Let's explain in-game physics!

[PainkilleR]

Ask your question about portal/time traveling mechanics that you didn't understand, and someone will try to explain the concept to you. To make things more interesting, let's not use "because it's a game" as an explanation, but rather find some sensible reasoning that could've explained the behavior of in-game physics.

My question is: if the present cube can't travel to the future through time portal, then how doesn't the player/portal gun cease to exist while jumping from the past to future?

Feel free to answer the question, or leave your own question regarding in-game physics.

[BurningCakeDoesAche]

I think because the cube is static and never moves or leaves the testchamber, which means that removing the cube from the past automatically means that there's no cube for the future cube to exist. However, story wise the player did leave the testchamber, so that's why there's not a future version of them, because the subject didn't just wait there for 20 years, and they don't need a present version to exist because the present version is the only version. If you get what I mean.

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by HeimlichLaboratories:

I think because the cube is static and never moves or leaves the testchamber, which means that removing the cube from the past automatically means that there's no cube for the future cube to exist. However, story wise the player did leave the testchamber, so that's why there's not a future version of them, because the subject didn't just wait there for 20 years, and they don't need a present version to exist because the present version is the only version. If you get what I mean.

So, in other words, do you mean that being an observer grants you the ability to travel through time portals freely? Or do you mean that there is a "third" time line that is taken into the account which can exist only when the test subject leaves the facility without the cube/other object?

[BurningCakeDoesAche]

Originally posted by PainkilleR:

Originally posted by HeimlichLaboratories:

I think because the cube is static and never moves or leaves the testchamber, which means that removing the cube from the past automatically means that there's no cube for the future cube to exist. However, story wise the player did leave the testchamber, so that's why there's not a future version of them, because the subject didn't just wait there for 20 years, and they don't need a present version to exist because the present version is the only version. If you get what I mean.

So, in other words, do you mean that being an observer grants you the ability to travel through time portals freely? Or do you mean that there is a "third" time line that is taken into the account which can exist only when the test subject leaves the facility without the cube/other object?

What I mean is that static objects like cubes and portals have two different versions, Present and Future, because they didn't move for 20 years (unless the subject moves them) and the test subject, since they story wise beat the test chamber, don't have a future version that requires them to be always in the past for it to exist.

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by HeimlichLaboratories:

Originally posted by PainkilleR:

So, in other words, do you mean that being an observer grants you the ability to travel through time portals freely? Or do you mean that there is a "third" time line that is taken into the account which can exist only when the test subject leaves the facility without the cube/other object?

What I mean is that static objects like cubes and portals have two different versions, Present and Future, because they didn't move for 20 years (unless the subject moves them) and the test subject, since they story wise beat the test chamber, don't have a future version that requires them to be always in the past for it to exist.

"don't have a future version that requires them to be always in the past for it to exist" that is the answer I was looking for. A perfect example of how I'd like to see this thread to continue. If other players will be interested to discuss the in-game physics of course.

[Lets Build]

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldnt there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldnt that be infinte cubes??

[jellyfishh]

Originally posted by Lets Build:

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldnt there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldnt that be infinte cubes??

i thought of that too!

[BurningCakeDoesAche]

Originally posted by Lets Build:

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldnt there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldnt that be infinte cubes??

No, because the cube you brought from the future is still from the future timeline. You basically removed it from the future timeline. Where would the second future cube come from?

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by Lets Build:

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldnt there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldnt that be infinte cubes??

Infinite cubes would violate the law of conservation of energy (which, in non-physicist words, means that nothing comes out of nowhere and doesn't disappear into nothingness). The cube from the present and the one from the future aren't really two different cubes. They both are the same cube.

Theoretically there could've been multiple versions of the cube, but only if the game featured a multiverse with many different timelines. However the game narrator clearly states at one point (I don't really remember where exactly he said that) that they've managed to establish the stable link only between two timelines (the present one and the one which happens in exactly twenty years).

[PainkilleR]

About my initial question regarding the test subject's ability to travel via time portals... HeimlichLaboratories' answer how "the test subject doesn't need to exist in the past to be able to exist in the future" is the only possible explanation as to why she doesn't cease to exist while traveling via time portals.

The obvious question is however: what determines which physical objects don't need to exist in the past to be able to exist in the future? For example why can the test subject carry her jump boots through the time portal but not the cube?

The simple answer could've been the portal gun itself. It's construction could've somehow saved it's wielder and other contacting objects from the time traveling paradoxes. The problem with that theory is that the test subject jumps through time portals before she gets the portal gun.

