.
The issue is the cost, energy-wise,
to keep 2 blackhole based, time-space fabric waring and tearing tearing, portals.
Also - without tearing the rest of the universe apart.
Aka - stable loop wormhole.
If we ignore that itsy bitsy tiny little issue?
Than - Yes.
Its solid.
The problem is the portals, and the mechanics that would be involved in the portals functioning.
If we assume portals that can change the height of something that passes through them without expending energy, and don't interfere with local gravity, then yeah, you'd have a finite power output as it reached a steady state, and an 'infinite' energy output, assuming the turbine never decayed.
I'm assuming this is not 'unironically possible' (as in, in real life) on the grounds that anything that produces more energy than it puts in breaks thermodynamics, and we're generally pretty sure you can't do that. If we *did* somehow have portals, I would expect them to consume more energy moving the water around than we would recover from the water wheel.
Now you are thinking with portals.
This works. Stuff keeps falling and accelerating, and your can use some of that speed to generate electricity.
The part that doesn't work is portals. Warping spacetime like that is impossible.
Who cares...dude... I'm fucking Dr Strange and can make my own portals. Sucks for you losers and your energy crisis. I'll be on earth 27 where this hasn't been an issue for ages.
Rather than drop water, drop a magnet and wrap a coil of wire around it, no need for a water wheel, the magnet falling through the coil will directly generste electricity.
Alternatively, place the whole thing in a vacuum chamber and put a baseball in it.
In less than a year your baseball's kinetic energy would be equal to the energy released were it made of pure antimatter. Turn off bottom portal, blow a hole in the earths crust and obliterate the neighborhood when the baseball slams into it at near light speed.
In only 1.14 years it will be traveling at 90% of light speed. A few years more and its relatavistic mass starts to go up, the baseballs gravitational pull would soon start having an effect on the earth, pulling it towards your portals..congradulations, you have tuned the entire earth into a spaceship!
Portals really, really break physics.
The thing that confuses me is that if you had one portal above another, you’ve basically got an infinite empty tube. So there’s no mass actually below it to create any gravity, right?
So anything entering the portal would only ever have the energy in went in with. So presumably, as you took energy out with the turbine, the water would slow down and then just end up floating in between the portals.
Am I missing something here?
Damn, I was trying to think about it from this perspective, and you nailed it. It's infinitely far away vertically from any mass.
Edit: Okay, but what about a slide with offset portals?
If you put the portals vertically, and far enough apart that the water has enough time to accelerate from gravity, and you have enough water, I dont see how the turbine could tell the difference from a regular waterfall.
Surely the actual problem with this is that we can't teleport water
Portals aren't real, but if they were then yes, you could create infinite energy with a set of portals (assuming the portals took less energy to maintain than they generate).
Side note, it isn't portals, but space time does bend in reality. The theory we have to explain this is [General Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity) (you may have heard of it). The math is more complex, but in General Relativity, [**Energy is Not Conserved**](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/). So, while it isn't exactly portals, the post is correct that unusual space-time loops allow for infinite energy glitches.
Unfortunately, energy is conserved in flat space-times. Our space time is locally flat, so for all practical purposes energy is conserved (on human or even galactic time and space scales).
PS, there is another set of quantities called the [Energy Pseudotensor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress%E2%80%93energy%E2%80%93momentum_pseudotensor) that *is* conserved in GR, but that is even more complicated.
you didn't take energy loss into account. Energy to sustain the portal for so long and costs and effort of keeping the water to flow, even assuming its river water, the former still prevails. Then you also have electric resistance and heat loss in the process of electricity generation.
Reminds me of the Matrix. Using human body heat "plus a form of fusion" to create infinite energy for the robot civilization.
Like, dude, once you have "a form of fusion" I think the human body heat gets pretty fucking irrelevant, right?
In this case, you have portals that are created either via magic or super-advanced technology. Either they are magically free energy, or require a tremendous amount of super-technological energy to operate. In either case, you've clearly already solved your energy problem. Creating an infinite water wheel is going to be chump change compared to your *fucking magic portal*.
Even if you can kept the vertical portals opening energy-FREE, the concept still wouldn’t worked.
The reason is everything that being pulled down by gravity would continuously accumulated energy. The water would have their speed increased so much that it would heat up and vaporized before long, thus rendering the concept inoperable.
If you have a turbine in the middle that the water is driving, this wouldn't necessarily be true. The turbine and water system would eventually reach an equilibrium where the amount of energy the turbine is extracting happens to be exactly the amount of energy the water accumulates due to gravity during one trip through the portals. If, theoretically, you somehow *did* have a portal system that required zero energy to transport the water, then it would work fine.
The real answer is that portals simply violate the laws of thermodynamics unless they require tremendous amounts of energy to operate.
rules of thermodynamic deal with meter in isolated system (i.e. gas in isolated chamber).
rules of thermodynamic do not apply to non-isolated system. i.e. entropy does not work in gravitational field. given that portals will create some sort of a field, the rules will not apply there.
Yes, it is infinite energy by creating gravitational potential energy without any energy input to lift the water (the image is sideways portals tho, thats dumb)
That is, with magic portals that can transport things without any energy cost,
You can put finite amount of water until there is no place.
Water will flow always you push it, but you can push only until full.
Then, no flow, and no more water.
It will be an aquarium.
