Why was Half-life titled Half-life?

[Misho-]

The name relates to the half-life equation for radioactive materials. The A is replaced with a lambda because lambda is the decay constant in that equation.

Actually this is the correct answer as per Valve, so DING DING DING DING... As for any other option well it's up in the air

 

[Numachuka]

My god that is a post that needs a tl;dr

I thought it was as simple as "Gordon is scientists, half life is science and sounds cool lets go with that".

 

[jboking]

It's just a name with a nice scientific double meaning. Same with Decay, Blue Shift and Opposing Force. Don't read too much into it.

The same reason they called the expansions Decay, Blue Shift, and Opposing force.

I believe it's just a theme, I mean it all just deals with science.

The expansion packs, aside from being developed by Gearbox instead of Valve, all had corny hints at what was happening in the game.

Blue Shift - You switched to playing as the security who were dressed in full blue throughout the whole game. It's shifting from the white lab coats to the blue security uniform.

Opposing force - You switch to being a part of the military sent to check on the black mesa incident. You were the force sent to oppose the aliens from Xen.

Decay - ....well I honestly never played it. But you see where I'm going here.

Half-Life does not represent the time it takes for a given quantity of radioactive material to decay. It represents the amount of time it takes for half of the quantity to decay. Hence half-life. At the point you reach an isotope's half-life, half of it has become inert. Half of the remaining half decays over the same period, and then half of the half of that half that's left. Then half of that half, etc. (To really break your brain, bring Zeno's Paradox into this.)

Lambda is the symbol used to represent the decay, which is why it's used in the game.

I'm not sure if there's a larger thematic justification of the title.

Thank you for that, I'm not a science major or anything, just going off of what I have learned in a few generalized classes (We were focusing mostly on radioactivity at the time, that's probably where my issue came from)

 

[jboking]

You forgot one of the most important figures in Half Life: The G-Man.

Ah, you got me. But how does he relate to how the game was titled?

I have no idea, so I'm just going to bullshit something.

The G-Man represents the one constant in Half Life; he apparently exists out of time, as evidenced by the fact that he doesn't age AT ALL between HL1-2. He's always calm and collected... until Episode 1 (or is it Episode 2?) where he displays obvious anger at the Vortigaunt's manipulation of Gordon's contract.

Yeah I dunno. No HL2 thread is complete without copious amounts of WHO IS GMAN.

It's just as good as anything I could come up with for that. It's all wild speculation after all.

Spoiler: and yes, every HL/HL2 thread needs some WHO IS GMAN!?

my bet's on future Gordon​

 

[Exterminas]

As far as I rembember it the experiment in Half-life-1 takes place in the lambda-complex, our you get to search a lambda team as the main quest. Was something like. So the main quest is a search for lambda = Half-life in physics.

You should not overinterpretate half life as a series, because frankly, half life one was from another era and I don't think valve intented something so sinistre when they made it. Sureal things like Xen or the G-men are probable in place to connect the game to more fantastic games, like the doom series, which were the campions in that era. Rembember please: Gritty realism in fps is an invention from the 21th century, as well as narrative in fps. (System shock doesn't count! Why? Because I say so! No, seriously, I would call it an RPG)

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

Half-Life does not represent the time it takes for a given quantity of radioactive material to decay. It represents the amount of time it takes for half of the quantity to decay. Hence half-life. At the point you reach an isotope's half-life, half of it has become inert. Half of the remaining half decays over the same period, and then half of the half of that half that's left. Then half of that half, etc. (To really break your brain, bring Zeno's Paradox into this.)

Lambda is the symbol used to represent the decay, which is why it's used in the game.

I'm not sure if there's a larger thematic justification of the title.

Well, don't forget about the over-arching theme of the need to reach the Lambda complex of Black Mesa in the first game. The people and tech in that part of the facility were the only things that could repair the damage done by the resonance cascade. Hence, the lambda symbol as the logo and Half-Life as the title.

Or, it could relate to the idea of the resonance cascade what with all of the exotic radiation and what-not that came out of it.

Or, it could also pertain to something we've yet to see. Something to be revealed at the end of the story.

Or, it could just be a name/word that Marc Laidlaw liked and felt it fit in with the story being that it's very heavily "science" themed. I just don't know.

I'd like to add, thank you for beating me to the punch in clarifying what half-life actually means. I was cringing at the other explanations.

 

[Sacman]

They did it because it sounded scientific... and that was sort of the theme...<.<

 

[jboking]

Well, don't forget about the over-arching theme of the need to reach the Lambda complex of Black Mesa in the first game. The people and tech in that part of the facility were the only things that could repair the damage done by the resonance cascade. Hence, the lambda symbol as the logo and Half-Life as the title.

Okay, thank you. That I forgot and is probably pretty closely linked to the games title. That's really what I was looking for.

I'd like to add, thank you for beating me to the punch in clarifying what half-life actually means. I was cringing at the other explanations.

Once again, I'm sorry about the explanation of Half-life. I'm not much into science.

 

[Clockwork Scarecrow.]

The name relates to the half-life equation for radioactive materials. The A is replaced with a lambda because lambda is the decay constant in that equation.

I'm pretty sure it's that.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Your reasons are good and well thought out and I do think they could be the underlying motives for making Half Life the name of the series. I rather suspect it also appeals to the layman because the lambda symbol represents science and the main character is a scientist.

 

[Jack_the_Knife]

Well, besides sounding thematically profound and all that, in mass spectrometry part of getting good results involves hoping whatever you're trying to identify has a long enough half-life to get something to detect.

