If portals did not apply a transient vector to your momentum then you could not pass through a portal.
Take for instance the many times Chell jumps through a portal. Her momentum is maintained as she passes through the portal, allowing her and her robot legs to do truly stupendous feats of gravity assisted acrobatics.
If Chell was stationary and the portal fell on her, she would not be launched out of the other side with the momentum of the portal, she would just find herself sticking out of the other side of the portal.
Similarly, if Chell were to ride a moving platform up into an overhead portal, we would expect the top half of Chell’s body to pop out of the portal without being accelerated by anything other than the moving platform on the bottom of her feet.
Therefore, unless there is some strange unknowable physics that we will not be able to discover until we develop portals of our own, the most likely outcome is that the victims on the tram would not gain any momentum as the portal was pushed into them, and they would plop out safely on the other side.
The only speed that should be relevant is the object’s speed relative to the portal. Anything else is a distraction. The physics don’t care if you are hurtling at it or it is flying at you, both scenarios are equivalent. The only way to maintain conservation of momentum is to assume your exit speed relative to the exit portal equals your entrance speed relative to the entry portal.
If it did work the other way, well it wouldn’t assuming your exit speed is equal to your initial speed, relative to the exit. That means your speed is 0 as you “exit.” This leaves us with two possibilities. Either you are smashed into a 2d plane and physics gets very concerned, likely forming a teeeeeny tiny black hole. Or the incoming matter behind the first bits will push the first layers through, which, will just wind up back at the starting point, as they will cascade into each other at a speed defined by the speed of the blue portal, being indistinguishable from the projectile interpretation.
If portals did not apply a transient vector to your momentum then you could not pass through a portal.
Take for instance the many times Chell jumps through a portal. Her momentum is maintained as she passes through the portal, allowing her and her robot legs to do truly stupendous feats of gravity assisted acrobatics.
If Chell was stationary and the portal fell on her, she would not be launched out of the other side with the momentum of the portal, she would just find herself sticking out of the other side of the portal.
Similarly, if Chell were to ride a moving platform up into an overhead portal, we would expect the top half of Chell’s body to pop out of the portal without being accelerated by anything other than the moving platform on the bottom of her feet.
Therefore, unless there is some strange unknowable physics that we will not be able to discover until we develop portals of our own, the most likely outcome is that the victims on the tram would not gain any momentum as the portal was pushed into them, and they would plop out safely on the other side.
The only speed that should be relevant is the object’s speed relative to the portal. Anything else is a distraction. The physics don’t care if you are hurtling at it or it is flying at you, both scenarios are equivalent. The only way to maintain conservation of momentum is to assume your exit speed relative to the exit portal equals your entrance speed relative to the entry portal.
If it did work the other way, well it wouldn’t assuming your exit speed is equal to your initial speed, relative to the exit. That means your speed is 0 as you “exit.” This leaves us with two possibilities. Either you are smashed into a 2d plane and physics gets very concerned, likely forming a teeeeeny tiny black hole. Or the incoming matter behind the first bits will push the first layers through, which, will just wind up back at the starting point, as they will cascade into each other at a speed defined by the speed of the blue portal, being indistinguishable from the projectile interpretation.