Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Moving along in reviewing SGA for the season 4 premier, I'm just about halfway through season 2 now. Couple of random musings have occurred to me that I thought to discuss on here.
-Aurora class: Can anyone tell how big it is? Do you think they all have hundreds of stasis pods built into them? It doesn't seem entirely practical, BUT that would depend on the size of the ship. (City-ships wouldn't be practical to have them either, because they have a much higher population density, I'd assume)
-ZPMs: How many could the Ancients make? I remember from the Asurans episodes (I don't recall if they're season 2 or 3 at this point but I think 3) that the Asurans had the capacity to manufacture "an unlimited supply" of them. If the Lanteans could as well, could they give every ship a ZPM? If they could, why wouldn't they? The Orion and Aurora don't have them (not mentioned anyway) so that seems to be an answer...but does that make the Asurans liars, or more advanced than the Lanteans? (And where does the massive energy stored in them COME from? I mean, you can't store energy - even by creating a universe-in-a-bottle - without having that energy in the first place.)
-The Four Races: Why didn't the Ancients share more of their tech with the other three? They seem far more advanced 10,000 years ago than the Asgard are even now. (The Nox do seem to have *really* perfected cloaking technology - but even Atlantis can cloak with a simple part-swap.) The only exception to this I can think of is the Asgard beam. The Ancients could beam from room to room, or via rings, but not through open space. Also, the Asgard beam (see that rather disappointing "Unending") can be used to create matter out of nothing (say hello 'replicators', heheh). Does that beaming tech seem like something that could have been developed in only 10,000 years, or did the Asgard have it back then? If they did, why didn't the Ancients? I only ask *that* apparently stupid question because tech development (when it's not reverse-engineered, stolen, or a gift, that is) seems reallllly slow in the SG universe - over millions of years the Ancients didn't really improve a great deal...they went from hyperspace-capable city-ship to...hyperspace-capable city ship. But then, they were rather the pinnacle, weren't they? And again, pinnacle or no, no beaming tech....
-Do you think the Stargates in the Ida galaxy were installed by the Ancients, or the Asgard? This brings up the question of, can the Asgards make Stargates? The Tollan can, and they're not nearly as advanced. If the Asgard can construct the Ancient's greatest achievement, is it fair to say they're finally on par with the Ancients? And it also leads me to wonder how many Alterans there *were.* Sure, it took millions of years per galaxy, but they installed Gates on untold thousands of worlds that they themselves probably terraformed (witness multiple habitable planets in solar systems, esp. Lantea) throughout the entire galaxy. That requires a lot of resources and population to get done, I'd think - both the manufacture *and* distribution.
Well, I'd say this post is long enough.
Registered: Jul 2005
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At this point one ought to just forget anything that happened in SG-1 prior to season three or so, it seems, at least regarding non-Goa'uld backstory.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
The Tollan gate was built with help from the Nox, IIRC. It's also worth noting that the Furlings could beam through open space, seemingly.
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
I know the ZPM harvests zero-point energy; but it harvests zero-point energy from an artificial universe: an "artificial region of subspace-time; kind of like a universe-in-a-bottle." Project Arcturus harvested zero-point energy from OUR universe, and was a bust due to the creation of exotic particles unpredictable by physics. ZPMs therefore have to be created; it takes energy to store energy, even if 'storing energy' means 'creating a micro-universe.'
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Then I'm not sure I understand your original question. (Though I'm ready to postulate that a wizard did it.) They do seem to sometimes treat them as batteries, and sometimes as generators.
Registered: Mar 1999
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Yeah... It keeps going and going and going....till the plot runs out.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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The Aurora is best guestimated at about 500m long. A Daedalus class ship is around 335m.
2) For the capital city of the Lantean society NOT to be able to manfacture its own ZPMs is silly. I like to think that the technology to create them was taken with 'em back to the Milky Way when everyone jumped ship, leaving only the three powering Atlantis plus whichever other ones they had scattered around Pegasus.
The Lantean ship Tria had a ZPM, and was using it to travel at near lightspeed to the Milky Way since their hyperdrive was destroyed. I don't think it was a standard piece of equipment. Only the Asurans seem to have the technology to make them now. However ZPMs work, there has been mention made of their structure reaching "maximum entropy" and thus losing their ability to draw power from subspace.
