Question Relating to a Scene From 'The Pegasus Project' (SPOILERS)

[Lord of Nightmares]

I was showing this episode on DVD to a friend of mine as he'd heard good things about it but is too cheap to buy the DVDs himself.

Thing is, once the credits started rolling, instead of commenting on how they managed to take the Ori mothership out and the other cool stuff in the episode, he started whining about the 'bad science' in it as Teal'c's ship should've been affected as well by the time dilation effects of the black hole at the other end in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Was this really an oversight on the part of TPTB, or is there an actual and plausible explanation as to why Teal'c's end wasn't affected just so I can tell my friend to shove it and buy the season 10 set himself if he wants to watch the rest of it? Thanks in advance.

[jds1982]

The black hole powering the supergate probably wasn't as big as the black hole in Pegasus, so it's area of effect (event horizon, area of time distortion) wouldn't be as big, and Teal'c might not have been inside of it. Of course he might still be affected by the gravity from the Pegasus black hole translated through the gate, but the gate in Pegasus was still pretty far from the black hole so it probably wasn't that big a deal.

[Lord of Nightmares]

Yeah, I was actually referring to the black hole in the Pegasus Galaxy, since my friend kept insisting that it's effects should've translated through the gate in the Milky Way. The problem was when Teal'c parked his ship alongside the regular Stargate and cloaked it in order to prevent the Ori mothership from detecting it.

My friend whined about how it didn't make any sense as Teal'c should've been affected, and the effects of the black hole should've prevented him from making any further communications with the Odyssey.

I also tried the explanation about how the Gate in the Pegasus Galaxy might've still been quite a ways off from the centre of the black hole, but he kept insisting that gravity is still gravity and it shouldn't matter. Frankly, I have no idea why this joker finds the need to nitpick over the slightest of things in this series whereas he also watches lots of sci-fi themed anime like Evangelion and Full Metal Panic and claims that the science in most of that's more grounded in reality when it doesn't really make much sense to me.

Btw, nice to see another Beast Wars fan, that's easily my fave episode in the series.

[SaberBlade]

Teal'c should have been affected by it but it all depends on how close the gate is to the blackhole.

The same thing should have happened in 'The Pegasus Project' as in 'A Matter of Time'. The closer the gate in Pegasus got to the black hole, and the closer Teal'c got to the gate in the Milky Way, the stronger the effects of the time dialation.

When Teal'c got close enough to the stargate to cloak it, he should have been suffering the worst of the time dialation, and the closer the other gate got to the black hole, the worse it would have gotten. The biggest difference between 'A Matter of Time' and 'Pegasus Project' would have probably been the distance from the gate to the black hole. The effects transfered through the gate wouldn't have been so bad as long as the gate was close enough to power the gate, yet far enough away not to be affected so badly.

As we say in 'A Matter of Time', that gate was on a planet where had time effectively stopped because it was so close to the black hole the planet was being destroyed. In 'Pegasus Project' the gate was far enough away that simple thrusters on the gate could keep it from pulled in.

So long thread short, you friend is right when he says Teal'c should have been affected, however he's also wrong because they weren't close enough to the black hole for it to cause serious time dialation problems. That said, i'm not a scientist or very smart so I could be all wrong.

[jonty-comp]

I've just thought of something interesting. In A Matter of Time, they said that eventually the gravity waves transmitted would force the whole Earth through the gate, right? So what would happen if they connected the Pegasus gate and Teal'c's gate, then stuck one to the side of the Supergate and sent the other one towards the black hole? I doubt the poncy Ori technology would have stood up to a black hole. Either the supergate would be ripped up and pulled through, or the Stargate would be destroyed or something.

[Lord You]

In face Teal'c was affected. Or rather his singal was. Remember how slow his signal sounded? Whether it significantly affected him depends on how far the effect spread. A Matter of Time established that the translation of both the time dilation and the gravitational effects were not instantaneous through the wormhole. Besides, it didn't see that the time dilation effect had that much a different in A Matter of Time. The main worry was the gravitation effects, which translated through much more slowly.

[garhkal]

I've just thought of something interesting. In A Matter of Time, they said that eventually the gravity waves transmitted would force the whole Earth through the gate, right? So what would happen if they connected the Pegasus gate and Teal'c's gate, then stuck one to the side of the Supergate and sent the other one towards the black hole? I doubt the poncy Ori technology would have stood up to a black hole. Either the supergate would be ripped up and pulled through, or the Stargate would be destroyed or something.

