The Stargate is a piece of alien technology that was built thousands of years ago to as a means of travelling between millions of worlds in several different Galaxies. The Race that ivvented the stargates were called the Alterans to each other, and the Ancients or gate builders in the Milky way and the Ancestors in the Pegasus galxy.

Quick Links: Stargate Basics, Stargate Symbols, How Stargates work, Using the Stargate Stargate Trivia and Facts

Stargate Basics:

The Stargate is a large ciercular device 6.7m in diameter. The Gate is made out of a material called naquadah, which is a quatrzite element that is discribed to "absorb and energizes with neutrinos. The stargate is composed of two rings, one inside and the other on the outer edge of the gate. The the inner ring is spins inside the outer ring and has 39 symbols engraved on it. One the outer ring is located nine "chevrons" spaced evenly around the gate that glow when activated.

The Stargates in the Pegasus galaxy (bottom right) do differ from the milkyway gates (bottom left) in some minor ways. The Pegasus gates only contain 36 symbol instead of the usual 39 on Milky Way gates and the gates in the Asgard galaxy, which apear to be identical to Milky Way gates. The reason for has never been explained but the only reason I can think of is that the Pegasus galaxy is smaller than the Milky Way, meaning there are fewer possible adresses. However I would expect that becasue of the Altantis gate can persumably reach the same number of worlds as the Earth gate, provided it has enough power to reach other galaxies, the Pegasus gates would have the same number of symbols. Either way, no canon explaination has ever been given.

There also exists an other gate farring race called the Tollan, who have the ablity to build their own gates. The Tollan gates are similar in function but aesthetically distinct from Ancient Gates.

Stargate Symbols:

Milky Way Gates:

Position	Symbol	Constellation	Position	Symbol	Constellation	Position	Symbol	Constellation
1		Origin Symbol*	14		Microscopium	27		Taurus
2		Crater	15		Capricornus	28		Auriga
3		Virgo	16		Piscies Austrinus	29		Eridanus
4		Boötes	17		Equuleus	30		Orion
5		Centaurus	18		Aquarius	31		Canis Minor
6		Libra	19		Pegasus	32		Monocreos
7		Serpens Caput	20		Sculptor	33		Gemini
8		Norma	21		Pisces	34		Hydra
9		Scorpius	22		Andromeda	35		Lynx
10		Crona Australis	23		Triangulum	36		Cancer
11		Scutum	24		Aries	37		Sextans
12		Sagittarius	25		Perseus	38		Leo Minor
13		Aquila	26		Cetus	36		Leo

*This sybol is unique to the Earth Gate and does not represent a constellation. Symbol number one veries between planets.

Pegasus Gates:

Position	Symbol	Position	Symbol	Position	Symbol
1*		13		25
2		14		26
3		15		27
4		16		28
5		17		29
6		18		30
7		19		31
8		20		32
9		21		33
10		22		34
11		23		35
12		24		36

*This is the Atlantis Origin symbol

How Stargates Works:

The stargate works by creating a stable wormhole between two gates. This wormhole allows energy to be transported across great distances in a matter of seconds. Because the wormhole that a open gate creates only transfers energy through it but not matter, matter must be transfromed into energy befor travelling through the gate. Matter is turned into energy and it's "pattern" is sent along through the gate. Intrestingly the matter-energy conversion for transport through the gate is much like what happens when a person uses the transporter in Star Trek. In Fact in the episode "48 Hours" Teal'c pattern gets trapped in the gate's pattern buffer when the DHD is destroyed when he is in transit, is much like what Scotty did in "Relics" with the transporter buffer to keep himself alive for 75 years, when his ship crashed. For some unexplained reason gates are only one way when transporting matter. When a gate is dialed the sending gate presumably gets locked into send mode and the recieving gate is locked into recieve mode. What would happened if someone attemped to go through a receiving gate is unknown. One thing to keep in mind is that audio and video signals are two ways when it comes to gate usage because they are already energy. This would suggest that that the one wayness of the gates is tied it the matter-energy conversion process.

