S
Spartan
Guest
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:
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..."):
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:
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!
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!