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440 lines
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440 lines
30 KiB
Markdown
## [D][Q] Portable Holes, Klein bottles, extradimensional spaces, and exploding heads
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* Author: u/eaglejarl *
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* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2idbk9/dq_portable_holes_klein_bottles_extradimensional/
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* Score: 12
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* Created: 2014-10-05T17:17:10
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### Post:
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One of the readers of [2YE](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/1/The-Two-Year-Emperor) was asking me about teleporting into Portable Holes, and it made me think of the '[Munchkin this nickel](http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2ib7ua/dmkmunchkin_this_nickel/)' thread, so I figured I'd post it here.
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How badly could you munchkin a Portable Hole in the real world? The Hole works as described below, but all other technology and physics are the same.
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Points of definition:
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* A [Portable Hole](http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Portable_Hole) is a magical piece of black silk cloth. You can pick it up, fold it, cut it (which destroys the magic), put it in your pocket, etc.
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* When you lay it flat on any surface (wall, floor, ceiling, a blanket, whatever) it creates an opening to an extradimensional space 6' in diameter and 10' deep. For the sake of discussion, let's identify the sides as Top (where the mouth of the hole is), Bottom (the flat side opposite the mouth), North, South, East, and West (the curved sides of the cylinder).
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* The gravity inside the Hole INSTANTLY aligns itself to the outside world when the entrance opens. If you open it on the ground, it's a pit and gravity goes towards Bottom. If you open it on the wall, it's a dead-end tunnel and gravity goes towards N,S,E, or W, depending. Open it on the ceiling and gravity goes down, out the Top. If you put it on a wall so that the gravity aligns North, then take it off the wall, rotate it 90 degrees clockwise and put it back up, then the gravity is now aligned to point East. (West is the new upper side.) When it opens, things fall based on the new gravity orientation.
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* When the Hole is open, it's just like any other hole -- mass inside it exerts a gravitational pull on the outside world, if the surface that it's on turns the gravity in the Hole remains aligned with the outside and anything inside it gets tumbled around just as you'd expect.
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* You can pick the cloth up from the outside and the Hole closes. Anyone in the Hole can't get out because the opening is gone.
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* You can pick the cloth up from the INside and the Hole closes, but you have the cloth. When you put the cloth flat (on the ceiling / floor / wall of the Hole) the opening will reappear.
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* The extradimensional space is always there, it's just that you can only walk in / out of it when it's open.
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* There is a magic spell that will allow you and everything that you're carrying to teleport into or out of the Hole regardless of whether it's open or closed.
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Other items gathered from the comments:
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* When the Hole is closed, the mass inside is completely disconnected from the outside universe.
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* The walls/floor are absolutely indestructible, since they are the outer boundaries of a universe.
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* They are always at a comfortable temperature (20C), but any outside thermal energy that contacts them simply vanishes.
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* They work like a Middle Ages wizard who didn't know much about physics would expect them to: if you drop something, it behaves as though you dropped it on a tile floor. Rubber balls bounce, then eventually stop. Beanbags just lie there. If you punch it, you hurt your knuckles and the walls are totally unaffected -- they do not distort at all, much less break.
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* When the Hole is open, the cloth vanishes, leaving the portal in its place. If you grab the edge of the Hole and pull, the cloth will reappear in your hand and the portal will vanish.
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* If something is sticking out the top, you can't close the Hole.
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### Comments:
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> **u/FeepingCreature** [+4] *GCV Literally The Entire Culture* (an hour later)
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>
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> > You can pick the cloth up from the INside and the Hole closes, but you have the cloth. When you put the cloth flat (on the ceiling / floor / wall of the Hole) the opening will reappear.
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>
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> What happens if you retract the hole from the inside, then destroy whatever the outside portal was on?
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2] (2 hours later)
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>>
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>> Undefined. I could see the following options:
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>>
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>> * The Hole is now inaccessible (can't be reopened from inside or out)
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>> * That when you open it it will open on the nearest flat surface. (And yes, that would imply instantaneous movement.)
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>> * That it will create a copy of the surface it was on. (This one makes the least sense in my mind but this is all just a thought experiment.)
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>>
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>> Choose which one you like, or try scenarios for all of them.
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>>> **u/FeepingCreature** [+1] *GCV Literally The Entire Culture* (20 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> How about "reopening the hole from the inside opens it to the Astral Plane."