3) Each of the four races seemed to have plateaued in their technological development at a stage where they couldn't advance further, or didn't want to. The Nox seemed happy being able to hide and heal, while the Ancients and the Asgard were basically able to do anything they wanted to have a happy Trekkie existence, at least until species-extinction reared its head. Eath and its allies are making rapid progress mostly because they're only making it TO that point. Lots of Ancient and Asgard tech seems to be far over anyone's heads anyway, to the point that it wouldn't be NEEDED in everyday life (who needs to reboot all life in the galaxy, anyway?). It's like us and nuclear technology. No one really understands how to make it, we benefit from it anyway, and it's otherwise just out of everyone's reach.
As for the beaming thing, well... Who needs beaming when you've got rings, gates and jumpers? They get'cha where you're going either way. Perhaps everyone was freaked out that over-use fo beaming will make you look withered and googly-eyed and sterile like the Asgard.
4) The one gate we saw in the Ida galaxy seemed to be of Milky Way design, so it stands to reason that the Asgard didn't have much need to them. They seemed perfectly capable of travelling between stars and whole galaxies in very short times by ship. They just did stuff differently.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
"Maximum entropy" is actually exactly what you'd say if what you were doing is draining the energy from an artificial universe. See, when a universe dies, depending on a particular little constant, it will either go into a Big Crunch, or it will expand out forever until the energy in it is spread so thin that every particle in the universe is almost at absolute zero and has not enough energy to interact with anything else - a long, slow, cold, dark death where the energy content of the universe is at maximum entropy (the most possible 'spread' of energy and the most possible disorder in matter).
And bear in mind the artificial universe need not even be contained within the ZPM itself - the ZPM could be the 'umbilical cord' that connects the 'baby'verse to our own universe. Some physicists speculate that's what black holes are, and that energy can only move from the parent to the child (not the other way around). I'm perfectly willing to believe they're wrong - I'm a great believer in paradigm shifts...
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I've always been of the opinion that the Gate seen in the Ida galaxy was the only one there, established by the Ancients as a means to travel back and forth to the Asgard planet. The Asgard, as was mentioned, don't seem to have need of a Gate network themselves, but as far as maintaining communication and diplomacy with the other 3 races, it would be convenient.
posted
Yes, and the one gate we've seen in Ida seems to have been placed in an important location (as Asgard started popping up immediately after O'Neil arrived). However, it' snot like ANYONE can just gate there on a whim, as you need a ZPM or other large power source to get there. I'd like to think that the United Nations planet was one place so-equipped to travel to Ida, but we may never know (and there's no real need to go back there now anyway).
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Yeah, no need for that Universal Language - everyone speaks English. (Seriously though, yeah, all that stuff is surely in the Ancient Database and probably the Asgard computer as well).
I *still* wonder, if Asgard weapons on Odyssey can outmatch an Ori mothership, why the small fleet of O'Neill-class Asgard battleships didn't fare better in the Battle of PY-Whateveritwas. They should have wiped them the fuck out, especially supported with the absolute *fleet* of Ha'taks lent to the battle by the Free Jaffa and the Lucian Alliance. And if the Ancient Database will contain any info on how to modify the Asgard power core so as not to be trackable from hyperspace; and whether we'll ever hear mention of the Asgard legacy again in Atlantis. Or the Nox or Tollan; I'm sure we won't, but that'd just be beyond cool to see serious colleague-level relationships developing betwixt the Tau'ri and the 'elder' type races.
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quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: I'm a great believer in paradigm shifts...
Does that mean that one day you wont be?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Deep, man. Meta.
I should clarify, I meant that I believe we as a species will continue to have paradigm shifts over and over every so often until the universe ends.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Civilizations rise and fall periodicly, so there's no reason to think the "advanced" races dont occasionally backslide into anarchy and then re-form into new, distinct communities. Consider a situation like China and Japan: over tens of thousands of years and lightyears of distance, there should be several seperate cultures of Asgard, Aint-cent,Nox (or any other long-lived race). You'd expect some worlds colonized by older races to be far removed in social structure from the ones we normally see- a mean, xenephobic, militaristic Nox might be fun too.
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Or even just a SINGLE Nox who didn't find him/herself bound in their value systems. I can't believe EVERY Nox agrees with every OTHER Nox.
Registered: Jul 2005
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
(Seriously though, yeah, all that stuff is surely in the Ancient Database and probably the Asgard computer as well).
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