What stops a Stargate from working? The Stargate on Abydos was buried on two separate occasions to prevent anyone getting through. But why should burying a Gate stop it working?

SGC close a titanium/trinium iris in front of their Stargate, but even though the Whoosh has nowhere to whoosh to, the wormhole still manages to open successfully behind the iris. A wormhole will still open if the Gate is lying down. And the season 2 episode Prisoners establishes that if you stand within the Whoosh zone you’ll get annihilated. Once the Abydos Stargate had been buried, therefore, I would think that the Whoosh would have had no difficulty punching through earth and rocks.

The only way you could prevent anyone getting through would be to either bury it so deep that the Whoosh wouldn’t reach the surface, or bury it face down. It wouldn’t stop the Gate from working but would mean that anyone coming through would end up in a small cave the exact size of the Whoosh zone and with no means of getting back through the Gate again - or of surviving long unless someone heard your cries for help and broke out the shovels.

Which doesn’t explain why, when SGC sent a probe through to Abydos after the events of the movie and before the Gate was unburied, the probe was flattened. It ought to have arrived safely but then couldn’t see anything because (unknown to SGC) it was underground.

And I wonder how many dead Jaffa the Abydonians found when they dug the Gate up the second time?! (Though that does make a potential nit of Apophis’ timely arrival just after Amonet had given birth, unless he threw another hapless Jaffa through off-camera.)

It should also mean that, if there’s ever another surge in an off-world planet while any SG team is dialling home and the wormhole diverts to the second Stargate with its permanent iris (as at the early part of season 3, anyway!), the team will be in a lot of trouble cos they’ll have no idea that they’re jumping into a wormhole with a dead end...

Good points.

I think that the burying the gate idea orginiated in the movie before it was established that the 'whoosh wash' annihilated things. But it is a very good point.

The only anti-nit guess I can come up with is that maybe the 'whoosh' has to have room to build up enough momementum to annihilate anything. Kinda like an inverse explosion, instead of tight spaces intensifying the 'whoosh'/blast it kills it. But like I said I'm just guessing.

Personally I can't say I blame the writers much, both are cool ideas: having the stay out of the way of the 'whoosh' and having people/things flatten if the gate is blocked. They really should have choosen only one though.

A good logically solution to the confusion would be something like if they is an object sticking though the gate then it can't open (like if it was filled in) so the surface of the wormhole couldn't form. or something like that. I'm just spitballing.

Something that I thought might be better put under here rather than on the Nemesis board.

I wonder if we'll ever find out if the gates have a function to find out who last dialled in. I've been wondering for a while if we'll ever see an episode that deals with another world working out how to use the Stargate and dialling into the Earth gate. There are already plenty of species we know that have the knowledge and wisdom to figure out how to work them (Heck, the Tolan even BUILT a gate) so there must be some scope for an episode like that where the tables are turned. Of course they'd probably splat/squish against the Iris at first but there must be away round that plot somehow...perhaps something like the plot point they use to allow the likes of the Tok'Ra and Tolan to contact the SGC.

Another separate point. If the gates do work like I've theorised on the Nemesis board how did Melbourne and his people find this out? How many "cold callings" did the SGC get before Melbourne and his team worked this out? I can see it now in the SGC Command room: "General Hammond sir, its another one of those calls. All I can hear is heavy breathing at the other end. What shall I do?"

I still can’t work out how Maybourne’s spy at SGC (I’m keeping it vague for people who’ve not yet seen the episode where they find out who the spy is) was able to notify NID at the precise moment that SGC were using the Gate. I think it was in Touchstone that it was suggested that that’s how NID were using the second Gate: they were told when the SGC Gate was active and their people then dialled home. So presumably when the SGC Gate was ‘engaged’, the Antarctica Gate would answer instead. But how long would all this take?! Spy has to wait until either SGC or an off-world SG team start dialling, then contact Maybourne (I can just see it: “Excuse me, General Hammond, I have to go and make an urgent phone call – again”). Maybourne then has to fire up his Gate and send a radio signal through to his off-world team and then close down the Gate so that his boys can dial home. By that time the SGC Gate will be have finished its job ages ago and be shut down again, so it should be the one that answers!

Ahahahahah Callie my dear. Its obvious how he/she managed to do it. Alien tech. They grabbed this flashy communications device that transmits a signal almost instantaneous (Like the Nox/Tolan doo-dah) and isn't detectable by the SGC. See, its simple. ;)

Hey, Smarty Pants - don't get too cocky, cos that's what the writers do and look where it's got them!! ;-)

Hmmm, now I come to think of it, where has it got them? Well for a start it's got them a really nice salary - probably more per episode than I earn in six months - which they get regardless of how many errors they make in the series ... Alright, SK, looks like you are onto a good thing here!

Well the reason I think the probes they talked about in the first episode were crushed is because the gate was facing down and buried so when someone dialed, the woosh anialated the rock underneath but as soon as it did, the rock above it fell through the empty space and crushed the probe.

As far as the multiple stargates go, it is a nit, a pretty big one because if that stargate in the Antarctic was there all these years and it was working, then how does the wormhole know which gate to send our heroes to? each time they dialed home there should have been a 50/50 chance that the gate in the Antarctic would open instead of ours. I don't understand why the gate at SGC was always treated as the default Gate and only shunted travelers to the Antarctic gate when there was a surge, there was nothing special about SGC's gate and both gates work just fine.

its something the writers seemed to have overlooked.

Maybe the older gate has some programming in it so that it only activates when it gets the overload signal from the newer gate?

Why doesn't the iris get annihilated every time the stargate wooshes while it's closed?

I think this now becomes a genuine nit – up until now I’d assumed that the titanium/trinium mix of the iris was mega mega strong and could withstand the Whoosh, but there have been enough episodes where they don’t close the iris until after the Whoosh that, in my opinion, this is yet another example of the writers not having a bible which they can consult. Different writers appear to have different opinions on whether to close the iris before or afterwards.

Of course, if I was an even worse anorak than I already am, I’d sit through every episode again making a list of who wrote the episode and when each writer had the iris closing, just to prove my point, but I haven’t got the inclination just yet. Maybe next week ... ;-)

This discussion started under Season 3’s New Ground but I’ve copied it over here in order to not include any spoilers within the episode page. There are spoilers for Seasons 3, 4 and 5 episodes in this posting.

The conversation started like this:

By Callie on Friday, February 15, 2002
This episode (New Ground) directly contradicts A Hundred Days (both Season 3).

In A Hundred Days, an offworld Stargate was knocked onto its back. SGC could only tell what condition it was in by sending through a MALP which sent telemetry for a split second before cutting off. Sam concluded from this that the MALP had emerged through the lying-down Stargate and had promptly fallen back in and been vapourised.

