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Sir Blunt sent us a theory along. I've picked out a few bits that really stuck out.
Sir Blunt (mrkurt@u.washington.edu) writes:
I don't think the Halos shoot out a searing plasma wave of death for 25,000 light years in all directions. We know from 343 that we don't need to wipe out all life; just those with a critical biomass and intelligence. With this in mind, what would make more sense is a targeted burst of energy. Now since it's targeted, you need targets. The only thing big enough to target from 25,000 light years away are stars. So, I think that halo shoots out some laser or energy burst that has a frequency in resonance with what ever star it is targeting. I think most stars that can support life are roughly the same so it could probably get by with just one frequency. If you excite something at its resonant frequency you can get a huge response with relatively little energy input. Like an army marching across a bridge. If they march at the right tempo, the wave energy builds up and amplifies and the bridge can collapse from the vibration. You can do this with anything. Everything has a resonant frequency. I'm thinking if this was done to a star it could cause a period of increased solar output or solar flares that would overwhelm even those planets protected by a magnetic field. This would effectively irradiate all life in the system.
Intelligent life is rare, so not very many stars would have to be targeted. Assuming the forerunner had complete control over the galaxy with highly advanced slip space and teleportation capabilities, they probably had a good idea of where most, if not all, advanced life was. They may have even recorded all the places life was. Maybe even made an INDEX of all life, and stored it in a LIBRARY. This index would have a list of all intelligent and non intelligent life and their locations. The halo would need this index to target the right stars, so it couldn't fire with out the index.
I don't think its that important that there could still be intelligent beings flying around in ships or on space stations. With out a habitable home planet, they would eventually die or be consumed by flood, who would then starve anyway. Its probably just important that the vast majority of consumable life is eliminated.
Implications:
For halo to be effective, the index has to be undated every few millennia, or it has to make assumptions about the non intelligent life evolving over the years.
Also, you don't need full galaxy coverage with a targeted system. Since the core of the galaxy is a quagmire of death, radiation, antimatter and unstable orbits, you don't really need halos there or anywhere else there is no intelligent life. So all this halo coverage talk is needless.
Given that the rates of evolution are pretty unpredictable, I'd imagine you'd need to update the index more often than every few millenia. Alien abductions, anyone? Now we know why Finn glows at night . . .
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-Jillybean
