Talk:Episodes, films, and shorts/@comment-26680194-20150927160726/@comment-10390252-20151001094925

The two types of portal are apparently very different, based purely on appearnace.

The portal used since the first movie appears to be a 'star-gate', basically a magical transportation device between two linked fixed points. It all does things like transform the transient into an appropriate form. Interestingly, you cannot see or hear anything beyond the portal 'event horizon'. That means that, apart from transients, information and energy goes not seem to pass between the two dimensions. There are several good reasons in quantum physics for saying that this is a very good thing.

What Midnight Sparkle seemed to be doing was blasting holes through the space-time continuum into a parallel one. So, in effect, they were force-created links between the two continui. For a the period of time in which the rips existed, the two universes were linked. Information and energy flowed freely between the two and notice that none of those who fell into the large portal transformed when they entered the Pony universe. This means that cross-contamination of energy, information and matter happened. Both universe's energy balance would have been microsopically altered and I think it would be plausible if everyone present at Midnight Sparkle's rampage may develop magical capabilities of some sort, if only minor ones, due to their proximity to the completely uncontained magical energy flow coming out of the portals.