Using the Stargate:

Usually a stargate on a planet is acompanied by a device known to the SGC as a DHD or Dial Home Device. The DHDs in both the Milky Way and the Pegasus Galaxy is are nearly identical except for the fact that the Pegasus DHDs are blue and instead of having Earth constellations for symbols it uses what is presuabaly Atlantian constellations.

As you can see the Milky Way DHDs (top left) are nearly identical to the Pegasus DHDs (Top center left) except for the differences outlined above. There are also other non-standard DHDs that were build by the Ancients, such as the DHDs in the Pudle Jumpers (Top center right) and the Atlantis DHD (Top Left). In some cases there is no DHD found with a gate. In that case the people using the gate either have to rig thier own dialing system like the SGC dialing computer. Also the stargate can be activated by manually turning the inner ring of the divice and providing enough power. That is however a long and time consuming process.

To "dial" or activate a gate one must enter seven symbols in order on the DHD and then press the large button in the center. This spins the inside ring until the symbol pressed lines up with the aproperate chevron, the chevron then locks the symbol in. The Seven symbols of the gate adresses are belived to be coordanents using six coordinates that are represented by constellations to form a cube with the reciving gate in the center and the seven symbol is the point of orgin which is unique to each gate. This is demonstrated in the picture below:

Although only seven symbols are needed to dial the gate the stargates have a total of nine chevrons. In "The Fifth Race" and "The Rising" we learn that the eighth chevron is used to dial distant galaxy and is sort of an "area code" of sorts for the gate network. The perpous of the ninth chevron is unknown but fans have spectualted it might have something to do with dialling multiple gates at one, like was done in "The Reckoning Part II", however that is just spectulation. For all we know it could be used to travel through time or to different dimensions or something else entirely different.

Once the seventh symbol is locked in the gate then sends out a signal through subspace to locate a gate in the given coordinates. If this is successful the gate then creates a wormhole through which matter and energy can travel. When the wormhole first forms there is what looks like a plume of water coming out of the gate that then sinks back in. However it is not really water but instead it is a vortex of unstable energy. Any matter caught in the vortex is "vaporized", though this visual effects are inconsitant with a vaporization event. In real life matter does not simple vanish when vaporized, instead it is transformed into a gassous form. More likely what happens is that the matter that touches the plume is transformed into energy that is stored in the gate's capacitors. Once the plume settles in the gate the event horizon is formed and matter can travel through the gate.

When a person steps through the gate they are transported in the method discribed above to another gate somewhere else in the galaxy. There the are reintergrated to into matter and walk out the other gate. This reintergration is the key behind the iris and gate shields. The iris and shield close a couple of mircons away from the even horizon making reintergration impossible.

Stargate Trivia and Facts:

38 Minutes: A Stargate can only be kept open for 38 minutes at a time. There are exceptions to this rule like in "A Matter of Time" the SGC dialed a black hole and the intense gravity caused time to pass much slower on the planet with the recieving gate. That ment that the Earth gate could be open longer becasue 38 minutes didn't pass on the recieving gate. Gravity also had an effect on the wormhole which could also have been a factor. In "Redemption" Anubis' gate weapon also kept the gate on Earth open for hours on end.

Time Travel: In the Episodes "1969" and "2010" the stargate was used for time travel when the wormhole passed nearby a solar flare.

Hitchhiker: In the Episode "Red Sky" the wormhole SG-1 was travelling in inadvertantly passed through the planet's star depositing a heavy element into the star causing it to go red. To correct this the SGC sent a superheavy element through the gate but shut down the gate in mid transit, depositing the base element into the star.

Multigate dialing: In "The Reckoning Part II" Ba'al set the gate on Dakara to dial all gates in the Milky way at one to deliver the anti-replicator energy wave. How he did this is unknown but it was propably either through using the ninth chevron or a modified version of the gate viris from "Avenger 2.0"

Home