Stargate (device)
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- This article is about the device in the fictional Stargate universe. For other uses of the term, see Stargate (disambiguation).
In the Stargate science fiction universe, Stargates are large ring-shaped devices created by the Ancients and scattered on Earth-like planets throughout the Milky Way and other galaxies as well. Their original Ancient name appears to have been Astria Porta, but the Jaffa and Goa'uld call them Chaapa'ai [tʃɑpɑˈaɪ]; the English word "Stargate" is apparently a direct calque of this word. Asgard-protected human peoples like the K'tau refer to them as the Annulus. In the Pegasus galaxy, they're called Ring of the Ancestors, Ancestral Ring and variations thereof.
Stargates can be used to open wormholes from one gate to another, allowing nearly instantaneous travel between them. Matter can only pass one-way through the wormhole, from the gate that "initiated" the connection to the gate that was dialed, but radio signals can travel both ways. Matter in transit is broken down into its individual atoms and then reconstructed on the other side, but walking through a Stargate is superficially no different to stepping through a doorway.
Stargates are typically 22 feet (6.7 m) in diameter and made of the heavy mineral Naqahdah. They are usually found standing vertically, though they still function normally in other orientations.
At present, there are three types of Stargates known: the type located in the Milky Way galaxy, those placed in the Pegasus galaxy, and the "Supergate" created by the Ori. It remains to be seen how an Ori Stargate functions.
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Durability of Stargates
The Stargates themselves are particularly resistant to damage or destruction: in Stargate SG-1 a stargate survived a direct hit from a meteor, another was still capable of creating a stable wormhole while on a planet proximate to a newly-formed black hole. This black hole was used as part of a plan to obilerate Apophis' fleet by creating an artificial supernova, which firstly involved creating a link between a Stargate and the aforementioned planet close to the black hole, established via an inbuilt DHD inside a Hatak (The Stargate had a forcefield in place to protect the ship). The Stargate was then released into a star, the black hole on the other side pulled matter from the sun through the Stargate resulting in the star becoming unstable and creating a supernova. The Stargate being used in the plan also seemed to survive entering the star for at least long enough to maintain the connection for long enough to carry out the plan. It is unknown whether the Stargate survived the star's explosion. Another Stargate managed to maintain a wormhole for just over the standard 38 minute window after a new naqadah-enhanced nuclear bomb designed for attacks on Goa'uld homeworlds seemed to destroy the planet it was situated on.
In the ninth season of Stargate SG-1 the United States is revealed to have developed a naqahdriah-enhanced "gatebuster" bomb that is theoretically capable of destroying a Stargate. However Anubis had previousy used Ancient technology to destroy both the SGC's original gate (using some unknown anti-gate technology) and the gate on Abydos (using a massive weapon system that also destroyed most of the combined fleet of the System lords).
The main way to disable (rather than destroy) a Stargate seems to be to bury it so that the plane where event horizon forms is completely filled thus somehow preventing a wormhole from connecting. Disconnecting or destroying the DHD or any other system that can provide power to the gate will prevent it from being able to establish an outgoing wormhole, but such a gate can still recieve incoming wormholes. One of the primary functions of the MALP probe that the SGC sends through to new gates is to confirm that a DHD is present for SG teams to use when returning. In a few cases Stargates have been dialled "manually" when more sophisticated means weren't available, by providing sufficient raw power to the gate and then rotating the symbol ring to lock each chevron. In the pilot episode "Children of the Gods" the dialling computer is (apparently) not active and no DHD is present but Apophis and his Jaffa still use it to return home to Chulak somehow, suggesting Goa'uld may have portable power sources they can use in such situations. Other examples of manual dialling include the episodes The Torment of Tantalus and Prisoners.
With the exeption of the Ancient gatedestroyer Anubis used there have been no examples of an active Stargate being destroyed, suggesting that active Stargates may be nearly indestructible. Nonetheless, SGC believed that their "Gatebuster" bomb would be capable of destroying an active Stargate in Beachhead. (This did, however, not happen, (partly) due to the nature of the Ori-designed forcefield surrounding the gate.)
