half life???

[D-MAN]

now i know this is a half life 2 forum but dont start b**chin at me for riting this thread.

anyway what i want to know is in black mesa at the start of it all what was the acctual experiment in the test chamber meant to be for???????/
please reply to let me know if you know. this could be the start of a v interesting thread. or it might just be ignored completely which is more likely

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

http://www.halflife2.net/page.php?p=hls_story

Search next time please.....

 

[ríomhaire]

Anylising a crystal, strange how that makes portal storms.

 

[jondy]

Yeah, the crystal was send down to be analysed - there's mention of mass spectrometry but I'm not entirely sure what kindof tests they were trying to run.

 

[ríomhaire]

A mass spectrometer analysies materials by bombarding them with ions or something.

 

[azazul]

Mass Spectrometer

 

[Beerdude26]

Oooh, never knew that...

But for what the hell is it used for?

 

[boystupid]

By working out the mass of the atoms in the crystal they can work out what it is made from.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Its simple really, the colours which are observed can be matched to the elements that make up the substance being bombarded. e.g. if you have a large quantity of sodium being heated and look through the spectrometer it would appear in red/orangely lines, as all the other colours of the spectrum are absorbed by it, with only the red/orangly light being visable in that part. And by using that technique we can work out the composition of different things, like the stars in other galaxies or our own sun. Half-life related...it was used on the crystal to find the properties i think, by finding out what was in it. Obviously someone didn't want them to find out whats in it...ooooh conspiracy

 

[AfternoonLemon]

For a start, who said it was a crystal?? And secondly, I don't think they were merely spectral analysing, as that could be done in a much easier environment. :rolling:

 

[Beerdude26]

You guys are way to intelligent for these forums... Go develop a 2 Thz CPU or something

 

[FCBob]

Here's my take on the experiment and this is what I thought was going on before i read this thread and learned what a mass spectrometor was so keep in mind that this theory is completely ignorant of that. I always thought that the specimens the scientists were referring to were some of the xenian life forms that the Lambda scientist later in the game talked about collecting. I thought this because after the resonance cascade occurs and you retrace your steps through the facilities you see three glass containers that have headcrabs in them. I thought that by using their originally developed means of teleportation they inserted a research team on Xen and retrieved the Xenian crystal which i assume they noticed possessed qualities that created natural portals. The day of the experiment I believed that the research teams on Xen had collected some specimens to be transfered back to Black Mesa. However over the previous weeks scientist noticed that some forms of energy caused the Xenian crystals to display their teleporting qualities and that with a large enough portal it could draw the crystals natural teleportation tunnel toward it. Thus being able to control it. They begin using the mass spectrometor to turn the crystal into a natural portal by bombarding it with ions (my ignorance about mass spectrometors and their use shows in that last sentence :bounce: ). After continueing to experiment they hypothesized that a certain amount of Ions refracting of the crystal could cause an uncontrolled reaction causing the crystals natural portal to remain open (kinda like a nuclear reactor having a unstopable chain reaction) and named this scenario a resonance cascade. On the day of the experiment they decided to retrieve the specimens using the xenian crystal but someone had disabled the locks on the mass spectrometor causing a mass amount of Ions to be pumped into it causing the resonance cascade. But really the only evidence for this is that it appeared that they were setting up to teleport three headcrabs to earth (the glass tubes).

So as I said all that is from the view point of someone who really doesn't understand theoretical teleportation or what a mass spectrometor is used for so feel free to say, wow that sucks, all you want. :thumbs: