Problem With Stargate Symbols

[Desepticon4]

If got a question. The symbols on the Stargate are star constelations right. And if the constellations we see are only visible from earth, how is it that they are on every Stargate we encounter. Does this mean that whoever built the gate used Earth as a point of reference. Does that mean they originated from Earth?

 

[Geronimo]

kel sha,

that's a really interesting question and my opinion is that the costructers of the chappa'ai have "invented" the chappa'ai on earth and so they used the star constellations they see from earth .. but i'm not sure ..

kree sha

 

[muzungu]

Not every Stargate has the same symbols on it. Rather each one has a different set of symbols, some of which happen to be the same as the ones on the Earths stargate and others that are different. This would have to be the case since the constellations that you can see in the sky would not appear the same if viewed from another star system.

 

[Desepticon4]

No your wrong. There are a set number of 39 symbols available. They are on every Staragate they incounter(except for the point of origen, that is different). If the symbols were different on every planet, then people going through the Stargate would have a hard time finding the right adress to get home.

 

[skydiver]

they are the same 38 symbols with the 39th one usually being the point of origin and is unique to each new planet...curiously enough, right now the sgc is using the beta gate, which was the one jack & sam discovered in the antarctic and it has a different PoO...we saw this in the show, yet when they lock in chevron 7 it is still the unside down v with the dot on top....oops???

as to them being earth based constellations...well i've obviouly never been in space but given the sheer size of a constellation it would seem to me you would have to be REALLY far away for the perspective to change a lot...there fore if the ancients originated in...alpha centari for example which is relatively close to us, like 40 light years or something(it's been a really long time since it took astronomy so correct me if i'm wrong) anyway , thier view of the constellations wouldn't be that far off of ours as opposed to, the planet in prodigy for example which sam says is 42,000 light years away...ooh excuse me, moon

 

[the_Brainz]

Distance of Alpha Centauri from the sun

Alpha Centauri's closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years away from Sol. The Alpha Centauri star system is on average 4.3 light-years away. I think.

 

[Prankster]

thats a pretty good theory because in the fifth race daniel said that the romans were the first to build roads and that they worshiped gods called the ancients .so the ancients could have originated from earth. Anyway well find out when we meet them.

 

[muzungu]

skydiver

Most of the stars which form the constellations are not associated with each other as a physical group and are often separated by immense distances. The pattern they form is merely an accident due to our relative position.

 

[Manco]

Originally posted by Desepticon4
No your wrong. There are a set number of 39 symbols available. They are on every Staragate they incounter(except for the point of origen, that is different). If the symbols were different on every planet, then people going through the Stargate would have a hard time finding the right adress to get home.

In fact Muzungu is right, in a way. In the movie the 38 glyphs were unique to each gate and were based on constellations visible from the planet the gate was on. This is why the glyphs on the Abydos stargate were very different to the earth gate: the constellations on earth weren't the same as the constellations visible on Abydos. This is also true in COTG. When SG-1 arrived on Chulak Daniel had to decipher the plyphs on the DHD and tell the others what glyphs to press in order to get home. However rather then have Daniel spending hours at the dhd working out what each glyph represents and because of the numerous times SG teams have to go through the gate in a hurry the production team made every DHD relatively the same as the earth DHD to save time in decoding what each glyph means. This moves away from the idea of plotting a course in 3 dimensional space and into the realm of fixed address.

Found all the above on a website so don't blame me if its all wrong.
Bye

 

[skydiver]

Originally posted by muzungu
skydiver

Most of the stars which form the constellations are not associated with each other as a physical group and are often separated by immense distances. The pattern they form is merely an accident due to our relative position.

true. they aren't 'groups' of stars per se, just individual stars we've grouped together to make a picture...but given that they can be 1,000,000 of light years from each other, isn't it possible that orion looks like orion on a different planet...it would all be a matter of perspective...if the other planet is standing behind earth for lack of a better term...parallel to us as opposed to being say 90 degrees away from us...man 3 dimensions is hard to talk about but say there is a flat picture inside an orange. anyone standing inside (yeah odd idea but it's late) that orange on a certain vector would see the same picture, just varied in size...but if you were on the front of the orange and someone was on the bottom of the orange both looking at the same picture, they would see different images given their relative position to the picture...

to make a long story short, the ancients didn't have to be ON earth, just on the same vector as earth when using the constellations to make the glyphs...i think. or it could be the last of that corbet canyon going to my head(and you thought daniel was a cheap date)

 

[KernalK]

Those pesky glyphs...

Why didn't the Ancients just use Wingdings on all the SGs and be done with it.