The Milky Way's Stargates
Image:Stargate.png A Milky Way Stargate has an inner rotating ring with thirty-nine inscribed symbols and an outer stationary ring around which are nine triangular structures called "chevrons". The first symbol on the ring is unique to each Stargate and represents the point of origin. The remaining thirty-eight symbols are the same for all Stargates, and can be thought to represent digits. Each chevron represents a digit place in a set of coordinates.
To dial a coordinate, the inner symbol-bearing ring rotates until the required symbol is adjacent to the required chevron, which registers that symbol as a dialed coordinate by "locking" the chevron. In the Stargate SG-1 series, a locked chevron glows red. This rotation and locking is repeated until all coordinate symbols are dialed.
In normal operation, seven chevrons are activated to link to another Stargate within the Milky Way galaxy: six non-repeating symbols establish the coordinates of the destination, with the seventh always set to the point-of-origin symbol. This gives 38×37×36×35×34×33 = 1,987,690,320 possible coordinates in our galaxy, but not all represent valid gate coordinates, and if the first six co-ordinates dialed are not valid, the point-of-origin chevron will not lock.
Image:SGOpenGate.jpg The gates are usually found accompanied by a dialing device called a DHD, or Dial-Home Device, that powers and activates the Stargate, opening it to the dialed coordinates. Because the gate on Earth was found without a DHD, the Stargate team on the Earth developed the technology to interface with the gate in order to power it and dial it by the use of computers. When dialing the Stargate using a DHD, its inner ring does not spin, it simply just activates each chevron, as they are entered on the DHD. Some species in the series possess the ability to instantanously activate a wormhole, thus being able to dial the gate without actually using a dialing device.
In the original movie only one valid set of destination coordinates was known, those of the planet Abydos, and it was thought that only those two Stargates existed. At the beginning of the Stargate SG-1 series, however, a large set of additional valid coordinates were discovered engraved in ruins on Abydos. According to what is known on this series, the symbols represent constellations of stars, with the destination point being triangulated between them. Most sets of destination coordinates do not have a Stargate located at them and dialing them will fail to establish a wormhole; there are sufficiently few valid coordinate sets that randomly dialing the Stargate is largely futile.
It was later discovered that more distant Stargate "networks" could be accessed by dialing eight chevrons, with the extra chevron serving as a sort of "area code" and the Stargate requiring significantly more energy to reach the destination. The Asgard world Othala in the galaxy of Ida and also Atlantis in the Pegasus galaxy was reached in this manner. This was not done routinely, however, as Stargate Command lacked both a sufficient power source and any other valid long-distance coordinates. The function of the ninth chevron is unknown.
Image:Sg1stargatekawoosh.jpg When a Stargate's wormhole is initially established the watery "event horizon" bursts outward in a destructive wave resembling a surge of water or quicksilver, dubbed the "kawoosh" by SGC personnel. In the original movie the opening of the Stargate was accompanied by earth tremors, but this issue is resolved in the SG-1 series with the development of more sophisticated control systems. Several aliens, namely the Asgard and the Nox have demonstrated the ability to open a wormhole without the "kawoosh". The wormhole is prevented from forming if there's a large obstruction inside the Stargate's ring, and consequently it is fairly common for Stargates to be semi-permanently sealed by burying them. Another means of controlling travel through a Stargate is placing a barrier a minuscule distance (less than two micrometres) from the event horizon, preventing the reconstitution of matter upon arrival through the gate. The iris on the Earth Stargate performs this function and is an effective defense while still allowing radio communication through the open wormhole.
Stargates have some built-in safety functions as well. The gate does not begin transmitting an object until it has entirely passed through the event horizon, only dematerializes it and stores it in the memory buffer. This means that if a Stargate is shut down while an object is partway through the portion that is already through the event horizon vanishes, but it also allows objects to be pulled back out of an outgoing wormhole if they haven't entirely entered it yet. The gate does not allow the air molecules of the local atmosphere to pass through it, the opposite could be disastrous if the receiving gate was in a vacuum. Also on several occasions a wormhole has been opened between a Stargate on Earth's surface and a Stargate under the surface of an alien world's ocean and the water was prevented from flowing freely through it.