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (22 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> I was trying not to introduce more non-real elements but sure, it makes as much sense as anything.
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>>> **u/RMcD94** [+1] (20 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Does the gravity stay the same even after you disconnect from the universe? Is time within frozen or is there no gravity or what
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>>>> **u/FeepingCreature** [+1] *GCV Literally The Entire Culture* (20 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> I think the original comment implies gravity stays the way it was when the hole was last open.
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>>>>> **u/RMcD94** [+2] (20 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Self contained energy creator, have hole open when gravity is bottom, close hole, spin surface and reopen hole, everything within falls generating energy in whatever device you've got inside the hole
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>>>>>> **u/FeepingCreature** [+1] *GCV Literally The Entire Culture* (20 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> Yes.
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (22 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Gravity stays the same, time continues.
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>>> **u/Adrastos42** [+1] *I got a B in critical thinking!* (4 days later)
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>>>
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>>> If the hole is now inaccessible, the escape route would be to use that teleport spell to leave, while holding the cloth, right?
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> **u/Geminii27** [+5] (2 hours later)
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>
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> If the mass of anything inside the hole is disconnected from the universe outside when the hole is closed, it should be possible to use the hole to both generate power and also as an inertial drive.
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>
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> Inertial drive: You have a large, powerful, piston capable of rapid movement. Steam train stuff. On one end, you bolt it to whatever you want moved. On the other end, it butts up against the entrance to the hole, and also wraps around to a plate on the back side of the hole - the hole is placed on the plate.
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>
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> The piston is retracted. The hole is opened. It contains a very heavy mass, which the unbolted piston end is now pressed against. The piston is extended and pushes against the mass, moving the mass away from the bolted end of the piston, and a reciprocal force is applied to the bolted end, pushing whatever it's bolted to.
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>
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> The hole is then closed, the piston retracts again with its now-much-lighter load, and the cycle repeats.
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+3] (2 hours later)
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>>
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>> That is very cool. You'd need an armature that lifted the cloth off the plate / put it back on in order to close / open it, but that's a pretty small addition to what you're describing.
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> **u/frodo_skywalker** [+4] (3 hours later)
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>
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> Space launch - stick a series of nested holes on a small, cheap launch vehicle, get it into space, then pop everything out of the holes. You could have arbitrarily large structures.
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (4 hours later)
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>>
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>> Nice. Who needs a space elevator? :)
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>>> **u/frodo_skywalker** [+1] (a day later)
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>>>
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>>> I've realised you seem to intend for us to have only one portable hole. In that case, abuse the hell out of the teleport spell. Actually, how does that work? I can teleport into the hole from anywhere, fine. But can I teleport anywhere from the hole, or just to my previous location?
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>>>
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>>> Send light rocket to LEO, with a payload of the hole. Auto deploy. Pop mini space station out. Teleport back and forth, bringing components for building a station up there. (I assume you can't teleport with a 10' x 6' module, but you could bring trusses, wall sections, fuel, solar panels, electronics, etc and bolt them all together). Come to think of it, a single launch could deploy arbitrary amounts of satellites. New communication satellite constellations, dozens of new GPS/glonass/Darwin satellites, etc...
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>>>
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>>> When you have your station set up to not need any more support for, let's say a decade (of you have people on board, bring some re-entry vehicles up), teleport in a rocket which can bring the hole to a higher orbit. Rinse. Repeat. Send it to the moon. Build a base. Send it to Mars. You can use a fast transfer because you don't have any fuel concerns - you get arbitrary amounts of fuel out of the earth's gravity for free, and your payload is almost weightless.
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>>>
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>>> You can deploy sensing and communication satellites/probes pretty much anywhere you want for very little cost. It would be a new era for astronomy.
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>>>
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>>> Oh, smuggling!
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> **u/narfanator** [+2] (2 hours later)
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>
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> Launch mechanism:
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>
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> Hole gravity goes out the top. Place object-to-be-launched inside hole, held in place by pins just outside the hole. When the pins are released, the object will fall real-world-up, out of the hole.
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>
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> Place hole on linear accelerator. When hole is at the appropriate position in the linear accelerator, release the pins. Object falls out of the hole and is now traveling at the speed of the hole plus the speed from falling 10 feet*. Stop the hole.
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>
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> Cheaper / easier / more reusable then hiding launch mass inside the hole and simply using a rocket.
