Dialing Home

[Smiley]

Has it ever been explained by the show or the staff how they know the seventh chevron to dial when going back to Earth every mission? They can't ask the natives in a lot of situations. Is there a unique symbol on every DHD that corresponds to the planet it's on?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression they had essentially memorized all the standard symbols, so when looking for the point of origin all they had to do was find the glyph that was unique to that DHD.

 

[David cgc]

Is there a unique symbol on every DHD that corresponds to the planet it's on?

Well, there should be, but with three exceptions, they've always just tapped a random standard symbol.

Actually, ideally, since the DHDs all have only 38 keys, the center button should logically substitute for the origin symbol, but they've never done it like that. Go figure.

 

[The Wormhole]

In Solitudes Carter points to a specific symbol on the DHD saying that has to be the point of origin since she doesn't recognize it. Presumably they use similar logic figuring out the point of origin on other gates.

In SGU's pliot they mention a plan to go trial by error to figure out Destiny's point of origin.

 

[Silent_Bob]

In early episodes Daniel would spend some time figuring out the address to get back home. Presumably after enough practice it becomes easy to spot the "odd one out" and find the point of origin symbol with a quick glance at the DHD.

 

[EyalM]

Does each DHD has a different arrangment for the symbols? If so, the the origin symbol will always be at the same spot...

 

[T'Girl]

I always thought they should, or maybe they did, give each symbol a name or a sound so that they could just say an address, instead of only being able to write the symbols down to show a address.

 

[Brent]

They do, it was explored in SG-1 episode "Lost city" in which it is discovered that each glyph has a corresponding syllable in the Ancient language, entire gate addresses can be spoken outloud.

The example used was Praclarush Taonas, which isn’t just the name of the planet, it’s also the gate address.

glyph = pra
glyph = cla
glyph = rush
glyph = ta
glyph = o
glyph = nas
POO (Earth Symbol) = at

So if dialing from Earth you'd say Praclarush Taonas At

 

[The Wormhole]

In early episodes Daniel would spend some time figuring out the address to get back home.

Actually, I think he only did that in Children of the Gods.

 

[Hermiod]

In early episodes Daniel would spend some time figuring out the address to get back home.

Actually, I think he only did that in Children of the Gods.

Dialling Earth's address should be the same no matter what planet you're on as you only need to change the point of origin, which is usually in the same place on the DHD.

 

[David cgc]

IIRC, "figuring out" consisted of Daniel trying to read the symbols from Abydos off his moleskine while under fire on Chulak because he hadn't memorized them yet.

 

[Hermiod]

^As the series went on, we had people memorising large numbers of Stargate addresses. I can barely remember my own phone number, yet other people can remember a Stargate address that they only saw just as they were about to pass out from being shot.

 

[Smiley]

Here's another technical question. How do non-Earth planets control how long a Stargate stays open? The SGC can just shut down the power on outgoing wormholes, but how about those planets with just the gate and DHD? Is this one of those "they read the script" answers? Logically, with no one on the other side to do anything, the gate should stay open 38 minutes when SG-1 comes home.

 

[cylkoth]

We've long assumed that there's some kind of motion sensor capability within the gate, detecting whether anything is moving towards it, and an active connection remains open until it senses no further movement. But the 38 min rule is more towards how long the wormhole can stay open, not long long it would stay open in ordinary use.

 

[Kpnuts]

The problem is some points of origin that we've seen on screen ARE standard glyphs found on every stargate. It's a little silly, and doesn't actually make any sense if you think about it.