I think B and maybe it's easier to explain my reasoning with a more dramatic example. instead of people on a track, maybe the trolly is heading towards a 50 foot horizontal pole. when the trolly comes to the pole at 90mph, the pole is not moving. but after the trolley's portal has "swallowed" 40 feet of the pole, all 40 feet of that pole are exiting the portal at 90mph, being pushed by the 10 feet of pole that the trolly is still "swallowing", so the momentum of 40feet worth of pole would continue to launch the remaining mass of the pole out of the portal and it would be launched out instead of flopping to the ground.

if we go back to our people on a track example, I think this would also kill them as for people on either side of the portal, it would feel like they're being ran into at 90mph by the people on the other side of the portal.

did that all make sense?

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, I also thought of the pole example. It would feel like a wave of gravity suddenly shifting around them. I do think it would be less dangerous than a direct collision at the same speed, but only by a little - the danger with sudden deceleration isn't the fact that it's sudden, but that it is almost always uneven, it rips things inside you apart or collapse them together. But the portal would be a very clean uniform wave of pressure moving over you, so it could still cause damage by compression over one dimension (in the direction of portal movement) but most other forms of impacts will be missing