In this episode (New Ground), Nyan puts his hand into the event horizon of the incoming wormhole. Why wasn’t his hand vapourised?
For that matter, why wouldn't the Stargate respond when it was covered with rock? The Whoosh should have been able to blast through the rock with no difficulty.

By KAM on Monday, February 18, 2002
Maybe a wormhole doesn't form if something is in the ring, like dirt or rock?

By Callie on Friday, February 19, 2002
Which would make plenty of sense until you go back to A Hundred Days again. The melted naqahdah 'iris' that formed over Edora's Stargate can't possibly have left a convenient gap behind it - so the place where the event horizon forms must have been also filled with naqahdah or other rubble, yet that Gate answered.

I recently read a transcript of an interview with one of the producers who said that they have a Stargate Bible that's bigger than the Bible. I just wish they'd flippin' well refer to it occasionally!

By KAM on Monday, February 19, 2002
I got the impression that the naquadah iris formed on the surface of the wormhole in A Hundred Days and didn't pass through the ring. The original cover stone on the Cairo Stargate may have actually gone through the ring to keep it from activating.
At least that's how I would have written it.

By Art Vandelay on Tuesday, February 19, 2002
I don't know if this counts as canon since it was cut out of the original movie, but the additional footage on the movie DVD shows that the gate did open after the coverstone was placed on it. The footage shows some Jaffa which have been embedded in the rock.
This may answer a nit on the movie board when Jack goes 'I'm here in case you succeed.' He's seen the Jaffa in the rock and knows they are not human (or terrestrial).

By Callie, now!
Ooh! That scene would have helped a LOT in making more sense of how Dr Langford’s team knew that, once they’d got it to work, it was likely to go offworld. It would also back up the times during the series when it has been possible to open a Stargate when it’s lying down and/or buried.

What still doesn’t make sense to me is whether it’s canon that debris inside the circle stops a wormhole forming. The partially excavated Stargate on Nyan’s world in New Ground still had solid rock inside its circle – it was only the Gate itself that had been unearthed. And regardless of the fact that the Stargate on Edora in A Hundred Days had a naqahdah iris over the top of it, the explosion from the meteorite which knocked it over in the first place almost must have resulted in there being some debris under the circle and inside it. But both Gates answered when SGC dialled them.

So far so good, but in Season 4’s Double Jeopardy, SGC dial a planet that they believed had buried their Stargate and when the wormhole forms, Sam says convincingly, “They didn’t bury it,” suggesting that the wormhole wouldn’t have formed if the Gate was below ground. Also, in Season 5’s 48 Hours (which I’ve only seen the first 15 minutes of because of dodgy downloads!), they move the SGC’s iris inside the Gate to stop anyone dialling in! So in these two cases, something inside the circle does stop the wormhole from forming.

By now, the writers really ought to have developed a policy on what will and will not stop a wormhole forming – and they ought to stick to it! It makes so much more sense to have a single policy – Keith’s suggestion that debris inside the circle stops a wormhole forming seems fine to me and it’s a shame that certain episodes have to contradict that.

Another major thing that hasn’t been established by the end of Season 4 is whether burying a Stargate face down will prevent it from working. If a face down burial does stop a Gate opening, it would make sense of episodes where SGC can’t get a Gate to answer when it did in the past. It would explain why - between the events of the movie and the first episode of the series – a probe sent to Abydos was ‘flattened’ at the Abydos end. It would explain why SG-1 have told more than one race to bury their Stargate and haven’t appeared bothered that, if they don’t bury it deep enough, bad guys could tunnel their way out. And it would help to explain why Sam can tell whether a Gate has been buried or not simply by dialling it up. If only they’d said something during an episode, I’d be a much happier bunny!

Here's an interesting question: Given that supposedly the first six coordinates are the location of the stargate you're dialing, how would you compensate for the gate being on a starship? It's constantly moving, and the coordinates would be even less likely to be the same than on a planet.

Also, someone pointed out the nit of the Ancients using Earth constellations. I'm beginning to wonder if in fact the Ancients are either a)from Earth to begin with, or b)were based here for a long time eons ago. There are (including Stargate Atlantis) three gates here. Too my knowledge, none of the other planets on the network have more than one. Granted, the Go'auld could have moved them, but it is an interesting point.

Since the Ancients are going to be figuring into next season, maybe we'll find the answer.

Marc

Marc, you can only dial a Stargate on a ship if the ship is near a planet with a Gate. This is established in the crossover episodes between Season 1 and 2 (spoilers follow).

While Apophis’ ship was in orbit around the Goa’uld homeworld, SG-1 were able to dial into the Gate. When they tried to dial out from the ship, however, they couldn’t because by then the ship was too far away from the planet. At the end of the episode when the ship was near Earth, the Gate could again be used to dial out. I don’t believe that the dialee (I’m keeping this vague in case you’ve not seen the episodes) could have dialled Earth itself (see Season 1’s Solitudes) but it was possible to dial any other Gate in the same way as you would do from Earth.

What’s not been made totally clear is what would have happened if somebody had tried to dial in to Earth while there were two active Stargates in the vicinity. If the events of Season 4’s Watergate are correct, I assume that anybody dialling Earth’s coordinates would have arrived on Apophis’ ship because, having a DHD, it would have over-ruled SGC’s Gate as the dominant one.

I actually don't mind spoilers (wait, I take that back, I still have to get those two people for spoiling the "I see dead people" movie (••••, I can't remember the title.

Has it been answered how close you have to be to the planet for it to work. In a later episode they send a gate into a sun, and that's pretty far away.

Marc

I don't think it's ever been established how far away you can be. However with the ep where they fire it into the sun it was already connected so, given a little leeway, you could say that once it's connected it'd be able to hold that connection until it was shut off. That's never been "officially" said anywhere but you could say that's the behaviour due to this episode and one of the season 6 episodes as well where they *spoiler* remove the gate from the gateroom and fire it into a hyperspace window.

Well, to be fair, the Gate was only 3 million miles away from Earth at the end of Redemption. The one shot into Vorash's sun during Exodus must have travelled tens of millions of miles and it still remained connected to its wormhole.

Perhaps the wormhole will stay connected while the Gate is within its own solar system?

Oh, and Marc, the film you're thinking of is The Sixth Sense and yes, someone spoiled the ending for me too!

A planet is in orbit around it's sun, so at different times of year will be on opposite sides of the sun. Presumably the Gate will therefore work when moved at least 2 astronomical units.

Since addressing is constellation based, it really doesn't matter. So long as you're within a light-year or so, the constellations don't change.

Maybe somebody answered it here, but why doesn't the whoosh destroy the iris? Especially the original non-trinium reinforced iris?

