The JumpGate Phenomenon: HH-091822#082
The history of the JumpGate is a fascinating and mysterious one. JumpGates underpin our daily life and make the galaxy accesible to all. They allow us to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other almost instantly. They hang majestically in space observing the billions of beings that use them every hour. But what are JumpGates, where do they come from, and just who came up with the idea?...Actually, no-one knows.
JumpGates are truly a riddle from the heavens and it seems that they have been in our galaxy a lot longer than we have. Who put them there and for what purpose we can only guess at, but science has probed them long and hard in an attempt to find out what they are and where they came from.
But What IS A JumpGate?
A gigantic 'ring' in space, JumpGates all appear to be exact duplicates of a single design. Amazingly fragile to look at, JumpGates are remarkably strong and are constructed of a material that has so far defied analysis. We now know that a JumpGate is a form of point to point matter transmitter that can transport material from one point to another point. This has not always been so and although they were first catalogued by Numai space travellers over 4000 standard years ago, it's only been in the last 125 standard years that we've found this out. After initial investigation revealed nothing about their purpose, origin, or structure, JumpGate's were placed on the list of 'space oddities' and left to float endlessly while the galaxy expanded around them. The work of the Rifdess archeaologist Nooncol Barni Jamara resulted in his ship travelling over 500 light years from Rifdess 5 to Nutrical almost instantly.
Jamara's beaming of tachion waves into the JumpGate activated what we now know to be a highly focused matter transporter and the result was his ground breaking voyage. Although HOW this happened still eludes science to this day, WHY it happens is far better understood.
Going against all conventional theory, JumpGate's use supposedly 'unstable' tachion waves as a communication system and it's this that activates the gate and sets the destination. The difficulty in controlling tachion waves though means that controlling a JumpGate is very much a black art. The generally accepted theory regarding JumpGates speculates that it should be possible to travel from any one JumpGate to any other JumpGate simply by getting the tachion wave setting correct, but so far only a fraction of these settings are known. With each JumpGate being unique, discovering these settings is a long and slow process and it looks like the dream of travelling from any JumpGate to any other JumpGate is still a long way off. Scientists have discovered though that swamping the JumpGate with tachion particles DOES open up the JumpGate completely and any point can be reached. This is discouraged though as many believe that untold damage may be caused by such actions and as a result such methods are prohibitively expensive to all but the wealthiest of travellers.
So Where Did JumpGates Come From?
The evidence about the Jumpgate's origin is practically non-existant and this has led to endless speculation. Given what we DO know about them it appears that they were constructed somewhere in the region of 500,000 standard years ago by a space faring race (or races) that inhabited our galaxy at the time. Who they were, how they lived, and what happened to them, are all questions that we simply do not know the answers to. Speculation of super beings, religious figures, and even the deadly Renari have all been put forward but without evidence to back them up, they have very little scientific credibility.
So What Next?
Now that the JumpGate puzzle has been solved (to a certain degree) several corporations are very interested in furthering our understanding of these mysterious rings. While their interest is more financial than scientific (they can charge tolls to space travellers) it does mean that they're constantly funding research into JumpGates (for whoever cracks HOW they work could stand to make a monumental profit). The greater the number of destinations, the more traffic a system can expect and that is something that no entrepreneur can ignore. Likewise the intelligent trader can transport goods over great distances and target his market for far greater rewards (rather than limit him/herself to intra-system commerce).
It appears that almost every star system in our galaxy has a JumpGate but as new destinations are discovered, who knows what we'll find out there.
Ronamis Ronami - Chief Curator, Loratis Museum of Time and Space