unforum

[IMightBeRusty]

[Phyltre]

Perhaps you could direct me to where it says it was the Slipspace part that made it safe?

[PONGpaddle]

From what I understand (from Wikipedia, I've not read it yet), the Onyx dyson sphere is in slipspace, in a sort of TARDIS situation (the actual theory behind it is about using a forth spacial dimension, in this case slipspace, to make the inside bigger than the outside), and Dr Hasely and co hid inside it, expecting the Halo network to be set off pretty soon to prevent the flood from escaping Delta Halo. This either means that being in slipspace protects you from the Halos, or something about the dyson sphere protects you.

Assuming it's option one, then it would be relatively easy for both the Forerunners and the Flood to escape the initial blast. But we can assume that there was no warning, as there are no Forerunners inside the Onyx dyson sphere. But considering the immense size and advanced state of the Forerunner's civilization, there must have been someone in slipspace, probably enough ships/people to continue the civilization, despite what would be a considerable population bottleneck. Since we're not seeing any Forerunners hanging around, I don't think it's this option.

I think it's more likely that something else about the dyson sphere protects it from the Halos (it's substantially protected from anything else by all the sentinels). Or, possibly doesn't - perhaps the Forerunners did take refuge in it, but something went wrong and were wiped out anyway.

On a side note, if there is something about the dyson sphere's construction that protects it from the Halo's blasts, then it's reasonable to assume that something called the 'Ark' makes use of this as well.

[IMightBeRusty]

Alright, let me put it another way. Slipspace and Realspace are two different things. That is, one can only enter Slipspace if they do it by force. It's not been confirmed, but we can suppose that Halo's firing mechanism does not have a Slipspace button, or whatever you'd call it.

Another note. Why would the Forerunners build it in Slipspace, if there's something about the sphere that makes it resistant to the Halo pulse? If you were going to build something, it would be more convinient to build it in Realspace. Therefore, they must have had another reason to build it in Slipspace, and the supposed reason being that Slipspace is not in the Halo's firing range.

[eolith]

[yakaman]

Can we assume that Slipspace and the inside of the Dyson sphere are the same type of thing? Do we know?

I don't think anything has been written or said to suggest that Halos operate hyper/extra dimensionally. There are 7 Halos spread throughout the galaxy to cover it in the X, Y, and Z dimensions. Again, nothing (to my knowledge) ever spoke to extra-dimensional functionality.

The point of my other post was to emphasize that it's OK if some life forms escaped in Slipspace, because invariably, the Flood would still starve.

I like Anton P. Nym's strong nuclear force theory, but it just seems that would be so hard to control or predict? If I tweaked the function of Sol, could I really predict the affect on the Earth?

I've always liked the theory of the Halo pulse being a telepathic "DIE" command somehow aimed at larger animals.

[Cloaked Hunter]

[eolith]

[yakaman]

[PONGpaddle]

[Siege88]

I don't really see how it'd make sense for slipspace to be immune to the Halo pulses.
The Forerunners obviously knew a lot about Slipspace, could manipulate it, their starships and vehicles probably could enter/exit it. And we've seen already that the Flood can take over and use starships.
So it's pretty obvious if their threat was so imminent that the Forerunners needed to use the Halos, then the Flood would have already taken over and been using a lot of Forerunner starships at that point.
If the Halos are such a last resort weapon and the only way to stop the Flood, it seems like a pretty huge oversight by the Forerunners that their blast can't penetrate slipspace when they already know the Flood have some of their starships and could be in slipspace at any time.

[LorD BaZTArD]

Although, I still think that what the humans and covenant describe as slipspace is completely different to the what the forerunners used and that people like Dr Halsey use "slipspace" as a cover all rather than an actual term.

With mastery like that though, throwing a dyson sphere inside the core of a planet like they did is insane. Perhaps they refined it to such a point that their ships didn't actually use slipspace to move around and it was used soley for plans like this.

That could pose an explanation as to why HALO does not target slipspace. Because they didn't think anyone would travel like that anymore. Thus they could then hide shield worlds and arks the way they did and if they didn't make it back to the shield worlds, they never got to explain these concepts to the covenant or humans. Since the covenant brute force their technology rather than understand it.

[Phyltre]

[LorD BaZTArD]

All wee saw was the ship enter the system. I mean you're right because that could shoot my theory down in flames, but what if their tech opens two connecting points and moves through it like a window. Slipspace is used but the ship doesn't go through it. The covenant method is kind of like this to a degree, except they still move in slipspace, now given the way they do use the technology, perhaps they are not using it right either. It could explain why slipspace is such a random/messy place to fly and fight through.

[qrunchmonkey]

From wikipedia's entry on radium