Before the trinium reinforced iris was placed upon the gate, the SGC kept the iris open until the "whoosh" past and then closed the iris.

Something related to the illustrious ScottN's question, what do you think would happen if the little wormy guy who dials the gate were to leave the Irus open until the gate wooshed, and then close it as it was wooshing? You know, when the spiral cyclone toilet water thingy juts out? what if you closed it right at that moment? Would the irus be destroyed? It's not destroyed when the full force of said woosh is exerted upon it. So what would happen? And another thing, do you think I have too much free time on my hands if I start to think about such things?

Yes, absolutely. Welcome to the club!!

SciFi have made a pretty good attempt to explain some of the ‘science’ behind the Stargate series here and I get the impression (plus I have a vague memory of a season 1 episode) that the iris is effectively behind the Whoosh zone which is why it’s not disintegrated when the Stargate engages.

The SciFi page I link to above is great fun as it’s essentially an FAQ page for Stargate owners and includes the brilliant question “Help! I’ve accidentally activated the Auto-Destruct. What do I do now?”!

By the way, Mistie, next time you refer to that nice Sergeant Davis as a ‘little wormy guy’ – especially when referring to ScottN as ‘illustrious’ in the same sentence – I may have to send out my death gliders in your direction! I mean, please – Scott or Walter Davis, there is just no contest ...

Callie, I'm seriously wounded by that one!

Oh, and I love the Customer Service address on that page!

Nit on that page:

---

Quote:

Your Stargate generates a teleportational wormhole when charged neutrinos are applied to its metallic Naquadah material.

---

Scott or Walter Davis, there is just no contest ...

And just who wins that contest, hmmm?

Just in case, ScottN sends some nishdah in Callie's direction...

Just what part of “no contest” do you not understand, Scott?!!! I mean, if I say “no contest”, there isn’t one, so how can anybody win a contest that there isn’t?! And anyway, Walter could beat you with one hand tied behind his back and his glasses on top of his head so he can’t see a thing and and, and .... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Obviously the nishdah didn't work.

I was kind of thinking that an object has to be totally beyond the event horizon of a wormhole before it's transmitted, so just sticking your hand in won't send your fingers to Abydos, whilst leaving you behind. It depends on whether the horizon is just under one Daniel thick (in the movie, Daniel was seen just on the other side of the horiZon before travelling, which I think is the only time we've seen that side of a horizon).
As for burying the gate, the whoosh could create a cavity, but anyone going into the cavity would have nowhere to go, and anything that was left of them would get obliterated when the gate was opened next time, or would fall back through the gate if it was on its back. In One Hundred Days, Teal'c had about four hours worth of air in a cylinder that he brought with him, after the SGC had opened the gate, heated up the other side with a particle accelerator for half an hour until the connection terminated (please replace your DHD and try dialling again ), and then opened it again to get the whoosh cavity. But why Teal'c had to go digging rather than just have the rest of SG1 standing there pumping rpgs through is beyond me

My questions are, what happens if you enter a stargate from the other side? As in walking from the back wall towards the control room in the SGC.
Also, what does happen if you walk into a destination wormhole? Do you get annihilated, walk through unscathed, or travel somewhere else?
So far, they've only said you can't travel along from destination to origin.

what happens when walking through a destination wormhole can be inferred from One Hundred Days. The M.A.L.P. fell back into the wormhole and was destroyed (it stopped transmitting and wasn't there when Teal'c arrived)

Kind of what I was thinking, but there's some humour in imagining an interstellar lost property office full of stuff that's gone the wrong way through a wormhole.

[I very nearly put ‘Callie, waking up with a jerk’ but that brought back some nasty memories ... ]

Wha?? Wha’ happen’? I was arguing with someone and then there was this funny-smelling stuff and ... I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t remember much, actually ... except that I must find my god and sit adoringly at his feet and worship him and polish his zat guns for him.

Where is he? Where is Scott? Where is my god, the mighty ScottN?!!

Sco-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-t!!!!

\goa'uld-reverb-voice{I am here, my child.}

To himself: As they said in Upgrades, "With great power comes great responsibility."

But does One Hundred Days prove that the event horizon at the destination is destructive?

The MALP could have been destroyed by falling back into the event horizon and deconstructed, but it also might have fallen back through the event horizon and been dashed against the rocks underneath.

We know from 48 Hours that the Stargate has a great deal of software control over the de- and re- materialization process; it is not just a physical property of the event horizon.

If the M.A.L.P. had merely fallen back onto the rock and not been annihilated, then it should have been there when Teal'c arrived (falling back the small distance that it did would not have bashed it to smithereens) and also, such a short tumble shouldn't so severely disable this device which must be designed to handle some rather rough terrain.

Yet more fuel on the fire for how Winnie works... In Fair Game, when the Goa'uld dial in, we see the seventh symbol locked in (and a controller say "chevron seven locked -- offworld activiation"), and it's Earth's symbol!

Maybe it's just the gate on Abydos that has a different Winnie and Daniel leapt to the wrong conclusion???

Except in The Gamekeeper we see their Winnie and it's a symbol never seen before.

Okayyyyyyy, maybe some worlds have an individual Winnie and then at some point the Ancient's accountant decided that it was just too darn expensive designing individual Winnie's for each world and then they standardized the rest of the Stargates?

;-)

From the New Ground board:

KAM: Maybe a wormhole doesn't form if something is in the ring, like dirt or rock?

ScottN: But there was rock inside the ring! And after SG-1 came through, you could see that the ring was still filled with rock!

Okay, so Rock doesn't stop the wormhole from forming, what about Easy Listening or Muzak?

;-)

You know we normally blame the writers for being inconsistant with how the Stargate works, but this time it was the set designers who screwed up a perfectly good explanation.

Okay, maybe it's a specific amount of fill or certain kind(s) of material in the ring?

(Man, I feel like a man overboard clinging to his lucky anchor.)

Taking this over from Death Knell ins Season 7 so there are a few spoilers from those that haven't seen that ep yet!

When we see the gate lying face down it forms a hole beneath it and in 100 Days it forms a hole above it due to the whoosh.

Personally, I don't think anything can stop the wormhole from forming. I think we could just take it that the Earth gate was never dialed again after the Earth rebellion which is why it's capstone remained intact.

Look at it this way, burrying the gate *will* stop folks coming through it but only if they don't really care about the planet. The best way to do it is to burry it "face up" so that the whoosh forms a tunnel above it. This way anyone/thing coming through the gate will immediately fall back into the event horizon and get destroyed. Goa'uld doesn't hear back from his/her Jaffa, doesn't send anymore. Same kinda goes for facedown however in this case they will survive (but be a bit brused unless they throw a mattress through first) but will have to dig their way out of any hole that's produced before their air runs out.

