How does Halo work?

Wild, speculative theories born from the communications with AdjutantReflex.

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Rainstorm1031
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How does Halo work?

Unread post by Rainstorm1031 »

I brought this up in the Discussion forum, and it was mentioned I should bring it up here as well.



Does anyone know **how** Halo wipes the galaxy clean of life?

This mystery may be the lead that explains *who* AR, D-Com, and everyone else that we are wondering about, is.

Any thoughts?
Heart
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Heart »

Slipspace matrix :?:
RogueDemonHunter
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by RogueDemonHunter »

All Halo's are orbiting gas giants. Saturn our gas giant was nearly a star. With just a little more matter, the interior temperature can reach the 10 billion degrees necessary for fusion to occur. This is the process by which Hydrogen is turned into heavier elements like Helium and carbon. Once Iron is created the star cannot fuse anymore and explodes in a supernova destroying everything in its path.... So here is a theory. With enough gas (from gas giants) and a form of fusion (forerunners probably had) then an enormous amount of energy could be produced. Enough to irradiate the galaxy, killing all sentient life, like irradiating a cancer patient to kill the cancer cells. My guess is that the gas giants are converted to energy, however if that is true why do the current halos have gas giants (i.e. why weren't they all used up?) perhaps the 7 installations are the only ones left? Perhaps I am rambling.

Anyway I recall in the making of documentary that Joseph Staten mentioned visiting other Halo's orbiting Gas Giants and in the description of the Collosus Map is says "what were the forerunners doing with all that gas?"

Just a thought... not fully formed yet
shyataroo
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by shyataroo »

The halo works by destroying all sentient life (sentient enough to support the flood within 10K light years) when one is activated all 7 are as well, and end up firing simultaniously to effectivley purge the galaxy of life (with the obvious exception of shield worlds and or worlds that are not within 10K light years) this could mean that earth is not within 10,000 light years of a halo construct (Someone verify the distance for me please) OR the ark itself shields the humans and sentient animals. The way it would work would probably be (although this is just conjecture) a certain energy frequency that destroys the parts of the brain that allow one to be sentient enough for the flood. in what form of energy this frequency would be, it is not known, it would have to be a Incredibly high frequency to travel across light years in a matter of seconds or picoseconds. (there is no way to know how long it would take, although I Would assume not at the speed of light as it would take 100,000 years to purge the galaxy, meaning that the galaxy was JUST finished purging at the time of halo 1. (give or take a few hundred years, as the exact date that it last fired is unknown)


EDIT: the power source of the halo constructs has been theorized as gas-fusion which cannot be, as the amount of power it would require is beyond "mere" fusion, it would have to be anti-matter-matter reaction, a matter-anti matter reactor theoretically works like this its based on the principal, that all matter has a oppposite, a, anti-version of itself electrons have positrons, neutrons have anti-neutrons... anyway, when matter and anti matter come together they completely eradicate each other converting 100% of all the matter into energy, whereas with nuclear fission its 1/1000th of 1% of all matter released and with Fusion 1/10th of 1% of all mater is converted into energy to give you an idea how much energy that is, half of a gram of matter and half of gram of anti-matter releases the amount of energy that the hiroshima nuclear bomb released and it was 500 pounds!
c2h6o
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by c2h6o »

Well, I haven't read any of the Halo books but I may be able to narrow it down.
One of the most well known things about the Halos is that they ONLY wipe out organisms that have "sufficient biomass to sustain the flood" (or something like that). This would imply that all of the microorganisms and little critters either too small to fight or produce more flood would not be effected by the pulse.

I think that this is the feature that the Forerunners liked the most: they do not utterly wipe out all life as we know it. I mean, if you take a look at a timeline of earth, it took a long, long time for single-celled organisms to develop from the primordial goo (this goo contained a slew of organic chemicals, like methane, water, CO2, and oily substances that formed bubbles, inside of which organisms developed and evolved). After that, the evolution from single-cell to Doberman Pincher took less than the blink of an eye.

So, the pulse is able to discriminate based on size.
What can do this??

Well, the four basic forces in the universe are:
1) Strong force: atomic bomb go big boom
2) Weak force: beta decay...believe me, this has nothing to do with it
3) Electromagnetic force: refrigerator magnets, electric shavers
4) Gravitational force: explaning this would be insulting

Really only the EM force is the most reasonable. Gravitational is far, far too weak. Strong would destroy, well, everything that was near it. That means no Forerunner structrues (or Halos, for that matter). Or, it could be a force we don't know about yet.

And the Halos wouldn't release anything toxic, or nanobots or anything else like that, that wouldn't make sense. They would have to be much larger to store enough of it for the galaxy.

The idea that it is EM in nature could explain the shape of the Halos. If the rings contained loops of supercooled metal, they could create a strong magnetic field (shaped like a doughnut, if you will) around it.

Now, the Halos are relatively small compared to planets. And the EM force fades in strength as a square (^2). Wiki Biot-Savart Law. But work with me here.

