Point of origin

somuj

After watching that ridiculous stargate movie it got me thinking.

Why does one have to dial a point of origin. Such an advanced race would surely not have incorporated such a redundant feature into the dialing program. My thinking is that the Chapai would connect a wormhole(providing that no star was in a direct path) from its current location to the co-ordiantes that have just been entered. No need for the point of origin then.

When I ring someone I don't have to dial my own phone number at the end so that the call knows where its comming from.

Maybe sleep deprevation is playing tricks with my all ready disturbed mine. Am I correct in thinking this.

hellboy99

You have 7 glyphs, 6 of them are used to pinpoint the 'X', 'Y' and 'Z' axis in glactic space of the location you want to gate to. The 7th glyph - the Point of Origin - tells the 'system' where in the Galaxy the signal originates from, ie: You can't go "to" somewhere without having come "from" somewhere.
You need to have a beginning and end point for each end of the wormhole to attach to to give you a straight line route - a straight line being the shortest distance between two points. Since it's a wormhole, using the concepts of Quantum physics, the wormhole "draws" these two points together so matter can moved.

alastair_doom

Maybe as a mechanism for having gates on ships in orbit of planets able to dial out without some massively complecated interstellar GPS.
or maybe

its just a silly little tv show

hellboy99

What u mean silly :eek:

thelordofcheese

I can't believe i'm about to do this....

Answer the first:

I'd image there is quite a good reason for a Point of origin. The first six points give you your destination, as we all know, the 7th chevron gives where your coming from, using what would be 12 points [i can only assume the 7th is some sort of macro or something to give you a second 6 point reference] you can then calculate the distance and direction the outgoing wormhole would need to be. basically, without a point of origin you wouldn't have a direction for the wormhole.
I suppose the second reason for not making the point of origin handled automatically is that remote DHD's [in the puddlejumper for example] would be pointless, seeing as the DHD moves about the place and might never have the same point of origin.


Answer the second
< standard sci-fi answer>
Shush, and look over there.
< /standard sci-fi answer>

Overheal

I agree; its another redundancy purposely built in to the system. Just another failsafe. Don't want to be forming rogue wormholes everywhere now do we? It lets the stargate know which location its trying to generate a wormhole from which (in conjuntion with the network-update system) allows the gate to do all its calculations for intervening stellar bodies, gravity, etc. etc. A redundancy Sam musta overrided when they gated through that sun (ah you know what Im talking about).

It was a simple thing to incorprorate one design concept: a) stargates tend to move around sometimes, b) Who wants to go making custom circuits for EVERY GATE in the network?? So you don't have to press a 7th button??

And on a side note; it makes the gate that much harder for races to figure out. Like this fella here: he's screwed.

mcgarnicle

thelordofcheese wrote:

I can't believe i'm about to do this....

Answer the first:

I'd image there is quite a good reason for a Point of origin. The first six points give you your destination, as we all know, the 7th chevron gives where your coming from, using what would be 12 points [i can only assume the 7th is some sort of macro or something to give you a second 6 point reference] you can then calculate the distance and direction the outgoing wormhole would need to be. basically, without a point of origin you wouldn't have a direction for the wormhole.
I suppose the second reason for not making the point of origin handled automatically is that remote DHD's [in the puddlejumper for example] would be pointless, seeing as the DHD moves about the place and might never have the same point of origin.

But wouldn't that mean the puddle jumpers' dhds should require 12 points to be punched in in order to give a destination and a point of origin.

thelordofcheese

Yeah i was thinking abit more about this [it was a slow day dammit] and i remembered that each gate has one unique symbol on the DHD that symbolises the point of origin [which would have the needed second set of six points tied to it, i'd imagine], so i guess that when the puddle jumper dials a gate it has a universal Point of origin button that takes the info from the local DHD.

Dunno what that means for space-gates though...

Overheal

The point of origin I assume they only wanted to make as a general marker for gate travel: no need for six extra points?

not all gates have a unique symbol I think; there are a few though for certain sectors I would assume.

And besides I'm sure its not something they thought about too long. Remember the Movie Guy and the TV Guys don't get along with eachother all too much

thelordofcheese

yeah, sorry i keep saying second six points, because you need six reference points to get a single position in 3D space, so you'd need 12 in total, but i'm assumung the 6 that represent your point of origin are hardcoded into a DHD as just One symbol on the DHD, to make things easier [and to make sure dialing the gate doesn't eat into too much screen time], anyway i'll stop confusing the issue now.

Actually, this is quite a good resource for all things stargate related

alastair_doom

ok, second theory. I'd imagine the ancients would have had many planets colonised significantly, and transport between worlds would have been quite slow, what with one way travel to one planet at a time. So i'd imagine they would have had bus/train station kinda places with many stargates, maybe 4 for outbound, and 4 for inbound, all controlled by one special DHD. So the 'point of origin' would relate to which gate as opposed to which planet.
To us, near instantanious interstellar travel may seems fast, but im guessing the ancients didnt like to queue.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

how about, because the writers thought it sounded cool?