Sooooo, that's my thinking anyways. Comments anyone?

I think they should have figured all this [censored] out at the beginning of the series and then stuck to it instead of just letting BILC & the whims of the writers keep changing it.

Callie - I recently read a transcript of an interview with one of the producers who said that they have a Stargate Bible that's bigger than the Bible.
If they had figured this stuff out ahead of time I doubt it would be that thick. Instead it sounds like they have someone trying to reconcile all the contradictory garbage that keeps popping up in various eps.

Kitty’s got it right when he says that it would make sense that a Gate should always answer whether it’s buried or not. The only time a Gate shouldn’t answer is if it has been destroyed (for instance at the end of Full Circle). If only the writers had realised this: we’ve had episodes (Torment of Tantalus comes to mind) where SGC dials a previously active Gate and the seventh chevron will not lock, promoting glum faces. In ToT in particular there was no good reason for the Gate not to reply; all it did was fall a few hundred feet into the sea which really shouldn’t have stopped it responding ... unless seawater fries the electrics, which maybe explains why the Giza Gate didn’t reply on Earth when it was underwater in Small Victories?! Nah, even that idea doesn’t work, because there was an underwater Gate in Watergate which worked just fine.

Other episodes establish that it doesn’t matter what’s in the way of the whoosh – rocks, a cooled iris of liquid naqahdah, a titanium/trinium iris, the Gate will still answer. Season 7’s Death Knell now establishes that even if a Gate is lying down, it doesn’t matter which way up it’s lying, it’ll still answer. The only way you’ll find out if the Gate is buried is to send a MALP through and if it gets squished, you know you can’t go through. I would imagine that any sensible Goa’uld would do the same thing and send his version of a MALP, i.e. a poor hapless Jaffa, through any Gate that hasn’t been used for a while to check that it hasn’t been buried. If he dials back home and comes back to where he started from, the rest of the party can then dial out again.

Oh, and as mentioned on the Death Knell board, the extended version of Stargate the movie shows that the Giza Gate was dialled at least once after it was buried, because when it was unburied they found a squished Jaffa between the Gate and its coverstones.

The concept that “a Gate will always answer but you may need to check if it’s buried” is a fairly simple premise and – as KAM says – it’s a shame that the writers had to spoil it with inconsistencies that are usually written in for either visual or dramatic effect. In Double Jeopardy, SGC dials a Gate they believed had been buried by the locals: when the seventh chevron locks and the Earth Gate whooshes, Sam looks startled and says, “It’s not buried.” How can she know until she sends a MALP through?!

Oh, and Keith, I later read one of the regular writers or producers saying in an interview that they’d thrown their bible away a long time ago. And boy does it show.

No doubt if they were ever challenged on this, they’d say that they weren’t expecting fans to be so totally obsessive (or perhaps even anal?!) about tiny details. My answer would be: have you really never seen sci-fi fans picking nits in their favourite show? (Actually, I know they have, because there were loads of references in Wormhole X-treme!) Nitpicking has been around way longer than Stargate SG-1 and if you had a little more pride in your work, you’d try all that much harder to make plots consistent. Would it really break the bank to have one more member of staff – a person whose sole job is to religiously watch each episode over and over again and then go through future scripts with a fine-tooth comb and find potential inconsistencies with previous plotlines? Heck, I’ll do it for a reasonable fee!

And yes, it’s only occasionally that it irritates us enough to get really cross about it. Most of us can watch on two levels at once: pure enjoyment of the adventure; while picking the heck out of it at the same time. Personally speaking, when they louse up a previously established plot point, I tend to feel more disappointed than angry – disappointed that they could have been so careless, or, worse, couldn’t care less. After seeing the way that Voyager went, I’d hate to see any favourite show of mine descend into that kind of “Who cares?” attitude.

On the one hand you would think the writers would understand science fiction fans because one would assume that the writers are SF fans themselves.

However that probably is not true. Nigel Neale of the much imitated Quatermass series despised SF. Terry Nation who created the Daleks for Dr. Who & the series Blakes 7 apparently didn't like SF. And looking at the output of Berman & Braga I would guess that they not only don't like SF, but don't even like good writing.

This does explain one nit about SF series though. Many times a character will find themselves in an SF situation but they don't react to it as an SF fan would. Presumably this is because the writer, not being an SF fan, doesn't realize that his/her/their 'original' plot has been done before and may even be a cliché.

It would be nice if these shows did have continuity people, but even that wouldn't completely eliminate the nits. Sometimes people forget, sometimes some dialogue may get cut, sometimes they are behind schedule and have to get it in the can regardless of contradictions.

It's the willful disregard of continuity that bugs me. What's even worse though is the egotistical, "My script is so brilliant that continuity doesn't apply to me" attitude that the Voyager writers seemed to have. (OK, technically the Voyager excuse was worded something like "Sometimes a story is so good, that we feel we can overlook what was said or done before.", but that's really just a justification. Only time can tell if the story was good enough.)

Ok, try these.
In Torment Of Tantalus, the gate was damaged by the electrical storm or falling debris and was unable to form a connection with earth gate.
In Small Victories, the gate wasn't connected to any form of DHD, and the power in the gate had been used to form SG-1s escape route from Thor's ship.
As for the whoosh not punching through earth, the iris, cover stones etc, maybe it lacks the energy to vaporise or move matter unless there's a certain amount of whoosh - in one hundred days, they heat up the naquadria or whatever on the other side, then dial again and use the whoosh to create a bubble, and the gate could never have opened in Watergate.

I've been puzzling over something for the last day or two. In virtually every episode, we see the SGC's Stargate or an off-world gate receive an incoming wormhole. OK, but before the wormhole is established, all the chevrons light up one by one on the destination gate. The thing is, how does the Stargate network 'know' which gate is the destination gate before the person dialling the address has finished dialling the first six symbols? And yet the gate network does indeed seem to 'know' which gate is about to receive an incoming wormhole as soon as the first symbol is dialled.

Someone raised this on another website I visited recently, arguing that as there must be some Stargates with identical first, or first two, or first three etc chevrons, all of them should start lighting up until the intended address becomes more apparent. The only answer I can come with is that there’s a delay between the outgoing Gate dialling all seven chevrons and the incoming Gate starting to dial in – the latter doesn’t start to dial until the former has finished dialling. However, you would have thought that the Ancients would have been able to then make the incoming Gate simply clunk all seven chevrons simultaneously and then kawhoosh.

Or perhaps it’s a safety mechanism – the Gate clunks for a while to give anybody in the kawhoosh zone time to get out of the way.

