why the name "Half Life"?

<RJMC>

<RJMC>

The Freeman
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(I know of everibody gona say "why this idiot ask that" )
I wanna know why Half Life(the game) has that name?
because HL is about aliens invasions(but of course is about other things)
I heard "Half Life" means "the end of the life" if is that it means are more sense,because in Hl2 we are in a earht invade by aliens and we are fighting to survive
or just the Valve creators like that name because is diferent
well i hope someone gona answerme
 
Half-life: the time it takes for one-half of the atoms of an unstable element or nuclide to decay radioactively into another element or nuclide

And another term for fun:

Hazardous Material (HazMat): any material or substance, which even in normal use, poses a risk to health, safety, property or the environment. Hazardous materials are broken down into nine primary classes by the United Nations, the USDOT, IATA and other regulatory bodies for the purposes of the placarding and identification the hazards of shipments.

Quite interesting actually.
 
scientific mumbo jumbo
black mesa was a research facility
put 2 and 2 together

it equals 4.
 
Because the first named sucked. I cant even remember it now... A single word, something short. Somebody will know :)
 
Look, all the Valve games have scientific names. Half-Life is what A true Canadian said, Blue Shift is an astrological term (something with telescopes) and Opposing Force has to do with physics. There was a topic on it months ago
 
dawdler said:
Because the first named sucked. I cant even remember it now... A single word, something short. Somebody will know :)
Click to expand...

i think it was "Attack of the Headcrabs"
 
it's a scientific term like A True Canadian said. dunno where you heard it meant the end of all life, go shoot that person ;)

could be a parallel between the decay of a substance into another, and the 'decay' of gordon from a scientist into a soldier/merc.
 
Found the terms you guys mentioned.

Blue Shift: A decrease in the wavelength of radiation emitted by an approaching celestial body as a consequence of the Doppler effect.

Counterforce: A contrary or opposing force, especially a military force capable of destroying the nuclear armaments of an enemy.

I think they used opposing force because it sounded better, but it is essentially the same thing.
 
dawdler said:
Because the first named sucked. I cant even remember it now... A single word, something short. Somebody will know :)
Click to expand...

The name was Quiver
 
ahahah Quiver, I remember that :p glad they went with Half-Life, Quiver sounds too much like: Quake, or Hexen, or Heretic. Blah.
 
Half-Life is a scientific term, the amount of time it takes for the radioactivity in something to drop by 50%, I've heard.. The game is filled with scientific terms, all the chapters and such.. (Surface Tension for instance)

It's a great name for the game.. Quiver does sound too much like Quake , Hexen or the likes.. Like Paintballer said.
 
BTW, this is great for the Schoolkiddos, you learn Chemistry at the same time you play one helluva game.. :D
 
U KNOW WHY THEY CALL IT HALF-LIFE??? Because u spend HALF of your LIFE playing it
 
I feel strange because I actually knew what these terms (half-life, blueshift, etc.) all meant. Maybe I should pay less attention in school.
 
i think it is...

the life we live is one half....and Xen the alien world is the other half hehe
 
Well, of course the term Half-Life referes to the time is takes 1/2 of a radioactive substance to decay (fyi, it take another period of the same time for the next half to decay and so on supposedly forever). Is comes with all the imagery of nuclear physics and weapons and sounds vaugly threatening.

BTW, if I am not mistaked. The symbol for half life is....Lamda (OK, not much of a surprise).

For a while I though they should do another expansion from the Black Ops point of view called "Black Body".
 
i actually remembered those terms for my test because i paid more attention when i suddenly heard the teacher say "Half-Life" :D
 
Tyrant said:
i actually remembered those terms for my test because i paid more attention when i suddenly heard the teacher say "Half-Life" :D
Click to expand...

See who says games rot your brain :D ?
 
Titar said:
For a while I though they should do another expansion from the Black Ops point of view called "Black Body".
Click to expand...
What about a Black Ops porno game called "Black Hole"? I keed... I keed...
 
Half-life: the time it takes for one-half of the atoms of an unstable element or nuclide to decay radioactively into another element or nuclide
Click to expand...

Precisely that, it was named after that definition because it had a real-life scientific relation and the whole idea of Half-Life is a journey through a world of science. It fits well.
 
Pauly said:
U KNOW WHY THEY CALL IT HALF-LIFE??? Because u spend HALF of your LIFE playing it
Click to expand...

:bounce: WOOT!!!1!!1 So true, but so sad, ;(
 
Tyrant said:
i actually remembered those terms for my test because i paid more attention when i suddenly heard the teacher say "Half-Life" :D
Click to expand...

We are doin hallf life formulas in math, i cant concentrate, i just sit ther doodling lamda symbols and day dreaming.
 
Half-Life is how long it takes something to decay.
Probably a reference to how the Black Mesa situation deteriorates.

Lambda symbol represents a lot of stuff, but not Half-life.
Most likely, it's meant to be used as the symbol for 'wave' or 'wavelength' in the game because that's what the lambda complex uses as part of teleportation.

Opposing force is exactly that: a force that opposes another, like friction slowing forwards movement.
It probably refers to the fact that Aidrian and the other grunts are the force that opposes gordon.

I'm not sure about Blue Shift, but it has something to do with light shifting along the spectrum, specifically for an object in space heading towards earth.
I'd bet it refers to Barney coming back home from Xen, or just the way everything shifts towards chaos at BM.

