Gate travel 102

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Stargate sg-1 game.

The dialling system for the stargate is seven symbol's from a possible list of 38. The Tauri, earth humans, Worked out how to use the gate without a full grasp of all its functions. Some other races while less advanced than the Tauri retain enough ancient knowledge to navigate the gate network more or less safely. They also know how to use a few as yet undiscovered additional functions hidden in the Dial Home Devices complex programming.

Gate functions

DHD diagnostic sequences. The DHD has two rings of symbol's in a sequence that differs from the sequence on the gate it self. The DHD has only 38 symbol's. The gate has 39; the 39th varies from gate to gate and planet to planet. The function of the 39th symbol remains a partial mystery to the Tauri. When they first navigated the gate to Abydos it was a serious problem. Those experienced with gate travel know all 38 glyphs just as you or I know the letters in an alphabet and without much effort can spot the 39th glyph at a glance. It is not always in the same place on the ring relative to the other glyphs. The 39th symbol is only "dialled" when using something other than a DHD.

There are many diagnostic signals sent by the gate to the DHD not all of these are to be seen by human eyes but some are revealed to the observant gate traveller. When a gate activates the ring rotates rapidly. If the gate stops on Norma this indicates that the DHD can't be detected. If it stops on the source worlds home glyph then it reveals that  conditions of the two worlds closely match. If it stops on Gemini then that indicates the same environmental conditions but the gate has had no traffic in the past 50 years. Orion indicates that the Planet is very hot and desert like. Bootes indicates that it is very cold. Aries has the same function as the source world glyph but also indicates that high energy discharges into and at the gate have been detected in the past 16 months. It stops on Aquarius if the gate is under water and a submersible vessel is required to explore the planet beyond. If it stops on Cra, this indicates that the gate is in zero-g, orbit, or vacuum. If it is on an orbiting ship; it stops on Perseus.

Because each gate has a home glyph this should make it impossible to dial a gate if the gate has been moved from planet to planet. It seems that some races, the Goa'uld  and the Tollan know how to overcome this problem.

The coordinate system.

It is easy to describe the sequence as a set of X,Y,Z coordinates but the reality is much more complex. A symbol is not used twice in the address therefore it is not a simple system of numerical values on an axis box. A simple numerical system would use some glyphs more than once. To add complexity, or perhaps as a form of encryption, the sequence is not in the order you would expect.

As might be expected the glyphs all correspond to constellations in a star map. If however you try to use simple astronomy you will fail. Some of these formations are inside the galaxy and others are outside it. The problem is that the closer formations should be useless to any point reference beyond the local area of earths space. They should also be useless in other galaxies. The best guess is that the reference points named and used by the ancients are all very distant but as a teaching aid closer more obvious constellations ended up with the same name. The constellations are distributed spherically around the milky way galaxy.  Their spacing is regular but not perfectly equal or symmetrical in any plane.

Two such stellar reference points define a line through the galaxy, a third defines a plane within it. A fourth and fifth defines a line which may pass through that plane creating a point on that plane. The problem is that this only requires 5 glyphs and results in a very crude reference. Millions of  combinations are excluded where the line does not pass through the plane. Huge areas of space are excluded being too far from any possible combination of plane and line. Thousands of worlds cluster around each possible point.

All is not lost there is much more detail to be found.

Interestingly while there are three glyphs defining any given plane their order is irrelevant. It can go ABC, BCA, CAB, BAC, ACB or CBA. How the gate builders have used this is a matter of further exploration. There is a chance that the planes are not all flat. That 6 choices of curvature are in play. There may simply be 6 off set values along the line.

Like wise the line can be AB or BA. Again this multiplies the options adding the option that one of the two defines a parallel or curved line with pre set standardised parameters. In total these two factors multiply the possible number of points per plane/ line intercept by 12. It makes the astronomy a nightmare but means each 5 glyph combination can define 12 points dozens of parsecs apart.

Even with the above options we are still dealing with several tens of parsecs for each possible point. The plane and line define a point at the centre of a cluster of a few hundred or so star systems. The solution appears to be the 6th  glyph. With 5 glyphs used and none repeatable there are 33 left. The probability of more than 33 habitable worlds being found in our few hundred world cluster is very low. In most cases only one or two will be found. Thus there may in fact be 20 to thirty spare coordinates to work with. This would also help compensate for drift. This might also explain why the keys on the DHD lock down preventing the reuse of any glyph. It reduces the chance of miss dialling a sequence and there is no point reusing keys since the  density of usable worlds is below 3.3 percent per cluster. Our best guess is that the 6th glyph is allocated by distance, with the first available glyph in the anticlockwise direction allocated to the closest system to the point defined by the plane and lines.

Our theory has one outstanding problem.

P3X-447 is a viable gate coordinate however the calculations show that in this case all possible combinations define a line that does not pass through any allowable plane. Either we have got it totally wrong or the gate builders have had yet more mathematical fun. Our guess is that they have an extra parameter in the coordinate system. Studying P3X-447's position relevant to other nearby viable coordinates is helping. The world is not actually on the line but is in the plane and the line passes directly under it. Our opinion that if the line misses the plane the gate builders still use it by applying yet another rule. The obvious assumption is that a new line is defined from the mid point of the line up or down to meet the plane at a right angle to the plane. However there is a catch. The lines are in theory infinite and referenced on point far from our galaxy. How is a mid point defined in such a case? There is however one reference point we have not mentioned and the gate builders may have used it. The galaxy has a central axis of spin and a centre of mass. These would not change over a time period of millennia. In P3X-447's case a line from the centre of mass if plotted in the plane on the galaxy also intercepts with the line from the other two glyphs directly at the world. If this is standard procedure this defines several hundred thousand more points.

We are not totally sure of this conclusion because while these two key lines do meet where the planet sits on the plane. These lines do not meet at a right angle. The angle is 31.4; perhaps a version of pi. We must be careful not to make assumptions about significants of angles like 90 degrees; the gate builders rarely use right angles. There are none in the gate itself.

There are other explanations of the coordination system but few explain why glyphs are not repeated. The reason may be technical, a design limit of the gates technology itself, yet the ancients are break equivalent limits on a regular basis.

It may be just art; the gate builders make a complex use of maths to create complexity and diversity. These facilitate the creation of many coordinates that are used to allow a broad range of locations in the galaxy and beyond. It is our opinion that the full range of options have not yet been explored. More wonders are yet to come.

Kang Ro Ei, Chief of Cosmology. Narras Academy Essara. Invisible League Worlds.

Wesley BruceŠ

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