As we all know there was an Alpha gate found in Egypt and a Beta gate found in Antarctica. The Beta gate was presumed destroyed for a while until it was learned the Russians recovered it. Alpha get eventually gets destroyed, SGC rents the Beta gate from the Russians. Now, the point of this thread is, maybe there's a Delta gate kicking around? Alpha gate was presumed destroyed when Thor's ship blew up on re-entry. The gates are pretty hard to kill. So, the gate that Apophis had on his ships when he tried to attack Earth the first time should still be in orbit or on Earth somewhere, right?
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I think you skipped Gamma....
And you're a little off on your Chronology. Alpha was found in Egypt, Beta in Antarctica. The Alpha Gate was beamed to Thor's ship and presumed destroyed with it, so the SGC then used the Beta gate. The Russians recovered the Alpha gate and used it for a while. Anubis overloaded the Beta gate which blew up in space, so the SGC got the Alpha gate back from the Russians. (Rented for a while, can't remember what else happened with that agreement.)
As for your other point about Apophis' gate, you could be right. But they didn't exactly have an easy way to recover it until recently.
B.J.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
And would it have the correct � Symbol? (inreality we should see the _�_ symbol now cause they are using the Beta Gate.
Well they definately used a gate to get some of the more 'modern cultures' off the planet that we've seen. That is those with Goa'uld 'gods' that aren't just from the time of the Egyptians. Presumably they used the Antarctic 'Beta' gate.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"And would it have the correct � Symbol? (inreality we should see the _�_ symbol now cause they are using the Beta Gate."
Um... No. As was just mentioned in the post preceding yours, the gate currently in use is the Egypt one. The Antarctic gate, with its "o" point-of-origin, was destroyed.
That symbol should have shown up during seasons four and five, but, oh well.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Yes, that's what I meant - when they were using the Beta gate. Interesting Idea about the Apophis gate still lying around. They could have had an episode where some civilians got a hold of it - and SOMEHOW worked out how to use it! Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"So, the gate that Apophis had on his ships when he tried to attack Earth the first time should still be in orbit or on Earth somewhere, right?"
It's more likely to be floating halfway between Earth and Saturn by now.
Posted by Chris Turnbull (Member # 1323) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cartman: "So, the gate that Apophis had on his ships when he tried to attack Earth the first time should still be in orbit or on Earth somewhere, right?"
It's more likely to be floating halfway between Earth and Saturn by now.
...or Uranus.
Seriously the idea of a "Gamma Gate" is an interesting one. But if it was still nearby don't you think the Tok'ra, Asguard or NORAD would have spotted it floating around in the Sol System (Tok'ra/Asguard ships have sensors don't they).
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
You would think that after taking a course on the ancient Greek language I'd know the alphabet... Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"But if it was still nearby don't you think the Tok'ra, Asguard or NORAD would have spotted it floating around in the Sol System (Tok'ra/Asguard ships have sensors don't they)."
The Asgard probably could find it, if they were looking. But certainly not NORAD.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Some amataur astronemer would notice it if it was in near earth orbit.....eventually, anyway.
It's sure be an easy way to explore the outer planets: gate probes out there and save years of travel time and tons of fuel.
Posted by ulTRS magDOS (Member # 239) on :
amataur astronemer
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Not in MY world, pallie.
Of course, I spell "ulTRs" as "Ultra", so what the hey.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"ulTRS". And you'd be wrong, then, wouldn't you?
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"Not in MY world..."
Where all dictionaries are burned and spelling is a crime punishable by death?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
You couldn't use a Gate unless it was in a near planetary orbit. One that the Gate system recognized. Once it's in space, the point of origin is no longer valid.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
The nature of gate coordinates is a bit vague, really, but the system seems intelligent enough that there might be some way to make it work.
But then, you'd have to get the gate out there to begin with, so why bother?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Well, they've stated pretty specifically that the Gate won't work unless it's on the surface of a planet or in orbit. In the season 2 opener, Daniel could only dial out of the Gate on the ship after entering Earth's orbit. The only exception I can think of is when they dialed the planet being consumed by a black hole then sent the Gate hurtling towards a star to suck the stellar material through the Gate. However, the wormhole was established before they sent it flying off.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Even though it seems that only one Gate per planet or planetary vicinity can be active, it would make sense to assume that Earth hosted dozens of Gates back in the good old days when Ra was running things here. Ra would have been in control of the Giza gate, but pretty much every Goa'uld of worth supposedly had a branch office here as well. They wouldn't have trusted Ra, so they probably would have had a Gate or two stashed somewhere. Certainly some percentage of the ships visiting Earth would have had Gates aboard. (Even if we consider most of the current pyramids just cargo-cult copies, there must have been plenty of original landing platforms to inspire the cargo-cult, and thus significant ship traffic as well.)