Here's a question - based off my last post.
The DHD supposedly supplies power and control for the gate (Small Victories, 48 Hours etc) - so how does the gate around the Wraiths planet in Atlantis (Rising and 38 Minutes) get power? Does it get power from the Puddle Jumper remote DHDs?

I watched Fair Game again yesterday. The SGC was waiting for an incoming wormhole while the gate's ring spun and the chevrons locked in. Finally the seventh chevron locked in (Earth's point of origin) and the technician said, "Chevron seven locked. Off-world activation." Is this another indication that origin gate and destination gate chevrons light up or lock in at the same time? I don't know.

Something else I sometimes puzzle over while watching Stargate: how do Stargates 'know' when to shut down the wormhole? After the last person in a team has stepped through the gate, how does the gate 'know' that no more people want to use the gate?

I've always wondered about that, and I think the only explanation is THRTS (they read the script).
It certainly doesn't seem to be a matter of time! It also makes me wonder how they can keep the gate open for almost 30 min. since it normally closes so quickly. (Does somebody stick sth. in the event horizon to keep it open?)

Provided they send a radio signal through non-stop, the Gate will stay open even if nobody's travelling. There are way too many instances, however, when it's pretty obvious that nobody's sending anything through but the Gate meekly stays open because, as Constanze pointed out, it read the script and knows that it will be needed again in a couple of minutes. There is no other logical explanation for why Gates sometimes stay open and sometimes close. It's an inconsistency that the writers never standardised.

Not only does the Gate read the script to know how long to stay open, it does so to know when to close, as when the wormhole almost collapsed on Phased Daniel in "Crystal Skull".

Has it ever been established whether or not a MALP is required in order for the SGC to receive a radio transmission from off-world? There are episodes in which it's implied that a MALP is required to relay transmissions back to the SGC. But there are other episodes in which the SGC receives off-world radio transmissions without using a MALP as a relay.

I imagine the SGC has a powerful transmitter/reciever positioned near or in the Gateroom for use when the MALP isn't being used.

Re: my March 30th post and my first April 10th post. I've just been watching New Ground's teaser, and it establishes that the chevrons on the origin gate and the destination gate do indeed lock in simultaneously. So how does the Stargate network 'know' which gate is the destination gate after you have dialled the first chevron? It would be rather like the phone system 'knowing' which phone you are dialling after you dial the first digit.

Yes, New Ground had the fundamental error of people at SGC saying that the Gate at the other end was responding before the final chevron clunked and the Gate kawhooshed. In other episodes, they don’t know whether the Gate at the other end will respond until the final chevron at SGC clunks and nothing happens.

A rather absurd possibility is that all the gates that have the first chevron clunk, then all of those that have the second chevron clunk... etc. If this were the case it would seem evident that the Telemarketers found employment as Stargate operations designers.

But the only times the Earth Gate clunks is when it's dialled at, not when another, similar address is dialed... your telephone doesn't start ringing if somebody dials a number identical to yours except for the last digit, right?

Maybe the Gates have some of that Universal Translater (ST) ability to read minds (scripts) and therefore know which gate is the receiving one and how many people want to go through...

How do you know that the only time the Earth Gate clunks is when it's dialed directly? I realize that we are only shown those times, however, I don't see any evidence that contradicts the possibility I gave -- yet I do not take that possibility seriously since, as I said, it's absurd.

As a note, while the telephone system does not operate like this, the equivalent would be I dial a number and all telephones with that first digit ring, then I dial the second and a subset of the first continue to ring, etc. (Hence my flippant comment about the telemarketers -- they would ask why *wouldn't* you want a phone call?). But just because the telephone system doesn't operate this way, doesn't mean the gate system can't. (Again I don't honestly believe that it does)

Going waaaaayy back to Callie's first post on Board 1.


But now we get into the problem of stellar drift. Discussing the Cartouche, Sam and Daniel realise that they will need to compensate for Doppler shift – the stars have all moved a lot in the 50,000 years since the Cartouche was created, and they will need to create a computer model to calculate the movement of the constellations.

My Stargate Manifesto:
Subtitle: It All Works Out For The Burying/Iris Stuff, Really, Guys!
By Andrew Gilbertson
:-)

From thread #1:

"However, in 1969 the solar flare disrupted the wormhole and apparently caused it to feed back on itself. An additional problem is that numerous episodes have indicated that, for matter, the Gate is one way only, but here the Gate is both entrance & exit." - Kam
You're not thinking fourth-dimensionally, Marty! :-) The gate's entrance is the Earth gate in 199X (whatever year it was) and it's exit is indeed the same gate is terms of physical construction... but it is the same gate from 1969 (a point at which no wormhole is coming to it and thus it is free to serve as an empty terminus)- therefore it is, in practice, a different gate since the outgoing gate (EarthgateA199X) is generating a wormhole while the incoming gate (EarthgateA1969) is separated from it by a 30-year gulf.
(Now, what would happen if the wormhole TRULY fed back on itself- looping back to it's own gate at a time when that gate already had an incoming/outgoing wormhole, I don't know... I'm guessing that if it were incoming, the streams might merge and you'd get a Dack O'nackson and Saml'c episode reminiscent of Voyager's 'Tuvix'- but if an outgoing wormhole looped back and became an incoming wormhole that collided with a previously existing outgoing wormhole? I'm guessing a massive explosion that would tear a hole in space/time the exact size of Belgium.) ;-)


"How's that work? The first six chevrons are meant to pinpoint a three-dimensional point in space - up/down, side/side, forward/back, and then the seventh chevron indicates the start point of the wormhole. So when the Gate dials eight numbers during The Fifth Race, what is that penultimate chevron doing? Does it say to the wormhole, "Then jump the 3D point you've just dialled sixty gadzillion light years in that direction", or what?" - Callie
Well, it's been compared to dialing an area code... so maybe the 38 symbols represent distance points from a centrally calculated point (and just appear like constellations to us?)? In which case the 8th symbol could say 'calculate from central point #2 instead of your default central point #1'?

From this thread:
"What stops a Stargate from working? The Stargate on Abydos was buried on two separate occasions to prevent anyone getting through. But why should burying a Gate stop it working?
SGC close a titanium/trinium iris in front of their Stargate, but even though the Whoosh has nowhere to whoosh to, the wormhole still manages to open successfully behind the iris. A wormhole will still open if the Gate is lying down. And the season 2 episode Prisoners establishes that if you stand within the Whoosh zone you’ll get annihilated. Once the Abydos Stargate had been buried, therefore, I would think that the Whoosh would have had no difficulty punching through earth and rocks." - Callie
AND
"I think this now becomes a genuine nit – up until now I’d assumed that the titanium/trinium mix of the iris was mega mega strong and could withstand the Whoosh, but there have been enough episodes where they don’t close the iris until after the Whoosh that, in my opinion, this is yet another example of the writers not having a bible which they can consult. Different writers appear to have different opinions on whether to close the iris before or afterwards." - Callie

See my LOOOOOONG post on "One Hundred Days." Summary:
A gate will apparently 'woosh' under certain conditions, creating an unstable disintegration front that will vaporize anything in it's path. However, if a gate is opened without at least a microscopic distance between the gate and the surface of the event horizon of the wormhole (or if it is opened by advanced Nox technology), it will not woosh- in the former case, because there's no room for the woosh to expand into- not even a single particle will have room to re-integrate. Therefore, the iris is not vaporized because there's less than a microscopic distance between it and the event horizon, giving the woosh no room to form.

