What is a Portal Storm?

[Narvi]

Does shooting a portal do anything to it?

Then why would heat matter?

 

[PortalStormzzzz]

What? I'm just saying that if a fusion does it, why not fission? Dark matter is just a polar opposite of normal matter, they both have the same effect on the are if the come in contact with each other: BOOM. Then again, I could be confusing that with antimatter.

 

[redruM]

Then again, I could be confusing that with antimatter.

I think you are

 

[Polaris]

What? I'm just saying that if a fusion does it, why not fission? Dark matter is just a polar opposite of normal matter, they both have the same effect on the are if the come in contact with each other: BOOM. Then again, I could be confusing that with antimatter.

Yes, you mean antimatter, dark matter is something completely different.
Still it doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[PortalStormzzzz]

neither do I. Antimatter is normal matter in reverse (protons -, electrons +) dark matter is invisible but a bunch of stuff. (70% of the universe) etc etc.


OY, this just gets more confusing. WTF does Dark Energy do?

 

[Polaris]

OY, this just gets more confusing. WTF does Dark Energy do?

Well, dark energy expanding our universe.

 

[PortalStormzzzz]

yea, I know that much. But what did it do in HL2? (Dark energy generator or something?)

 

[Polaris]

yea, I know that much. But what did it do in HL2? (Dark energy generator or something?)

Combine was using dark fusion reactor to supply their teleportation core.

 

[PortalStormzzzz]

Well I remember somewhere something about dark energy. Can't think were though. maybe in the citadel core?

 

[Asknoone]

Mossman mentioned it in Black Mesa East.

 

[Polaris]

Well I remember somewhere something about dark energy. Can't think were though. maybe in the citadel core?

At the top of the Citadel but also Core was linked to dark energy, hence Kleiner's worries about "dark energy flare".

 

[Van Kayne]

Ok, this thread seems to be wandering back and forth, so let's clear this up.

Portal Storms
Seems to be any unpredictable behavior linked to portal activity or dimensional instabilities. Thus, the random teleporting in Black Mesa during and after the resonance cascade fits the definition, as does the massive shockwaves released in Ep2.

The Satellites
The first one was launched in HL 1. It was meant to try and stabilize things, but it didn't do much (possibly because by then the Big Baby had control of things). The second satellite launched in Ep2 was to stop the Superportal.

The Superportal/Dark energy fusion core/Citadel explosion
The Superportal was created because the core explosion was forced into a coherent beam of portal energy. A nuke won't open a portal by itself, because all the energy would just be emitted in light, heat and kinetic forms, whereas the citadel explosion's energy was focused into creating a portal (and I assume that the explosion that wiped out City 17 was the surplus energy from the core meltdown that didn't go into powering the birth of the Superportal and sending out the transmission).

The best real-world analogy I can think of is a laser: a nuke is like a really big flash bulb from a camera: lots of light and all at once, in no particular direction. But the same energy put into a coherent beam can burn through solid objects.

In this context, it doesn't particularly matter what dark energy is, other than it's the best way the Combine can think of to power their portals. I don't think dark energy is a prerequisite for portal creation, since the teleporters in HL 1 and Kleiner's lab didn't seem to need it.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Valve, all this is based on me playing the games and using two networked neural lobes in tandem, with the result optimized for internally consistent logic.