This in mind, I find it highly unlikely that the Antarctica Gate would be the means by which post-Egyptian cultures propagated into space. Our heroes back in "Devil" and the like had a good reason to think it may have been the means, since they did not know of other possibilities - but it sounds far more likely that other Goa'uld would have sneaked in after the rebellion and Ra's demise, and abducted these people with the help of ships or shipborne Gates.
It would be simplest to assume that the Antarctica Gate has been buried since prehistoric times (the strangely modern human found next to it remains as mysterious as ever in Season 8, right?). But it is also quite possible that Earth (or the Sol system) still retains other Gates, left behind by Goa'uld infighting. And perhaps it is possible to run multiple Gates simultaneously from one location, or from various points that are slightly offset from the basic planetary coordinates, and the Goa'uld may know how.
Physically speaking, low Earth orbit cannot be the limit of a Gate's ability to operate "off-boresight". After all, Earth wobbles crazily around its central star. Perhaps an accuracy of 50 AUs might be closer to the truth?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Well, the operation of the Beta Gate by the NID and the Alpha Gate by the Russians at the same time as the SGC operated its Gate proves that two can be functional on the same planet at the same time. So in theory, a dozen System Lords could've had Gates on Earth at the same time trafficing people through them. They just couldn't have done it at the exact same time. The issue of where an incoming wormhole would connect to would still be a problem.
The fact that incoming wormholes defaulted to the Giza Gate even when the Antarctic Gate was able to receive wormholes suggests that the Giza Gate was the one orginally placed on Earth by the Ancients. Other Gates would still be able to dial out, but only one could receive.
The Antarctic Gate is possibly one of the Gates brought to Earth after the rebellion. There was a Jaffa found next to it in modern Jaffa armor, but who knows how long they've been using that design.
Later seasons and revelations about the Ancient Base beneath the Antarctic Gate may invalidate this reasoning, but I've not seen those episodes yet.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
The issue of where an incoming wormhole would connect to would still be a problem.
Yeah, the DHD may override a hacked together system, but... what if you have two DHDs?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, not that it will happen, but that question could, technically, be addressed on the show if they found the "Gamma Gate". After all, there are still two DHDs on Earth, right?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Minor spoilers for the fifth season...
They have two DHDs, neither of which work.. The one they retrieved with the Beta gate reported just "stopped working" shortly after they got it, and the original Alpha DHD met its fate in "48 Hours" in the fifth season. Suffice it to say that their jury-rigging system is the best they can do short of manually dialling the gate like they originally did in "torment of Tantalus" et. al.
Mark
Posted by WizArtist (Member # 1095) on :
Maybe we can have the Antartic gate being what brought the Predators and Aliens to Earth to build an Aztec pyramid.
Just a thought, but in the episode where they destroy an entire fleet of Mom-a-Mids in space, wouldn't there then be a BUNCH of gates just floating around out there? Couldn't they go back to the system and recover a few after the Nova subsided. (and NO, I have no idea how long that event would take)
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, there's no evidence that every Goa'uld mothership has a gate on it. Besides, the force of the nova could have thrown any gates that were there far out into space.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Or obliterated them. Gates are tough, but (I'd like to think) not indestructable.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Indeed. The one they dropped into the sun was destroyed, and so was the one that overloaded. In the first season, Teal'c told a story of how Nirrti used explosives to destroy a gate. It was probably just sheer luck that the gate they destroyed on the Beliskner was not destroyed...
Hey, anyone remember Apophis' ships in the second season opener? I can't remember, but of the two, only Klorel's ship seemed to have a gate, right? Poppy and Son had to ring over there to escape before the two ships collided.
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"The one they dropped into the sun was destroyed..."
Well, are we sure about that? It ceased to be a problem once it was in the sun, but was it actually destroyed? I mean, you'd think it would be, if they can be destroyed by explosives. But, then, they can fall into a black hole and, far from being destroyed, continue functioning. So, it's hard to say what the criteria are for destroying one.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
A plot device destroys them pretty well.
