What's up with the ninth chevron?

[Nate the Great]

Actually, I believe a Stargate is used to travel nearly instantaneously between two points. That's the entire point of a wormhole. By going "through the paper" the distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri that used to be four lightyears is now the thickness of an event horizon, which we can assume is as next to zero as makes no odds. All of that "going through a blue tunnel with rings of light zipping by" thing is purely for the viewing audience's benefit and entertainment.

You can't "travel" through space that fast because we'd have to turn into energy AND have a nearly-infinite power source. More than Project Arcturus.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

The whole dialling system makes very little sense. Generally, the Stargate series has been pretty good with their science (Red Sky being an exception), but they inherited a whole lot of gibberish from the movie. You don't need six points to define a location in three-dimensional space, you only need three, although that assumes you're using some sort of grid pattern not based on random squiggles. Assigning each gate a unique six-squiggle address is OK as long as you're not pretending it's based on coordinates or constellations (don't get me started on that...).

Speaking of Red Sky, they don't really explain just how they were able to fiddle with the dialling sequence to get a lock. If a planet has a unique Gate address, shouldn't dialling a different address take you to a different planet?

[Nate the Great]

Actually, this whole business of "six coordinates can handle everything" needs a little scrutiny by itself. I propose the following:

1. The galaxy is 100,000 lightyears across.
2. The galaxy rotates around it's center in such a fashion that it can be taken as read that it's standing still, with some line (say the one going through Earth) taken as a "Prime Meridian."
3. Use some form of polar (or rather, cylindrical) coordinate system makes more sense, as I believe that planets get denser as you head inward and sparser as you go outward.
4. Hence three coordinates: angle, distance, and elevation above or below the galactic plane.
5. For gate address 123456, 1 assigns the angle to a range 1/38th of the circle, 2 assigns the angle to a range 1/38th of the previous, or 1444 slices of pie, so to speak. 3 assigns a broad radial band of 5000 lightyears, 4 assigns a narrower radial band of 300 lightyears (all of this is rounding, of course). 5 and 6 assigns the height above or below the galactic plane (I can't assign numbers because I don't recall the galactic height offhand).
6. Within each of these ranges there is precisely 1 Stargate. Or rather, one "active" Gate. This is similar to some of the Star Trek games, where a "sector" is defined by the major planetary system within it.

Actually, by this system I think you'd need another coordinate for the radius to make it work. But at least it makes more sense than the old "box connected to Earth" routine.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

2. The galaxy rotates around it's center in such a fashion that it can be taken as read that it's standing still, with some line (say the one going through Earth) taken as a "Prime Meridian."

I'm pretty sure that's wrong, you know, but don't quote me on it.

[Nate the Great]

PointyHairedJedi: I'm pretty sure that's wrong, you know.

Had to be done.

This also had to be done:

"Darnit, PHJ! I'm an engineer, not an astronomer!"

[Tate]

Actually, it seems that it's right after all. Even though rotation speed would theoretically vary with distance from the galactic center, observations of other spiral galaxies show that it doesn't. Except for the very center of the galaxy, the rotation speed is pretty much a constant. So it sounds like a line through a star could serve as a prime meridian.

[Nate the Great]

Hey, cool. And as for stars closer to the galactic core, you could take one of the angular coordinates (since the slices of pie get so much narrower) and use it to compensate for radial speed.