Mobile Stargates

[imported_Whitestar]

Okay, first, forgive my extreme verbosity and two, if you haven't seen all the episodes, this probably counts as a spoiler, so I'll just say this:

POSSIBLE SPOILER

POSSIBLE SPOILER

POSSIBLE SPOILER

Now then...
At the end of season one, SG-1 gates to Klorel's ship, which has its own stargate. At the end of another season- four, I think- SG-1 has captured Cronus' ship and is lending it to the Tok'ra to take their stargate to a new world.

My question is this: HOW CAN THIS BE?

In the movie, the adress (address?) six symbols are described as being six points in space used to determine the location. Everything I have read online supports this explaination. When the team finds out they're on Klorel's ship, Carter even says that they know how far away from Earth his ship was because of the coordinates.

Does this strike anyone else as being suprisingly limited? You stick a stargate on your ship, but out of the entire galaxy, you can only dial home when your ship is in ONE PLACE? When Klorel's ship is in orbit of Earth, would the coordinates be the same as the Earth stargate or would the gate retain the same symbols as when it was orbiting a planet? And when the Tok'ra are moving their stargate, Jacob makes a point of saying that now they can find a new world hidden from the Goa'uld.

Now Jacob's statement makes sense- move the gate to a new planet and it would be assigned new coordinates (even if the Tok'ra who don't know the new coordinates kind of get it in the shorts- and how would the new adress be calculated, anyway?).

The situation with Klorel's stargate doesn't- if the stargate adresses represent a phyisical location, then puting a gate on a starship makes no real sense since either the coordinates would be constantly changing or the gate could only be used in one particular part of the galaxy. The only way that a starship equipped with a stargate would make any sense, to my mind, is if the six adress glyphs represent a serial number rather than a location. But then, in that case, moving a stargate to another planet would make no difference.

Please alleviate my confusion.

 

[PTeppic]

Well, you may not have read all the entries in this "Technical" forum, since this point has been discussed at great length...

One of the major conclusions is that the gates/addresses system changes between the movie and the SG-1 series - but we are expected to ignore this. This is mostly cost-based I would imagine - the film only needed two gates. The series only has two, one in the SGC set, and one mobile version for location. This one has to be used for all other planets, but is basically the same with the same glyphs.

The resulting discussions, if I remember correctly, came up with the following relevant points:

a) points in space are identified by their unique combination of glyphs from the surrounding constellations [this allows the following conclusions]
b) by moving a gate, you would dial in to it with a different set of glyphs - but this would lead to conflict with any other gate at that "address" ["Solitudes" etc.]
c) this movement would also occur as the universe expands - hence the new addresses required to coimpensate for stellar drift ["Children of the Gods"]
d) you can only dial out at a point in space where you can also dial in if necessary ["Serpent's Grasp"]
e) if dialling out from a moved gate, you use the local gate's Point of Origin glyph ["Serpents Lair"]
f) gates have in-built sensors to detect where they are and respond to being moved [implied from (b), (c), (d), (e)]
g) glyphs are probably only the ones shown on the Earth gate, except for the Point of Origin glyphs [this is SG-1 only, changed since film] [otherwise many gates would be unavailable from each other]
h) a gate's address is the same no matter which other gate it is being dialled from [seen each time SG-1 dial home]
i) Point of Origin glyphs on a gate may be a generic "position" on the DHD, since they never seem have to work it out, and they otherwise wouldn't be able to move DHDs/gates so easily to/from SGC.

and probably some others I have forgotten...

 

[webmouse]

What happens when someone builds a new gate as the Tollan did on a planet not previously part of the gate system? Does it generate its own address? (Hmmm, knowing the Tollan it would be an unlisted number )

 

[PTeppic]

In line with the previous entry, the address would be calculable based on the position in the universe relative to the other celestial bodies.