Posted by WizArtist (Member # 1095) on :
It was the Omega-13 Device....Or the Omega Particle.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
In "The Torment of Tantalus", the gate in that building stopped working after the storm went through. Could the storm have actually destroyed the gate or is it a case of the gate not having any power source whatsoever to be able to function? This doesn't quite seem right given the establishment of an incoming wormhole through the Antarctic gate which had been buried in ice.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
The Gate that dials out is the one that supplies the power. The receiving Gate doesn't need a power source. You're just stuck there after you go through. Ernest's Gate stopped working because it was buried at the bottom of the ocean.
Yes, Klorel's ship was the only one of the two with a Gate aboard.
The Gate Nirti (hot) destroyed blew up because the explosive detonoated while in the wormhole, if I remember correctly.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Something detonating in a wormhole would be difficult given what we know from "38 Minutes" about nothing actually having corporeal existence in a wormhole, the thing being basically equivalent to an interstellar transporter.
As for the gate from "Torment", the gate in "Watergate" was completely submerged and worked fine, so water doesn't interfere. The gate must have had solid matter in the ring. Or, alternately, I suppose someone could have had an active wormhole to the world at the exact time they dialed, but that's a far more complex explanation.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Which makes you wonder about the oft-given advice to bury a gate to stop it from working. The explanation for the iris is that it is placed close enough to the event horizon to stop anything from forming when it comes through. Not even the, uh, "ka-woosh" seems to form when the iris is closed. And yet we've seen a buried gate work before, even excavating out a nice hole in front of it. So do gates still work when something solid is shoved through them or up against them, or not?
(One could point out how the on-location gate is always embedded in apparent rock or metal with no gap for the inner ring to spin around at all, but I suppose that's just nitpicking.)
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
That particular gate was buried while an incoming wormhole was active. All the molten rock burying it fell into the wormhole and was destroyed. (I'd love to know how mass energy conservation deals with that...) Supposedly, when the rock cooled and solidified and the wormhole deactivated, the rock was far enough away from the event horizon for the kawoosh to vaporize more. Or maybe there was a laser of some kind involved in digging out enough for the kawoosh to form. It's been a while.
The basic rule is that if the gate has anything solid inside the ring, it won't activate. If the gate has some sort of shield right on the surface, the kawoosh doesn't form, nor does anything else. Actually, in the novels by the movie creators, someone once stood in the path of someone else coming through a wormhole, and bad things happened to both of them, but that's hardly SG-1 canon.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
In "A Hundred Days", the gate was buried by molten rock, which formed an iris-like effect. What they ended up doing was building a particle beam generator that melted the rock-iris just enough that the kawoosh could form and vapourize the usual area around it. Teal's subsequently harpooned his way through - and we already had a discussion on that.
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"As for the gate from 'Torment', the gate in 'Watergate' was completely submerged and worked fine, so water doesn't interfere. The gate must have had solid matter in the ring."
Well, yeah, it wasn't the water that was the problem. It was all the bits of the collapsed castle.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
quote: All the molten rock burying it fell into the wormhole and was destroyed. (I'd love to know how mass energy conservation deals with that...)
Wouldn't it get dumped back into realspace somewhere in a discorporated state, as per "Hey The Sun Is Blowing Up So Let's Use This Red Filter"?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
If it was an *incoming* wormhole, anything attempting to enter from that Gate would be destroyed, including bits of rock. But I think it was actually an outgoing wormhole, as our heroes were attempting to escape at the time.
TSN: Exactly. Ernest's Gate was likely buried in pieces of castle and cliff when they tried to redial.
Though, this makes one wonder why coverstones and irises keep Gates from working. The coverstones we've seen don't go through the Gate, they just sit on top of it. So theoretically, the Gate should still activate and vaporize the coverstone and all the earth above or below it, depending on how the Gate was buried.
I suppose a handy trick would be to bury the Gate facing down or lay it facing upwards. You'd either have bad guys come through and fall right back into the event horizon, or come through and find themselves buried alive.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
We sorta saw the latter in "Death Knell" last season, where an attack knocked the gate onto its front and excavated a perfect foxhole for the rescue team to come through. As for being on its back, in "The First Commandment" they used it that way as a well of sacrifice, of sorts. Only in "A Hundred Days" do we see stuff EXITING a wormhole when a gate is on its back.
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