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>
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> * For vertical launches, this is actually a slight loss, not a gain, due to air resistance, and so you need to give the object a little extra push to clear the hole's horizon.
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> **u/bbrazil** [+1] *NERV* (24 minutes later)
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>
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> > The gravity inside the Hole aligns itself to the outside world when the entrance opens.
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>
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> First obvious use is power generation.
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>
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> Place the hole on a large vertical gear. Place an enclosed waterwheel with some water inside the hole, with the axle coming out of the hole, and hook it up to the gear such that when the water turns the axle one way the hole's gravity goes the other way.
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>
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> As long as much more energy comes from the water falling than is required to turn the gear and make up for losses, you've got yourself an infinite energy source.
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>> **u/VorpalAuroch** [+2] *Life before Death* (56 minutes later)
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>>
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>> Better method for this: vertical assembly-line-style setup; conveyor belt lifts the folded holes upward, where they are opened on the ceiling, dropping a load of water below, over a waterwheel (or similar) and into another hole open on the floor. They might be brought down open or closed on the conveyor belt, whichever, but then they are re-opened on the ground and filled with water, closed, and lifted up again. Generates a bunch of energy with fairly small human intervention.
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (31 minutes later)
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>>
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>> I'm trying to visualize this and failing, so I'm not sure if the following is relevant:
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>>
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>> The gravity only changes when the Hole is first opened; after that it's just a pit in the ground / hole in the wall like any other pit / hole. The gravity won't realign just because the waterwheel turns. You would need to open and then close the Hole again to make that happen.
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>>> **u/bbrazil** [+1] *NERV* (58 minutes later)
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>>>
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>>> Ah, I misunderstood that. The key point is that you can use the hole to transport something much more massive than the hole itself, while only needing the energy to move the cloth of the hole.
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>>>
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>>> You could have some sort of auto-opener, it seems that the slightest non-flat bit is enough to close the hole so that should be fairly easy mechanically.
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>>>
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>>> If you've two holes on opposite ends of an arm, opening towards the centre where there's a fixed turbine.
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>>> Put water in the bottom hole, close the hole automatically, rotate so it's now on top, open the hole, let the water flow through the turbine and into the new bottom hole and repeat.
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>>>
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>>> You can fit about 8.5 cubic meters in there. Assuming water, that's ~8.5 tons which with a 10m drop will give you around 800kJ per round, and which will last around 1.5 seconds which is around 600kW.
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>>>
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>>> Not that great, and that's before allowing for losses.
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Hm. If you had multiple Holes and you nested them inside one another, you could store a lot more water and thereby increase the power. But, I didn't specify multiple Holes so I guess that's cheating.
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>>>>
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>>>> If you would, save me some math -- how does the power generated scale with the size of the wheel?
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>>>>> **u/bbrazil** [+2] *NERV* (3 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Potential energy is mass * gravity * height.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Time for the water to drop is sqrt(height * 2 / gravity).
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>>>>>
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>>>>> So if you quadruple the height, you double the power.
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>>>>> **u/frodo_skywalker** [+1] (3 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> The power scales with the height the water falls, so linearly with wheel diameter.
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>>> **u/narfanator** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> I think it's then even easier, although it still depends on "more energy out than in".
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>>>
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>>> Open the hole on the ceiling (things inside the hole now fall out of the top). Move the hole onto the floor (things outside the hole can fall into the hole). Drop something into the hole; it'll fall in and then back out.
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>>>
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>>> This allows power generation, but is not yet a perpetual motion machine. You need to move the hole up and down out of phase with the falling object. This causes the object to enter (and then exit) the hole with more momentum (relative to the opening), and to gain a "free" potential energy boost by leaving the hole at a higher real-world height than it enters.
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>>>
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>>> Now you have a resonator and a way to add energy to it. The question is then just wether the cost of moving the hole in this fashion is less than the energy added to the resonation; if so, perpetual motion.
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>>>> **u/narfanator** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Actually, I think there's a better way... Again, hole gravity is towards top. There's a widget at the bottom of the hole that will grab and hold the object. Hole goes on inside of wheel. Widget releases object so that it falls out of the hole when the hole is at the apex of the wheel; wheel spins so that the hole is at the nadir of the wheel when the object finished falling the diameter of the wheel.
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>>>>
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>>>> Energy gain is the potential energy of the object at a height of the wheel's diameter, energy cost is the friction losses of the wheel during rotation.
