Did David cause the Neutrino Blast?

I'm near 100% sure David 8 used Engineer tech to cripple the Covenant with the Neutrino Blast. That could be attributable to where the large Engineer ship is hidden.

And I don't believe that the android left in the temple was "expired". Nope, not a chance, nada.

Good points!

The neutrino blast was probably the result of an engineer planet being destroyed in their civil war.

Ridley Scott has hinted that it's where he's going with the story.

@Airlock - WOW, a whole planet destroyed???!!!!  The entire star fleet couldn't destroy a whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more fire power than I've—

@PhallicJaw or it might have been from a galaxy far far away :-)

No. A neutrino blast (for real) is something that occurs during a supernova event. Neutrinos travel at very nearly the speed of light but do no damage because they rarely interact with matter. A neutrino is to an atom as an atom is to the solar system in terms of 'size'. Trillions of them pass through your body each second during the night, have flown eight minutes from the Sun, and right through the Earth.

A blast wave of charged particles occurs sometime afterwards in a supernova event. You wouldn't want to be anywhere near that.

The movie is somewhat inaccurate in that supernovae are extremely rare, and it's unlikely a ship like Covenant would encounter one.

Good points

As I watched again the movie, the Neutrino burst originates in Sector 106 according to MU/TH/UR and Shaw's signal originates in Sector 87. I think it's just a random event.

It was just a random stellar event. Why they said 'neutrino burst' in the movie is beyond me. I assume the writers did not understand what a neutrino was, or confused something they read online about an atomic blast. They later call it a 'spontaneous stellar flare' and 'highly charged shockwave from a stellar ignition' in the movie, which makes more sense.

Basically they are implying the ship was hit by the shockwave from a nearby star that had gone super nova without actually saying that.

@Phallic nicely done..,

I believe that Walter said that there were seven more jumps on the journey to Origae-6 after the flare incident. I assume that the Covenant would have to drop out of FTL (faster than light) travel to charge with the sails.

So, David 8 had to be pretty lucky to have an FTL ship drop to cruising speed for a recharge near enough to his planet to pick up the Dr. Shaw Country Roads weak transmission.

In the incredible distance to Origae-6, I don't know how many recharge cycles there are but to get hit by a random particle burst next door to David 8 squatting on Paradise is pretty lucky for that android if he didn't operate Engineer technology to make the burst happen.

Great analysis repacitor and images.

I do believe if there was a space-based perimeter far around the planet Paradise then the burst would come from another sector. After all the searching, Paradise wasn't even picked up. I'm sure this is because the Engineers wanted to be hidden from trespassers and their technology most likely made that happen when the humans were searching for a new home.

Just another reason to have your script peer reviewed!

What was the point of this stellar event? Why write this into the script?

 To kill Branson?

Slow the ship down to 'listen' to the Shaw signal?

?

To change it up from Mother waking the crew(too A L I E N like)to check on a distress signal........Walter could have found Shaw's signal and alerted the crew, saving some budget.

Ridley wanted to use his shiny space suits?(my choice)

Was David perfectly happy to be stuck on planet 4 for the next thousand years? Didn't he want to escape and try his experiments on some humans? You would think David would try anything to get off the planet or have visitors. Send his own distress signal as loud and powerful as he could.

Apparently there was a reason David could not send a loud and powerful transmission.

Hallett and Hatton indicated in the AVP podcast that David could not get a clear transmission sent because of the protective shield the Engineers placed around the planet, which was also the cause of the storms and why the Covenant could not establish clear communication. They said that was in the script, but never made it into the finished movie.