Stargate vs ???

[adam_grif]

If it helps, think of "Event Horizon" as having undergone extensive linguistic change in the SGverse, ala "turbolasers" in the SWverse.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I always thought of "event horizon" to mean "point of no return." Now, before anyone goes all ape shit at me for a probably incorrect and oversimplistic definition, think about it.

It certainly aplies to Stargate, with the "event horizon" being the point of no return for that wormhole, once you cross it, you can't go back without closing the wornhole and opening a new one, hence, "point of no return"

[NecronLord]

I always thought of "event horizon" to mean "point of no return." Now, before anyone goes all ape shit at me for a probably incorrect and oversimplistic definition, think about it.

It certainly aplies to Stargate, with the "event horizon" being the point of no return for that wormhole, once you cross it, you can't go back without closing the wornhole and opening a new one, hence, "point of no return"

Technically, you can go back, if you're EM. But yeah, it makes a metaphorical kind of sense, but I doubt they thought that deep; the idea that it's a wormhole would be where they got it from, then they made it a microscopic wormhole with a glorified transporter that shoots you through it.

[Crazedwraith]

I always thought of "event horizon" to mean "point of no return." Now, before anyone goes all ape shit at me for a probably incorrect and oversimplistic definition, think about it.

It certainly aplies to Stargate, with the "event horizon" being the point of no return for that wormhole, once you cross it, you can't go back without closing the wornhole and opening a new one, hence, "point of no return"

Except you can. You can stick and an arm in and out an outgoing wormhole to no effect. (O'Neill often demonstrates this running his hand through the puddle. which was expensive enough that the producers took the cost for the effect out of RDA's paycheck)

The concept of the MALP-on-a-stick in the Atlantis episode also precludes this.

[Batman]

O'Neill on one occasion used this to his advantage. By sticking his arm into the receiving end of an outgoing wormhole, he forced it to stay open, preventing the rogue NID agents who went around stealing alien tech from dialing somewhere else.
Heck, an early SGA episode centered on a jumper stuck halfway through the gate.

[adam_grif]

New theory time:

It used to be a point of no return, but after several high profile slayings involving rich brats who got stuck halfway before deciding to back out and were chopped in half as a result, the Lantean Health and Safety council forced the Stargate Corporation to enact safety measures to prevent things like this from happening. "Event Horizon" was just the cool marketing slogan they came up with to sell their product, and the name stuck. Thousands of nerds on sub-space chatrooms and image boards were furious at the incorrect terminology. The Lantean Libertarian Society was angry that the Health and Safety board was daring to intervene with the free market. The Libertarian society had previously (successfully) protested to have all forced safety regulations on the ancient head sucker knowledge banks repealed, on the grounds that the warning labels were printed in plain sight in Lantean, Nox, Asgard and Furlong, so only an idiot would use it. They were planning to protest the Stargate thing too, but then the plague came and none of them could afford the cure because of shitty Ancient healthcare.

[Batman]

New new theory: The Lanteans used the term 'event horizon' for the same reason the SG producers did, because it was vaguely connected to wormholes (however tentatively and, in this case, inappropriately) and initially the Stargate system was a great success, until one of those time-traveling scamps went to their relative future and saw 'Event Horizon'. He returned and started proselytizing that far from being a safe, fast, and damn convenient way to go places, the Stargate was instead a direct gate to hell. The gullible masses from there onwards refused the Gates, the smart Lanteans Ascended out of disgust for their brethren, and when the plague came about, the remaining population didn't have the brains to maintain their health care system and eventually died out.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Oooook slightly slightly random there. Ordinarily I'd join in with a new new NEW theory, but sadly my Ancient Funky Theory Generator (TM) just exploded due to poorly labelled safety concerns, so I am too busy trying to contact Pegasus to get the damn thing fixed

Anyhoo, when i thought of it as "point of no return" i meant once you'd FULLY passed it, as a real person not some silly EM wave. I did say don't get pissy cos of the simplified idea btw

[NecronLord]

New theory time:

It used to be a point of no return, but after several high profile slayings involving rich brats who got stuck halfway before deciding to back out and were chopped in half as a result, the Lantean Health and Safety council forced the Stargate Corporation to enact safety measures to prevent things like this from happening. "Event Horizon" was just the cool marketing slogan they came up with to sell their product, and the name stuck. Thousands of nerds on sub-space chatrooms and image boards were furious at the incorrect terminology. The Lantean Libertarian Society was angry that the Health and Safety board was daring to intervene with the free market. The Libertarian society had previously (successfully) protested to have all forced safety regulations on the ancient head sucker knowledge banks repealed, on the grounds that the warning labels were printed in plain sight in Lantean, Nox, Asgard and Furlong, so only an idiot would use it. They were planning to protest the Stargate thing too, but then the plague came and none of them could afford the cure because of shitty Ancient healthcare.

Your nonsense offends me sir.

[adam_grif]

Back on topic, the time dilation tech would also be very useful for R&D and construction work. I'm evnisioning a reconstructed Area 51, complete with it's own Asgard core and extensive independent power supply, with researchers going on month-long research benders that only take a few hours in the real world.

For the standard Vs scenario, blockading the wormhole with intensive time dilation in one way then making use of the opposite effect for your research + construction efforts means that, if used competently, you'd expect to be able to build up a nice fleet and advance your tech quite rapidly. The bottleneck for production would thus be getting raw materials in sufficient quantities and in-place.