That sounds like an interesting idea..

[Jarnin]

In face Teal'c was affected. Or rather his singal was. Remember how slow his signal sounded? Whether it significantly affected him depends on how far the effect spread.

Time dilation is a direct result of a gravitational field.

Teal'c's signal shouldn't have been red-shifted like it was in that episode. Technically speaking, they should have been communicating without any dilation between them since they should have been situated in the same gravitational field.

A Matter of Time established that the translation of both the time dilation and the gravitational effects were not instantaneous through the wormhole.

No, A Matter Of Time established that the time dilation effect advanced ahead of the gravitational effects due to the StarGate having a lensing effect (which is technobabble BS).
If this is canon, then both the SuperGate and the StarGate should have been producing a time dilation effect as well as a lesser gravitational effect, but they weren't.
Instead, the only time dilation effect shown in The Pegasus Project was coming from the Black Hole in Pegasus.

Besides, it didn't see that the time dilation effect had that much a different in A Matter of Time. The main worry was the gravitation effects, which translated through much more slowly.

The crazy thing is, the whole point of the gate's being positioned near a black hole is to take advantage of a time dilation effect in order to keep a wormhole open longer than the usual 38 minutes.

In A Matter Of Time, it was the gate's proximity to the black hole that forced the gate in the SGC to remain open. As that planet spiraled closer to the hole, the time dilation effect (and gravitational field) would have grown, and the gate would have never shut down.

However, in Pegasus Project, the gate and the ship were too far away from the hole to increase the time the gate would stay open by much at all. Teal'c's transmissions were only shifted a tiny bit, which means the gate connection between the Pegasus gate and the SuperGate shouldn't have stay open much longer than the normal 38 minutes.
Of course they hand-waved away the time dilation effect keeping the gate open and changed it to "the black hole powers the gate" a while ago, which again, is technobabble BS.

Lord of Nightmares: To be perfectly honest, if your friend is going to nitpick one of the best episodes of SG-1 because the (non-scientist) writers don't understand physics, then he probably wouldn't like any of the episodes.

If you want to introduce the series to him correctly, have him watch the movie, then start him on season 1. If he gets through that, then have him move on to the rest of the series, season by season. Don't have him jump straight into season 10; he'll be too focused nitpicking the science and not involved enough in the characters and story.

[ascendedancient42]

The big difference between these two episodes is outgoing/incoming wormholes.

Remember, the Supergate was the receiving gate. All of the effects of gravity and time dialation we saw previously were by dialing into a gate near a black hole.

This may be why we didn't see the same types of effects on Teal'c.

[Lord of Nightmares]

Thanks for the responses, guys. Yeah, looks like TPTB might've screwed up on this, unless they know something about the way black holes operate that we don't. >_<

Oh yeah, and Jarnin, my friend's been following Stargate since the very first movie came out. Thing is, he's watched all of SG-1 and Atlantis that's been released on DVD to date courtesy of yours truly as he's too cheap to buy them on his own, as I have mentioned before.

Another thing, he's the one who keeps bugging me to let him watch the next set of episodes practically every other week we meet up, his excuse being that he keeps hearing off the 'Net about how highly regarded the franchise is and that he wants to see if Westerners are able to do sci-fi right as compared to all that aforementioned anime that he watches.

The really annoying thing about him however is that no matter how good an episode might be, he'll find some reason to nitpick it or other. Other examples include 'Lost City part II', where he said that the bit at the end where the drones tore Anubis's mothership to shreds while avoiding the Prometheus had been done much better in an anime series called 'Vandread', not to mention the fact that he complained 'Even after all that, they still haven't found Atlantis!'. Then there's 'Threads', which he says was pretty much just a cheap ripoff of an episode of Star Trek set in the Q Continuum or something. And yeah, his latest tirade which nearly made me blow my top was with 'The Pegasus Project', despite the fact that he'd been bugging me nearly every alternate week or so as to when the S10 DVD set was coming out after he'd finished watching S9 (I won't even go into how unimpressive he claimed he found the Supergate battle at the end of 'Camelot' to be).

Sorry if I seem like I'm ranting, I'm a little tired right now (down with the flu to boot), and I think I really need to get some sleep. And thanks again for your thoughts on this, everyone, I really appreciate it.