I was watching Atlantis's season 5 episode "The Shrine" yesterday where they showed the team stuck on the other side because the gate was submurged under water. Sheppard ordered Atlantis NOT to drop the shield as Atlantis would be flooded. Am I crazy or did we previously explained that the gate can differenciate between elements actually pushing through and those just applying natural forces around the gate preventing this? The episode was SG1's "Watergate" with Marina Sirtis if I remember correctly.
There's probably a difference between a partially-submerged gate with water rushing into it and one that's fully under (more or less) standing water. Also, Sheppard might've just been being thorough. I don't remember if we saw the shield constantly sparking, showing there was water pouring through it.
Maybe, but that would be poor engineering on the Ancient's part given that even gases in air may have lairs of different pressure level. I was thinking that the gate would simply compare the pressure with that of an equal point on the back thus even being half submerged would not be an issue. Aren't top SG personnel supposed to know these things? And McKay was with him, so I don't think so.
Interesting. If the water did go through the wormhole, you'd think the water level in the area of the gate would have droped pretty quickly since there was a place for it to go, kind of like pulling the drain plug in a bathtub. The speed of the water flow would only be limited to the amount that could go through the gate at any one time since it wouldn't be slowed by anything past the event horizon.
Correct, the shield much like the SGC's iris would prevent the water molecules from re-materializing thus destryoing them and quickly reducing the level on the other side. I'm calling a plot hole!
I think the term "safety protocols" for gates only applies for establishing a lock, not for what happens once a wormhole is active. Sam talked about overriding safety protocols in "Red Sky", as the gate was disinclined to connect since the wormhole passed through the system's sun. She also talked about how the safety protocols innate to the DHD are missing/incomplete on the dialing computer, hence the retconned early-season freezburn when you travelled to Abydos and other places that hadn't had their stellar drift accounted for by the dialing computer. It very well may be that the Atlantis gate's behavior in certain circumstances is variable; thet might have set it to permit water to flow through when a gate was not fully submerged and there was uneven pressure on the event horizon; the team might have known this and warned the control room.
We know Shep has a habit of not listening to technical briefings on stuff, especially when McKay is talking. This has cost him on at least one occasion. Mark