The science of Half-Life (spoilers?)

[Spartan]

I guess this contains spoilers. Beware. Bah.

When you meet up with Dr. Mossman, she starts to talk to you about teleportation. She says: "Eli thinks their [Combine's] portals are string-based, similiar to our Calabi-Yau model."

This got me thinking, because a lot of the scientific stuff in Half-Life is based on something real, even if loosely. So I checked Wikipedia, and found an entry on the Calabi-Yau manifold. It states that:

Calabi-Yau manifolds are important in superstring theory. In the most conventional superstring models, ten conjectural dimensions in string theory are supposed to come as four of which we are aware, carrying some kind of fibration with fiber dimension six. Compactification on Calabi-Yau n-folds are important because they leave some of the original supersymmetry unbroken. More precisely, compactification on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold (real dimension 6) leaves one quarter of the original supersymmetry unbroken.

It mentions compactification, which makes me think about Mossman's comment about Kleiner "compressing" the Xen relay. But more importantly, it mentions the superstring theory ("string-based..."):

Superstring theory is an attempt to explain all of the particles and fundamental forces of nature in one theory by modeling them as vibrations of tiny supersymmetric strings. It is considered one of the most promising candidate theories of quantum gravity. Superstring theory is a shorthand for "supersymmetric string theory" because unlike bosonic string theory, it is the version of string theory that incorporates fermions and supersymmetry.

The article also mentions that superstrings are in the field of theoretical physics, which just happens to be Gordon's area of expertise. Additionally, the articles says that the string theory assumes the presense of more than three spatial dimensions. I don't know if they can have any relation to the dimensions we see in Half-Life 2 (which don't seem to be spatial). I'm not a physicist. There are vast amount of entries related to the superstring theory. There's even talk of "hyperspace."

Mossman: "If they [the Combine] knew what we're doing with entanglement..." Quantum entanglement is related to quantum teleportation. The latter entry states that:

In quantum mechanics, the state of a system is described by a mathematical entity called the wave function or state vector.

I vaguely remember that a resonance cascade causes a wave function collapse. Or something. Maybe I'm just talking out of my ass. But what I'm trying to say is that Half-Life's science is suprisingly well made. I don't know what a real theoretical physicist thinks about it, but it seems very convicing, almost semi-realistic, to me.

edit: While I have no idea where Planet Half-Life got the info, this page states that Gordon showed interest in quantum physics, like quantum teleportation, when he was studying at Innsbruck. It all fits together!

 

[guchi]

wow, this is really interesting! valve must be belivers in the string theory...

 

[Spartan]

... and I think it's very interesting.

 

[ExarKun]

It's bull. Sorry, Entanglement just doesn't work, even with information. The EPR paradox stuff that Gordon's supposed to have gotten his PH.D. in was resolved quite a while back. It is not a paradox. I get the feeling Valve just looked up technical stuff on the net and threw it together to make grammatical sense.
The essence of a good science fiction story is to use science without trying to explain it to make the human factor interesting. StarWars did that right, but StarTrek messed it up, with lots of major technical errors. When I read sci-fi, I don't want some bullshit theory explaining why it works, I really just care about the human elements of the story.

 

[ExarKun]

BTW, compactification is a mathematical term. A compact space is a closed and bounded space. A compactification of a space is a larger space which is also compact.

 

[Spartan]

It's bull. Sorry, Entanglement just doesn't work, even with information. The EPR paradox stuff that Gordon's supposed to have gotten his PH.D. in was resolved quite a while back. It is not a paradox. I get the feeling Valve just looked up technical stuff on the net and threw it together to make grammatical sense.

I very much doubt that. Whether or not theory x is viable or not doesn't matter. What matters is consistency. And in any case, science changes all the time so it's pretty dumb to refrain from talking about it or using it as a plot element just because it may or may not get outdated one day. What Laidlaw "threw together" is too well organized and consistent to be random.

The essence of a good science fiction story is to use science without trying to explain it to make the human factor interesting.

Depends on the genre. Hard scifi is a genre where a realistic portrayal of science and technology is key. The "human element" is not always the most important thing - not every story needs to be about human affairs.

StarWars did that right

I'd hardly call Star Wars science fiction.

When I read sci-fi, I don't want some bullshit theory explaining why it works, I really just care about the human elements of the story.

Half-Life 2 doesn't go into in-depth detail to explain how teleportation works. Some bits of it are just mentioned by Judith. Gordon is a fellow scientist, the teleportation project is extremely important and Gordon is supposed to work on it. So I dare say that it makes a whole lot of sense for Judith to talk about it. They are scientists, not laymen, so there's no reason to avoid science.

 

[ExarKun]

Originally Posted by ExarKun
It's bull. Sorry, Entanglement just doesn't work, even with information. The EPR paradox stuff that Gordon's supposed to have gotten his PH.D. in was resolved quite a while back. It is not a paradox. I get the feeling Valve just looked up technical stuff on the net and threw it together to make grammatical sense.



I very much doubt that. Whether or not theory x is viable or not doesn't matter. What matters is consistency. And in any case, science changes all the time so it's pretty dumb to refrain from talking about it or using it as a plot element just because it may or may not get outdated one day. What Laidlaw "threw together" is too well organized and consistent to be random.



Quote:
The essence of a good science fiction story is to use science without trying to explain it to make the human factor interesting.