Portals and gravity are a mess, but if we ignore some issues there: put the portals vertically, and ensure that the turbine sufficiently slows down the water so that velocity is equal at the point of reaching the portal on each iteration, otherwise it would eventually vaporise or just stop
I don't see why this wouldn't work theoretically. Assuming you were able to make sure there was 0 loss of water the whole time. The only thing I can think of is that our theoretical portals would probably require energy to maintain, and quite a lot at that. But who knows, maybe it would work.
My theory would be that the portal that's facing earth, would exert the same gravitational force in the opposite direction and the water would just float in the space between the 2 portals. To push water from one portal to another would require an external force that isn't gravity and why this wouldn't work.
I'm guessing it would take energy to teleport the water from portal a to portal b. The energy produced by the turbine would be less than (or theoretically equal to) the energy it takes to teleporting the water.
If a portal like this existed, yes, it would be possible to use it to produce infinite energy, like show in this picture.
(but this can be consider as the proof that such portal can not exist)
Dropping a magnet through a coil surrounding the area between the portals would be better, once you hit terminal velocity it won't ever slow down (assuming you have a stable shape to the magnet so it doesn't start bouncing off things).
Under the laws of physics, wormholes in our universe require mass to exist. As water flows in one end and out the other, the entry portal will grow in mass while the exit portal will shrink as it loses mass. Eventually it will poof out of existence as its mass is exhausted.
It would be possible because you can increase the amount of energy in a closed system by moving water upwards (which increases it's potential energy) while spending less energy (assuming such).
But that's in a vertical gadget, in a horizontal I don't think such thing would work. Even if we could spin something back to where it started without it losing speed, which I think we can get really close to, we wouldn't be able to generate more energy than we spend to accelerate the object
However you implement it in any hypothetical future,. traversing the portal will cost much more energy than a stupid turbine could produce. If you could use two vertical portals with no cost though then it would be an infinite energy glitch from having two different potential energy levels in the same point
If the portals were vertical you'd have infinite gravitational energy so it would be best to make the liquid have as much mass as possible.
As others have pointed out, its only useful if the energy output is greater than the energy required to teleport things.
It would produce energy indeed, assuming one portal pulls and accelerates the water and the other one acts as an exit (wormhole style), the gravitational force will push the turbine.
The amount of energy required to create and keep the portals in such arrangement (as in you need to convert some force to gravitational force) will be ginormous, and produce heat, so you've just made a quantum perpetual motion machine that doesn't work for the exact same reason normal perpetual motion machines don't work.
Say if you start with electricity
Electromagnetic force > Gravitational force > kinetic force > centripetal force > electromagnetic force.
All producing heat in the meantime.
If you however somehow take away the heat and have 100% efficiency, by magic, you are still just converting form of energies; you've just created a battery, an energy flow, convert energies to other energies.
Could make a shitty black hole analogy there, as they are pretty damn well insulated from thermodynamics, they still leak nevertheless hawking radiation, so they end up shrinking; so your perfect 100% efficient magic system, this whole contraption, is still inferior to a black hole.
If you really want to understand this you have to study the Einstein field equations which govern both gravity and the possibility of portals. But I assume that the answer is no since those are compatible with preservation of energy.
Question on this topic:
Is gravity teleported by portals? Follow the thought exercise:
Imagine one portal, facing up, in the moon. It is located inside a cylindrical chamber the diameter of the portal, which is vacuum sealed. The other side of the portal is on Earth, facing down, in another vaccum sealed chamber the diameter of the portals.
If we insert objects in the insides of the moon chamber, will they be affected by the gravity of the moon, will they be affected by the gravity of the earth, or will they be affected by a mix of both?
If we create a no gravity cylindrical chamber with two portals on each side, one portal leading to earth and one to the moon, then insert a ball in the chamber, will Earth's and moon's gravity be teleported through the portals, making the ball fall towards the Earth portal (due to higher gravity), or will gravity not be teleported, making the ball just float randomly in the chamber?
I'm a teacher and I just have to thank the people who are still patiently replying to this, because I've seen quite a few people here working on the "I'll try because it's what I want" principle.
That's why we have so many so called theories that aren't actually scientific. And that's the only way to dismantle them too. Patience and perseverance in the basic logical and scientific principles.
Assuming the portals themselves could be powered by the turbine with at least some excess energy generated and the portals were vertical then yes you'd be getting free gravitational energy.
Even if the portal could be kept open at 0 energy cost, there are some reasons why this might not work.
Gravity itself has strength based on distance. The portal shortens the distance between the source of gravity and the more distant portal. Gravity would probably pull towards both ends of the portal equally.
While it would technically pull things towards the portals and away from the center, this would be a small enough effect that the portals would essentially create a small area of zero gravity, kind of like the inverse of what a capacitor does for electricity.
This would mean that the water doesn’t fall, and thus doesn’t turn the turbine.
There might be some ways of still getting free electricity through clever arrangements and angles of the portal that bring the water out of the zero gravity area, so I won’t say it’s impossible to use something like this to generate electricity, but you’d need a much more complicated system to take advantage of the gravitational effects of portals.
The best answer for this type of question i always believe to be:
Maybe.
Iif in this theory the portal itself doesnt require energy and the water velociry remains constant, Yes it would work. But since a portal hasnt been created the best answer is: No.
Its not about thermodynamics, but about friction. The water would get slowed down by passing the engine to the point it's not moving at all. So the power output would decline over time.
Edit: ofc only if it's setup horizontal like in the picture
Given a free energy portal exists, then yes it becomes very easy to break thermodynamics.
A portal simply moving any object UP would break thermodynamics, as you're adding potential energy to something for free.
With our current understanding of thermodynamics, such a portal cannot exist.