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>>>>
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>>>> Bonus: Take enough holes to cover the inside of the wheel. Energy cost remains the same, energy gain is multiplied by the number of holes.
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>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Yes, although you'd need to open / close them as you went. If they stay open all the time they are just pits in the wheel, and you need to move the mass inside them. It's only when you close them that the mass gets disconnected from our universe. At that point you're moving the mass of a piece of silk cloth, so you can actually gain.
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>>>>>> **u/narfanator** [+1] (3 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> Aha. That is what I would have expected at first, but I interpreted this differently:
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> > The gravity only changes when the Hole is first opened
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> I thought this meant that the interior gravity of the hole was established upon opening the hold and stayed constant relative to the opening despite motion in the outside world. Aka, that the direction of gravity inside the hole only changes when the hole is first open, and does not change when the opening is rotated.
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>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>> Ah, yes. Sorry, I phrased that poorly.
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> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (2 hours later)
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>
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> Can you break the inside of the Hole? It could make an awesome shield against something. Although, it would only be able to cover a flat 6' circle. Plus, it would make a pretty good weapon if you could detonate a nuclear weapon inside and then open it. It would probably kill you in the process though, which is a slight drawback.
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>
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> Is the diameter of the opening 6'? Or is the opening small and that is the diameter of the hole?
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>
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> Can you carry something like a hot air balloon which is incredibly light? Is so, with an appropriately made conveyance such that you could teleport into holes with it and have it poke out of the top, you could sell instantaneous travel. Of course, that has the drawback of needing to travel to the people you are transporting. It could make you an awesome bodyguard though, if the hole was in a safe place and you could easily carry your charge.
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>
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> There are the obvious things about winning the Randi prize, international fame, etc.
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>
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>> > Can you break the inside of the Hole?
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>>
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>> Nope. It is a self contained universe, and as such is utterly unaffected by kinetic energy.
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>>
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>> > Is the diameter of the opening 6'?
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>>
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>> Yes.
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>>
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>> > Can you carry something like a hot air balloon which is incredibly light?
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>>
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>> You mean can you put that in the Hole? Yes, although it would need to be a small balloon in order to fit. Well, you could have it poke out the top but then you couldn't close the Hole and it would effectively just be an indestructible pit in the ground.
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>>
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>> > Is so, with an appropriately made conveyance such that you could teleport into holes with it and have it poke out of the top, you could sell instantaneous travel.
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>>
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>> How so? I'm not following.
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>>
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>> > It could make you an awesome bodyguard though, if the hole was in a safe place and you could easily carry your charge.
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>>
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>> Absolutely.
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>>
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>> > There are the obvious things about winning the Randi prize, international fame, etc.
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>>
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>> Heh, yeah.
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>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+2] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (2 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> ie. You get a (very large) hot air balloon and fill it with people. Or a blimp or whatever. You can then carry the balloon because it is light because of the upwards force of the hot air. The Hole is left as a pit in the ground far away. You teleport, holding the balloon, and appear in the pit with the balloon above you and out of the hole, teleporting large numbers of people at once
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>>>
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>>> EDIT: Also, what happens if something is sticking out of the hole when it ceases to be flat?
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2] (3 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Ah, sneaky.
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>>>>
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>>>> I had intended the spell to only work when the Hole was closed, but I didn't specify that. Nice catch.
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>>>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (3 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> On that note, what happens if you teleport and there is already something in the space you would teleport into?
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>>>>>
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>>>>> Because it would make an awesome weapon if you can put the hole down and then teleport into it holding a massive stick which materialises in the middle of whatever the hole is pointing at
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>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> Erm...hadn't thought of that. Well, under standard D&D rules, Teleport will shunt you to the nearest safe space. Let's assume the same here -- if you teleport into the Hole, it won't allow you or your stuff to overlap. Which means you can't teleport in if the Hole is full.
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>>>>>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>> What if the hole gets dusty? There will be dust floating in the air, so you cannot teleport in. Plus this makes it very easy to stop you teleporting into the hole once you have access to it
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>>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2] (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>> Grumble, grumble. Silly Redditors, calling out every ambiguity and poorly phrased point. Grumble, grumble.
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>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>> Let's assume that, if you could walk into the Hole you can teleport into it.
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>>>>>>>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>> Why thank you, you're making me blush. What happens to the dust?
