What's up with the ninth chevron?

[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.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by 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.

I don't watch the show, but I assume that by "points" you mean "coordinates" or "numbers" or some such.
If you want to justify six coordinates, the values could be (x, y, z, t, energy required, check digit) or some such.

[Nate the Great]

I can't remember where I read this the other day, but someone was bringing up the whole "there are more than 39 Stargates, so this whole system is hooey" argument. Apparently, they don't realize that the point of origin is not one of the 38 standard glyphs, it's a symbol all it's own that's located in the same position on each Stargate. It's just like if my Enter key was painted red, Zeke's was painted blue, Sa'ar's was painted green, and so on. All else being equal, it's a quick way to point out "hey, I'm the Enter Key!"

I pity people (fictional though they may be) that have to use Pegasus Gates. Have you paid close attention to one of those glyphs? It's not five or so points in a simple pattern, it's dozens in a vague blob that you have to memorize!