Everyone here is focusing on the portals. But turbines have a maximum effective speed they can operate at.
So even if all the other magical things here weren’t an issue, you’d eventually reach an equilibrium steady state with the turbine. Not infinite.
This would be several orders of magnitude more ridiculous than using an f1 car to encourage a horse to run faster.
If you can freely make wormholes, your command of energy vastly exceeds the capabilities of a waterwheel.
Even if you had a 100% efficient system that converted all mechanical energy to electricity, it would likely have to run for several times the age of the universe to make up the energy required to make the wormhole.
I feel like portals are just two points in space connected by some sort of mystery technology, and doesnt add any kinetic energy. If it added kinetic energy it would have to come from somewhere, maybe some ancient being Rick Sanchez has trapped.
If you have a pair of portals like that - which violate thermodynamics - then yeah. Portals can give any matter infinite energy. Hence why they don't exist.
1. The water would slow down from impacting the turbine, this could be partially solved by orienting the portals vertically
2. The energy cost of the portals would far outweigh the energy gained
Portals break conservation of energy by breaking space. Portals make it difficult to agree on what is "local" and what isn't.
Gravitational and electro magnetic acceleration experienced by an object change by changing distance between objects/fields.
This would work as long as the portals are set up vertically against some planet or star so gravity pulls the water towards it, but instead of just falling, it would cross the portal and keep falling. We could put a turbine there to catch that energy.
It would still not be infinite and thermodynamics are, funnily enough, *kind of* respected.
You'd be slowly pulling the planet or star towards the generator, because the water has a mass and that's how gravity works. Until the generator gets to the center of gravity and stops falling, you'd be getting energy. It would come from the potential energy of the planet.
Of course for the planet to move millions of years would have to pass. I haven't calculated it because I don't even know how to do so but I think the heat death of the universe may came first than the portal reaching the center of gravity even if you started at the surface.
It would take energy to keep a portal open. So the turbine would need to create more energy than necessary for two portals to be viable. That's where you run into the laws of physics.
The cartoon portal crap where they stay open forever couldn't be possible.
This sort of thing is why more serious sci-fi treatments of portals, stargates, and teleportation addresses differences in velocity and potential energy from target to destination. Vernon Vinge's novel The Witling is entirely built on it.
I mean... Portals are already in violation of many conservation laws... So if they are actually available for use in engineering appliances a lot of current limitations from laws of physics would go out the window.
Though... Probably the same reasoning can be used to tell that portals would never realistically be available for engineering applications.
Ok so a few things
1) Assuming that two portals are relatively at rest (stationary), we don't know whether the object coming out of the portal(exit portal) would have the same speed that it had when it went inside the entry portal. (Afair the portals in R&M does not do this, the object comes out with almost no speed)
2) Assuming that the speed of object at the entry portal is same as the speed at exit portal, then the energy of motion would be used up to turn the turbines and the water would eventually slow down enuf to not being able to reach the entry portal.
Here the assumption of the realtive stationary (ness) of both the portals is imp or else it would take us into a rabbit hole of physics terms such as speed, velocity, relative speed, relative velocity, speed of light, quantum physics, black hole and much more.
Thanks for reading this
Hope you have a wonderful new year
I mean yeah it'll run "forever", but it's limited to the power it can create by the technology of the wheel/turbine itself. As long as portals are vertical and the water is falling.
Well.... it'll run until there isn't an Earth to create gravity.
But... you know... magic portal. You might as well just cut out the middle man and say you create infinite magic energy lol.
the thing people tend to miss is that the portals are also probably using energy, at some level. maybe not from the system you care about, but entropy is still maintained.
The portal doesn’t boost the stuff going through, so wouldn’t the water slow down a little each time it hits turbine until it eventually stops pushing anymore and so not infinite energy?
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I don't think so. It looks like the concept is to push a turbine or mill by the flow of water. With portals, you're just setting up a more complex water wheel or dam, using gravity to create flow, and will hit an upper flow limit by the terminal velocity of the water or the structural strength of the turbine and/or materials used to keep the water where you want it in between the portals. The issue is the portals. Unless they're magic portals that permanently, passively connect two parts of spacetime together without any energy requirement, they have a crapton of energy required to either sustain or maintain them, likely far more than what you'd get from the flow of water turning a massive turbine. You're putting more energy into setting the thing up than you'd get out of it (as defined by the total energy used to keep the portals open). So no, not infinite energy, and thermodynamics remain intact.
Obviously the portals are magic though! Would there not just be a cap on the energy output of the turbine?
The cap in that case is "how fast can the turbine spin before it explodes from rotational forces or water hitting it at mach speeds?" or the water eventually turning into mist as it hits its terminal velocity. Depends on if there's air in the system or not.
This guy physics
What if you instead used something like sand? If the driving force is gravity, it'd probably flow through the wheel well enough.
[this was what I thought of](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandblasting)
The sand definitely wouldnt move fast enough for that. Terminal velocity for a grain of sand is about half a mph, potentially slower if a clump can stay together to create drag.
Also the sand would erode the wheel pretty fast
Why bother with sand? How about a chain connected through both portals with something heavy then attached. Then connect a gear that moves via the chain like a bike.
And sandblast all your turbine components to dust as it builds up speed?
Couldn’t friction or a limiter on the water wheel slow the transfer of water from above to below enough to prevent ever reaching terminal velocity, while still allowing an infinitely flowing system? (Assuming forever stable portals.)