Of course, if you were to throw it at something like Star Wars, it's still exceedingly unlikely that you could possibly hope to buy enough time with the dilation trick to pull off a victory, and totally impossible to quantify given the speculative nature of "future tech" in a completely fictional universe. We can't determine what they'll have in the future since we haven no idea what the physical limits are for those 'verses.


The ZPM power output has been previously stated, but I've heard in a few places people claiming that ZPM's canonically have the power to blow up a solar system or something. Where did this come from? I thought the solar system scorching was from that real-space zero point reactor thingie that went critical?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Adam_grif

I agree wholeheartedly with the use of time dilation/acceleration in a strategic role, it could indeed be a potentially devastating advantage. I still dont think it could be realisticaly used in a tactical sens though.

Also, the ZPM solar system blowing up came from "zero Hour" where Camulus tampered with a ZPM and if it had been plugged in it would have taken everything else with it to hell.

Ordinarily though, we have seen three ZPMs overloading as merely destroying the ASuran city ship above Lantea, without collateral damage to Atlantis, so I think the solar system destruction was not presentative of ZPMs

[adam_grif]

Given the wildly inconsistent levels of ZPM potential output, could it be that the Ancients put some kind of safety measures in place to prevent catastrophic overloads, that prevent getting the most out of it in order to prevent them from doing that very thing? Then, when camulus tampers with it, this was removed, it would have given a full bang, etc.

Also, perhaps the way that the ZPM's work means that rapidly drawing power from them somehow reduces the total power that can be extracted from it. This might explain why they can sometimes be depleted extremely rapidly and sometimes they last zillions of years.

[Batman]

When have we actually SEEN ZPMs last zillions of years? I know that I earlier pointed out that to take out a solar system by brute force they would NEED that kind of energy capacity, but hat doesn't mean they actually HAVE it. Even if the system destruction power is THERE it doesn't have to be a DET event, especially as SG is lousy with non-DET events.

[adam_grif]

It just seems odd that they can be depleted so quickly when they're apparently designed to power things for decades or hundreds of years. From memory there was that EM field that had been powered for a stupidly long time with a minimal power draw, and over in SG-1 it was able to power some ridiculous level of time dilation, convert energy into matter to feed people, provide oxygen and drinking water, and keep the lights running on the Odyssey for >50 years. Even then, it hadn't run out, it just didn't have enough juice left to reverse time for the ship. But then whenever Atlantis comes under fire it's like "Oh no 2 days of power left". Anytime they need to do anything important or plot related they manage to totally deplete their ZPMs and need to find new ones.

Even if the system destruction power is THERE it doesn't have to be a DET event, especially as SG is lousy with non-DET events.

What is a DET event?

For destructiveness, we've seen that if you fill an asteroid with Naquadah, then nuke it, it will output Nova level energies, at least for a short time. ZPM's are supposed to be the ultimate pinnacle of power generation technology, so it being able to approach this level of output (the "can destroy a solar system" line would put it there) would at least be consistent with it.

If large power spikes necessitated by shields coming under constant bombardment "poisoned the well" and prevented efficient extraction of power / made power lost to the ZPM, it might patch up the various statements and energy calcs.

It would also be consistent with Atlantis being designed for 3 ZPM's simultaneously, instead of simply plugging in one, depleting it, then plugging in the next one, depleting it...

[NecronLord]

DET is an acronym for 'Direct Energy Transfer' as opposed to funky sci-fi weapons that induce a chain reaction in their target, like say, Anubis' planet killer, or the Tok'ra bomb they used to blow up Delmak.

When have we actually SEEN ZPMs last zillions of years? I know that I earlier pointed out that to take out a solar system by brute force they would NEED that kind of energy capacity, but hat doesn't mean they actually HAVE it. Even if the system destruction power is THERE it doesn't have to be a DET event, especially as SG is lousy with non-DET events.

The one at Taeonas was probably millions of years old, according to its intro.

[adam_grif]

Oh, right.

Now that I think about it, it probably wasn't nova level, but I haven't seen the episode since like '05 or something when I rented the the S5 box set. It was energetic enough to boil Earth's oceans from (iirc) somewhere between the Earth and the Moon. Must have been a pretty big bang due to inverse square law, no?

Would it be possible to run calcs for naquadah energy release based on assuming that the asteroid was as large as could possibly be destroyed by a 1200 MT bomb (the yield of the one sent to blow it apart by SGC), and the minimum temperature necessary to boil the surface water of the Earth?

[NecronLord]

It was outright said to be:

O'NEILL
So, what happens when that bomb goes off?

CARTER
Well, the explosion will be enhanced by the Naquadah probably to the force of a small nova. This close to the Earth, it would be enough to set the atmosphere on fire and boil the oceans.

[adam_grif]

So that's why I had it in my head that it was a Nova

Of course that sounds like she's just done some back of the envelope calcs, or worse, estimated.

[NecronLord]

Worth remembering that Anubis obviously planned all this. So it would at least have totalled Earth, as that was his plan.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Bit redundant though. Even a small nova would total the Earth from quite a bit further away than that asteroid. Setting the atmosphere on fire and boiling the oceans probably wouldn't need nova-level energy even at the distance of the Moon

[adam_grif]

As a curiosity, do you think a bomb that would boil Earth's oceans at greater than the distance from the Earth to the moon would obliterate a wars ship if it went off a few hundred KM's away? It'd be nice to know that it's at least possible for them to take out something, even if getting that much firepower in one place is hideously expensive and impractical...

And hey, how did Anubis move it into place in the first place? A shuttle hyperdrive could move it a tiny distance, presumably a Ha'tak drive would be able to make it go much further. I wonder what it would take to get one of those things mobile enough to prance around the galaxy as a missile.