(More) Seriously: As I have posted before... from my perspective, there seems to be a slight continuity error between the Movie and COTG: namely, the different/identical glyphs on stargates. I accept this as a difference between the production teams on each project.

As far as I've seen, the glyphs on off-world (Earth, in case you were wondering... ) seem to be the same as the ones shown in great detail on the Earth-alpha gate, just with a different symbol for point of origin. (I have elsewhere reasoned that the difference in p-o symbol may be a kind of fool-proofing on the gate activation sequence) In the movie, they needed a specific cause for them to be stuck on Abydos for about 1.5 hours (real-time); but in SG-1, when the SG network was shown to be much, much more than just 2-stop journey, it became unreasonable to have a different set of glyphs on every local gate.

As someone pointed out earlier (sorry I can't remeber who you are), Daniel needed to familiarise himself with the Chulak glyphs, but I think he meant that he was checking that they were indeed the same before getting everyone's hopes up again.

It is, as someone else still pointed out, unreasonable to think that there would be a different set of glyphs every time, or else no one would ever get anywhere at all!

PS: I think it's possible that Daniel was doing a slight conspiricy thing in the Movie with the not knowing the glyphs and all... maybe he had a secret agenda from the British Museum's Egyptology dept.?

 

[the_Brainz]

Or maybe he just didn't want to leave because Sha're was such a damn babe...

 

[PTeppic]

Yet oddly enough if you can play sequences showing the dialling computer listing destinations (Fifth Race, Prisoners etc.) you can see there are sequences which have the Abydos glyph as PART of the address... which is even more wrong than having similar/same glyphs throughout the galaxy.

PS. I am new here, so I assume the "Abydos - far side of the known universe" and "it must the closest planet in the network" discrepancy was pointed out long ago?

 

[Quantum God]

About the constelations stuff, yep they look different when you're away from earth ( you can go to www.fmjsoft.com and download StarStrider - a little 3d planetarium - and choose to go to Alpha/Proxima Centauri and llok at the sky. It's different specially when you choose to draw the lines of the constelations, try it) so each stargate would have different glyphs, that is if the ancients didn't construct the stargate here on earth or if the gliphs aren't only like numbers on a phone address.

 

[PTeppic]

But, if we ignore the film as misleading and non SG1 (sort of!), then it is mostly implied, if not stated explicitly, that the gates and places etc. that the SG team go to are only ever within our own galaxy.... so the distortion should not be toooo big.

 

[Quantum God]

I'm sorry but even inside the galaxy the distortion is big, beacuse we are talking about very large distances (light-years and parsecs). As I said try the program I talked about.
Initially I thought that before they went trought the gate but after sending the malp they would create a computer-simulated sky of in that planet and then checked the coordinates of earth but it appears that the gate symbols are equal.

 

[PTeppic]

So does this mean they have missed the huge part of the film plot that the Abydos gate has at least partially different glyphs - significant enough that they could not get home? And if that is "the closest gate in the network" in the SG1 series, the other gates should just get worse.

Doh! :erm:

 

[Quantum God]

Perhaps they didn't miss it. They just could figure out earth's coordinates.
Abydos' Stargate is "the closest gate in the network" according to SG-1 but in the movie they say Abydos is the another galaxy on the other side of the universe

 

[PTeppic]

You mean they work out the Earth's address each time they arrive, and because it is so common don't actually show it?

a) can we/they assume the origin glyph is always in the same position on the DHD [if so, what about "Prisoners"?]?

b) how come it is usually Daniel (anthropologist) and not Sam (astro-physicist) that gets to do the dialling, and presumably address calculation

c) or do they have the computer on earth work out the likely constellations - earth doesn't move, just the location impression of the likely 6 constellations used as the "square"

d) just thinking aloud - it is just being picky I know :evil:

 

[Koala]

And some of the "stars" in constellations are actually other galaxies or clusters.

There are 38 identicle glyphs plus the point of origin. All travel is within our galaxy, except when they went to Othalla in the Ida galaxy. In that case the required 8th chevron represented distance. It also required additional energy, indicating that perhaps the original "general" purpose of the gate was not intended to travel outside of the galaxy but could be used by the Ancients since they presumably either had the required energy generators linked in or the capability to plug one in when needed.

It might have been set up in this manner to limit travel by the "locals" who weren't "old" enough to be trusted with that knowledge. Kind of like "you can screw up your galaxy but you won't be allowed to others until you grow up."

That would make the chevrons dual purpose. Now we get to figure out how a glyph represents distance, and possibly use that to help decode th P#L-### thing.