What the Crucible Does - An Attempt to Explain How it Works

This is another post I did one day in Mark 3. I was told I would get cookies if this comes true. So we'll see... I redid all the bolds again and fixed all the video links so it can stand out and work here.

Ok I was inspired by this video of a crucible:



It reminded me of the crucible being built and decided to post all of this below.

First up the War assets and a brief explanation with some real life science background supporting why I think this (except for the suppositions and anything else I didn't explain). Then an overall summary and a crude demo via another game I love that does something similar.

War Assets for the Crucible
Haptic Optics Array
The Haptics Optics Array is an experimental computer user interface, Cortical implants allow users to "see" screens projected in front of them. A user's eye movements are tracked, syncing to hand gestures as they sift through data.

EDIT – Targeting Sensors to aim at reapers remotely

Interferometric Array
Normally interferometric arrays are used to analyze planetary landmasses, or to determine the astrophysical properties of stellar systems. The powerful array salvaged from the Hercules system can be used for something much more ambitious: the Crucible tunes into the mass relays' command switches. Installing the interferometric array into the Crucible's systems results in a real-time map of the entire galaxy, including the position of each and every Reaper in the Milky Way.

EDIT – Real life science - astronomical interferometer where the individual telescopes seen as parts of a fractionated spacecraft are positioned in a spherical arrangement (requiring the individual telescopes to be positioned to a fraction of a wavelength). This geometry reduces the amount of pathlength compensation required in re-pointing the interferometer array Using this spherical geometry of array elements and using a densified pupil beam combiner, and calls this his "Hypertelescope" project. It might theoretically show features on Earth-like worlds around other sun.
This is why the Crucible has that big sphere

Optimized Eezo Capacitors
Dreadnought-class drive capacitors use specialized eezo-based compounds to channel and store thermal energy with greater efficiency than previous designs.

EDIT – Improves efficiency of design to store more energy for a bigger boom

Shadow Broker Starship Tech
The ship ingeniously drew its power from the thunderstorms raging constantly on the planet it orbited, relying on an interlocking system of kinetic barriers, grounding rods and capacitors to avoid being ripped apart. These systems have repurposed for sections of the Crucible that require the safe discharge of tremendous amounts of energy.

EDIT – A grounding device to not cause the crucible/citadel to go boom with electrical discharges and a ship full of impure eezo.

Advanced Starship Fuel
Helium-3 is used to power the vast majority of commercial starships. Chemical engineers on Cyone added experiment mixtures of compounds to the gas to make a more efficient fuel for ships traveling long distances. One of their new formulas is used in ships transporting major loads of materials to the Crucible, speeding up the building process.

EDIT – Used in part as fuel for ships but used in part to create helium 4 – real life science bit - Fermionic condensates As the name suggests, a superfluid possesses fluid properties similar to those possessed by ordinary liquids and gases, such as the lack of a definite shape and the ability to flow in response to applied forces. However, superfluids possess some properties that do not appear in ordinary matter. For instance, they can flow at low velocities without dissipating any energy—i.e. zero viscosity. At higher velocities, energy is dissipated by the formation of quantized vortices, which act as "holes" in the medium where superfluidity breaks down.

More real life science - Superfluidity was originally discovered in liquid helium-4 - When liquid helium-4 is cooled to below 2.17 Kelvin (–271 °C) it becomes a superfluid, with properties that are very unlike those of an ordinary liquid. For example, if superfluid helium-4 is kept in an open vessel, a thin film will climb up the sides of the vessel and overflow. In this state and situation, it is called a "Rollin film"
As in many other systems, vortices can exist in BECs. These can be created, for example, by 'stirring' the condensate with lasers, or rotating the confining trap. The vortex created will be a quantum vortex. A principal property of superconductors is that they expel magnetic fields; this is called the Meissner effect. If the magnetic field becomes sufficiently strong, one scenario is for the superconductive state to be "quenched" (TURNED OFF). However, in some cases, it may be energetically favorable for the superconductor to form a lattice of quantum vortices, which carry quantized magnetic flux through the superconductor.

Any perfect conductor will prevent any change to magnetic flux passing through its surface due to ordinary electromagnetic induction at zero resistance. The Meissner effect is distinct from this: when an ordinary conductor is cooled so that it makes the transition to a superconducting state in the presence of a constant applied magnetic field, the magnetic flux is expelled during the transition. It should thus be noted that the placement and subsequent levitation of a magnet above an already superconducting material does not demonstrate the Meissner effect, while an initially stationary magnet later being repelled by a superconductor as it is cooled through its critical temperature does.

Prothean Data Files
the Crucible's blueprints provided the key to understanding the equations. Locked inside the discs were theories on dark matter meant to be used with the Crucible's main power source.

Edit – Combining dark matter with eezo creates impurities. (supposition)

Jovian Dissertation
A brief glance at the data hints at some kind of energetic pulse that might pass through the magnetosphere of a planet unimpeded, but any details are best derived by high-energy physicists.

