Aperture science, We do what we must, because we can. For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead. But there’s no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying till you run out cake. And the science gets done and you make a neat gun for the people who are, still alive.
And it is a very neat gun. With the power to create portals connecting separate places in space together, it is the primary tool used in the Portal series. But how does it work? Asides from the suggestion ” Do not look directly at the operational end of the device” which. along with everything else you’re told, seems to be completely useless advice. So today, lets have a look at what we know of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.
According to the Aperture Investment Opportunity #4: “Boots” video, the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device is powered by a miniature black hole within the device, and is cooled with a small fan in the rear of the unit. It goes on to say that there are two miniature German stick grenades inside, which can be activated if the black hole begins to destabilize. Finally, it says that if the device is still malfunctioning, you should take it apart to retrieve the Event Horizon Estimation Wheel inside, which will tell you what the minimum safe distance is when the device fails. Besides making me realise that writing technical documents at Aperture Science would be an amazing job, it tells us that there is a black hole inside the device, with its event horizon compressed by some means.
To give a quick run down on black holes, the event horizon is a ‘sphere’ around the singularity of the black hole which nothing can escape. If you picture a black hole as a steep ravine, the event horizon is the height at which nothing can climb back up, not even light. The bottom of the ravine is the singularity, the point of infinite density at the center of every black hole.
As well as creating portals, the ASHPD can also pick up objects and props, and toss them a short distance. Now this sounds very much like the Gravity gun from the Half-Life series, which actually makes a lot of sense. Black holes produce incredible amounts of gravity, so much so that most galaxies in the known universe have a super-massive black hole in the centre to hold everything together. If we assume that the ASHPD has some form of gravity gun module in it, most likely the zero point energy field manipulator (more commonly known as the ZPEFM), that not only lets it pick up and toss large objects, but also, through some fantastic means, holds in and compresses the event horizon of a miniature black hole located somewhere in the device.
The fan would be for removing the immense amount of heat that the black hole, and presumably the ZPEFM would produce, the stick grenades would be for pushing the event horizon back in (yes I know that doesn’t work but we’re using a bit of creative license here) and finally if the unit fails the event horizon would expand out to a size calculated using the Schwartzchild radius, which is what the Event Horizon Estimation wheel would calculate.
Now, since an event horizon means that nothing can escape a black hole, not even information (excluding Hawking radiation yes), this means that all black holes have only 3 properties. Mass can be calculated from the size of the event horizon and the gravitation force it exudes, rotation how squished the event horizon, and charge, which can be calculated by looking at how matter outside the event horizon behaves. Now, when a black hole rotates something interesting happens. The singularity, which is normally just a point of infinite mass, starts to get larger. As we increase the rotational speed of a black hole, the centrifugal forces start to act on it, stretching it out(like how the earth is slightly wider at the equator than the poles). If you speed it up enough, the singularity should turn from a point into a donut, or Toroid.
When this happens, it means that the gravitational forces aren’t consistent around the black hole, but (a big theoretical here) a path down into the black hole which doesn’t lead to eternal destruction. If you were to navigate down this ‘safe path’, you could escape the singularity and pass through the black hole, reappearing somewhere else. (infinite density tends to rip holes in space-time, connecting different points together).
A key point to this hypothesis comes from the latter part of Portal 2, around when you start playing with the blue goo. Cave Johnson states that playing with portals could lead to time travel, which is something that could quite easily happen with black holes, connecting different point of space-Time. Now, we can theorise that the ASHPD shoots out miniature black holes, which then link together, making a small wormhole. Making another leap, if the ZPEFM not only compresses the event horizon, but also feeds it energy to stop it decaying, we can link up a whole bunch of data.
The ASHPD, with a controlled black hole in the center, shoots out miniature rotating black holes out, which then link together to create the portals we all know and love. Without something to contain and feed them matter, these miniature black holes would quickly evaporate, which happens when you fire another portal of the same colour or step through an emancipation grill.
But we aren’t going to stop at explaining the mechanics of this fantastical piece of machinery, we’re gonna try and explain all of it. Each portal that the gun shoots out has a different colour, blue for left click and and orange for the right click. We’ve utilized the mass and rotational speed of the black holes to make our hypothesis work, but we haven’t yet touched the electrical charge. In addition to having a event horizon caused by the mass of the singularity, black holes also have event horizons for the rotation and electrical charge. If we assume that the rotational event horizon is the edges of the portal through which you work, the elliptical nature caused by the stretched shape of the black hole, then we could assume that the electrical event horizon is slightly bigger, maybe even a little uncontrolled, causing it to grow and shrink slightly?
Yes, we’re gonna explain the familiar colours with science! Gases can fluoresce when provided with charge, the trick used in neon lights and fluorescent bulbs. Krypton glows a blue which is fairly similar, and Helium is a fairly good orange. This would also explain the light light on top of the portal gun changing colour, the ASHPD generating the correct charge for the portal, then presumably maintaining that charge after firing, which would turn the gas near the electrical unit that colour.
To finish this article out, lets finally go over the components of our portal gun. We have the black hole at the center, which the gun then fires off a part of it, which the device then spins up to the required speed and charges it to the correct charge. The gun then maintains this miniature black hole with the help of those big prongs out front (Quantum Shaping Prong A through C if you were interested), compressing and controlling the event horizons, and providing it with mass to maintain its shape. A dye trap at the front of the unit infuses the exiting black hole with the appropriate liquid gas (labelled dye) which is then held at the edge of the electrical event horizon to give the portal the colour designation.The power is supplied by the same zero-point energy field modulator which runs the gravity gun. This module controls the black holes, and lets them shrink and disappear when needed.
And there you have it, a complete and thorough rundown of the portal gun, going through every part of the famous Portal Gun. While most of the science is correct, some shortcuts and liberties have been taken to make the experience work. Please read the article in that frame of mind.
