StarImage3 Update

[Twigge]

Gravitational Lensing

I am getting the feeling that this is something worth looking more into. It correlates so well with that diagram from The Castaway Theory.

[Maimbot 9000]

That is a very cool idea, and if that's the reason for the duplicate stars I'm suddenly impressed with this game again. If I understand the concept correctly, it needn't be a black hole doing the "lensing," just a really, really massive object, yes? Could this be some other Forerunner artifact? Something far bigger than the Halos?

Or... could this be "the enemy" mentioned in the "keepers of the flame" e-mail?

the enemy is almost upon us

Closing in from all sides,
Moving faster than the light
it snuffs with its passage

Could it be some ridiculously massive Flood fleet, or a single Flood ship? A hugely bloated Gravemind swimming through the stars toward Earth?

[alstrong]

Correct, it doesn't have to be a blackhole. It just has to be an object or group of objects with a significant net gravitational field to bend light. Clearly it wouldn't be a galaxy doing the lensing in this case; that would place the stars we are seeing outside our own galaxy. The point about being massive should relate to the actual inertial mass (kg) and the resulting gravitational field.

For example, black holes are supposed to be the result of the self-collapse of a neutron star that had the mass of at least 5 solar masses (mass of our sun called Sol btw). I don't know what's the lowest "limit" of a gravitational field that is required for gravitational lensing, but if we assume it has to be at least the gravity on a typical neutron star, that's roughly a trillion times Earth gravity on its surface already.

Obviously the gravitational field dissipates the further away you get, but if the Forerunners created an object that could bend space-time with its own mass, it would be either inhospitable or astronomically huge (if you think in terms of humans living on the surface of the Earth where the gravity is only 9.81m/s^2 versus living at the core of the planet where gravity is stronger, but exists none-the-less).

If we took a step back and generalized a bit further, the gravitational lensing is due to warping of space-time. So instead of black holes or massive objects, the effect we're seeing in these images could be the result of something the Forerunner used or did, perhaps the activation of the Rings.

Gotta wait for new images I guess.


One thing that isn't clear to me at all (and may never be clear) is the location of the observer for these images. i.e. who took these photos and from what reference point are we observing what is occurring.

[ClownX]

I personally think that the Starimages will show more than just a map, and will be used for... Something...

[Lurono]

Wow. Very nice work with the lense theory! I agree that if this turns out to be true, I will be greatly impressed with Bungie (at least as far as the maps go). Our new problem would be how to combine the images together correctly... Time to call in the Photoshop masters again!

[EliteSniper177]

well using the guides provided by Bungie in the jpeg files, they should all line up, so that each glyph is overlapping the another, so if you took all of the images we currently have, and use the spherize filter, the common points could line up, but thats just my guess, ill try it when i get some free time

[c2h6o]

Yeah, really nice work with the lense theory. To be completely honest, the idea came across my mind but I never really explored it further. But your theory holds up well, and I like it better than the "copied & pasted stars that MS used to confuse us until server 5 opens" theory.

The only problem that I have is that black holes never really move around that much, so that could be a problem with the differences between starimages. If stars get near them, they tear apart, but elsewise they stay to themselves pretty much. I actually remember a scientist saying something like that on Discovery Channel's "The Universe" series on black holes that showed last night. But there could be an explanation for this; like you said, there might be objects of Forerunner origin in between the object and the observer.

[NateTheNewt]

Short video on Gravitational Lensing from PBS's NOVA Science Now

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow ... i-vid.html

[alstrong]

The only problem that I have is that black holes never really move around that much, so that could be a problem with the differences between starimages. If stars get near them, they tear apart, but elsewise they stay to themselves pretty much.

I guess it depends on your frame of reference as to what is considered moving. For instance, if you sit still are you really at zero velocity? The Earth is rotating on its own axis and revolving around the Earth, and further out we're moving around the galactic core, and the entire galaxy is moving relative to other galaxies. It's all relative.

Just to give an idea of what that may imply, imagine that these pictures are looking into the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Keeping in mind that it's a spiral galaxy, objects closer to the galactic center are rotating about that center quicker than objects at the outer edge. That produces those spiral arms. You can even compare that to the planets revolving around the Sun; Mercury takes 88 days to complete a revolution whereas Pluto takes.... a lot longer.

In the image below, pretend that we're the yellow X and that we're looking across the plane of the galaxy towards the green X. Pretend there's a black hole somewhere along that line. Note how the green X is closer to the galactic core and that anything on the red line is closer to the core than us (yellow X). Everything revolves around the core in a clockwise orientation at different angular velocities in order to make the spirals.

At a later point in time it's going to appear that objects at the green X are moving towards the right because they're rotating faster nearer the core. The black hole on that red line will distort our view of them in some manner. And depending on how the black hole or other black holes are moving, there can be an instant in time where our view of things at the green X is not distorted by a gravitational lens.

I hope that made sense.

[thereIwasn't]

wait a sec, I thought that the forerunners did make something that could bend space and time. Remember that crystal mentioned in First Strike?