Skip to main content

Is there any indicator as to how many planets have Stargates?


I'm trying to figure out how many planets have stargates in the Stargate universe, preferably separated by galaxy. I've recently thought about just how many stars there are in the galaxy, and roughly what fraction of them would have a stargate, just to run through some numbers.



Bonus points if you compare the number of stargates to the number of stars in the galaxy, distance between stargates, etc.



Answer



To my knowledge, there was never a number given for the number of Stargates in the Milky Way or Pegasus galaxies. An out of universe explanation for this is that giving such a number would limit the number of planets they could visit and thus the number of episodes they could have on different planets. Such a limit would also prevent the writers from easily doing things like pulling 17 gates from each galaxy to build an intergalactic bridge, which would further reduce the number of gates in the galaxy.


This is a pretty comprehensive list of the known gates and addresses.


On the other hand, for Stargate Universe, we know that the trail of gates left behind the seed ships have been going for 60 million years, and their FTL is pretty quick. If one ship is able to seed a gate on one planet each week, then that means there are roughly 3.13064742 × 10^9 gates spread across the universe, per seed ship.


After reading a few of the Stargate wiki pages, I rewatched a couple of episodes that I thought might provide clues. In Avenger 2.0, a season 7 episode, Felcher's assistant Chloe provides a hint to the number of gates in the Milky Way. They deploy a virus that scrambles the glyphs on a DHD so they no longer correspond to the correct coordinates. This makes it so the DHD for that gate doesn't work. This virus then spreads to other gates, and Chloe says:



If each gate only dials 2 others before adapting to the new system, the entire network will be affected in less than 2 hours.



This was several hours after they'd deployed the virus. What follows is speculation, inferring from what is in the episode. The above quote was from later in the day they deployed the virus to one gate. If we assume they deployed the virus first thing in the day, and learned of the ramifications at midday, then there are ~5 hours of the virus spreading prior to that quote. Add 2 more hours, we get 7 total. We don't know how long it takes for one gate to dial another gate and send the update, so for an upper bound on the number of gates, let's assume that it's instantaneous once the two gates connect.



One gate dials one other gate (1 infected DHD), sends the update (2 total), then both gates dial another (4 total). Then the first infected gate is done, and the 3 others dial out (7 total). Then the second infected gate is done, so 5 of the gates dial out (12 total). Next 8 of them will dial out. The number of gates dialing each time is going to follow the Fibonacci sequence.


So, now we know how long it will take to spread, and how quickly it spreads to new gates. If we assume that the dialing process takes 1 minute, it will run for 420 iterations. But that yields a number larger than the number of stars in the galaxy. By like 10^78th power. If it takes 2 minutes to dial, that comes down to 10^35th.


I hate it when writers don't do research.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more