Atlantis is flawed

[DownFallAngel]

Thats what General (almost wrote Col. lol) O'Niell stated. He disliked the fact that Earth would be totally defenseless, now that the ZPM is drained, or...almost drained.

[Hyperspace]

^^^

That is a key question which I hope SG-1 will address. I'm thinking it was drained too much for intergalactic wormhole use, but it can still be used for Ancient weapons stations?

[uknesvuinng]

No one said the ZPM's had infinite power, we just said its pretty weird that as advanced that the Ancients were they had no backup power sources to the ZPM's on Atlantis, like relying on solar energy or a power plant built in the city.

They don't exactly need "backup" sources. They could produce ZPMs with probably as much ease as we can make AA batteries. You don't go looking for some other source of power when the batteries go dead in your remote; you buy more batteries. They had batteries that provided a ridiculous amount of power for millions of years, and they could produce more. There wasn't any reason to make a backup source.

Personally, I'd find it humorous, when the episode they truly go home comes, if they were exploring the city and found a small building with a sign that said "Spare ZPMs".

[EYU86]

That would be funny.
There has to be some manufacturing building within Atlantis that produces ZPM's. Well there doesnt have to be. Guess we just gotta wait and see.

[uknesvuinng]

That would be funny.
There has to be some manufacturing building within Atlantis that produces ZPM's. Well there doesnt have to be. Guess we just gotta wait and see.

Well, they had to build 'em somewhere. The question is, can we use whatever devices they used to manufacture ZPMs? Or will Sheppard use the technology to create an endless supply of turkey sandwiches?

[EYU86]

I vote turkey sandwiches

[ylai]

No one said the ZPM's had infinite power, we just said its pretty weird that as advanced that the Ancients were they had no backup power sources to the ZPM's on Atlantis, like relying on solar energy or a power plant built in the city.

I remember someone in the pilot episode mentioning that ZPMs can be depleted by reaching the maximum entropy. Since entropy is bounded by either the volume or the boundary surface (this depends whether the propsed "holographic principle" is true), this is the abolute thermodynamical limit. Someone from the production team clearly seems to have consulted a physicist...

[dolmata]

I wonder if the Puddlejumpers run on ZPMs. The ancients use them in their outposts and Atlantis, so why not the Puddlejumpers? It makes sense that if you knew that the ZPMs work well wouldn't you want them in all of the big devices? Plus the Puddlejumpers use drones(squids) as their weapons. The outpost did the same. The power requirement would be tremendous.

[ylai]

I wonder if the Puddlejumpers run on ZPMs. The ancients use them in their outposts and Atlantis, so why not the Puddlejumpers? It makes sense that if you knew that the ZPMs work well wouldn't you want them in all of the big devices? Plus the Puddlejumpers use drones(squids) as their weapons. The outpost did the same. The power requirement would be tremendous.

Wouldn't that create more logical flaws?

1. They could just take the ZPM of a Puddlejumper and power the City with it.
2. If the shield of the city is already inpenetrable (for the Wraiths) with 3 ZPM. One ZPM would be overkill for a Puddlejumper.
3. ZPM seems not to be easy to manufacture, if the City only have 3 and an outpost 1. One ZPM in a Puddlejumper looks like if ZPM are so easy to put together as ... well, an aircraft engine.

[dolmata]

That is just it. The Ancients are over confident with their technology. A Puddlejumper just seem logical to have a ZPM.

Why wouldn't it be easy to recreate a ZPM? It would seem the facility is probably equipt somewhere to create more ZPMs, but I bet it most likely takes more than one ZPM to create another one. They may not ever be able to create more.

Also the city only needed one ZPM to run on minimum. It was also almost dead and the shield still worked(short amount of time). Having three was probably a fail safe or just the minimum needed to run at full power.

[ylai]

That is just it. The Ancients are over confident with their technology. A Puddlejumper just seem logical to have a ZPM.

Why wouldn't it be easy to recreate a ZPM? It would seem the facility is probably equipt somewhere to create more ZPMs, but I bet it most likely takes more than one ZPM to create another one. They may not ever be able to create more.

You are right if it would seem ... well, close to our scientific expectation that you have to put massive energy to create a ZPM. The vacuum energy is expected to be just there. It should just be a matter of putting together a sufficiently cleverly constructed device.

On the other hand. It is questionable whether the vacuum energy is indeed infinite. It does appear in calculations, but possibly it is just an artifact of the renormalized quantum field theory. If energy is mass (as like E = mc²), the vacuum energy is clearly not infinite, but rather little (it would be far less dense than just air, or we would feel it by its mass). So I think it is better not to start thinking about all these stuff... :-)

[dolmata]

Maybe it is better not to get into it. They will probably never address it in the show anyway.

[VirtualCLD]

Why must the puddlejumpers use ZPMs? They have know forcefields. It's never been said how much power the drones use. We might be able to power them w/ our own technology. However, Atlantis requires much more, as did the intergalactic gate travel.

[Mio]

Wouldn't that create more logical flaws?

1. They could just take the ZPM of a Puddlejumper and power the City with it.
2. If the shield of the city is already inpenetrable (for the Wraiths) with 3 ZPM. One ZPM would be overkill for a Puddlejumper.
3. ZPM seems not to be easy to manufacture, if the City only have 3 and an outpost 1. One ZPM in a Puddlejumper looks like if ZPM are so easy to put together as ... well, an aircraft engine.

They could be powered by ZP technology. But maybe not by a ZPM.

For an analogy, Atlantis is powered by 3 D cells. But each Puddle jumper could have a tiny watch battery in it.

[EYU86]

Yea, I don't see Puddle-Jumpers using ZPM's because the drones were already pre-loaded into the ship to use as weapons.
As for the Ancient outpost, it may need the ZPM because the outpost could be producing drones while sending them to attack.
It would be pretty funny if the outpost could suddenly run out of drones considering how many were used to take out Anubis and his fleet.