Earth must have the ancient database now huh?

[Havicc Brine]

I don't know if this was covered already but when they were ready to blow up the city they were going to load as much of the ancient database onto the hard drives as possible, 1/10 or something like that. Well now that they have a ship running back and forth, as well a ZPM in which to open the gate, you would think that they would have sent to whole thing as a back-up by now.
Should be only a matter of time till earth has the entire ancient knowledge database at their fingertips.

[Avatar28]

I don't know if this was covered already but when they were ready to blow up the city they were going to load as much of the ancient database onto the hard drives as possible, 1/10 or something like that. Well now that they have a ship running back and forth, as well a ZPM in which to open the gate, you would think that they would have sent to whole thing as a back-up by now.
Should be only a matter of time till earth has the entire ancient knowledge database at their fingertips.

Having it is one thing. Understanding it and analyzing it is quite another. Even the Asgard, as much more advanced as they are, have by their own admission, barely scratched the surface of the database. Now whether that means translating/understanding it in general (and they might already have discovered a lot of the information it contains on their own) or they mean all the new stuff in it that they didn't know before I'm not sure.

[LiquidBlue]

I don't think we can compare the database of the Atlantis computers the head-sucking repositories of knowledge. The Asgard have recovered the repositories, but the knowledge that the contain is designed to be interpreted by a human or ancient like mind. Apparently the Asgard have be exploring it using some sort interface.

The Atlantis database apparently is designed to be interacted with through a computer interface. The question then arises, what information is to found in the database. We can be fairly safe to assume that it contains mundane things like starcharts and geological surveys. It likely contains some research data.

Does the Atlantis database contain knowledge concerning the function and manufacture of Ancient Technology (TM)? We don't know. Only the one hand it would seem to be the best place to store such information. On the other hand, the ancient abandoned it. Even though the evidence has been that the Ancients do not have a compunction about leaving dangerous technology lying about (see Dakara), in this case they might have felt compelled not to leave it, expecially if the Wraith might gain access. They may have felt that worthy successors would be in possesion of sufficiently advanced technology.

Anyway, I agree that Earth must now be in possession of the Ancient database and whatever it contains.

[LORD MONK]

I hope we did. That is up to the witers in up coming not here yet eps.
The Asgard know about it and talked about how the haven't even scratched the service. But then again, it wasn't meant for them. It was meant for us. Why, I don't know.

[ckwongau]

Well, I remember , In Episode Siege Pt1 ,Dr Weir ask one of the Scientist about how much of the Atlantis Database can be downloan into the hard drive they brought from Earth(Rising).
I think they can take about 4 or 5% of the Database if it was compress (like in "Letter from Pegasus").
I am not sure how many hard drive they got at the time, They took just enough essential material to Pegasus (Rising )

So i think about 10 truck load of Harddrive would be enough to download the Ancient Database (if compressed ) .
But it would take a long ,long,long time to translate and study the Database ,and to understand the technologies is another matter
The Atlantis also has a lot of hidden lab and working technologies, it is easier to reverse engineer than to creat something with the new knowledge.

So don't expect Earth to create any new super weapon any time soon, but i do expect a few break through(base on the Database) in the next one or two season

[kryon22]

I'm inclined to agree about the assessment of the utility of having the entire Ancient database from Atlantis at your fingertips. While the ease of having it at your disposal 24/7 is a nice concept, it presents a lot of subsequent issues. I'll take a stab at a few.

Earth, first and foremost becomes a priority target for just about every other baddie, power-mongering villain out there in the Milky Way when words gets out (and it will, trust me...) that Earth has access to accessible and translatable copies of the Ancient database. It drastically changes the power balance structure in our galaxy. And not necessarily in our favour. Gaining advantages and power from knowledge is only useful when you're capable of defending and holding on to that knowledge. If the bulk of the data remains in Atlantis with updates coming over every now and then, then it's likely that you attract less attention whilst gaining the ability and advantages that are afforded with each new discovery.

Another thing is, that kind of knowledge has to be earned. You can fast-track it all you want, but more often than not, without fully understanding the full ramifications of such advanced technologies and allowing your own society to internalize it comfortably, the chance of that knowledge leading to the collapse of your society and civilization is that much more assured. It can be as simple as nuking yourselves to death to collapse from civil war over intrisically opposed ideologies regarding the discoveries. We've seen it happen many times on other worlds and shouldn't be so naive as to think that it can't happen on ours. Just look at current world affairs and the state of politics and the balance of power now.

The other side of things are simply, will access to such an advanced race's repository of knowledge actually do us very much good when we aren't in a position to fully comprehend the contextual backdrop upon which that knowledge is based? The basis for certain types of technologies and the way they are implemented is a basic premise. Even though we might be fairly close to the Ancient's in physical identity, our sociological and anthropological predispositions are obviously quite different. Will we be able to comprehend the instances in which they applied technologies? And if we do, will it do us more good or more harm in the long run in establishing our own identity as a race. We are, after all, humans...not Ancients. A good point to note would be to look at the Babylon 5 parallel...comparing humans, Minbarri and Vorlons, and looking at the parallel that humans evolve into a million years later.

