Another Gate Physics Question

[cylkoth]

Well, inspired by this thread http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=109102,
where an unsolved mystery of the gate was asked, here's another Gate Physics question that I've been curious about, but never bother asking.

If you tied a rope around several objects-say backpacks full of supplies, and then entered the Gate pulling the rope, would the gate allow those packs to be pulled along after you've entered to puddle? In other words, would you, the rope, and whatever's attached to the rope be counted as a single object until inside the puddle before you're de-molecularized and sent along to the receiving gate? Or would the receiving gate split you out, pulling half the rope until the other gate pulled in the rest of it? We've seen instances were characters stick their arms inside the puddle to prevent the gate from shutting down, which was established as a security precaution to prevent a person from being killed. But the rope being organic, would the gate allow the act of pulling something along behind you to continue being...pulled? :wacko:

Aye, too much stuffing I be havin' today.

 

[cultcross]

The gate appears to apply some form of 'pulling' force to objects that have entered the event horizon until they have all passed through. The best example of this would be Apophis' body being returned to Sokar in Serpent's Song. They push his legs in, then let go and the rest of him follows slowly without falling to the deck.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

Indeed, it would be counted as one continuous matter/data stream. Tho this didnt stop the gate from sending Earnest Littlefield who was attached to an air hose.

 

[UssGlenn]

Indeed, it would be counted as one continuous matter/data stream. Tho this didnt stop the gate from sending Earnest Littlefield who was attached to an air hose.

so it has to be an organic matter type of thing apparently.

 

[cylkoth]

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, in Continuum, when Baal and his Jaffa emerge from the gate in the Achilles's hold, they send a plank through first, which I think remained partially inside the event horizon as they walked through on it.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, in Continuum, when Baal and his Jaffa emerge from the gate in the Achilles's hold, they send a plank through first, which I think remained partially inside the event horizon as they walked through on it.

They did, yes. So maybe it is only living matter or bio matter. Its never been fully explored.

 

[SilentP]

Indeed, it would be counted as one continuous matter/data stream. Tho this didnt stop the gate from sending Earnest Littlefield who was attached to an air hose.

Didn't the Gate in that instance just completely lose power or something like that? Since they hadn't quite figured out how the gate works and therefore how much power it needed.

 

[Checkmate]

I don't try to think about it too much. The series completely handwaved anything sensible about the Stargate away the moment the series started.

I'm still trying to figure out why all of them use Earth constellations even though they have zero bearing on anything since the symbols are just used as a phone number. It's even more confusing since they had their own suitable language to use which would have made far more sense.

The movie was so much better about the trials and tribulations that would go along with using one. The series just makes it a magic circle of teleportation that can do anything if you kick it just right.

 

[SilentP]

Even the movies idea of how the address system sounded off to me. Using a constellation as a point/face of a box where you're aiming for? (IIRC, I only watched the movie once, so forgive me if I'm remembering it badly or confusing it with the series). Ok, where in the constellation do you take this point to be? It's not a solid entity, it's a batch of stars light years away from each other, not even on the same 'plane' as each other.

 

[Jenee]

As long as the gate is open, objects, living or not, will continue to pass through.

If an object is partially in and partially out of the wormhole, and the gate is shut down, either manually or ... lack of power or whatever, whatever is inside the wormhole is gone, whatever is on 'this side' of the wormhole, stays here.

The episode where Teal'c is holding someone's head in the wormhole - mighta been Kawalski - gate was manually shut down.

The episode where the guy back in the 40s goes through in a 1940s underwater outfit goes through, the line is cut - probably a power issue.

The thing with the episode on SG:U where Rush tells Eli to stick his arm in the wormhole, the Destiny's computer was controlling the gate, and the computer sensed a biological presence in the wormhole and didn't shut down.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Indeed, it would be counted as one continuous matter/data stream. Tho this didnt stop the gate from sending Earnest Littlefield who was attached to an air hose.

I don't think any of this would be a problem if it weren't for "38 Minutes." That seemed to be the 1st episode that established the rule that the Stargate only sends objects through in one piece. Thus, if the Gate shut off while the Puddle Jumper was still lodged halfway inside it, the front half would be lost, vaporized, as presumably happened to the back half of Kowalski's head in "Enemy Within." By this logic, Ernest Littlefield should have been vaporized as well.

Actually, this rule suddenly made me very sad. There's some episode of SG-1, I don't recall which one. (Maybe "Point of View"?) Anyway, at the end of the episode, a bunch of Jaffa are fleeing the SGC through the Stargate. Just as the last Jaffa walks through, the Gate shuts down and the back tip of his staff weapon is left behind. Before, my reaction to that scene was, "Damn, that was a narrow escape." Now, my reaction is, "Awww. Does that mean he never materialized out the other side?"

 

[David cgc]

I guess that depends on how tightly he was holding on to his staff weapon.

 

[Silvercrest]

Even the movies idea of how the address system sounded off to me. Using a constellation as a point/face of a box where you're aiming for? (IIRC, I only watched the movie once, so forgive me if I'm remembering it badly or confusing it with the series). Ok, where in the constellation do you take this point to be? It's not a solid entity, it's a batch of stars light years away from each other, not even on the same 'plane' as each other.

