All you ever wanted to know about The Iris and the Wormhole

[garhkal]

just wondering, even if sg-1 wasn't being cancelled could we make a shield like the one on atlantis' stargate. or is that still beyond our technology,

Spoiler:

or could we use an asgard shield we got from them during unending

so then it would be like super impurvious, like against particle acelerators, or have our enemeys stopped using that, also this might be answered in a future episode sorry, i am just up to season 4 disc currently.

Prob there, is power. It imo would take a lot just to make that 'shield' go up.

[crudelius]

Prob there, is power. It imo would take a lot just to make that 'shield' go up.

good point, but didn't we also get like super powered generators? or how are we expected to use all the cool technology?

[fallenexile452]

We have seen the goa'uld put shields around the gate before so i don't think it requires excessive power. Even a weak shield just on the outside of the iris would significantly increase the overall resistive strength, it's just basically adding an extra layer on top.

[boinga1]

I hope this hasn't been discussed before, but I'm new and I haven't read through the entire post. Why doesn't light travel through an wormhole? We know radio waves can be sent both ways through a wormhole. Light and radio waves are simply electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths; why can only radio waves pass through. (If light waves did pass through, presumambly the effect would be a wormhole that looked like a "portal" through which you could see the other side.) Perhaps the wormhole only allows certain wavelengths of energy to pass through?

[spinspinspin]

I hope this hasn't been discussed before, but I'm new and I haven't read through the entire post. Why doesn't light travel through an wormhole? We know radio waves can be sent both ways through a wormhole. Light and radio waves are simply electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths; why can only radio waves pass through. (If light waves did pass through, presumambly the effect would be a wormhole that looked like a "portal" through which you could see the other side.) Perhaps the wormhole only allows certain wavelengths of energy to pass through?

Maybe the light that the "whoosh" and the watery shiny thingy that the Stargate generates when "on" overwhelms light coming from the other side?

[Dr Weir]

I hope this hasn't been discussed before, but I'm new and I haven't read through the entire post. Why doesn't light travel through an wormhole? We know radio waves can be sent both ways through a wormhole. Light and radio waves are simply electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths; why can only radio waves pass through. (If light waves did pass through, presumambly the effect would be a wormhole that looked like a "portal" through which you could see the other side.) Perhaps the wormhole only allows certain wavelengths of energy to pass through?

Errr no. You got it completely wrong! Light and sound are not the same at all! Light is electromagnetic waves made up of particles called photons which are clusters of energy. Sound is produced by the vibrations of already existing molecules in the media such as air. It becomes sound once picked up by a hearing organ such as an ear. The light appears to be reflected by the barrier people walk though as they enter the stargate so that might be why.

[boinga1]

Sound waves are entirely different from light waves, yes. But radio waves are electromagnetic waves, just like light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_waves). My point is that the puddle should allow light waves and radio waves to pass through.

(I know wikipedia isn't always reliable, but i don't have time to search for a better source).

[spinspinspin]

Sound waves are entirely different from light waves, yes. But radio waves are electromagnetic waves, just like light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_waves). My point is that the puddle should allow light waves and radio waves to pass through.

(I know wikipedia isn't always reliable, but i don't have time to search for a better source).

Just because radio waves can pass through does not mean that light waves can.

For example, trying to observe the night sky at the optical wavelengths yields a very different picture than observing at say, infared wavelengths.

That's why people use radio telescopes, to see things that optical telescopes cannot. If you are interested, one of the reasons why we do this is that the interstellar dust diffracts EM waves with optical wavelengths but the longer infared wavelengths can get through.

ALSO:

EM waves such as light experience things like interference. For example, imagine you are in a really bright room. When you shine your flashlight on the wall, you can't really see the light coming from it. This is because the light from the room is so much more powerful than the light from your flashlight. Thus, when the waves superimpose and add up, the flashlight's contribution is tiny and you can't really notice it much. But a flashlight in a dark room is very noticeable.

Now, imagine the barrier shiny thing of the stargate is your "bright room". A person standing on one side of the gate shining a light into the other side won't be observed from the other side since the gate is too "bright".

I suppose the reason radio waves can get through is that the gate does not emit any radiation at radio wavelengths, only (from what we've seen) in the optical wavelengths (proof: obvious from all that light we see!).

[!!??]

For the addresses to use the constellations probably sounded like a good idea back when they unsure about the origins of the gate network or how old it was. as we have gone along though the writers have just been shooting themselves in the foot, if you are basing the symbols on modern constellations then the gate has to be a recent thing, and the points to be correlated from earth. using this idea the gate uses corridors of space that expand like a cone outward towards the specific constellations like a symbol for a particular area of the space as seen from earth.

The problem comes however in that they then have the gate to be millions of years old and stellar drift would mean that the original points would have been random and meaningless to the ancients when they were using the gate network and it would be one of the biggest coincidences since humans evolving into the same form as the ancients for the constellations we have today to form those symbols.

therefore back to my original statement, we can't explain so don't even try.

In avenger 2.0 carter explains that each gate makes a number of updates. One of these updates is steller drift. Most of the symbols on the gate dont look like constellations when few do. The few that do probaly didnt change that much in millions of years.

[therealdb]

this my have been answered alrdy, but thers 15 pages to red, but does anyone know how the iris fits into the stargate whist its not on? the iris' widest point is too thick to fit into the gate and even so, where would it go? the symbol ring is right inside it and then theres all the inner workings.

just a thought

[crudelius]

^ maybe a plot hole? or maybe the iris is transported into another dimension when the iris opens, and then it floats along until we use our super powered multi dimensional magnets to pull back in the correct position, close it, and then pull it back into our dimension , but i guess it's all theoretical. and here is my own question, in shades of gray when o'neil puts his hand back thru an incoming wormhole, what if someone walked right into that part of the wormhole? would his hand and the other person's body be fused together (probably not), would he be transported to some random location in space and die (again probably no) or be loaded into the buffer until o'neil moved his hand out of the way (i like this one). i know i sort-of answered my own question, but again i'm no physicist, so maybe, you, or someone else has a better/cooler answer.

[Kidwizz]

hahaha not so randomness: i remember a few times, people asking about how does the gate know if there are still are people to go through. I just thought of why, Could it be because the IDC code is still being sent through, so the wormhole stays open.

[Geral]

I started watching Stargate with Atlantis and now I'm going back to see the seasons of SG1. Amazing show, especially now that I'm watching them in order. I always wondered... The Iris was installed to prevent people who they don't want to come in, to stay out. When the Iris isn't there, or for any other stargate the gate does that WOOOSHHH thing and its proven that anything that stays in its way gets vaporized.

The one episode where they're prisoners in season 2 called "Prisoners" proved that one. Well, why doesn't the wormhole vortex vaporize the Iris?

I went to the unofficial source of Stargate information, Wikipedia, and it doesn't say anything about it.

Well? I'm just curious

[Gen_J_O'Neill]

lol, it's a question that has long been debated here!

When you think about it the iris should be vaporized when the KAWOOSH occurs but isn't. I think the general concensus is that the iris is so close to the event horizon that it prevents the KAWOOSH from even starting. This way the KAWOOSH doesn't even form and doesn't put a whole in the iris.

That said, its a bit of a plot hole!

[VSHARMA]

When the Iris properly reintegrating nothing really can got pass expect radio signals, the Iris stops most matter from reintegrating.

That's why you always hear a noise when a Human or Jaffa gets swashed against the Iris. Same with nukes.