They could also release a powerful beam of light. Light has a spectrum of wavelenghts, right? Low energy light is radio waves. Pretty harmless.
High energy light is gamma rays. Its released by nuclear reactions, and very deadly.

Well, the Halos could release gamma rays, killing everything except bacteria, which are able to mutate and evolve to become resistant to the gamma rays. This is a theory widely accepted by scientists, and why you never hear about a nuclear holocaust being the end of life as we know it (just the end of us).

When AR mentioned the Halos aligning, this sounds like an EM phenomenon. Again, you want the doughnuts (mentioned above) to all point to one direction, our galaxy, and synchronized to fire so that they all overlap at the center of our galaxy. Otherwise, you might miss some spots here and there, or even cancel out the effects of other Halos. With the gamma ray theory, the rays would probably shoot out in flat planes (like a sheet of glass), and you would want to "cut up" the galaxy with these sheets of radiation.

Well, its getting late here, and I'm starting to ramble on. Anyone, feel free to shoot down my theories. This is all I can come up with at this hour. :shock:

Edit: Now that I think about it, the first Halo was destroyed pretty easily by MC. One of the shards from one side broke the other side after it exploded. This would mean that it would not even be able to hold itself together under such high magnetic fields. The only possibility for this theory is that it is itself not influenced by the field created. Its been such a long time since I studied E&M: is this even physically possible? For an object to create a magnetic field and not be affected by it? I don't have the time to study it any further today.
Last edited by c2h6o on Fri Jun 22, 2007 7:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Avateur
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Avateur »

This might help some. :)
c2h6o
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by c2h6o »

Avateur wrote:This might help some. :)
Um, did PD ever say what he thought the "red blobs" were? Nice to see that the storyline doesn't have any holes in it, though.
Rainstorm1031
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Rainstorm1031 »

shyataroo wrote: The way it would work would probably be (although this is just conjecture) a certain energy frequency that destroys the parts of the brain that allow one to be sentient enough for the flood. in what form of energy this frequency would be, it is not known, it would have to be a Incredibly high frequency to travel across light years in a matter of seconds or picoseconds. (there is no way to know how long it would take, although I Would assume not at the speed of light as it would take 100,000 years to purge the galaxy, meaning that the galaxy was JUST finished purging at the time of halo 1.
1. Thanks to Mr. Einstein, we know that the spped of light is the fastest anything can travel, due to e=mc². So, bringing up that the galaxy was just getting done with the purging is a good point.

2. I don't know of any frequency (I am assuming you meant sound frequency) that would destroy only part of your brain, let alone all of it.

What I am hung up on is that it doesn't destroy structures, it didn't seem to affect us here on Earth (or any of the plants or animals), and the Covenant seem to be unaffected by it as well (I think if they knew about the purging, they would have had it on the murals in the lost cutscene from Halo 2 Link).
c2h6o wrote:I mean, if you take a look at a timeline of earth, it took a long, long time for single-celled organisms to develop from the primordial goo (this goo contained a slew of organic chemicals, like methane, water, CO2, and oily substances that formed bubbles, inside of which organisms developed and evolved). After that, the evolution from single-cell to Doberman Pincher took less than the blink of an eye.
But still longer than 100,000 years. So the flora and fauna here on Earth were either: A) Unaffected by the Halo blast, or B) taken into the ark (all of the flora and fauna, which is improbable) and protected.

If only 2 of a certain creature was saved (like in Noah's Ark) then even now we'd know of a mass extinction by digging up fossils and such... with DNA analysis we could literally "see" the bottle-necking of the world's life populations... but we don't see that, and to build up from 2 people to 6 billion in only 100,000 years.... I mean, I like sex as much as the next guy, but even that is rediculous.
reaperdude42
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by reaperdude42 »

Whatever the Halos do i dont think they work using the standard models in modern day physics. Even if a pulse of energy or a wave or a cosmic death ray of doom (or whatever it turns out to be) was fired at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years for it to cross the galaxy from one side to the other and so it wouldnt wipe out all life instantly...

If thats the case, what would be the point. By the time the effect of the halos had reached the other end of the galaxy life would have re-evoled at the starting point so there would never be a point at which the flood couldnt find something to feed on.

Ok i realise that having 7 of them dotted around the galaxy means that it wouldnt take 100000 years for the big wipe out to complete, but it would still take a significant amount of time.

As for the gas giants i would speculate that massive plannets are used because they have favourable orbits that allow the halos to be properly aligned when the time come to push the big red button. :twisted:

If you ask me they are using some funky new tech that uses propertis of string therory or M theory to do the job...
kulervo
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by kulervo »

This is being discussed (sort of) overe here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=483&hilit=

1. The Halo's wipe out calcium deposits in life with calcium. So there is no issue with cosmic rays, or sound frequencies that destroy brains. See the halopedia article i link above.

2. The mini-halo from ILB had an effect on slip-space. We need not assume a rate of propagation at Light Speed, we can assume a faster than light rate of propagation.

3. How a faster than light signal wipes out calcium stores is beyond me, and beyond 21st century physics, so just accept it.
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