Image:Sg1stargateside.jpg Normally, a wormhole can only be maintained for about thirty-eight minutes at a time. The Stargate that established the outgoing wormhole determines how long the wormhole is held open, and can generally close the wormhole at will. One exception to this rule occurred in an episode of Stargate SG-1 when an outgoing wormhole was established to a Stargate that was in the process of falling into a black hole; due to the gravitational time dilation that the remote Stargate was experiencing, the wormhole could not be shut down. The connection was eventually severed by forcing the wormhole to jump to a different destination Stargate as described below. The wormhole can only transmit matter in one direction, but EM waves (radio, gamma, etc.) can be broadcast in the other direction as well. However, if someone has only partially passed through the event horizon (of a Stargate), they can still be pulled back through.
At least some planets possess "secondary" or "backup" Stargates. The second Stargate is normally inactive, with the other Stargate receiving all incoming wormholes. If the originating Stargate receives a power surge while the wormhole is open, however, the wormhole can be made to "jump" to a different gate than the one originally dialed. Normally the wormhole jumps to the closest gate in the network, in the case of a planet with two gates this is the other, normally inactive gate, on that planet. On one occasion a Stargate was hit by an energy weapon as Stargate SG-1 team members returned to Earth through it, causing them to be transmitted to a second, previously unknown, gate on Earth that was located beneath the ice of Antarctica. The DHD is apparently responsible for determining whether a Stargate is set to receive incoming wormholes or not; the Russians were able to use their DHD to override the American Stargate's (Stargate Command's) reception of incoming wormholes to retrieve their own returning Stargate exploration teams.
Image:Diy-stargate.jpg In addition to the Ancients, the Tollan have demonstrated the ability to build Stargates with the assistance of the Nox after SG-1 introduced the two races in the first episode that the Tollan appeared in. Also, in the season 5 episode Ascension, one Ancient was able to build a small one-shot Stargate using materials and tools readily available on Earth to average citizens, but it could only dial one address.
The Giza Stargate's symbols
*This symbol is unique to the Stargate recovered from Giza. In the movie, Dr. Jackson interpreted it as representing the Sun over the peak of a pyramid. Other Stargates have their own unique origin symbols, including the Antarctic Stargate that was also found on Earth.
Pegasus' Stargates
Image:Pegasus-gate.jpg In the spinoff series Stargate Atlantis, an expedition dials the 8-symbol address Image:StargateGlyph39.pngImage:StargateGlyph21.pngImage:StargateGlyph02.pngImage:StargateGlyph16.pngImage:StargateGlyph15.pngImage:StargateGlyph08.pngImage:StargateGlyph37.pngImage:StargateGlyph01.png from Stargate Command to travel to the Ancient Lost City of Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy. They find that the Ancients seeded planets throughout the Pegasus galaxy with Stargates too, but used gates of a slightly different design. Pegasus Stargates have blue chevron lights instead of red and the address symbols are groups of small white lights instead of raised figures. Unlike the Milky Way gates, there are 36 Symbols on the gate, but 7 symbols are still required to dial an interplanetary address - which totals 1,168,675,200 possible combinations from each Pegasus galaxy Stargate, fewer than those in the Milky Way but adhering to the same constraints. The address ring does not rotate; instead, the symbols light up sequentially to indicate which one is currently selected. This probably means that manual dialling of Pegasus gates is not possible. The visual effects used for the "traveller's-eye view" is also different, with the traveller hurtling down a twisty green tube of mist.
In an apparent departure from the standard "anywhere to anywhere" dialing capabilities of Stargates, the only Stargate in the Pegasus galaxy that's capable of reaching Stargates in the Milky Way is the one located in Atlantis. This is due to a special control crystal apparently unique to the Atlantis DHD without which a Pegasus Stargate cannot encode its eighth chevron. This is likely a deliberate feature, as the Ancients fled the Pegasus galaxy to take refuge in the Milky Way and sealed their fortified city behind them. Unlike any other known gates, the Atlantis Gate can also identify the point of origin of a gate, and block an incoming wormhole. This was used to keep Atlantis sealed for 10,000 years, although the expedition from Earth has yet to learn how this was done. Pegasus Stargates are the same size as Milky Way Stargates and can be kept open for the same maximum duration (38 minutes), so they likely operate on the same principles with only cosmetic differences.