How that factors into anti-mass spectrometry which I'm assuming involves anti-mass.

Now, the Xen crystal they had, since it's obviously composed of something from a world that doesn't follow the same rules of physics that ours does, obviously had multiple applications since all the fancy experimental and teleportation stuff apparently ran on stuff from Xen.

Needless to say, it's kind of obvious why a private research institution would want to develop almost instantaneous transportation, even if it involves whipping around the borderworld or whatever.

So, using anti-mass spectrometry on the "purest sample", they were able to generate ions (and the antimatter equivalent), and in the half-life of whatever they generated by exposing it to the spectrometer apparently "tore open" the barriers between the two universes.

So, basically the half-life could be the entirety of the events of the first game, with any further decay basically being the period between the end of HL1(when the things from Opposing Force appeared) and the end of the portal storms period. So whatever the Xen crystal produced apparently could break reality and make universes merge with each other.

'Course, I'm cutting corners on real science and this is just grasping at straws for something I doubt the writers even really tried to make fit.

 

[Woodsey]

It relates to him being a scientist and to him only having half of a life now the G-Man's in the driving seat.

 

[Anarchemitis]

TL;DR I believe that Valve put some thought into the title of their flagship game series. Possible Reasons:
- The old world is decaying and becoming something else
- Gordon is becoming more of a legend and less of a man
- People are starting to change and develop a permanent respect for freedom[/b]

It's a good thing you didn't put "Or" in there, or I might have put the mathematicians answer:
Yes.

 

[jboking]

'Course, I'm cutting corners on real science and this is just grasping at straws for something I doubt the writers even really tried to make fit.

We're talking about a world where they made an enormous portal to an overlying dimension inhabited by otherworldly creatures that just happens to not follow the laws of physics. I don't think anyone can blame you for cutting some corners on the science. It also seems to be the general consensus that it was either just 'sciency' or 'cool' so they went for it, so maybe they didn't put any major thought into it in relation to their story. I'd like to think they did, but I guess it's entirely possible they just put up a list of cool 'sciency' words on a dart board and used whichever one they hit.

 

[scnj]

Because half my life will be over by the time Episode 3 is released?

Seriously though, your post was an interesting read and well thought out.

 

[Sayvara]

Half-Life does not represent the time it takes for a given quantity of radioactive material to decay. It represents the amount of time it takes for half of the quantity to decay. Hence half-life. At the point you reach an isotope's half-life, half of it has become inert. Half of the remaining half decays over the same period, and then half of the half of that half that's left. Then half of that half, etc. (To really break your brain, bring Zeno's Paradox into this.)

Zeno's paradox (The dichotomy paradox to be exact) doesn't apply here because we're not talking about infinately divisable amounts here. We're dealing with atoms. (atom = greek for indivisible). After 79 halflives, for every mol of matter you started out with you are most likely to only have one atom left. After that, for every half-life that passes, the likelyhood that this atom will remain in existance, and not decay, halves.

That can lead to some mind-boggling numbers. Let's say for instance that we assume there is one atom of Iodine-131 (one of major worries in a nuclear incident/accident) left from the Chernobyl accident. Now I-131 has a half-live of 8.1 days, and the accident happened on april 26, 1986. How much I-131 would have had to be released from Chernobyl in order to have one atom remaining?

24 ½ years * 365.25 days per year = 8900 days. Hm, let's say 8100 days for nice numbers.

8100 days = 1000 half-lives of I-131. 2 ^ 1000 = 10 ^ 301.

Ten to the threehundred and first power... a one followed by 301 zeroes. That is how many atoms we would have had to start out with. That is a truly mindboggling number, which is next to impossible to wrap your head around.

For comparison: the total amount of matter in the obeservable universe is expected to be at approximately 10^80 atoms... ten to the 80:th power. So if our entire universe was just one atom in another universe with as much matter as ours, and every atom in that universe was a universe like ours, full of the same amount of matter, we'd reach 10^160. And again... 10^240... and again... 10^320.

If your brain just exploded, don't worry... it's a normal reaction.

Anyway... conclusion is this: there isn't any left, at all. The last atom of I-131 from Chernobyl vanished even before the Soviet Union crumbled.

/S

 

[dogenzakaminion]

The same reason they called the expansions Decay, Blue Shift, and Opposing force.

I believe it's just a theme, I mean it all just deals with science.

HOLY CRAP! I never thought of the like that. It all makes sense! I just assumed Blue Shift since the shirts of the cop people's shitrs were blue and Opposing force since you played as..well..the opposing force.

I like OP's points too, in terms of analyzing the games story and themes. Always knew Half-life was reffering to radiation decay, but then again, as Freud said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Btw, what does TL;DR mean...see it all the time now and I assume it means "summary" or something but its confusing...

 

[jboking]

Btw, what does TL;DR mean...see it all the time now and I assume it means "summary" or something but its confusing...

It basically does mean summary, but it specifically stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read"

it was titled half life because the yellow crystalline material that opened the portal to another dimension was a radioactive material therefore they named it half life.

Interesting, you said that with a lot of certainty. Was it something Valve said?

 

[Nomanslander]

Maby they just wanted to jump on the nuculear band wagon.

Atoms where all the rage back then you know.

That was the 50s...lol

In the 90s there was a lot of fascination with the paranormal and the supernatural, that is why you had a lot of shows like the X-files and a whole bunch of Sightings knock off shows.