Gell-Mann

[daverince]

With all of the physics going on throughout both HL games, I kinda assumed that G-man was just a small homage to Murray Gell-Mann. He was a Caltech Physicist whose famous theory was to do with 'hadrons' and other incredibly-difficult-to-undersand-atomic-physics-kinda-stuff.

Gell-Mann basically stated that atoms are much smaller than anyone realised, and thus the story goes much deeper than anyone realised.

What he discovered would eventually be more widely known as quarks.

He's quite a big name in science, and I've always assumed (with HL's links to this science) that G-man, was simply called that as a reference to Gell-Mann.

You know I'm right.

Bwaaahahahahahaha.

 

[Sniper156]

What good is a theory if you are un-a-ble to speak?

 

[daverince]

What good is a theory if you are un-a-ble to speak?

What's your ****ing point?

 

[Sniper156]

What's your ****ing point?

Shh... No point.

 

[daverince]

Shh... No point.

...Burp

 

[Sniper156]

Intresting theory, with so much speculation its going to be hard for Valve to come up with something original and suprising.

Anyways, what do you suppose this leads to? Or is that all your trying to say?

 

[daverince]

All I'm trying to say, is I don't think there is a huge, grand meaning in G-Mans' name, like many people suppose. I just think that five years ago, when the original game came out, they named him in a referential way to add meaning/symbolism to the whole dark-matter, atomic, Half-Life story.

That's all. I'm just surprised that no-one had thought of this link before, because I've always assumed that G-Mann was a refernce to Gell-Mann.

Also, G-Man's character fits in nicely with Gell Mann's own theories, that suggested (with success) that things go A LOT deeper than we realised (in an atomic particle sense) and so does story of HL.

In the same way that the particles in an atomic particle can appear and disapear in random (but frequent) ways, so too does G-Man.

That's what I got out of it, anyway.

 

[doomed - uk]

It's never occured to me that it was a reference to Murray Gell-Mann. I thought it was just a reference to an old slang term for the FBI.

Gell-Mann ruled particle physics from the 1950s to the 1970s. He's so smart that even other Nobel laureates in physics have admitted his intellect intimidates them. He was one of the people behind the idea of the quark, that protons and neutrons and things were made up of even smaller particles. He gave it that name too, based on the word "quirk". He also was one of the people behind the Eightfold Way, the sub-atomic physics equivalent of the Periodic Table. He gave it that name too, from Eastern mysticism. The bizarre names that things in physics often have these days is the result of his influence. He started it all off by calling a property of a particle a bit like charge its "strangeness" and it all went from there.

Gell-Mann is still around, now doing work on improving quantum theory so it actually makes more sense. He's working with Jim Hartle who is himself famous for his work with Stephen Hawking.

What Gell-Mann and Hartle have been working on is called "decoherent histories". Decoherence has been nicknamed "the theory of universal entanglement".

The stuff in Half-Life 2 about "entanglement" could be a reference about that. I have my doubts, though. But this kind of possible reference by Valve is certainly not something which I had thought about.

I talk very occasionally with someone who has worked with one of the physicists whose work Gordon Freeman was inspired by according to Valve's backstory.

Freeman is supposed to have met these physicists a couple of years earlier than this guy I know who worked with one of them. This supposedly inspired Freeman to get into researching quantum teleportation.

This physicist who supposedly inspired Freeman knows Gell-Mann as well and was prompted to ask him some questions by the guy I occasionally talk too.

The guy I occasionally talk to and myself are in a long, very low-level argument about whether Gell-Mann is right or not about "decoherent histories". I say Gell-Mann is right and this guy says he isn't.

Maybe I should tell the guy I occasionally talk to to the tell the physicist he worked with who was one of the group who supposedly inspired Freeman that he's made it into videogames history as being an influence on Gordon Freeman.

I suspect the guy I occassionally talk to will tell me to get lost.

 

[daverince]

That made me smile, cheers.