Given that a lot of their technologies are light years ahead of us (leaving the Asgard behind in the dust as well), will having access to the technological knowhow do us any good, if our own basic understanding of science doesn't expand correspondingly? A good point Carter raised in passing during the episode Prometheus when she stated that crashed alien technology that they had access to didn't do them much good in developing spacecruiser technology until their own basic science had progressed on their own till they could take advantage of the advances offered by the alien tech. As a scientist myself, I can attest to this from firsthand experience. If we're still stuck at industrial age science, and we were given an advanced confocal laser microscope for fine-cellular imaging, we probably wouldn't know, how to build it competently, how to callibrate it efficiently, how to envisage preparing adequate samples for viewing, how to label the specimens appropriately for appreciable imaging etc etc....We probably wouldn't even know how the machine is able to generate such high definition images without understanding how lasers are created, harnesed and what their upper and lower limits are. To be able to harness the full potential of such technology often requires that our own basic understanding has to grow as well, and that kind of advance has to be earned by ourselves (more often than not).

So, I suppose it's a mixed bag of blessings. We have to be extraordinarily careful how that knowledge is applied.

Just my two cents worth.

[Qasim]

Yes they do -it was brought back with the daedalus but analysing it could take millennia the asgard have only scratched the surface of the repository data

[Ganjaman]

When you are presented with a lump of technology I suppose that is true. The atlantis database is vast enough to count as a repository and it would be the most uptodate one the ancients ever had with the other repositories created before they left the MW. The Atlantis base even has the labs whihc show what the lantians were working on. One would think, or at least hope, that the database is comprehensive, it should contain the knowledge to advance our science and understanding of the universe including detailed information on their technology, culture, history etc as opposed to being given an object of anceint design and figuring out how it works, what it does, why etc. Information in Atlantis of that kind could help in episodes such as Avalon. They were able to open the stargate to earth and transmit all their human information including video diaries inside 1.3 seconds. That shows a highly sophisticated compression technique and it also goes to indicate just show large the wealth of information there is in atlantis much of which they may not have discovered previously due to a plack of power due to a lack of zpm. Also atlantis provides in a digestible form rather than the brain-altering and potentially fatal method of the repositories for which we have not evolved sufficiently to use properly.

[GateMan2000]

I think the knowlege from the ancient database won't take as long to understand as everyone thinks. The Atlantis crew if made up of many different countries. All of those countries are starting to act more as Tauri instead of their own individual nations. With all of the major nations on Earth working on it, it should only be a matter of years (maybe a hundred or 2) before we are "one" of the most powerful in the MW as well as the pegasus...thats with the understand the Ori doesn't put a the kabosh to Earth's plans.

[Perriman33]

Lets hope they took it all back to earth. Although it's a lot of information they could search for some relevant data, like info on the wraith and technlolgy that could be used.

[Dr Weir]

I think the knowlege from the ancient database won't take as long to understand as everyone thinks. The Atlantis crew if made up of many different countries. All of those countries are starting to act more as Tauri instead of their own individual nations. With all of the major nations on Earth working on it, it should only be a matter of years (maybe a hundred or 2) before we are "one" of the most powerful in the MW as well as the pegasus...thats with the understand the Ori doesn't put a the kabosh to Earth's plans.

I agree that with the help of many countires the info in the database might be uncovered quicker then thought, but probably many asgards tried to uncover it over possibly 1000s of years and they still only got a small amount of it. What could help is if the asgard, earth and other advanced planets try uncover different parts of it, but it'll still probably take ages. Dr Weir says there might be a way to defeat the wraith in it, but if there was wouldn't the ancients have used it, unless they didn't have the chance for some reason. Maybe there's a way to reverse the ageing process caused by a wraith feeding on a human on there.

[Wass]

I think it is illogical to think that the people at pentagon or Dr Weir her self would not recommend backing to the ancient knowledge of hard drives and taking it back to earth. After the events of the siege Atlantis came close to being destroyed they need to take the knowledge back to earth not only to studied but also to keep it safe. The whole purpose of expedition was not only to learn about the ancients but also to gain new technology.

[Qasim]

How much hard drive capacity did they take with them the first time

They would have needed 10 times more to back up the database

Or maybe they transmitted the database in a high compression data burst through the stargate once they got the ZPM - In this case the SGC would have needed a lot of hard drive capacity which they probably have as the dialling computer is a supercomputer

[oragans]

The ancient database should be sent back as a back as it is the most valuable thing in atlantis.

[Acropolis]

well now that we have the ancient tech we really have acomplished stargate's primary mission to attain new higher forms of technology. we could ask the asgard for help in understanding some of the data. but they still dont understand all of it. if the tollan were still around they would probably be begging to help us. but what we could make of it could probably make then new 303s extremly powerful