How does Halo work?

Wild, speculative theories born from the communications with AdjutantReflex.

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ACEfanatic02
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by ACEfanatic02 »

kulervo wrote:Step 5: Take over planets that have had 25,000 years to regenerate.
This is your error.

25,000 years is not a particularly long time by evolutionary standards. The most that could have evolved in that timeframe is a primitive fish. (Remember, gamma radiation resets evolution back to bacteria.)

It doesn't particularly matter where the Flood starve. But they will.

-ACE
N Fox
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by N Fox »

Rainstorm1031 wrote:
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.

may be you dont have to enter the actual ark may be i creates a slipspace field around the entire earth shielding us from the Halos.
Xaos Maladay
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Xaos Maladay »

c2h6o wrote:Gravitational is far, far too weak.
I would like to disagree with the notion that this eliminates gravity entirely. It is possible that the Halo's generate gravitational radiation (also known as gravity waves) with a amplitude equal to the size of a calcium atom or a frequency equal to the natural resonant frequency of calclium. Gravity and quantum scales don't like each other too much. th eorganism would have to have a sufficient mass of calcium in order to be affected. Why calcium? At least in humans, it is neccesary for neural function. It might be neccesary for all intelligent species.

Any mass moving non symmetricaly can generate gravitational waves, including blackholes. However, it seems orbital systems generate them best. Its interesting that we find the Halo's orbiting near gas giants. Interesting quote from Ghosts of Onyx posted at wikipedia: "... The drive used particle accelerators to rip apart normal space-time by generating micro black holes." Using the Halo's to create a blackhole and a tear into slipspace might generate powerful enough gravity waves to affect calcium.

Finally affects of a high frequency gravity wave:
[url=http://www.gravwave.com/docs/Layperson's%20Description%20of%20HFGW.pdf]Gravity Wave Article Link (pdf)[/url] wrote: (2) As discussed in the authoritative text by Landau and Lifshitz,
HFGWs provide a remote means for causing perturbations to the motion
of objects
such as missiles (anything from bullets to ICBMs), spacecraft,
rogue comets or minor planets that are destined to impact Earth, land or
water vehicles or craft – a totally new propulsion system!
(Xaos's Note: Could possibly lead to violently shaking object until they break up... such as calcium deposites in organic beings).

(3) Remote coalescing of clouds of hazardous vapors, radioactive
dust, etc. by changing the gravitational field in their vicinity.
(Xaos' note: It could be possible to reverse this process).

(5) the potential for remotely disrupting the gravitational field in a
specific region of space (using a HFGW “beam”) and even producing
nuclear reactions there – possibly without any radioactive waste!
(Xaos's Note: Another possibility for how gravity waves could disrupt normal matter.)
My fuzzy memory says the crystal from First Strike may fit into this as proof othe forerunner's ability to bend space-time.

However, gravity waves do suffer from the same problem as EM radiation. They still travel at the speed of light.
3zz
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by 3zz »

You are all so hung up on the fact that the Halo's weapons systems discriminate based on biomass, but so far Ive seen all of you forget one of the most simple solutions:

It could merely be some form of weapons (radiation?) that naturally does not effect small organisms. 343GS could merely be remarking upon the weapons 'flaw' so to speak instead of mentioning its awesome discriminatory powers. Maybe it is some kind of radiation weapon that only packs the punch to kill large clusters of cells (thus being of large biomass) and smaller clusters arent as impacted by it and thus survive.
c2h6o
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by c2h6o »

Xaos Maladay wrote: I would like to disagree with the notion that this eliminates gravity entirely. It is possible that the Halo's generate gravitational radiation (also known as gravity waves) with a amplitude equal to the size of a calcium atom or a frequency equal to the natural resonant frequency of calclium. Gravity and quantum scales don't like each other too much. th eorganism would have to have a sufficient mass of calcium in order to be affected. Why calcium? At least in humans, it is neccesary for neural function. It might be neccesary for all intelligent species.
Well, it is possible. Its just that they are so weak that humans have yet to detect them.
Xaos Maladay wrote: Any mass moving non symmetricaly can generate gravitational waves, including blackholes. However, it seems orbital systems generate them best. Its interesting that we find the Halo's orbiting near gas giants. Interesting quote from Ghosts of Onyx posted at wikipedia: "... The drive used particle accelerators to rip apart normal space-time by generating micro black holes." Using the Halo's to create a blackhole and a tear into slipspace might generate powerful enough gravity waves to affect calcium.
That is the only way that gravitons are possible. Since the "fabric" of spacetime is already bent around a gas giant, the Halos could give it the last little bit of energy to tear spacetime.
Xaos Maladay wrote: (Xaos's Note: Could possibly lead to violently shaking object until they break up... such as calcium deposites in organic beings).
Great idea also. It wouldn't do do simply "push" or "pull" organisms from the Halos. It would have to oscillate and rip them apart. Or, they could oscillate so that there is large amounts of heat generated, and literally boil them alive a.k.a. the microwave phenom. Or, if it was EM, it could act on the electrical potential across cell membranes to the same effect.

To add something to the discussion, it hit me that the original use of the Halos could have been to explore lifeforms (new theory, anyone??). This is where the index comes from, a record of all lifeform DNA found. Somehow, the Halos can search the galaxy for organisms, and determine the genetic record of it.

Well, one day the Halos found the flood...a rather nasty creature. The Forerunner handily captured it, and kept it on...the Halo, hoping to research it. Then, it broke out. In a last minute decision, they were retrofitted to "attack" the spacetime coordinates where the dna sequences were found (via the index).