This leaves us with another possible answer... The infinite multiverse where the test subject is in such a timeline where the timeline itself dictates (in a deterministic way) whether the test subject can or cannot travel through time portals. I personally absolutely hate all those infinite multiverse theories and find them extremely dull, not to mention how they don't really answer/solve anything, and contradict a lot of laws of physics.

A somewhat better explanation could've been some quantum physics related theories where the fact that being an observer or not changes the laws of physics (just like in case with light interference experiments where the light acts as a particle or as a wave depending on whether it's being observed or not). The problem with that theory is that... Quantum physics isn't much better than infinite multiverse theories.

An "infinite multiverse" antagonistic theory, but with the same outcome: the universe is fully deterministic and the ability of the test subject to travel to the future through time portals is the only possible way for the universe to exist.

And the last theory - the time portal is a lie. Time travels in Portal Reloaded never happened. Aperture made you think you were time traveling, but in reality the green portal was just another ordinary portal which mirrored its position in a similarly looking room somewhere in the facility. It was all about five portal test chambers and nothing else. The "present" cube disintegrations, mirrored object physics and all the other gimmicks were there just to make the test subject to believe she was time traveling.That is obviously just a joke theory.Or is it?

[Knee]

why are present lasers and light bridges allowed to travel to the future but not cubes?

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by Knee:

why are present lasers and light bridges allowed to travel to the future but not cubes?

That's actually much easier to explain than the ability for the test subject to travel to the future. The answer is rather self-explanatory.

When you open the green portal, you can clearly see what's on the other side of the wormhole (both in the future and in the past). The picture is not pitch black nor distorted meaning that the light can travel freely between the past and the future. And lasers and light bridges are just that - a light.

[Adzramous]

I have a question: If you have a cube in the present, spawned by a cube deployer, then travel to the future and spawn a new cubie, dropped by the deployer, then bring that new future cube back to the present, why does moving the present cube update the future cube? It's a DIFFERENT cube. The future version of that cube is doomed to be fizzled.


Edit: Actually, moving the present cube would change the time line of where I picked up the future cube to fizzle it, thus meaning it never got fizzled. But if I pressed the cube deployer button, which the position of the cube has no effect on, wouldn't that still mean that the new cube has no correlation to the old one?

[KTev]

Originally posted by Lets Build:

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldn't there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldn't that be infinite cubes??

Your character is sort of a 3rd timeline but the future and past are only moving forward and if observed by a 3rd party the second cube would exist from the time you brought it back. Just prior to you collecting the cube from the future both cubes could exits, but once you move the original old cube, the now second old old cube in the future would cease to exist and when you bring it back to the past, the result is no cubes in the future.
Hence, the 3rd cube is a paradoxical phantom cube that you never get to interact with, because for it to exist in your timeline you would have had to destroy it first. As such, infinite cubes is halted before we ever get to 3.

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by AdzAdz7:

I have a question: If you have a cube in the present, spawned by a cube deployer, then travel to the future and spawn a new cubie, dropped by the deployer, then bring that new future cube back to the present, why does moving the present cube update the future cube? It's a DIFFERENT cube. The future version of that cube is doomed to be fizzled. :KScared::p2wheatley:


Edit: Actually, moving the present cube would change the time line of where I picked up the future cube to fizzle it, thus meaning it never got fizzled. But if I pressed the cube deployer button, which the position of the cube has no effect on, wouldn't that still mean that the new cube has no correlation to the old one?

Originally posted by KTev:

Originally posted by Lets Build:

i have another question or something like that.
If i go in the future and bring the cube to the present shouldn't there be 2 cubes now in the NEW future, cause in the present are 2 cubes the one from the present and the other one from the OLD future, shouldn't that be infinite cubes??

Your character is sort of a 3rd timeline but the future and past are only moving forward and if observed by a 3rd party the second cube would exist from the time you brought it back. Just prior to you collecting the cube from the future both cubes could exits, but once you move the original old cube, the now second old old cube in the future would cease to exist and when you bring it back to the past, the result is no cubes in the future.
Hence, the 3rd cube is a paradoxical phantom cube that you never get to interact with, because for it to exist in your timeline you would have had to destroy it first. As such, infinite cubes is halted before we ever get to 3.

I might be wrong here but aren't those cubes you get from dispensers made from the same cube molecules they disintegrate in the process of calling a new cube, so it's always the same cube in the end (when you need to reset your cube Aperture disintegrates the current cube and recreates it in another place)? I thought that's how it worked in portal/portal 2.

[๖คፈɬเς Ꮄน∂Ꮛ]

You're looking too far into a video game.