I proposed, in a different thread here, which lysdexia was kind enough to ridicule a conceptual model to examine the density of stargate nodes, i.e. points in space addressable using the above system. I seem to recall finding that such a system was entirely feasible, given the known size of the galaxy and when using a tolerance (see below) of say 200 million miles for individual points. My model was the simplest to test: pretty much equidistant points around an imaginary sphere representing the edge of the galaxy - it worked. The "real" galaxy, in a fictional sense of course, would have the intersection points scattered throughout and within any sphere representing the edge of the galaxy - this would make many of the points perhaps too close together to be usable. [We did wonder, well, I did, whether it was possible to have two physically close addresses apply to the same gate, or whether an address was only valid for a gate for part of the planets orbit - both good fan-fic opportunities] But, with the number of possible points, tens of thousands, this probably wouldn't be a problem anyway (if it was).

The extension of this being, not every possible planet in the galaxy may be usable for a stargate. Since we also examined, in some other threads, the tolerance on the gate system... i.e. assuming Earth is a worst-case scenario (on average, it probably isn't). The Earth has an orbit diameter around its star of c. 200 million miles - that means that any stargate within that radius of earth would have/need the same gate address, basically preventing a gate being located on any of the inner planets, and probably Mars as well.

All in all what am I rambling about. The Tollans would need to find a world with all the suitable physical conditions they required, mass, diameter, atmosphere, weather etc., but also position in space that wasn't in an addressable blind-spot ofthe gate system. To actually find the address, simple 3d trigonometry whist examining the relative position to the new world of pairs of the 30-odd constellations used as reference markers. So long as three pairs intersected "locally" (i.e. within the tolerance of at least 200 million miles). Remembering that since they had to travel by ship, they could always disable any gate (stastically probably unused - but I can't actually prove this theory!!) that WAS actually nearby and hijack its address.

 

[gr8scott]

In a different SG forum we discussed this same topic in depth. We concluded the same thing^^^ as you all did. the points in space thing is out - especially the symbols/glyphs on the gate which are relative to a particular vantage point, and would change if you moved the gate. There still has to be a reference point order to get another gates address. We mostly concluded that the gate network was exactly that... a network. And this network is intelligent and can "find" a gate as it moves through the cosmos. Each gate needs an address... like an IP address on a network. The problem here is that the gates must communicate with each other and understand each other’s relative positions.

How the Tollan assigned their homemade gate? If these assumptions are correct, they must have understood the gates unique identifier and assigned their own.

Edit: The idea that supports this is that the gates, even though they sit on a planet, are still moving through space. Over the centuries, many things can change an otherwise predictible orbit (i.e. Nova's, Black Holes, etc.). So, either the Ancients were able to predict these events (unlikely), or they made the network intelligent - each gate knowing the others positions real-time.

 

[shu_hunter]

But the whole reason it took so long for the SGC to find all the new positions of the gates found on tha Abydos cartouche is because there is stellar drift and the adress changes over time. This supports that a gate's adress is subject to change, and you can also bring a gate to wherever and it'll still work as long as it's dialable. The thing with the point of origin is that it can reorient. It's assumed that that's how During Appophis' invasion of Earth via motherships Appophis and Klorel were able to escape. Since they exited hyperspace, the gate they were carrying was able to reorient to Eath's region and they gated away.
Also, you might remember in "The Fifth Race" O'Neill comes up with a "revolutionary new formula for calculating" stellar drift. So there you go.
P'Teppic, of course, can explain it better.

~Shu Hunter
:upto: Stargate fan{atic}

 

[gr8scott]

That's interesting. What about the glyphs? They're suppost to represent star constellations. These would change if you moved the gate to a distant location. They would even change over time on the planet which the gate resides. Polaris will not always be the pole star for earth.

 

[PTeppic]

Agreed - however, the Stargate network builders appear to have used the representation of the constellations as they appear from Earth, for no matter where you are in the galaxy. Theoretically they will also change of serveral tens of thousands of years, too.

Also, the other way to think about it, HOW different will they actually be, within only our own galaxy. Given many of the constellations are from distant galaxies, they may still look the same anyway, they're so far away.