Note: Even with less than a microscopic distance, a wormhole WILL engage, and subatomic particles have enough room to form. If those subatomic particles can burn/melt away enough of the iris material to allow a microscopic particle to form, it's 'foot will be in the door' and the woosh will have room to form (apparently requiring at least 1 microscopic particle's worth of room) and will vaporize the rest of the blocking material. This occurred during One Hundred Days, and would have if Sokar's subatomic particles had compromised the iris- the next woosh would have then vaporized the iris, no matter how tough it was. It's not vaporized during startup because the woosh has no room to form in the first place.

Burying a gate does render it inactive, however, because the actual space of the event horizon is filled, and the wormhole can't form. The iris is simply less than a microscopic space ABOVE the event horizon- burying the gate or filling it in actually fills the area of the event horizon, thus a wormhole can't even be established to send subatomic particles (or any particles at all) through. This is consistent with the 48 hours and Double Jeopardy examples cited later on Feb 9th, 2002. This policy is consistent throughout the show... except for the New Ground prop error and potentially the Abydos probe/Jaffa from the film (see below for all).

Because there isn't enough room for a single atom to re-integrate or re-form in the case of an iris, people will simply dissipate when running into the iris, because all of their particles will arrive, but not have enough room to come together again, since there's less than a microscopic space. This is the 'flattening/slamming against the iris' effect which happens frequently to unfriendly Jaffa. (Lucky the SGC never receivers any friendly explorer-visitors!) All of this has actually been pretty consistent through the show (at least seasons 1-3 so far...). There are some inconsistencies to this, however:
This squashing effect is apparently what happened to the probe to Abydos, etc. (Not because it was underground.) that would, of course, imply that they'd constructed an Iris- unlikely that they could fine-tune it to a microscopic degree with their technology- or that they waited until the woosh subsided and put something in front of the gate to block it... a much more likely explanation is that there was a cover stone on Abydos that they hauled out an used somehow- but we have nothing to establish that... hmmmm... by all logic, it should've just been a 'chevron seven will not engage' situation if the gate was buried; a squished probe implies an iris-esque scenario.
Presumably, the Horus guards in the film were also squashed this way, though it is curious that their bodies seemed to have actually reintegrated enough to leave remains in the stone. Perhaps the vaporization/non-reintegration results in a stream of high-energy output in the shape of a person being emitted from the gate, perhaps in the form of subatomic particles- and while they have no effect on the superstrong-iris, they were enough to leave an 'impression' on the softer coverstone- more of an x-ray imprint of the shape of the guards that simply LOOKED like they were imbeded in the rock, when it was really a sort of 'xerox' of them burned into the rock's surface. Just a theory...
On further thought, though- both Earth's coverstone and an unseen Abydos stone COULD form an iris! After all, an iris doesn't need to be strong. The fact that the iris on Earth is super strong tritatium-whatever is only human paranoia, like when General Hammond closed the iris to prevent intruders that destroyed a MALP from getting through the OUTGOING wormhole. He's just playing it safe. All an iris really needs to do is be less than 1 atom from the event horizon surface, preventing any matter from reintegrating (unless you're bombarded by subatomic particles, a rare occurrence that no one planned for). It could be made of, presumably, any stone/metal strong enough to survive whatever energy-form that the un-reformed particles come out as- meaning rock might work for this purpose.
Now, how does a primitive culture like Abydos or Egypt make such a perfectly measured iris to the very micron, you ask? Simple: they use the 'Kowalski's Head' method- stick a large Stargate-sized block (not so difficult to carve) partway through and let the gate close. Voila! Instantly cut to the exact, micron-specific perimeter of the event horizon! Now admittedly, such an iris would not be super-reliable, since a settling of the rock in the opening by even a microscopic amount might allow the woosh enough room to get it's single-atom foothold and form, so you'd have to be careful. But realistically, this way there could be an Abydonian iris, and the Egypt coverstone could have likewise functioned as an iris- all you need is a plug that you can anchor in place partway into the wormhole and let the closing gate 'trim the excess' off, giving you an microscopically exact iris object! Woohoo! Nits resolved! ;-)

"What still doesn’t make sense to me is whether it’s canon that debris inside the circle stops a wormhole forming. The partially excavated Stargate on Nyan’s world in New Ground still had solid rock inside its circle – it was only the Gate itself that had been unearthed." - Callie
Yes, that is the nit, I think. The debris should block the wormhole- that's what's established. I think the set/prop guys just screwed up showing debris within the event horizon area. Everything else is consistent, especially One Hundred Days, which pretty much establishes how everything does work. This isn't a case of the writers not knowing how the gate worked, however- but the prop guys not constructing it the way it was written/established. (As KAM said on January 28, 2004- when you come back to this stuff 5+ years later, you can feel so REDUNDANT sometimes. ;-) )

"And regardless of the fact that the Stargate on Edora in A Hundred Days had a naqahdah iris over the top of it, the explosion from the meteorite which knocked it over in the first place almost must have resulted in there being some debris under the circle and inside it. But both Gates answered when SGC dialled them." - Callie
No, it was apparently molten, and cooled around the gate with the wormhole still active, leaving the wormhole's area an empty pocket when the gate disengaged. (Hope you don't feel like I'm picking on you with this post, Callie- you just have the most to say about gates, so every quote is cite happens to be yours! :-) )

"Another major thing that hasn’t been established by the end of Season 4 is whether burying a Stargate face down will prevent it from working. If a face down burial does stop a Gate opening, it would make sense of episodes where SGC can’t get a Gate to answer when it did in the past. It would explain why - between the events of the movie and the first episode of the series – a probe sent to Abydos was ‘flattened’ at the Abydos end. It would explain why SG-1 have told more than one race to bury their Stargate and haven’t appeared bothered that, if they don’t bury it deep enough, bad guys could tunnel their way out. And it would help to explain why Sam can tell whether a Gate has been buried or not simply by dialling it up. If only they’d said something during an episode, I’d be a much happier bunny!" - Callie
That WOULD be nice- but face up/down has nothing to do with it, unfortunately- it's blocked/unblocked that make the difference. Leaving us to have to be creative about the $^#&*^&*#$ Abydos probe and the ^@&*)^$# Horus guards! ;-)

"Presumably a wormhole does not form when the exact event horizon is blocked by a certain percent - otherwise dust could mess it up." - Cathal ryan Hynes
Good thought, Cathal! That could help to clear up New Ground and bring the blocked/unblocked issue into full consistency- was a lesser percentage of the event horizon area blocked than was free?