Well, my explanation is this. Yes, the glyphs represent points in space, but they don't represent constellations. The Ancients didn't name the constellations. They were an advanced culture who were unlikely to sit around giving names to cute little patterns of stars. The glyphs are merely symbols that the Ancients assigned to represent points in space around the galactic perimeter. (These points are used to draw three-dimensional coordinates for dialing a Stargate.) Who knows what the symbols really mean.

Later, when primitive human civilizations arose (maybe with some hand-me-down knowledge of Stargate lore), they took those symbols and found patterns in the sky that resembled them.

Basically, the symbols inspired the constellations. Not the other way around. My thought.

Indeed, it would be counted as one continuous matter/data stream. Tho this didnt stop the gate from sending Earnest Littlefield who was attached to an air hose.

I don't think any of this would be a problem if it weren't for "38 Minutes." That seemed to be the 1st episode that established the rule that the Stargate only sends objects through in one piece. Thus, if the Gate shut off while the Puddle Jumper was still lodged halfway inside it, the front half would be lost, vaporized, as presumably happened to the back half of Kowalski's head in "Enemy Within." By this logic, Ernest Littlefield should have been vaporized as well.

Actually, this rule suddenly made me very sad. There's some episode of SG-1, I don't recall which one. (Maybe "Point of View"?) Anyway, at the end of the episode, a bunch of Jaffa are fleeing the SGC through the Stargate. Just as the last Jaffa walks through, the Gate shuts down and the back tip of his staff weapon is left behind. Before, my reaction to that scene was, "Damn, that was a narrow escape." Now, my reaction is, "Awww. Does that mean he never materialized out the other side?"

If anyone is interested, I've written a document that tries to resolve issues like this. I went through the whole show and took notes on the behavior of the event horizon, the 38-minute window, what it takes to keep the gate open, what happens if it closes prematurely, and so on. Then I wrote up a booklet that tries to address all the inconsistencies and explain the functions of a Stargate rationally.

This booklet is actually a resource intended for a tabletop RPG, so you have to ignore references to saving throws and DCs. If you can do that, I think it does a pretty good job of clearing things up. It contradicts the show in a few places, but actually less than the show contradicts itself.

I'm not really that computer-savvy, so I don't know how or if I can put it on here. Can we send attachments with PMs? I could post a .pdf version of it here as an image, but I'm not sure that's a good idea. It's over 20 pages long.

Any interest? Any suggestions?

 

[Kirby]

**enters thread**

"The marinette strings from 200 were cut when the gate shut down."

**runs away**

 

[Jenee]

"The marinette strings from 200 were cut when the gate shut down."

and the marienettes were just laying on the ground on the other side of the wormhole - intact. well, without the strings, but everything else was in tact.

 

[Kirby]

^^ I know, I was just trying to justify something based on the spoof show... Kinda like those people that think Furlings actually look like that, or Jack is really Mitchell's father.

 

[Jenee]

I know. and I used it to justify my really flimsy physics analysis of a completely fictional situation.

 

[Starwind]

Even the movies idea of how the address system sounded off to me. Using a constellation as a point/face of a box where you're aiming for? (IIRC, I only watched the movie once, so forgive me if I'm remembering it badly or confusing it with the series). Ok, where in the constellation do you take this point to be? It's not a solid entity, it's a batch of stars light years away from each other, not even on the same 'plane' as each other.

Well, my explanation is this. Yes, the glyphs represent points in space, but they don't represent constellations. The Ancients didn't name the constellations. They were an advanced culture who were unlikely to sit around giving names to cute little patterns of stars. The glyphs are merely symbols that the Ancients assigned to represent points in space around the galactic perimeter. (These points are used to draw three-dimensional coordinates for dialing a Stargate.) Who knows what the symbols really mean.

Later, when primitive human civilizations arose (maybe with some hand-me-down knowledge of Stargate lore), they took those symbols and found patterns in the sky that resembled them.

Basically, the symbols inspired the constellations. Not the other way around. My thought.

Add to that the fact the Stargate system is millions of years old, the stars are simply not anywhere near the same postions. Plus anyone can take just about any group of stars and draw lines between, making a picture of just about anything.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

**enters thread**

"The marinette strings from 200 were cut when the gate shut down."

**runs away**

Actually, that may be a good point. Perhaps there's a thickness factor. If most of a solid object has passed through the event horizon and only some very thin tether remains (such as the marionette strings in "200" or Ernest Littlefield's air hose), then the Gate will send that object through. But if it is a large, solid object lodged halfway through, like the Puddle Jumper in "38 Minutes," the Gate will give some kind of error message and not send the object. (Although, with such an advanced piece of technology, if it received such an error message, you'd think maybe they'd have a safety feature that would spit the rejected matter out of the sending Gate.)

 

[Silvercrest]

No interest in that document I mentioned? It may not be canon exactly, but it does attempt to provide some consistency.