- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
*sigh*
After reading through the whole thread, I feel obligated to point some things out.Posted by: vcxtrenton
Hey, I know the answer! You learn that halo is a weapon and that it kills all life within like 25000 light years (very far) in the level two betrayals, this is also where you learn HOW they do it. Cortana tells you to destroy the 3 phase-pulse generators that "amplify halo's signal" and give it some huge range. So, these generators are the actual weapons. I'm assuming the generators just produce large amounts of gamma radiation, that is the only thing that would travel through space and be serious enough to kill the life. Gamma radiation kills all life if theres enough energy.
Now, two things to think about for halo's "weapon":
1. Since nothing travels faster than the speed of light, it would take gamma radiation, or anything, atleast 25,000 years before it killed all life, so we wouldn't need to worry =D.
2. I saw this on tv, astronomers have recently been finding gamma radiation bursts throughout the sky that are immensely powerful. These bursts seem to appear randomly in the sky with no way to tell where it came from. Astronomers are also wondering if one might happen near us. You never know, halo could be for real =P. Thank god Master Chief and all you 1337's out there saved us from this.
The key phrase Trenton used is "enough energy". I'm sure any of you who've passed Jr. High science know what the inverse square rule is, what a lightyear is, and how much 25000 is. It takes quite a bit of high-energy light to kill a human. (Just FYI, it does that by breaking DNA and other proteins apart.) For the concentration at 25000 light years to kill human-like stuff that way, Halo would probably have to consume Threshold and its whole star and convert it entirely into energy. A sphere 50000 lightyears accross has a whole lot of area for that energy to be spread over sorta evenly (with ripple patterns due to gravity) and still be intense enough to kill me.
Get your facts strait, dude. Gamma bursts aren't news, astronomers looked at them and scratched thier heads for years. It's the explanations we've come up with that are news.
Cortana might have used the word "signal" instead of "shock" or something because Halo is selective; it doesn't kill stuff by hard irradiation, that would take too much energy. The crucial piece of data was called the index, not the key or password. I think that however Halo selectively "cuts hairs", it needs data on whatever kind of haircut it's to give. I think that Guilty Spark said the galaxy would be lacking life "quite soon". If he's talking and thinking on something near our timescale, 50000 years probably isn't "quite soon". If the Pillar of Autumn can travel faster than light through something called subspace, why not a "signal" carefully tuned to selectively destroy certain life forms in realspace? Whatever it is, it probably isn't ordinary light. That would require a lot of energy and it wouldn't be very selective; you'd probably be better off sending world-glassing automata with hyperdrives to sweep the galaxy, they can do it faster and more efficiently.
Oh, yeah. By the way, light slows down for atoms too- not just gravity. As light passes through something like air or glass, it hits atoms. When it hits them, it's absorbed for a very short but nonzero time before being belched out again as the electrons return to thier proper valence shells. Index of refraction is a measure of that slowing, remember?
[Edited on 6/24/2004 11:25:58 PM]