Episode 10 of the podcast Let’s Learn Everything! starts with a discussion of this incident and the ways that epidemiologists have studied it to draw real-world parallels.
It’s a great comedy/science podcast; I strongly recommended it.
I like the boldness of the new colors, but they’re also very reminiscent of the French tricolor. I kind of prefer the first flag for its distinctness, even if I prefer the colors of the new flag.
a. The portal maintains itself via energy supplied remotely by the portal gun or
b. Once created, a portal does not require energy to exist. It’s simply an anomaly in space-time. A strange loophole whereby one location is closer to another location that it’s supposed to be or
c. The portal runs on chuckle-power generated by Cave Johnson’s witticisms
I think the idea that the portal generates infinite energy is too complicating and problematic to be assumed.
This still assumes that the portal is an infinite-energy machine, though, which I think is unwarranted and creates more difficulty than is necessary. I would assume that the portal itself has no properties and does not act on other objects.
I don’t think the portal contains anything within itself, though. The portal is a non-entity - it’s just that if you pass through the portal, you suddenly find yourself in a different location, as if that location were right next to you. The portal itself has no other properties of its own, I’d think.