 

[webmouse]

There may be another piece to the Stargate system, as yet "undiscovered" and therefore available to the writers to cover continuity problems if they need it -- a "cell tower" system.

Perhaps there are beacons that are fixed points, rather than planets on the move -- a quasar or pulsar might do -- and the gate address keys off of that.

Just a thought.

 

[shu_hunter]

I'll buy that - the glyphs represent specific points or areas and the actual constellation is irrevelant.
There's something that supports all the gate network's glyphs being from earth's point of view -

<SPOILER>

Carter said in that season 6 episode when they found the woman in the ice that the Antarctic Gate is one of if not the oldest gate(s) in our galaxy. What if this was their starting point from our galaxy, if not their very origin?

</SPOILER>

~Shu Hunter
:upto: Stargate fan{atic}

 

[PTeppic]

Just trying to clarify:
Is this suggesting that relative to some galactic origin, the position of each set of six glyphs represents a fixed XYZ address, and the glyphs are really just convenient symbols? Would this map to all the other things we know about the gate system? It sort of goes against the whole "intersection of six points" thing which is given in the movie and then reinforced in SG-1 episodes. Not sure how easy it would be to "calculate" the planetary shift stuff that they now have to do, with fixed "coordinates"- they'd need to know what each glyph meant in the "coordinate" number system.

The cell-towers/quasars idea - nice idea, but they too will move...

Origin of the gates - add to the new season 6 stuff the things that Sam has said (first trip to Vorash?) that "most" gates go to planets which are human-habitable. Makes you think...

 

[gr8scott]

Do you think that the inclusion of an eighth chevron necessary for traveling to distant galaxies supports the idea of the 6 points in space??? I think it kinda messes it up.... and blows away the 6-point/glyph idea. This is where we can start speculating about networked gates and such.

EDIT: The glyphs can still represent specific points but the system would need to be able to predict movement and future gravitational events. It's more likely that the extra chevron enables the gate to increase it's possibilities of addresses... like 8-bit (binary combinations) on a computer equals 256 possible combinations (I hope I got that right).

 

[PTeppic]

There's nothing in the show which actually shows they NEED six points in space. You can do it (mathematically) with either 3 or 4 - its just the trigonometry (and visual explanations) is a LOT more complex.

For six points, you basically get three pairs of points, put imaginary lines between the ends of each of the pairs, and simply find the intersection of the three lines.

For 3 or 4 points, the same intersection applies, but they will all be single lines, at a mutually proximal point: i.e. closest, but its much harder to imagine, and the maths is "bad".

PS> I'm busy preparing another thread to discuss the glyphs, though we had already beaten it to death in a couple of other threads

 

[Fifth]

Originally posted by shu_hunter
I'll buy that - the glyphs represent specific points or areas and the actual constellation is irrevelant.
There's something that supports all the gate network's glyphs being from earth's point of view -

<SPOILER>

Carter said in that season 6 episode when they found the woman in the ice that the Antarctic Gate is one of if not the oldest gate(s) in our galaxy. What if this was their starting point from our galaxy, if not their very origin?

</SPOILER>

~Shu Hunter
:upto: Stargate fan{atic}

Actually, yes earth was the starting point for the gate builders. The builders are known as the Ancients, and lived on a mobile city known as Atlantis. They explored all the parts of the galaxy, and eventually moved on to Pegasus. (They also used to reside on Othala, the Asgard home in the galaxy of Ida (ref: The Fifth Race)). However, they were quickly dying from the Reith (in Pegasus) and had to send some of their people back home to earth. Thats probably where Plato (the greek poet, and author of the Dialogues, which are an epic poem about Atlantis in real life) heard about the sinking city. Earths Stargate is alos the only Gate in the Milky Way Network that can dial to 38 other galaxies, and Othala and Atlantis share the same dialing properties. The Antarctic Gate was the original gate for earth, however it became lost in the ice, and they placed another at Giza. Hope that helps.