Some Pegasus Gates are orbital: they lead to open space, something never seen in the Milky Way. These apparently have no DHD, and are used almost exclusively for space craft travel, specifically that of the Puddle Jumper and the enemy Wraith Darts. Orbital Stargates are powered by three power nodes spaced equally along the outer ring. These nodes take the place of the standard DHD in powering the Stargate. The Puddle Jumpers have inbuilt DHDs making travel back through these gates possible, and it appears that Wraith Darts have a similar capability, as they were able to open a wormhole remotely during their first encounter with the Atlantis team.
The Atlantis Stargate also features a protective force field similar to the Iris installed on Earth's Stargate by the SGC, to prevent enemy travellers rematerializing. This technology appears to be unique to Atlantis so far.
"Origin" Galaxy's Stargates
In the ninth season of Stargate SG-1, it was discovered that the Ancients, originally called the Alterans, were not native to the Milky Way, but originated from another galaxy more distant from Earth than the Pegasus galaxy.
While it is not known what the Stargates in the Origin galaxy look like and none have been seen on-screen, their presence is implied by the fact that the Ori (Alterans who remained behind and did not follow the others of their kind to the Milky Way) were able to send Priors (religious messengers) to the Milky Way through a Stargate.
Since the transport rings used in the Origin galaxy are white and pearly in appearance, it is logical to assume that the Origin Stargates have a similar appearance. Any gates in the Origin galaxy would far predate both the Pegasus system gates and the Milky Way system gates.
Image:Supergate.jpg The Ori have demonstrated a far greater knowledge of Stargates and wormhole physics than anyone in the Milky Way with the possible exception of the Ancients. They recently (Beachhead) attempted to create a massive "Supergate," 300 to 400 meters in diameter, which could connect the Ori galaxy and the Milky Way indefinitely. See that article for more details.
Earlier uses of the Stargate concept
The concept of the Stargate did not originate with the movie Stargate. Several science fiction authors, notably Andre Norton, C. J. Cherryh, and Dan Simmons have previously used the concept of devices creating portals spanning interstellar distances. Norton's Witch World was colonized by humans and other races using such portals. In Cherryh's Morgaine series, the Gates' potential for facilitating time travel makes them a danger to causality and therefore to the future of civilization. The title character is engaged on a centuries-long quest that takes her from world to world via the gates, setting each gate to self-destruct just after she has used it to move on to the next. Simmons' Hyperion universe contains devices called farcasters which allow for instantaneous travel between them via dialed or permanent connections. Farcasters can be either terrestrial in the form of doors or rings, or orbital in the form of rings.
As a term for a science fictional device allowing rapid travel between distant locations, the epithet 'Star Gate' was coined by Arthur C. Clarke in the story 2001: A Space Odyssey, although his 'Star Gate' in no way resembles the one described in this article. Stargate SG-1 paid homage to Clarke in the two episodes 2010 and 2001, which correspond to the titles of the first two books and films of Clarke's Space Odyssey saga, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two.
| Technology in the Stargate universe with articles |
|---|
| Tau'ri Technology |
| Beretta | M16 | M4 Carbine | M249 | P90 | MP5 | AGM-65 Missile | UAV |
| GDO | Iris | Kull Disruptor | MALP | Naqahdah Generator |
| X-301 | X-302 | F-302 | Prometheus | Daedalus |
| Goa'uld/Tok'ra Technology |
| Al'kesh | Death Glider | Ha'tak Mothership | Hand Device | Healing Device | Intar | Sarcophagus | Staff Weapon | Staff Cannon | Tel'tak | TER | Tunnel Crystals | Zat | Zatarc detector |
| Ancient Technology |
| ATA Gene | Atlantis | Dakara Weapon | DHD | Drone Weapon | Healing Device | Puddle Jumper | Repository of Knowledge | Ring Transporter | Stargate | Zero Point Module |
| Other races' Technology |
| Beliskner-class Ship | Ion Cannon | O'Neill-class Ship | Supergate | Thor's Hammer | Wraith Dart |
es:Stargate (aparato) fr:Porte des étoiles it:Stargate (dispositivo)