Now, if we could just get some more clues...
kulervo
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by kulervo »

ACEfanatic02: On the topic of 25,000 yrs and evolution. I know it wouldn't be possible to evolve anything from microbes in the that time frame, but at the same time, it would also be impossible to evolve anything in 100,000 years. - Since the galaxy does not appear to be devoid of anything larger than microbes, we can conclude that items larger than microbes survived. Therefore my point is still sound, and we can assume that Halo did not wipe things out back to microbes.

Xaos Maladay: Gravitons is an interesting spec. As is the possibility of setting a resonance frequency for calcium. We do know that the Slipspace drives function by tearing space time and operating in higher order dimensions, so the same drive technology the forerunners had would work to generate gravity waves. Gravity decays at the same rate (inverse distance squared) as light, so we have the same distance limitatons, gravity waves travel instantaneously, so they wouldn't have to worry about STL propagation.

As spec goes, it has a lot of potential.
edcalaban
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by edcalaban »

I think we're ignoring several facets to the weapon that may be important:

1) As shown in Ghosts of Onyx, it can be shielded against implying it takes time to propagate and doesn't occur instantaneously everywhere. (I may be reading too much into this)
2) It may not have killed all food sources. Why? Humans saw the Forerunners in the new comic (http://www.halo3.com/comic/) which would imply they existed while we did. If that's so, either some survived or the weapon failed to eliminate humanity. Of course, another possibility is that the "New Gods" from the comic are purely AI/Sentinal forces.

Combine 1 + 2 and you get the potential for blindspots where the weapon does not take effect, so there needs to be an out.

3) Why does it need to be activated by a Reclaimer (which seems to be purely human)? Why not any sentient species in combat with the Flood? Is it possible the Reclaimer actually is an integral part of the process (identifying a food source) or is it purely a fail-safe? Maybe the rings reconfigure for each firing in order to eliminate whatever species is allowing the Flood to propagate.
Xaos Maladay
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Xaos Maladay »

edcalaban wrote:1) As shown in Ghosts of Onyx, it can be shielded against implying it takes time to propagate and doesn't occur instantaneously everywhere. (I may be reading too much into this)
Is it possible that hiding an object in slipspace could shield from the Halo's weapon? I may be in error, but I believe the Dyson Sphere in Onyx was inside slipspace.

kulervo:
As for the speed of gravity waves, they do travel at the speed of light. I've checked a few references and they agree on this. We still have the same propagation problem as light.
It does has one advantage over EM radiation: it can travel through mass without experiancing the absorbtion-re-emition phenomena of photons in glass (particle absorbs incoming photon, expels a photon).
Slipspace could be used to speed things up, but we run into problems such as edcalaban's and the re-entry of the gravity waves into normal space.
One reference.
kulervo
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by kulervo »

Xaos Maladay:That's an ongoing argument in physics. Personal opinion is that gravity is instantaneous. I am in the minority, so I will yield the point.

Also: The reference link you gave had a few mistakes in it. One is that information cannot be transmitted faster than light. Look into quantum entanglement.

But I still think that the Halo's must operate FTL, so I am not convinced that that model of gravity can lead to a workable Halo killing method.
Air Sparrow Hawk
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Re: How does Halo work?

Unread post by Air Sparrow Hawk »

Well, if you look at the Array_Recorder_Data you can see that it is obviously an iniatiated firing sequence recorded via the built in Array Recorder. The answer to your question has already been handed to us in the form of a simple text file.

At precisely 1 minute and 12 seconds into the firing sequence the fuel consumed takes place.

This is line 11:

'Confrm: Array burn radium {check} 3.0'

This means: Confirm Array Burn Radium & Check for 3.0 amount

The 3.0 must be a universal stardard used by the Forerunners. It must be an amount to consume. Now think about it: What other weapons use radium? Personally the only thing that comes to mind is the western favourite: The Nuclear Bomb

So how does this wipe out an entire galaxy without even touching any planets or flood? The reason is simple: Nuclear Fallout. The fallout is so big is spreads across the 3.5 Radii that it affects and kills all life due to radiation, the flood are somehow inaffected, possibly immune to this radiation. Now you are probably saying: This is absurd! Someone tell this moron that the Blast would've destroyed the Halo itself! This can't be true!

Touche, but I have a comeback ready.

A little while ago I was arguing with a friend over what the blast radius of a nuclear bomb was, I believed it was a couple of hundred miles (as we were told in school whenever we asked) and he believed that it was only about 2 miles or so, he was closer. After careful research we came to the conclusion that despite such a huge fallout zone, the blast is only 3 miles.

Now to the next question you are asking: "Okaaay... but how does that apply here exactly?"

Well actually it is quite applicable. Think: Despite there being such a huge fallout zone there is a tiny, miniscule blast radius. This leads me to believe that the whole of the blast radius is always contained within the center of the Halos ring! This is quite plausible because if you remember correctly when the Lieutenant was forced to activate Installation 05 the blast readied itself. You could see it with your own eyes that the Halo was about to send out a wave. But this wouldn't be possible unless the blast stayed inside the Halo.

So in short, the Halo is a just a huge nuclear bomb with a fallout distance of 3.5 radii.
This would also explain why no buildings were affected and why the Ark exists, aka a form of a bomb shelter.

And no, I'm not some army fanatic or anything like that.

Thoughts?
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