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>>>>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>> It gets pushed aside, exactly as though you had walked into the Hole, except that the push would be outwards from the center of where your body forms.
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>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>> Before you ask: by default, you would teleport into the center of the side which is "down", but if that space is occupied then you would be shunted to the nearest part of the Hole where you can fit. If there is no such space, the teleport fails.
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> > EDIT: Also, what happens if something is sticking out of the hole when it ceases to be flat?
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>>>>
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>>>> ~~Portal cut.~~
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>>>>
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>>>> Oops, I had already said that you couldn't close it if something was sticking out the top.
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>>>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (3 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> So, can you just not pick up the hole if there's something sticking out? If so, could you add a bit of tape to the edge to keep it shut? Or something much harder to get off if you wanted to permanently lock it
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>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2] (4 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> > So, can you just not pick up the hole if there's something sticking out? If so, could you add a bit of tape to the edge to keep it shut? Or something much harder to get off if you wanted to permanently lock it
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> Yes and yes.
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> **u/narfanator** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>
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> Energy storage:
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>
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> Gravity-top hole. Vacuum chamber. Place heavy magnetized disk at surface of hole; disk will stabilize half in, half out. Magnetically accelerate the rotation of the disk.
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>
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> Zero moving parts, zero friction. Downside: Requires incredible precision and/or disk position/orientation control mechanisms. Also not sure if this is better enough than magnetic bearings.
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>
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> Fake Edit: Actually, have a 20 foot cylinder.
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> **u/Chronophilia** [+1] *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (6 hours later)
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>
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> Make a larger hole by nesting them. Put a second hole on the bottom of the first, a third on the bottom of the second, etc... With a hundred holes, you can make an extradimensional space 6' in diameter and 1000' deep (so, 50 metres deep).
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>
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> Now your infinite waterwheel is much more compact!
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (6 hours later)
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>>
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>> > 1000' deep (so, 50 metres deep).
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>>
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>> I make that 307 meters and some change...
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>>> **u/Chronophilia** [+1] *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (10 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Is ' feet or inches?
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>>>> **u/Zephyr1011** [+1] *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (12 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Feet. Besides, if it was inches it would be more like 25m
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (13 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Feet. " is inches.
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> **u/gabbalis** [+0] (an hour later)
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>
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> What are the properties of the extra dimensional space itself? Are the walls absolutely indestructible? When you punch a wall is the kinetic energy precisely reflected, and if not where does that energy go? If I set off a nuke in a closed hole what happens? Seems like if you were willing to sacrifice people you could teleport in an arbitrary amount of matter to make a portable black hole. A spell that lets you teleport other stuff but not yourself in would help here.
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>
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> Is the cloth still as vulnerable as normal cloth when it's in portal form? If so then the moment you open it the cloth will be obliterated, but by that time a massive gravitational wave has escaped anyway, so it's still a massive one use bomb.
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>
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> If you could find a way to ensure the fabric survives you could also just use it as containment for your fusion reactor.
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>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (2 hours later)
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>>
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>> > What are the properties of the extra dimensional space itself? Are the walls absolutely indestructible?
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>>
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>> Yes. They are the outer boundaries of a universe.
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>>
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>> > When you punch a wall is the kinetic energy precisely reflected, and if not where does that energy go?
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>>
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>> They are always at a comfortable temperature (20C), but any outside thermal energy that contacts them simply vanishes.
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>>
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>> They work like a Middle Ages wizard who didn't know much about physics would expect them to: if you drop something, it behaves as though you dropped it on a tile floor. Rubber balls bounce, then eventually stop. Beanbags just lie there. If you punch it, you hurt your knuckles and the walls are totally unaffected -- they do not distort at all, much less break.
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>>
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>> > If I set off a nuke in a closed hole what happens?
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>>
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>> You get a big explosion that is completely contained and has nowhere to go. All the energy remains bottled up and when you open the Hole you get an enormous plasma lance.
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>>
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>> > Seems like if you were willing to sacrifice people you could teleport in an arbitrary amount of matter to make a portable black hole.
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>>
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>> That works.
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>>
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>> > A spell that lets you teleport other stuff but not yourself in would help here.
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>>
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>> Let's skip that. It renders the thing trivially abusable and therefore less interesting.
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>>
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>> > Is the cloth still as vulnerable as normal cloth when it's in portal form?