"hand not vaporised because stuff needs to go in a little way before it is dematerialised possibly?" - Cathal ryan Hynes
Could well be- the MALP in One Hundred Days was 'fully committed' - gravity forced the whole thing all the way in. Perhaps the water effect is an unstable, shifting surface that is permeable, beneath which is concealed the solid, impenetrable, try-to-force-your-way-through-and-you'll-be-smashed-or-vaporized event horizon?

"My questions are, what happens if you enter a stargate from the other side? As in walking from the back wall towards the control room in the SGC." - Chris Marks
One of the books addressed this, I think, having Teal'c alluding to the mangled remains of a friend who had tried it. :-)

"Personally, I don't think anything can stop the wormhole from forming. I think we could just take it that the Earth gate was never dialed again after the Earth rebellion which is why it's capstone remained intact." - Spottedkitty
Safe to say that either:
A. The coverstone was perfectly calibrated to the micron to form an Iris effect, being less than an atom's distance from the event horizon (which could totally work... see the Abydos iris above), or
B. It blocked the ring entirely causing a wormhole not to form.
The presence of the Horus guards would seem to suggest A... (Unless of course the poor guys were actually crushed under the gate-plugged-by-stone somehow as it was dropped into the pit, and somehow fossilized by that...) ;-)

"In ToT in particular there was no good reason for the Gate not to reply; all it did was fall a few hundred feet into the sea which really shouldn’t have stopped it responding ... unless seawater fries the electrics, which maybe explains why the Giza Gate didn’t reply on Earth when it was underwater in Small Victories?!" - Callie
In both cases, the event horizon could have been blocked if it was partially settled into the sandy sea-floor, or in TOT, had rubble that fell with it and buried it. Neither of these are necessarily inconsistencies...
Chris also makes the excellent point that "In Small Victories, the gate wasn't connected to any form of DHD, and the power in the gate had been used to form SG-1s escape route from Thor's ship." Problem solved!

"Kitty’s got it right when he says that it would make sense that a Gate should always answer whether it’s buried or not." - Callie
Respond as in connect? If so, it will unless the event horizon's blocked. (Does a blocked event horizon still spin the other gate, or does the gate 'shut down' to prevent accidents until it's cleared? Hmmmm...)

"The concept that “a Gate will always answer but you may need to check if it’s buried” is a fairly simple premise and – as KAM says – it’s a shame that the writers had to spoil it with inconsistencies that are usually written in for either visual or dramatic effect. In Double Jeopardy, SGC dials a Gate they believed had been buried by the locals: when the seventh chevron locks and the Earth Gate whooshes, Sam looks startled and says, “It’s not buried.” How can she know until she sends a MALP through?!" - Callie
Again, the concept is 'the gate will always respond if the event horizon isn't blocked.' If it's buried, the ring is filled is, thus the event horizon is blocked. If it has an iris, it will respond and open because it's not blocked, you'll just get squished. The woosh won't vaporize an iris because there isn't enough room for the woosh to form (1 atom or more). Those are the rules, and they were pretty consistent with them, actually. :-)

"This does explain one nit about SF series though. Many times a character will find themselves in an SF situation but they don't react to it as an SF fan would. Presumably this is because the writer, not being an SF fan, doesn't realize that his/her/their 'original' plot has been done before and may even be a cliché." - KAM
Actually, I think Stargate is one of the best shows for recognizing this and having the character react the way a sci-fi fan would! ;-)


So, potentially even the Abydos probe/Horus guards thing is explainable with the Abydonian Iris theory- leaving the wormhole functioning/gate-forming system completely intact and potentially flawlessly consistent (New Ground obstructions being the questionable ground)- and since New Ground is attributable to props/construction and not the writers... I'd say the writers did know how a Stargate wormhole worked- they just hadn't figured out the dialing/Winnie/coordinates system in the slightest, since that's hopeless. ;-) Gate function, they had down pat. Gate dialing, Wormhole-staying-open-duration... they were clueless. :-)

Zarm - The gate's entrance is the Earth gate in 199X (whatever year it was) and it's exit is indeed the same gate is terms of physical construction... but it is the same gate from 1969 (a point at which no wormhole is coming to it and thus it is free to serve as an empty terminus)- therefore it is, in practice, a different gate since the outgoing gate (EarthgateA199X) is generating a wormhole while the incoming gate (EarthgateA1969) is separated from it by a 30-year gulf.
But what about the whole 'each gate* has its own "phone number"' aspect?
They dial one gate, but instead get their own which would be like you dialing one number then hearing the phone answered by yourself 30-odd years in the past or future**.

* Okay, it's more like each region of space with a Stargate, but that's a mouthful.

**. Ignoring, of course, the possibilities of you getting another phone number during that time or the possibility that you might be too young to answer a phone 30 years in the past or dead before you reach 30 years in the future.

Cathal - Presumably a wormhole does not form when the exact event horizon is blocked by a certain percent - otherwise dust could mess it up.
Zarm - Good thought, Cathal! That could help to clear up New Ground and bring the blocked/unblocked issue into full consistency- was a lesser percentage of the event horizon area blocked than was free?
I could have sworn I commented somewhere (maybe on the episode boards) that we have seen Stargates with the bottom of the ring imbedded in either the ground or a floor, with no space for where a wormhole should have formed.

This is the 'flattening/slamming against the iris' effect which happens frequently to unfriendly Jaffa.
Wouldn't you like to see a scene sometimes where we see the backside of the iris & some underlings are cleaning off the remains said Jaffa? ;-)

KAM - my only thought is that the phone number analogy only goes so far... :-) I think the idea is that the flare causes the wormhole to loop backwards (and through time at the same time) and, in essence, do the 'jump to the nearest gate' energy-surge thing- in this case, the nearest gate being itself, which also happens to not be the outgoing gate because it's the gate of 30 years past. Maybe it's more like... a conference call where you can't reach the third party, but you can still hear the other person on the same line (but holding a different receiver) in your own house. ;-)

"I could have sworn I commented somewhere (maybe on the episode boards) that we have seen Stargates with the bottom of the ring imbedded in either the ground or a floor, with no space for where a wormhole should have formed." - KAM
Hmmmmm... yes, we have seen pedestal-embedded gates... perhaps they're programmed to make the pedestal part of the gate-generating surface (so there's no blockage, it just isn't a perfectly round event horizon)?

yes, we have seen pedestal-embedded gates

Isn't the Atlantis gate like that?

