A Question On The Asgard Teleporter

[_Owen_]

You beat me to it again Avatar28. What I was going to say was, mass is the amount of matter in an object, seeing as light is energy and not matter, it has no matter, therfore, no mass.

Owen Macri

[Avatar28]

And yet it still has momentum and gravity. Ain't physics wonderful?

Actually, one way of looking at it is that EM DOES have mass, but it's so negligible as to be irrelevant. Of course, that doesn't jive with Einstein but that's why we have different theories.:-) Anyways, in some of these theories, matter is just basically condensed energy. In the same way that steam condenses into water, energy condenses back into matter

[_Owen_]

That is a very good way of putting it. The problem is, there is so much stuff, that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface, we are billions of light years away from the surface. We will never truley understand a single thing, until we understand everything, it may seem like we understand some aspects of science, but there is so much undiscovered and it could all disprove what we believe to be correct.

Owen Macri

[Avatar28]

If only we could discover a grand unified theory, it would help explain everything. AND, it might help us even bypass Heisenberg, thus allowing teleporters. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a grand unified theory would do that.

[cozzerob]

From what we have seen (and I think we might have heard in the show when they intercepted matter streams) it works in a similar way to the stargate itself. The rings dematerializes everything in the rings and transmits them to the other rings in a similar but seemingly a lot slower and shorter distanced then the stargate. The rings at the recieving end rematerialize and go away. It hasn't been shown but I think if there were anything standing at the recieving rings one of three things would happen. The rings wouldn't come up, the person standing there would be vaporized, or he would 'switch places' with the guy at the sending end. I don't like the last idea because then the 2 matter streams would have to pass through each other at one point (presumably the middle) and possibly scramble or mix or something of that point. So either they built in a securit feature of it simply not turning on (sure would be easy to stop rings from initializing, just sit something over the thing) or they dont care about someone stupid enough to stand in on a recieving ring. Knowing the Goauld, it is probably the vaporize whoever was standing there option.

There is a very good already thread that explains the 'goa'uld' transport rings - i'll try to find it later. In that thread it tells you that you can have the two rings contents change places. However, in response to your problem about conflicting matterstreams i would say that i believe that the 'matterstream' is actually energy, not matter (which would be more inkeeping with the stargate transportation technology, on which the rings are based {or vice versa - we built cars before planes...}). In that case there is no need to worry about signals merging. You could send one at a time, or send the streams at the same time (think about it - there are thousands of radio waves all travelling through the air, you can send emails up your internet connection while downloading files, etc)

[LiquidBlue]

I recently viewed "Solitudes". I did not remember how much gate theory it revealed. For example, Captain Carter referred several times to the matter stream that is transmitted from one gate to another. It would seem then from the evidence of this episode that the gates do not convert matter to energy, but rather disintegrates and reintegrates the object. The same would then likely be true of the ring transporters.

In "Enigma," Narim tells Captain Carter that Quantum Physics is an elementary physics fallacy and that the Tollan are beyond it. This leaves open a wide window for new physics and teleporters that take advantage of it. Of course most of our advanced technology -- IC's, lasers, etc. -- are based on quantum physics.

[cozzerob]

I hate to be rude - but i believe that you are wrong. The 'matter' stream is just a turn of phrase, like wormhole. That's where the matter is transported, but it is transported as energy. This point is mentioned several time in many different episodes.

[LiquidBlue]

I hate to be rude - but i believe that you are wrong. The 'matter' stream is just a turn of phrase, like wormhole. That's where the matter is transported, but it is transported as energy. This point is mentioned several time in many different episodes.

No offense taken. Indeed, that is why I included the qualifier "from the evidence of this episode." I would like to have some references to other episodes that reveal gate technology - specificly the idea that it involves the matter -> energy -> matter conversion. I'll have to review "48 hours" as it might contain such information.

[cozzerob]

I'm glad you weren't offended. However, finding evidence will be hard - it's like alot of the central ideas in the series - you can't remember where you heard it but you know you heard it sometime - i'll see what I can find tho...

[cozzerob]

Ok - I found a good, clear reference to this in the episode 'Red Sky':

O'NEILL
I thought when something was in a wormhole, it existed only as…energy. That you needed another stargate to turn it back into solid matter.
CARTER
Actually, you absolutely correct, Sir.
O'NEILL
(Seconds later, amazed)
I am?
CARTER
Yes!
(Smiles)
You see? It's the Stargate on the other side that actually reintegrates the matter into it's pre-organized form.
[O'Neill looks back at Hammond with a huge grin on his face]

CARTER
Without it the energy in the wormhole would rematerialize in it's base form. Now, in the case of a person, that would be very bad, but in the case of an element, it shouldn't be a problem.
O'NEILL
(Still smiling, to Hammond, whispering)
I was right!

[sg1 volgman]

does something have to be energy to move through subspace?

lol... "I am?" "I was right!"

[_Owen_]

If only we could discover a grand unified theory, it would help explain everything. AND, it might help us even bypass Heisenberg, thus allowing teleporters. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a grand unified theory would do that.

A grand unified theory would be great! It would help us with a lot of concepts. I believe it might, however, your guess is as good as mine, I have no evidence.

...goa'uld' transport rings...

Actually the transport rings are of Ancient design, the Goa'uld stole them. We know this because the Antarctic base had transport rings, and the Atarctic base was undiscovered by the Goa'uld.

Owen Macri

[_Owen_]

I hate to be rude - but i believe that you are wrong. The 'matter' stream is just a turn of phrase, like wormhole. That's where the matter is transported, but it is transported as energy. This point is mentioned several time in many different episodes.

You are very right here, matter stream is an incredible misnomer. A "matter stream," is actually energy, there is very little if no matter in what we would consider the "stream" at all.

Owen Macri

[_Owen_]

does something have to be energy to move through subspace?

lol... "I am?" "I was right!"

Seeing as we really have no solid facts about subspace that can and or have been proven, we can't really say whether or not it must be energy to travel through subspace, so I appoligize, but I cannot give you an answer.

Owen Macri

[cozzerob]

A grand unified theory would be great! It would help us with a lot of concepts. I believe it might, however, your guess is as good as mine, I have no evidence.

...goa'uld' transport rings...

Actually the transport rings are of Ancient design, the Goa'uld stole them. We know this because the Antarctic base had transport rings, and the Atarctic base was undiscovered by the Goa'uld.

Owen Macri

Yes Owen Macri - I know that... that is why I placed goa'uld in quotation marks, to emphasise the point that they were not of goa'uld design. You accidentally cut off the first quotation mark in your quote. It originally looked like this:

the 'goa'uld' transport rings

Again - hate to be rude but I specifically put goa'uld in quotation marks to point this out - I did see that episode of SG (it was damned good too...).

It shouldn't really come as any surprise that the rings are not of goa'uld design - as far as we know, nothing they have is there own - except the naquadria development - possibly.