Depends on the genre. Hard scifi is a genre where a realistic portrayal of science and technology is key. The "human element" is not always the most important thing - not every story needs to be about human affairs.




Quote:
StarWars did that right



I'd hardly call Star Wars science fiction.


Quote:
When I read sci-fi, I don't want some bullshit theory explaining why it works, I really just care about the human elements of the story.



Half-Life 2 doesn't go into in-depth detail to explain how teleportation works. Some bits of it are just mentioned by Judith. Gordon is a fellow scientist, the teleportation project is extremely important and Gordon is supposed to work on it. So I dare say that it makes a whole lot of sense for Judith to talk about it. They are scientists, not laymen, so there's no reason to avoid science.

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No one ever get sci-fi right. I've been seeing it for years now. Don't get me wrong, but hard sci-fi is usually a good topic for amusement for us before talks and during coffee breaks.

One thing that you will realise if you attend talks or meetings is that scientists don't usually just blab about thoery with random people that they've just met. At the last conference that I attended, AAS 2004, Denver, CO. , I spent far more time discussing beer around the world than indulging in theoretical discussions. Before you start talking theory with people you've just met, you spend a lot of time trying to make sure they really wanna talk about it, not many people do . There was this one guy from LLNL who started up on GRBs, but we all thought he was a bit weird.

Science doesn't change much under the same name. If something new came up tomorrow that suggested that the EPR paradox may be true, I very much doubt it'd be called the EPR paradox anymore. A case in point being General Relativity. It's a theory of gravity, but no one associates Newton with it. The safe thing to do is to not mention it at all. Anyway, much of the Physics quoted in HL2 is highly mathematical, and mathematics does NOT change. You want immortality, do Math or conquor the world.

I dunno what genre I'd put StarWars under, but I'm trying to point out that by leaving theory unstated, StarWars escaped critical scrutiny. Afterall, who can criticise lightsabers when we don't know what they are except that they cut through stuff and have something to do with light (or the light side of the Force)?

 

[Spartan]

No one ever get sci-fi right. I've been seeing it for years now. Don't get me wrong, but hard sci-fi is usually a good topic for amusement for us before talks and during coffee breaks.

That doesn't seem very plausible, seeing as how hard scifi is also written by scientists.

One thing that you will realise if you attend talks or meetings is that scientists don't usually just blab about thoery with random people that they've just met. At the last conference that I attended, AAS 2004, Denver, CO. , I spent far more time discussing beer around the world than indulging in theoretical discussions. Before you start talking theory with people you've just met, you spend a lot of time trying to make sure they really wanna talk about it, not many people do . There was this one guy from LLNL who started up on GRBs, but we all thought he was a bit weird.

That may all be true, but you can't really make the comparison with Half-Life 2.

Science doesn't change much under the same name. If something new came up tomorrow that suggested that the EPR paradox may be true, I very much doubt it'd be called the EPR paradox anymore. A case in point being General Relativity. It's a theory of gravity, but no one associates Newton with it. The safe thing to do is to not mention it at all. Anyway, much of the Physics quoted in HL2 is highly mathematical, and mathematics does NOT change. You want immortality, do Math or conquor the world.

Very well, but I'm still saying that HL2 does a good job with what little science you see. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate or realistic because it doesn't matter.

 

[ExarKun]

The problem with mentioning science casually is that it's very easy to mislead people who are otherwise capable of understanding the actual stuff. You mentioned manifolds somewhere in your Wikepedia quote. A manifold is a n-1 dimensional surface in a n-dimensional space. Most common manifolds are Riemann manifolds that have certain nice properties about them. Non-Riemann manifolds have very intruiging properties, but are harder to work with. Now if I just state some stuff like - "The warp engine works by twisting non-Riemann, manifolds over a simple group while preserving the metric", then I'm potentially spreading incorrect science to a young audience that can leave incorrect conclusions in thier minds. It's a developers responsibility to society to be accurate and not mislead the society. This is exactly whats wrong with Hollywood. Hollywood loves using bad science that can potentially harm a young person's intellectual developement. If your game has a decent physics engine in it, and your using that as the USP of your game, then it's a good idea to keep Physics straight inside the game. Thats my point. For example, to probe higher dimensions, we need to be able to manipulate an enormous amount of energy - Plank's Energy. If the human race were capable of manipulating suich large quantities of energy trivially in a ramshakle lab run by one scientist, then I'd very much doubt that the Combine would be a problem.

HardScience is, in my experience, written by borderline scientists. Mainstream scientists do not have the time or inclination to worry about hard Sci-Fi, they're usually more worried about making sure thier grants don't expire.

 

[Spartan]

I wouldn't worry about spreading false science to people through HL2. It's fairly certain that 99,9% of all players dismiss Mossman's speech as techno babble. I didn't even pretend to understand anything of it, I only pieced it together (somewhat) with Wikipedia.

Speakinf of bad science, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics has it in abundance, it seems. Their review of The Core left me wondering how anyone can know so much about physics and science, and be so observant.

I'm assuming, of course, that everything written in the review is more or less true. I have no way of knowing.

 

[ExarKun]

I've gone over that site. It's pretty good. I wanna see a review of SpiderMan 2 on that website! Yeah, I was probably being overcritical in that last post, sorry. See you around, gtg.

 

[Asuka]

Very interesting i watched a doc. on the string theory was very interesting.

 

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