I was under the impression that every gate had a point of origin symbol that happened to be one of the buttons that also could be used for the six destination codes. For example, say there were only 26 buttons instead of 38.

Earth calls Abydos, using C, R, M, B, L, H, and uses PofO ("Winnie") symbol A.

Abydos calls Tollan using D, A, K, L, V, N, and uses PofO symbol M.

There's a little trick here which I think I read about. Not all gates can reach all other gates because of "missing" symbols. Well, rather than "missing", it is "already used". The stargate addresses work like phone numbers, except you can't have any digit used more than once. 453-3167 is not valid, because there are two 3s. Similar to "The Wrath of Khan", when Spock dials the Reliant's prefix code 16309: if it was 16306, 16300, 16301 or 13603, Kirk's plan would fail because Spock couldn't dial the same digit twice!

So, if Earth wants to go to a place where the six destination digits includes A (using the 26-symbol example above), they can't. They'll have to dial somewhere else that doesn't use any of the six destination digits as a PofO digit, then dial their ultimate destination.

Of course, the MacGuyvered computer that SGC uses probably is superior in that respect: they probably CAN dial the same digit as an address and include it as the PofO symbol. They can call the Tollan using D, A, K, L, V, N, and then A again, as the A symbol rotates around to the top chevron after visiting whichever chevron is connected to for the destination digits.

The Stargate teams will have problem if the PofO symbol on a foreign gate happens to be one of the symbols they need to dial Earth. SGC probably plans on this contingency when selecting destinations. The Goa'uld control so many worlds that they don't have a problem making an in-transit connection on any of their trips.

Now, those nasty old constellations that are only good on Earth. Yes, that's a definite problem. Alpha Centauri's skies are nearly identical to ours, but the Centauri and Cassiopeia constellations each have a significant difference - one is missing a prominent star, one has a prominent star added. Go further afield, and faint stars like our own Sun would disappear altogether and not factor into any constellations on other planets.

It would have made far more sense for the Ancients to base the symbols on 3D space groupings of stars, e.g. the Pleaiades makes an excellent reference, and so would globular star clusters. The groupings of stars would stay together for long periods of time.

It also should be pointed out that the six symbols that reached Abydos 50,000 years ago may point to nothing, or a different gate, now. Abydos may only use five, four, or just two of those symbols now. If the DHDs truly calculate star movements to update, then they need to dynamically translate input addresses into current coordinates, which means each address is symbolic. For example,

When you dial 453-1235, it hits a house on Maple Street on the east side, but when you dial 453-1236, it isn't the house next door. It's a house on Thorn Street in a rural area southwest of town. What counts is that when you dial the number, the exchange finds out which line equipment (hooked up to the cable pair going to that house) is programmed to respond to that number. The number does not tell where the phone is, only which line equipment will connect to the right wires.

So, the six digits need not even be related to location, except in a historical sense which in a few tens of thousands of years will be meaningless. The DHDs simply check the current position that the gate should be in, and direct the wormhole down that way, even if the six destination symbols no longer are in any way relevant to the stellar coordinates they suggest.

At some point, perhaps the Ancients intended to reissue all the "phone numbers" to represent current stellar coordinates, then let the system operate on "update calculation" for another few tens of thousands of years!

That's the only thing that fits the show's use of coordinates and symbols, but it seems inefficient. Maybe we should be like the Ancients and try to determine a system that will last for the long term (a million years or so).

The system used on the show suits Daniel Jackson's discovery in the movie based on recognizing Orion. But it isn't sustainable. It would have made more sense for them to discover that, of several tens of thousands of possible combinations, only ten percent are in use. It also would have been better if, in "Children of the Gods" when the DHD was introduced, they showed it was mechanically possible to dial a single key more than once in an address because it would release after another button was pressed (so you couldn't have 455318, but you could have 453518 because the 5s wouldn't be consecutive).

In addition, it could have been established that the cover stone was made of some fragments of an Earth cartouche, and only the Abydos address happened to still be readable due to weathering and erosion. Each address would be like a phone number and not a set of coordinates.

Perhaps, since the stargates are wireless, I might have used a cellular phone analogy. Each stargate is a cell phone, and although they aren't "mobile", they drift around in the serving area, so different towers serve them. The towers are fixed coordinates.

It would help in that the stars orbit around the center of our galaxy, with those closer to the core moving faster than those near the rim. Unless I'm mistaken, there are almost two billion possible combinations (38 x 37 x 36 x 35 x 34 x 33 = 1,987,690,320), and though I can't imagine the Ancients assembling and installing that many gates and having found that many planets with suitable environments, I can imagine one to two million. In a galaxy with several hundred billion stars, even confining them to an area away from the inner arms, that still leaves a lot of empty space around each gate, on average.

More than likely, 38 key points could be identified, but would more than three of them be around a specific area you wanted to connect to? It could be that the Milky Way has more than one "area code", perhaps ten to twenty, and the Pegasus Galaxy has a single area code. The Goa'uld have been confined to a single area code, and as luck would have it, we're in the same area code as the Goa'uld! Now, with our section of the Milky Way being one area code, there are 38 distinct points in space that serve as 3D references, and so it is easy for there to be six of them close enough to each gate to identify it. But the more gates there are in each area code, the more exacting those coordinates have to be, so you hit Earth and not Alpha Centauri!

There's a little trick here which I think I read about. Not all gates can reach all other gates because of "missing" symbols. Well, rather than "missing", it is "already used".

The DHD used in the show has 38 symbols set on 2 concentric rows of 19 each. 37 of these symbols are constellation symbols and 1 is the point of origin. With this setup, you are correct to say that it is not possible to dial any stargate from any other, some stargates will be out of reach because of the missing constellation symbol.

However, I wanted to make a 3d DHD model to use in a custom videogame map, and I looked up pictures and drawings of it on the net. I found one of the original concept sketches of the device, and it has all 38 constellation symbols on its dial. The point of origin symbol was supposed to be on the red dome in the center of the dial. That's a much better setup, you press six coordinate symbols on the dial and press the central dome to encode the point of origin and activate the stargate. I wonder why they changed that very good setup for the less usefull one used in the show.

Possibly so that you had to be educated and recognize how to determine the PofO, so that "bad guys" couldn't use the gate because they wouldn't know the PofO. However, as Daniel Jackson and the Goa'uld and the Aaschen proved, eventually others can figure out the point of origin and "crack" into the gate system. By putting on the red dome, anyone can use it without having to know the symbol.