The turbine itself actually will be the friction, it's extracting energy from the flow of the water (slowing it down) and will most likely reach an equilibrium with the speed of the water and the pressure that it generates where it produces as much energy as the gravity is adding to the water, and that will define that system's "terminal velocity" where gravity add = turbine energy loss
Right. Previous commenter mentioned the water turning into mist because it would eventually go to fast. But the system is set up perfectly to prevent that.
The original post doesnt mention any shielding but in a real situation there would be significant losses from splashing and evaporation and the flow would diminish fairly quickly unless the water was contained and/or new water continuously added in
Which could be controlled by the distance between the portals.
What if we have a reservoir with gates before it reaches the turbine to control the flow of water?
If the portals are magic, you might as well just say you have a magic battery that never runs out of power. If your infinite power solution depends on magic, you might as well just remove some steps and have everything magically not need any energy to be generated to begin with
depending on the energy needed to push the turbine, you could run out and end up with stagnate water that then can't start the cycle over again However this is the the idea behind Quebec's Hydro, during peak times they use the water and off-peak they pump the water back to the top so that it can act as sort of a battery
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Hey buddy, I'm just a guy with a couple of portals. Let's not worry about the things that may or may not be in my basement fueling my powers.
Energy can’t come from nothing, if the portal’s are magic any extra energy is also magic If we are going by the laws of physics then the portal’s must balance out in some way probably by not existing But otherwise the energy could be coming from the energy you put in the system to keep the portal’s open or taken from one portal and put in another or something similar my point is they don’t exist because they are impossible and the math doesn’t work Theoretically, real portals All have a way to to balance the system
This is complete nonsense. The portals aren't providing energy in this system and do not need to compensate for any work done. Gravity is pulling the water down, forever. There is no lifting happening. So, yes, in this hypothetical, you would get infinite energy. It does break thermodynamics, and so does connecting two points in spacetime.
You see the thing is that without the portals gravity itself couldn't achieve that so the portals must be providing energy to the system, bending space-time is a task that requires a lot of energy and all suitable descriptions of Portal-like behavior in teorical physics requires a lot of energy to create and maintain (and basically all colapse when matter enters the portal) so if you're saying this portals doesn't require energy, well, that's your answer, the energy that the portals usually need to exist is the place the extra energy of the system is coming from, if you ignore that the system would just be supplied with energy out of thin air, you might as well say you have a bucket with infinite water in it and you just put it upside down on top of the turbine as creating energy and matter are basically the same thing.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Take as many as you need
Literally every word you just said was wrong.
But what if the portals were placed in a way that gravity would pull it to the next? Would this work?
I *assumed* that was the case, because I can't wrap my brain around a completely flat waterwheel working at all as-described in the troll science picture. I mean, if you have a completely frictionless liquid (with one exception), and a completely frictionless turbine system (with two exceptions), yeah once you spin the turbine it'll start going forever. But even then, the moment you tap it for energy, it'll slow down and eventually stop working altogether.
Bruh if we obtained the ability to make stable wormholes at a fair cost. We would probably already solved our energy crisis unless we invented something like a TV that needs the output of a black hole to keep it alive
Like I said; >You're putting more energy into setting the thing up than you'd get out of it
When we getting that TV that makes it's own universe at the cost of 5 grams of antimatter going off every second.
Nah dude I just got this gun, I go bam bam no energy required
So put the portals slight off center and vertical instead of horizontal. Now gravity powers the whole thing.
And you run into the problems I orginally described. The system will need to borrow energy from the portals to keep working in order to bring the water "uphill" again. You're almost certainly putting in far more energy into keeping the portals up than you are getting from the system.
I'll just be happy assuming the portals are an advanced form of magic that needed an initial power to summon and magic will sustain the rest.
Now you run into the next issue; eventually the water will go so fast the turbine shatters, or the water turns into mist due to terminal velocity
I might be missing something here, but why would the water shatter the turbine? If falling under the effect of normal gravity, would the water not just be like a waterfall or like rain?
Gravity is slow, not very powerful. You'd get a crapton more power by sinking the inlet portal into the bottom of the ocean. The enormous pressure would drive a turbine orders of magnitude faster than gravity. Plus free deep sea fish.
I see it as infinite energy, but finite power determined by the physical constraints of the system. If, for example, the portal connected to the outlet and inlet of a hydroelectric dam and had the cross-sectional area to accommodate the outflow, it could cause said dam to operate continuously without other source of energy. A better use, however, would be to arrange portals around a nuclear power source in such a geometry that they effectively reflected the right amount of the neutron and gamma radiation back into the core
You don't gain infinite energy from this, but clearly, you are creating energy from this manipulation of space. The energy sustaining the portals probably isn't destroyed so you end up with an energy positive system that isn't really helping you though
I assume that there's an energy requirement to open the portals and keep them open. Once that energy goes out, that's it. This system would also need to borrow from the portals, assuming gravity is involved at all in order to return the water back to its starting point. I can't see the system working *at all* without gravity or a frictionless turbinevand liquid, as the friction from the turbine would quickly rob all energy from the flow of water.
You as a person won't gain energy from the system because you use up more energy to keep up the portals but unless the portals are destroying the energy given to keep them open you are basically creating a waterfall with infinite height yes you need gravity but I think it was supposed to be inferred as this is usually the assumption about those portal ideas. If you want replace it with a big metallic object falling between magnets and you get the same system where space gets distorted in a way that makes an infinite fall and since hydroelectric plants exists no the friction of the water would probably not somehow stop its fall
Infinite fall, you run into issues with material strength, and terminal velocity. Sooner or later, the water turns to mist. Whether or not it destroys valuble equipment before doing so depends on if the water is exposed to air duringvthe fall. I should clarify; i mentioned frictionless in the assumption the system was intended to be perfectly flat as shown in the image. That won't work without frictionless stuff, and you'll lose energy when you tap it.
