The surprising way a Portal gun could work according to physics
Portal and its hugely popular sequel Portal 2 are video games that take place in a future dystopia, inside a massive complex known as Aperture Science run by a comically evil robotic master, GLADOS. The main character, Chell, trapped within this complex as a test subject is equipped with nothing but a gun that can create instantaneous portals between two places and a pair of impact absorbing boots.
She creates portals by firing the gun first at a wall, floor, or ceiling coated with a moon-dust derived material and then at another similarly coated place. She can then step through and travel from one place to another.
At a recent reveal of the new handheld Steam Deck mobile gaming system, a Portal themed version was demo’d (fat chance obtaining one as it is only a prototype) showing that Portal is still near and dear to maker Valve Software even 10 years since the last game.
The game doesn’t quite explain the physics of the Portal gun. It claims it was developed in the 1950’s as the “Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device”. This suggests that it works via quantum principles rather than, e.g., creating a…