Decay pretty much the same as Half-life.
 
Half-Life is how long it takes something to decay.
Probably a reference to how the Black Mesa situation deteriorates.

Lambda symbol represents a lot of stuff, but not Half-life.
Most likely, it's meant to be used as the symbol for 'wave' or 'wavelength' in the game because that's what the lambda complex uses as part of teleportation.

Opposing force is exactly that: a force that opposes another, like friction slowing forwards movement.
It probably refers to the fact that Aidrian and the other grunts are the force that opposes gordon.

I'm not sure about Blue Shift, but it has something to do with light shifting along the spectrum, specifically for an object in space heading towards earth.
I'd bet it refers to Barney coming back home from Xen, or just the way everything shifts towards chaos at BM.

Decay pretty much the same as Half-life.
Click to expand...

All of the names of Half-Life related games are scientific terms, but also have another second meaning, which you have defined pretty well. You've got Half-Life, Decay, Opposing Force and the Lambada Symbol right, but allow me to define Blue Shift:

Blue and Red shifts are just variations on a common phenomenon called "Doppler Shift". Any wave (be it light or sound) that is approaching you from a source moving relative to you will appear to you to be shifted in wavelength.

In the case of sound waves, you can easily hear this phenomenon with the sounds of passing cars. As the cars approach, the sound waves produced by their engines are "scrunched up", that is the sound wave is Doppler shifted to a shorted wavelength, and therefore the car engine will sound with a higher pitch that if it was just standing still next to you. The opposite is heard when car moves away from you, the engine's sound will be heard by you to be lower pitched, as the sound waves are Doppler shifted to longer wavelengths.

In the case of light, the Doppler effect is harder to see because the speed of light is so much greater than the speed of sound. So while changes in wavelength are known to correspond to color (from short to long wavelength, the colors of the rainbow are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red), the change in color due to a Doppler shift is usually imperceptible to the human eye. Therefore, the only easy way to observe this phenomenon is using spectrometers which allow you to carefully measure the wavelength of light you observe. And when a light source approachs you, you can observe in a spectrometer that the light it emits appears to be of a shorter wavelength than when the source is at rest relative to you, that is, the color of the light is shifted blueward of normal. This is the definition of blue shift. Similarly, when a light source is moving away from you, it's light is said to be redshifted, since it is of a longer wavelength, or "redder", than normal.

One of the most interesting discoveries of the 20th Century was made by Edwin Hubble when he looked at the light of distant galaxies and noticed that in every case the light was redshifted, implying that all these distant galaxies are moving away from us. The redshifting of galaxy light is what tells us that the universe is expanding.
 
Oh yes, and also Blue Shift is referring to the shift that Barney Calhoun is working at Black Mesa - that's the double conotation. You pick that up if you've read the manual.
 
Jesus guys - Half-Life has been defined. Stop defining it. We got it the first time, and it's something you should all know anyway.
 
<RJMC> said:
(I know of everibody gona say "why this idiot ask that" )
I wanna know why Half Life(the game) has that name?
because HL is about aliens invasions(but of course is about other things)
I heard "Half Life" means "the end of the life" if is that it means are more sense,because in Hl2 we are in a earht invade by aliens and we are fighting to survive
or just the Valve creators like that name because is diferent
well i hope someone gona answerme
Click to expand...

Black Mesa research included radio active material. The Half Life for radioactive material is the time for half the atoms to decay. For Cesium, what fell over parts of Europe after Tjernobyl, is 27 years. For Plutonium, it's thousands of years. For some others it's microseconds.
 
Pauly said:
U KNOW WHY THEY CALL IT HALF-LIFE??? Because u spend HALF of your LIFE playing it
Click to expand...

And u'll spend the other HALF of your LIFE waiting for HL2 !
 
Lambda symbol represents a lot of stuff, but not Half-life.
Most likely, it's meant to be used as the symbol for 'wave' or 'wavelength' in the game because that's what the lambda complex uses as part of teleportation.
Click to expand...

Lambda is the symbol for the decay constant of a radioactive material:

decay constant = (ln 2)/HalfLife

so the symbol for halflife isn't lambda (which is usually what comes up in these threads)
 
wow, I think this is my first interesting thread, becausea lot of people post they opinion,I think of someone of the HalfLife2.net staf will answer and thred close,but no, is all a cientific explication that i dont have idea,and another thing is Half Life is no a bad name,because is mistery and strange,when I knew about HL was when I see the demo in a CD,I have read "Half Life" and I say "waht game hav that strange name"and I dont paid attention to it,but when I read(because dont hav images)it was a multywining game awards I play it,and I get in loved,cuz is a very diferent game of all I know and is original and very cool,I just ge inloved of that game just to see the action,the enemyes(especially the big-blue fire launcher)and thins like the DAMMIT AND MYSTERIOS GMAN, and now is one of my favorite games,well my favorite fps game.
and about the mean of "end of the life(or universe)" is cuz I write one time: www.halflife.com and appear something about a "musical comedy about the end of universe",for that I think it was it means,but whatever, Half Life is a nice name
my personal opinion was, Gordon who is hired at the end of HL1 by Gman,all his life before the black mesa "accident" (in my opinion that was not a accident) was his HALf of his life and the rest of his life is just to serve Gman(because I think Gman go tho send gordon to many missions)
 
It's a good name. The fact that we can all sit here and talk about it in detail just goes to proove that fact :)
 
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