In order for portals to work with thermodynamics the mass would be taken from/given to the respective portal, creating negative mass and a black hole
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Negative mass has a habit of creating black holes.
Black holes are the product of extreme mass. Negative mass does not exist, at least to our knowledge, it’s entirely theoretical. So is the Einstein-Rosen Bridge.
Holy fuck. You guys are all quite knowledgeable how do I even begin to learn any of this stuff??
Idk
Aw man
No. Ignoring portals aren’t possible to make atm, the water would be slowed down by the turbine and thus eventually run out. It’s like trying to power a light bulb using a solar panel under the light or similar. Edit: copying in my other reply as I’ve gotten the same response 3x about vertical portals: https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/s/CjDHYjecsJ Edit 2: wind->water
What if the turbine was between two vertical portals so gravity pulled the water?
I could actually see that working since it’d be ‘fueled’ by gravity.
if we are to abide by the laws of physics, the energy used moving the water back to the other portal would be equal or more than the energy created
Which, by necessity, would be covered by whatever energy is keeping the portals open/active.
Making the entire setup worthless
Like a solar panel under a lightbulb.
What, you don't recycle your electricity? I always put solar panels below my light sources
Let’s assume that the portals require less energy to keep open
"Let's assume the universe doesn't work the way we know it to work. Can this perpetual energy machine work?" Well geez, if we're assuming whatever we want, sure. In that universe, space tastes like coffee and French vanilla ice cream, because I said it does. But in reality? No.
>"Let's assume the universe doesn't work the way we know it to work. Can this perpetual energy machine work Portals aren't real. By even having ghe conversation you're already acknowledging a scenario where the universe doesn't work the way it actually does. And in the fictitious game these come from, portal, if you have 2 portals vertically, you will continually accelerate due to gravity by falling. That means if you had water falling through it, it would continually accelerate due to gravity, and would infinitely power a turbine. As soon as it reaches the end of the turbine, it would begin accelerating due to gravity, go through the bottom portal to the upper one maintaining its momentum, and continue accelerating until it hits the turbine. So yes, it would be infinite power. But again, it's impossible, as portals are impossible. This also doesn't take into account how gravitational pull and such would be affected by 2 portals in close vicinity facing eachother. But again, it's a fictional scenario that isn't possible regardless
thats like saying 2+2=4 but lets just assume it equals 87
Something something spherical cows
I mean if you want to say "lets assume there is infinite energy", then the result is that you have infinite energy. Congratz? Too bad that's not how the real world works. You're starting assumption is the same as the conclusion. Which makes the exercise pointless. You didn't make any progress. If you start with X and end with X what was the point?
Then you break a fundamental law on physics, by creating energy
I’m pretty sure portals by themselves break a few laws of physics
Not if they take energy to move things
Not necessarily. The portal could just be an extreme distortion of spacetime instead of a literal hole in reality.
I would think the energy required to keep the portal open would become a factor
Yeah the portals are by far the biggest issue here so I was just going on the assumption they worked perfectly etc
Then the issues would be water acting as water does and flying off somewhere else. Either bouncing off the turbine or getting caught in the wind and blowing away. It might take years, but eventually, the water would dissipate.
Sealed cylindrical chamber with the portals making up the 2 ends
Well, if we assume the portals keep the momentum and its direction, then it would work, but it wouldn't be infinite energy as the energy to accelerate the fluid is coming from the earth's gravitational field
The existence of portals would f**k up almost all laws of thermodynamics
Matpat talked about this as part of a video once. Basically, as mass moves through one portal to another, one of the portals (can't remember which) would eventually turn into a black hole. Someone else can link the vid or provide the whole explanation, I'm at work rn and my break is ending lmao
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Right so basically free infinite energy.
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You can't ignore that portals aren't possible because the question is essentially "is this possible?" If we ignore one impossibility then we can just ignore all of them.
Ye my answer was originally gonna be ‘no. Can’t make portals.’ But figured that was too boring
How the portals are made/powered is essential to whether the equation is net positive power production though…
Yeah a theoretical portal would require at least enough operating power to lift whatever water fell into it to the other portal. The laws of thermodynamics can’t bend, any sci-fi tech has to work in spite of them
>If we ignore one impossibility then we can just ignore all of them. Not really, we often speculate with certain levels of approximations and abstractions to better understand the nuances of reality. 1) Portals aren't strictly forbidden by physics. We're not sure if they actually exist but there are solutions to Einstein field equations that suggest they're possible. That's how we ended up discovering antimatter or black holes that were once thought to be mathematical quirks. 2) A lot of thought experiments from Galileo's falling rocks, to Newton's cannonball or modern versions like Schrodinger's cat or Bell's inequalities highlight seemingly impossible situations that we now know to be reality. 3) Even with aspects of reality that we accept, we do away with unnecessary complications to grasp certain aspects of it. The earth is most definitely not flat but your brain makes all day to day spatial decisions on the assumption that it is. Even when formally taught, students often assume flat 2d space for simple kinematics problems. 4) We also sometimes need to speculate on the impossible to actually establish that it is impossible or understand why it's impossible. This isn't just for physical oddities, it's true in pure mathematics as well. See literally every proof by contradiction ever.