EDIT – Creating an energetic pulse that pushes the Javalin after it has been magnetized and is floating on the magnetic rails due to the previous stuff

Dark Energy Dissertation
Published years ago by Dr. Conrad Verner, this doctorial dissertation on xenotechnology is a lengthy but intriguing argument that dark energy causes a minute but empirically observable difference in the passage of time.

EDIT Speeds up the time dilation thus creates a chain cascade event making the javelin travel faster than it would have. Plus when the Javelin explodes it releases dark energy causing another type of cascade to the barrier and possibly changing the location of the javelin upon hitting the actual Reaper when it goes boom (supposition)

Javelin Missile Launchers
Developed by the Alliance, Javelin missiles release dark energy upon impact. This creates devastating space-time disruptions, magnified warp fields that strip away a target's molecular bonds. Even the strongest kinetic barriers will eventually collapse after multiple impacts from these rockets.

EDIT – An object that can be supercooled thus converted to superconductivity then when it hits a kinetic barrier, its dark energy and eezo combines causing a chain cascade reaction of accelerated time and disruption of magnetic properties of the kinetic barriers causing it to have a catastrophic collapse and puncture the Reaper ship. It takes more than one Javelins given Javelins are not big. Hence also why they are installing them on ships. Put dark matter/eezo javelins and fire them at Reapers you have something like a quantum torpedo from Star Trek

Element Zero Converter
Element zero refineries are large industrial facilities that remove impurities from the element, also called eezo, before it is used to fuel starships or gravity generators. It's an important process, as sending an electrical charge through impure eezo can cause the element to explode.

EDIT – HMM…superconductive EEZO? And when that charge goes off inside the Javelin after hitting its target, the eezo/dark matter core will explode, just after the kinetic barrier falls and just after reaching the Reaper itself (remember the time dilation of Dark Energy (supposition).

The point of the catalyst in ME 3 in my opinion is to allow the crucible to fire at the Reapers wherever they are without being affected by the Crucible's energies or the Citadel's energies. While we still don't know what the Catalyst is we can infer the purpose of the Crucible and Citadel interactions. In other words it uses the Citadel to create a stable mass relay between the Citadel and the front of a Reaper (remember the citadel’s job is the manage the mass relays not the Reapers themselves). It can do this thanks to the ease of targeting explained below. Once it has found its target, a Javalin is magnetically charged, sent down the barrel with zero resistance, enters the citadel’s mass relay exits in front of a Reaper, flies with still zero resistance slams into the kinetic barrier, causing the Javelin to send an electrical pulse through the impure eezo/dark matter substance at the same time as sending a dark energy blast through the Reaper’s barrier, collapsing it. The ensuing explosion happens shortly after what’s left of the exploding Javelin Reaches or enters the Reaper’s hull

This video is a crude example but it works. Think of everything I just said above to do exactly this( I was worried the link would get lost so I used the actual video):


– The Reaper is the Weapon very far away. The targeting scanners for the gun is like the targeting I explained above, the kinetic barrier is like the barrier on the North Crater, the mako reactors is helium 4 being used to shoot, the shot itself is fired like a rail gun/mass driver, the explosion is the eezo/dark matter exploding, the disrupting barrier is via the dark energy and killing/damaging the Reaper at the same time.

Something extra I ran across while looking all the above up
A heat treatment of metals definition:
Mass Effect definition -
Definition: A term used to signify the effect of size and shape during heat treatment, since it is the rate of cooling of a piece of steel which determines the properties resulting from the hardening and quenching process

The end result – the crucible is a giant mass effect cannon

I disagree that it is how it works as I very much think it is is a trap, but I think it is how it could come to work. If it turns out it is trap it might still be reconfigured to allow a thing such as the above to work.

My main ideas for the Crucible have always been based around the idea it might become a giant Mass Accelerator Cannon similar to what took out the Derelict Reaper similar to that.

Another idea based on the Javelin's is that the Crucible might handle the calculations for the precise detonation of thousands of Javelins at once. One of the main things about javelin's is the fact that when detonated in a precise sequence the fluctuations magnify each other. Imagine a volley of a thousand Javelins all being detonated at just the right time.

Essentially a Macros Missile Massacre.

Raistlin Majere wrote:I disagree that it is how it works as I very much think it is is a trap, but I think it is how it could come to work. If it turns out it is trap it might still be reconfigured to allow a thing such as the above to work.

My main ideas for the Crucible have always been based around the idea it might become a giant Mass Accelerator Cannon similar to what took out the Derelict Reaper similar to that.

Another idea based on the Javelin's is that the Crucible might handle the calculations for the precise detonation of thousands of Javelins at once. One of the main things about javelin's is the fact that when detonated in a precise sequence the fluctuations magnify each other. Imagine a volley of a thousand Javelins all being detonated at just the right time.

Essentially a Macros Missile Massacre.

You and I have similar thoughts about this. Though it could very well be a trap and that would make for a great reversal of content, thinking we're saving the universe and finding out we're trapped instead. We'll see how it ends