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>>
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>> Nope. It's not really there when the portal is open, but if you grab the edge of the Hole and pull the cloth will reappear in your hand and the portal will vanish.
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>>> **u/Sceptically** [+2] (5 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> > They are always at a comfortable temperature (20C), but any outside thermal energy that contacts them simply vanishes.
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>>>
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>>> Hmm. That sounds like it could make for some... interesting abuses. Instant water heater/cooler. Embarrassingly, I'm having an easier time thinking of massively destructive uses of this than of useful ones...
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>>> **u/gabbalis** [+0] (3 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> OK, So primary usages are invincible storage. All the not insignificant storage issues we have ever had are solved by these holes. This includes atmospheric leakage, ultrahot plasma, fictional alien blood...
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>>>
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>>> Surviving in one would have the same requirements as surviving in space, minus atmospheric leakage issues and with the benefit of free artificial gravity. and no inertia. So you can launch a ship with your hole in it but remove the hole from the inside for the duration of the trip.
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>>>
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>>> of course this is irrelevant when you have a teleport spell. Just send the hole off on a spaceship and teleport to it later.
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>>>
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>>> both of these are risky though since you can't be sure where the ship ends up.
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>>>
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>>> There are a number of possible uses that depend upon how the hole reacts to inertia as it is moves through the parent universe (our universe) when open. If the contents don't react, you can also use the hole as an inertial dampener even when open, If they do, you can theoretically get the sides of the hole to push around the contents at FTL speeds. (by the classic counterpoint to relativity of having a pole revolving whose halfway point is already moving at lightspeed... except this time it would work... and also actually succeed in disproving relativity)
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>>>
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>>> (Since the hole is effectively its own universe, I'm guessing it works the first way)
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>>>
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>>> Inertial dampening really only gets us as much free power as the water tricks already discussed as far as I can tell...
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>>>
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>>> Perhaps filling the hole with a massive magnet would be a more efficient way to get power.
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>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (4 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> > of course this is irrelevant when you have a teleport spell. Just send the hole off on a spaceship and teleport to it later.
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>>>>
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>>>> Yeah, I'm irked with myself for mistyping that. I meant the teleport spell to only work into a **closed** Hole, but that's not what I wrote. Meh. It wouldn't actually change things much, I suppose -- you could still send the cloth off on a ship and teleport into the Hole. You wouldn't be able to open it from the inside though.
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>>>>
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>>>> > There are a number of possible uses that depend upon how the hole reacts to inertia as it is moves through the parent universe (our universe) when open.
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>>>>
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>>>> When it's open, it's the same as any other hole in the ground. (Well, except that the walls are indestructible and thermally isolated.) That is, whatever is in it is affected by outside conditions such as gravity, temperature, vacuum, relativity, etc.
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>>>>
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>>>> Re: the magnet -- you're visualizing opening / closing the Hole quickly in order to generate AC in a wire over the Hole?
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>>>>> **u/gabbalis** [+1] (5 hours later)
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>>>>>
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>>>>> If i have a hole on a plate on a stick, what happens to the matter inside when i swing it around? Will the stick be harder to move if the hole has 10 tons of bricks in it than if it had just air?
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>>>>>
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>>>>> This is relevant because if you rotate the near side of the hole at 3*10^7 rpm, the far side would be moving at relativistic speeds.
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>>>>>
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>>>>> >Re: the magnet -- you're visualizing opening / closing the Hole quickly in order to generate AC in a wire over the Hole?
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>>>>>
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>>>>> I has thinking you could use it to generate potential energy by lifting a chunk of metal, but AC could work too.
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>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (6 hours later)
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> > If i have a hole on a plate on a stick, what happens to the matter inside when i swing it around? Will the stick be harder to move if the hole has 10 tons of bricks in it than if it had just air?
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>>>>>> >
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>>>>>> > This is relevant because if you rotate the near side of the hole at 3*107 rpm, the far side would be moving at relativistic speeds.
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>> If the Hole is open, then it works exactly like a regular hole in the ground -- you have to spend energy to accelerate all the mass inside it. If it's closed then the interior mass is isolated and you only have to accelerate the cloth itself. If you accelerate the cloth up to speed and then suddenly open it, the internal mass will be reconnected to the outside universe and moving at the same speed as the plate. Which means creation of kinetic energy. Wow, cool. So long thermodynamics!
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---
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