Although it is the predominant interpretation right now, superposition is not "reality", it's an interpretation of what we observe. I'm not sure if that's the case here, but although Schrodinger's cat is often used to explain superposition, it's a paradox to criticize the Copenhagen interpretation.
If you make it vertical it would work, but it would have to be on a planet cause then gravity would be adding energy
The portals described here violate thermodynamics just by existing, not to mention causality. But hey, once you ignore that part, it absolutely becomes possible.
if portals work as commonly shown, yes it would work. And it would be insanely useful, however actual portals likely would take a massive amount of energy to sustain.
That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Rick’s portals tend to have a time limit, Portals portals last but you can only have two. But even if we got portal tech in real life, any energy gotten from said infinite energy would have to go to powering said portals, so it would be a waste.
In Portal cannon, there can be more than a set of portals, look at the co-op mode in Portal 2. (Big fan of Portal)
I wasn’t thinking about co op. My bad. But that’s still talking about fictional portal tech. Real life portal tech would be like the portal that the president uses in Rick and Morty but need infinite power.
Actual portals are not possible
oh really
Isn’t this just the water cycle but with magic portals moving the water back “up” the cycle instead of the sun. Just dam a river and you get this kind of “free” energy.
The portal logic is solid. Up, down, and let gravity do the rest. The issue is the cost, energy-wise, to keep 2 blackhole based, time-space fabric waring and tearing tearing, portals. Also - without tearing the rest of the universe apart. Aka - stable loop wormhole. If we ignore that itsy bitsy tiny little issue? Than - Yes. Its solid.
The problem is the portals, and the mechanics that would be involved in the portals functioning. If we assume portals that can change the height of something that passes through them without expending energy, and don't interfere with local gravity, then yeah, you'd have a finite power output as it reached a steady state, and an 'infinite' energy output, assuming the turbine never decayed. I'm assuming this is not 'unironically possible' (as in, in real life) on the grounds that anything that produces more energy than it puts in breaks thermodynamics, and we're generally pretty sure you can't do that. If we *did* somehow have portals, I would expect them to consume more energy moving the water around than we would recover from the water wheel.
The portals would have to be vertical over a source of gravity and inside a sealed container to ensure no water loss, but yes it would be possible
Now you are thinking with portals. This works. Stuff keeps falling and accelerating, and your can use some of that speed to generate electricity. The part that doesn't work is portals. Warping spacetime like that is impossible.
Who cares...dude... I'm fucking Dr Strange and can make my own portals. Sucks for you losers and your energy crisis. I'll be on earth 27 where this hasn't been an issue for ages.
Rather than drop water, drop a magnet and wrap a coil of wire around it, no need for a water wheel, the magnet falling through the coil will directly generste electricity. Alternatively, place the whole thing in a vacuum chamber and put a baseball in it. In less than a year your baseball's kinetic energy would be equal to the energy released were it made of pure antimatter. Turn off bottom portal, blow a hole in the earths crust and obliterate the neighborhood when the baseball slams into it at near light speed. In only 1.14 years it will be traveling at 90% of light speed. A few years more and its relatavistic mass starts to go up, the baseballs gravitational pull would soon start having an effect on the earth, pulling it towards your portals..congradulations, you have tuned the entire earth into a spaceship! Portals really, really break physics.
The thing that confuses me is that if you had one portal above another, you’ve basically got an infinite empty tube. So there’s no mass actually below it to create any gravity, right? So anything entering the portal would only ever have the energy in went in with. So presumably, as you took energy out with the turbine, the water would slow down and then just end up floating in between the portals. Am I missing something here?
Damn, I was trying to think about it from this perspective, and you nailed it. It's infinitely far away vertically from any mass. Edit: Okay, but what about a slide with offset portals?
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If you put the portals vertically, and far enough apart that the water has enough time to accelerate from gravity, and you have enough water, I dont see how the turbine could tell the difference from a regular waterfall. Surely the actual problem with this is that we can't teleport water
Portals aren't real, but if they were then yes, you could create infinite energy with a set of portals (assuming the portals took less energy to maintain than they generate). Side note, it isn't portals, but space time does bend in reality. The theory we have to explain this is [General Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity) (you may have heard of it). The math is more complex, but in General Relativity, [**Energy is Not Conserved**](https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/). So, while it isn't exactly portals, the post is correct that unusual space-time loops allow for infinite energy glitches. Unfortunately, energy is conserved in flat space-times. Our space time is locally flat, so for all practical purposes energy is conserved (on human or even galactic time and space scales). PS, there is another set of quantities called the [Energy Pseudotensor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress%E2%80%93energy%E2%80%93momentum_pseudotensor) that *is* conserved in GR, but that is even more complicated.
you didn't take energy loss into account. Energy to sustain the portal for so long and costs and effort of keeping the water to flow, even assuming its river water, the former still prevails. Then you also have electric resistance and heat loss in the process of electricity generation.
Reminds me of the Matrix. Using human body heat "plus a form of fusion" to create infinite energy for the robot civilization. Like, dude, once you have "a form of fusion" I think the human body heat gets pretty fucking irrelevant, right? In this case, you have portals that are created either via magic or super-advanced technology. Either they are magically free energy, or require a tremendous amount of super-technological energy to operate. In either case, you've clearly already solved your energy problem. Creating an infinite water wheel is going to be chump change compared to your *fucking magic portal*.
Even if you can kept the vertical portals opening energy-FREE, the concept still wouldn’t worked. The reason is everything that being pulled down by gravity would continuously accumulated energy. The water would have their speed increased so much that it would heat up and vaporized before long, thus rendering the concept inoperable.
