Could a stargate have 2 or more addresses?

[jollyrogue]

I was watching "a matter of time" last night and this just popped into my head (there's no relation to the episode, its just when the idea happened)

A stargate address is 6 points in space, with the 7th being the point of origin (PoO hehe):


So could it not be theoretically possible that a planet/gate/system, could have a 2nd address, but from 6 different points in space?



just a thought, sorry if someone has asked before

key:
middle bit is obviously the destination, orange dots represent points in space and the green line - orange dot is the point of origin. the black dots represent the stars and whatnot

[K^2]

First of all, this is obviously not how the address system works. I know that this is how they explain it in the show, but it can't work that way. Feel free to search for discussions.

But yeah, it might be possible for two addresses to point to the same gate. Each address is a unique point in space, but the gates don't need to be at that point, just sufficiently close to it. It's entirely possible for the same gate to be the nearest gate to two unique address destinations, making it have two different addresses.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

Your drawings are two-dimensional... the lines probably wouldn't intersect at the same point in three-dimensional space.

But.... if you could use any six points to find a stargate, since there could be literally millions of points in space that could be used to find one specific location (just by moving the points closer together or further apart or rotating opposing points around the central point or dialling the address forwards/backwards or dialling CD-AB-EF-G instead of AB-CD-EF-G where G is the point of origin and AB would be the points at either end of the intersecting lines which locate the destination) A stargate could have any number of potential addresses.. but Stargate canon has shown that only one address works when dialling a specific destination.

[K^2]

I don't think Stargate Canon specifies anything here. They have a list of known addresses. These addresses are probably the optimal coordinates for each gate. There could be additional coordinates that would work, but since there are nearly 2 billion combinations, it is incredibly unlikely that you'd dial a random combination and end up connecting to the gate. Even less likely for it to be one of the gates you already know.

[The Mastage Kidd]

I'm pretty sure they've never outright stated that each gate can have only one address, however they've never come upon an alternate address that leads to the same planet they've visited. Maybe the gate actually cares what order you put the co-ordinates in?
I've been trying to find anything in episodes on this at all and as far as I can tell it's never come up.

[K^2]

But SG teams don't just go to random addresses. They go to addresses they already know to lead somewhere. Maybe, when nobody is using the gate, they might be trying to dial random coordinates. The number of locations discovered would be in tens of thousands. Number of possible addresses is in billions. Even accounting for birthday paradox, the odds of them accidentally finding two addresses for the same gate are rather slim.

[timstro59]

But SG teams don't just go to random addresses. They go to addresses they already know to lead somewhere. Maybe, when nobody is using the gate, they might be trying to dial random coordinates. The number of locations discovered would be in tens of thousands. Number of possible addresses is in billions. Even accounting for birthday paradox, the odds of them accidentally finding two addresses for the same gate are rather slim.

but it would be rather interesting seeing the look on their faces.

[K^2]

"Anyone else is having a deja vu?"

[lordofseas]

I thought it went from the 6 closest constellations, the closest being number 1, 2nd closest number 2, etc. etc. until you push PoO and the giant [insert colour] button and voila, instant wormhole.

[K^2]

Nope. All stars in constellations are bunched in a rather tight, by galactic scales, ball around Sol. There is a good reason to believe that the system can assign addresses far outside of that region. Also, specifying even the second nearest constellation does little to improve precision, let alone the remaining 4.

[jollyrogue]

It's kinda hard for me to draw 3 dimensional space in paint

I thought that was how the coordinate system worked, i saw a drawing somewhere that had something similar, i'll try to find it.

edit: i found it

[K^2]

Yeah, but that doesn't work. Even just two random lines in space don't intersect. Having three come even close to one point is difficult. Not to mention the fact that if you did manage to get two lines to intersect, why do you even need a 3rd? You already have the point of intersection.

This is the reason why I proposed a 3-plane intersection system, which I discuss in detail in a different thread. That gives you a unique destination point from 6 glyphs. There have also been other proposals that are quite good. Still, there is a lot of uncertainty with every system proposed so far, and none of them correlate with addresses in the show. Though, it's probably safe to assume that these are made up.