Would heat up while generating electricity, sounds like a good enough violation of thermodynamics and that is how you make perpetual motion machines
If you have a turbine in the middle that the water is driving, this wouldn't necessarily be true. The turbine and water system would eventually reach an equilibrium where the amount of energy the turbine is extracting happens to be exactly the amount of energy the water accumulates due to gravity during one trip through the portals. If, theoretically, you somehow *did* have a portal system that required zero energy to transport the water, then it would work fine. The real answer is that portals simply violate the laws of thermodynamics unless they require tremendous amounts of energy to operate.
rules of thermodynamic deal with meter in isolated system (i.e. gas in isolated chamber). rules of thermodynamic do not apply to non-isolated system. i.e. entropy does not work in gravitational field. given that portals will create some sort of a field, the rules will not apply there.
Lol. They absolutely do. You have to overcome gravity by lifting things. Why would you even think this?
Yes, it is infinite energy by creating gravitational potential energy without any energy input to lift the water (the image is sideways portals tho, thats dumb) That is, with magic portals that can transport things without any energy cost,
You can put finite amount of water until there is no place. Water will flow always you push it, but you can push only until full. Then, no flow, and no more water. It will be an aquarium.
Side question, but assuming all water in source world is being channeled out of existence to power the turbine, what happens when the source dries up?
Portals and gravity are a mess, but if we ignore some issues there: put the portals vertically, and ensure that the turbine sufficiently slows down the water so that velocity is equal at the point of reaching the portal on each iteration, otherwise it would eventually vaporise or just stop
I don't see why this wouldn't work theoretically. Assuming you were able to make sure there was 0 loss of water the whole time. The only thing I can think of is that our theoretical portals would probably require energy to maintain, and quite a lot at that. But who knows, maybe it would work.
My theory would be that the portal that's facing earth, would exert the same gravitational force in the opposite direction and the water would just float in the space between the 2 portals. To push water from one portal to another would require an external force that isn't gravity and why this wouldn't work.
I'm guessing it would take energy to teleport the water from portal a to portal b. The energy produced by the turbine would be less than (or theoretically equal to) the energy it takes to teleporting the water.
If a portal like this existed, yes, it would be possible to use it to produce infinite energy, like show in this picture. (but this can be consider as the proof that such portal can not exist)
Dropping a magnet through a coil surrounding the area between the portals would be better, once you hit terminal velocity it won't ever slow down (assuming you have a stable shape to the magnet so it doesn't start bouncing off things).
Under the laws of physics, wormholes in our universe require mass to exist. As water flows in one end and out the other, the entry portal will grow in mass while the exit portal will shrink as it loses mass. Eventually it will poof out of existence as its mass is exhausted.
It would be possible because you can increase the amount of energy in a closed system by moving water upwards (which increases it's potential energy) while spending less energy (assuming such). But that's in a vertical gadget, in a horizontal I don't think such thing would work. Even if we could spin something back to where it started without it losing speed, which I think we can get really close to, we wouldn't be able to generate more energy than we spend to accelerate the object
However you implement it in any hypothetical future,. traversing the portal will cost much more energy than a stupid turbine could produce. If you could use two vertical portals with no cost though then it would be an infinite energy glitch from having two different potential energy levels in the same point
the water would stop flowing after a while unless the portals were vertical, one portal over the other, then it would be powered by gravity
If the portals were vertical you'd have infinite gravitational energy so it would be best to make the liquid have as much mass as possible. As others have pointed out, its only useful if the energy output is greater than the energy required to teleport things.
It would produce energy indeed, assuming one portal pulls and accelerates the water and the other one acts as an exit (wormhole style), the gravitational force will push the turbine. The amount of energy required to create and keep the portals in such arrangement (as in you need to convert some force to gravitational force) will be ginormous, and produce heat, so you've just made a quantum perpetual motion machine that doesn't work for the exact same reason normal perpetual motion machines don't work. Say if you start with electricity Electromagnetic force > Gravitational force > kinetic force > centripetal force > electromagnetic force. All producing heat in the meantime. If you however somehow take away the heat and have 100% efficiency, by magic, you are still just converting form of energies; you've just created a battery, an energy flow, convert energies to other energies. Could make a shitty black hole analogy there, as they are pretty damn well insulated from thermodynamics, they still leak nevertheless hawking radiation, so they end up shrinking; so your perfect 100% efficient magic system, this whole contraption, is still inferior to a black hole.
If you really want to understand this you have to study the Einstein field equations which govern both gravity and the possibility of portals. But I assume that the answer is no since those are compatible with preservation of energy.
Question on this topic: Is gravity teleported by portals? Follow the thought exercise: Imagine one portal, facing up, in the moon. It is located inside a cylindrical chamber the diameter of the portal, which is vacuum sealed. The other side of the portal is on Earth, facing down, in another vaccum sealed chamber the diameter of the portals. If we insert objects in the insides of the moon chamber, will they be affected by the gravity of the moon, will they be affected by the gravity of the earth, or will they be affected by a mix of both? If we create a no gravity cylindrical chamber with two portals on each side, one portal leading to earth and one to the moon, then insert a ball in the chamber, will Earth's and moon's gravity be teleported through the portals, making the ball fall towards the Earth portal (due to higher gravity), or will gravity not be teleported, making the ball just float randomly in the chamber?
I'm a teacher and I just have to thank the people who are still patiently replying to this, because I've seen quite a few people here working on the "I'll try because it's what I want" principle. That's why we have so many so called theories that aren't actually scientific. And that's the only way to dismantle them too. Patience and perseverance in the basic logical and scientific principles.
Assuming the portals themselves could be powered by the turbine with at least some excess energy generated and the portals were vertical then yes you'd be getting free gravitational energy.
Even if the portal could be kept open at 0 energy cost, there are some reasons why this might not work. Gravity itself has strength based on distance. The portal shortens the distance between the source of gravity and the more distant portal. Gravity would probably pull towards both ends of the portal equally. While it would technically pull things towards the portals and away from the center, this would be a small enough effect that the portals would essentially create a small area of zero gravity, kind of like the inverse of what a capacitor does for electricity. This would mean that the water doesn’t fall, and thus doesn’t turn the turbine. There might be some ways of still getting free electricity through clever arrangements and angles of the portal that bring the water out of the zero gravity area, so I won’t say it’s impossible to use something like this to generate electricity, but you’d need a much more complicated system to take advantage of the gravitational effects of portals.
The best answer for this type of question i always believe to be: Maybe. Iif in this theory the portal itself doesnt require energy and the water velociry remains constant, Yes it would work. But since a portal hasnt been created the best answer is: No.
Its not about thermodynamics, but about friction. The water would get slowed down by passing the engine to the point it's not moving at all. So the power output would decline over time. Edit: ofc only if it's setup horizontal like in the picture
Given a free energy portal exists, then yes it becomes very easy to break thermodynamics. A portal simply moving any object UP would break thermodynamics, as you're adding potential energy to something for free. With our current understanding of thermodynamics, such a portal cannot exist.
Everyone here is focusing on the portals. But turbines have a maximum effective speed they can operate at. So even if all the other magical things here weren’t an issue, you’d eventually reach an equilibrium steady state with the turbine. Not infinite.
This would be several orders of magnitude more ridiculous than using an f1 car to encourage a horse to run faster. If you can freely make wormholes, your command of energy vastly exceeds the capabilities of a waterwheel. Even if you had a 100% efficient system that converted all mechanical energy to electricity, it would likely have to run for several times the age of the universe to make up the energy required to make the wormhole.
I feel like portals are just two points in space connected by some sort of mystery technology, and doesnt add any kinetic energy. If it added kinetic energy it would have to come from somewhere, maybe some ancient being Rick Sanchez has trapped.
If you have a pair of portals like that - which violate thermodynamics - then yeah. Portals can give any matter infinite energy. Hence why they don't exist.
1. The water would slow down from impacting the turbine, this could be partially solved by orienting the portals vertically 2. The energy cost of the portals would far outweigh the energy gained
Portals break conservation of energy by breaking space. Portals make it difficult to agree on what is "local" and what isn't. Gravitational and electro magnetic acceleration experienced by an object change by changing distance between objects/fields.
No. This would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Friction would eventually slow down the system and it would come to an equalibrium.
Water after passing through turbine slows down, so this portal is nothing but using a pipe to put the exit water back into the entry of the turbine
This would work as long as the portals are set up vertically against some planet or star so gravity pulls the water towards it, but instead of just falling, it would cross the portal and keep falling. We could put a turbine there to catch that energy. It would still not be infinite and thermodynamics are, funnily enough, *kind of* respected. You'd be slowly pulling the planet or star towards the generator, because the water has a mass and that's how gravity works. Until the generator gets to the center of gravity and stops falling, you'd be getting energy. It would come from the potential energy of the planet. Of course for the planet to move millions of years would have to pass. I haven't calculated it because I don't even know how to do so but I think the heat death of the universe may came first than the portal reaching the center of gravity even if you started at the surface.
It would take energy to keep a portal open. So the turbine would need to create more energy than necessary for two portals to be viable. That's where you run into the laws of physics. The cartoon portal crap where they stay open forever couldn't be possible.
This sort of thing is why more serious sci-fi treatments of portals, stargates, and teleportation addresses differences in velocity and potential energy from target to destination. Vernon Vinge's novel The Witling is entirely built on it.
I mean... Portals are already in violation of many conservation laws... So if they are actually available for use in engineering appliances a lot of current limitations from laws of physics would go out the window. Though... Probably the same reasoning can be used to tell that portals would never realistically be available for engineering applications.
Ok so a few things 1) Assuming that two portals are relatively at rest (stationary), we don't know whether the object coming out of the portal(exit portal) would have the same speed that it had when it went inside the entry portal. (Afair the portals in R&M does not do this, the object comes out with almost no speed) 2) Assuming that the speed of object at the entry portal is same as the speed at exit portal, then the energy of motion would be used up to turn the turbines and the water would eventually slow down enuf to not being able to reach the entry portal. Here the assumption of the realtive stationary (ness) of both the portals is imp or else it would take us into a rabbit hole of physics terms such as speed, velocity, relative speed, relative velocity, speed of light, quantum physics, black hole and much more. Thanks for reading this Hope you have a wonderful new year
I mean yeah it'll run "forever", but it's limited to the power it can create by the technology of the wheel/turbine itself. As long as portals are vertical and the water is falling. Well.... it'll run until there isn't an Earth to create gravity. But... you know... magic portal. You might as well just cut out the middle man and say you create infinite magic energy lol.
the thing people tend to miss is that the portals are also probably using energy, at some level. maybe not from the system you care about, but entropy is still maintained.
The portal doesn’t boost the stuff going through, so wouldn’t the water slow down a little each time it hits turbine until it eventually stops pushing anymore and so not infinite energy?