A couple ideas....

[SGSlugger]

I'm throwing two ideas out here for thought:

1) Could an Ancient society still be alive in an alternate universe? Could the SGC use the quantum mirror (assuming that it wasn't destroyed) to find a reality where the Ancient defeated the Wraith or never made contact with them?

2) The Ancients were this super-smart race, but they when it came to saving their own people, they didn't use their resources very wisely. They tried to build that time machine in "Window of Opportunity" to go back and save their people, but would not they have known that their Stargate could also send them back?

Have fun!

[ShadowMaat]

I'm throwing two ideas out here for thought:

1) Could an Ancient society still be alive in an alternate universe? Could the SGC use the quantum mirror (assuming that it wasn't destroyed) to find a reality where the Ancient defeated the Wraith or never made contact with them?

Well, an Ancient colony that hasn't faced the Wraith wouldn't be much use
against them. They'd have no more idea what to do than we would.

A colony that has defeated them might be of more use, but if THOSE Ancients are different from OUR Ancients, then their Wraith would likely be different, too, so there's no real guarantee there, either.

2) The Ancients were this super-smart race, but they when it came to saving their own people, they didn't use their resources very wisely. They tried to build that time machine in "Window of Opportunity" to go back and save their people, but would not they have known that their Stargate could also send them back?

And unless you have a convenient and predicted solar flare, using the gate for time travel isn't going to do you a lot of good. There's also the fact that, as I understand it, predicting how far back or ahead or even in which direction in time you travel is not going to be easy via the gate. The time device had (I assume) controls built in to manage the time functions to a greater degree than what could be managed via the gate, which was NOT built specifically for time travel.

[Jafana]

1. I think, that yes, the Ancients could quite possibly have survived in an Alternate reality. However, thats a moot point now for our SGC because they destroyed the quantum mirror. It posed too much of a threat.

2. I think you're right. The creators of the Stargate system would almost definately have known at least of the possibility of time travel.
However, time travel is dangerous. No matter how you do it, you are likely to change the future.
As such, I would imagine the Ancients in their 'wisdom' would have discarded this idea.
but even if they didn't, perhaps they saw ascention as being the better road?

[Crazedwraith]

1. I think, that yes, the Ancients could quite possibly have survived in an Alternate reality. However, thats a moot point now for our SGC because they destroyed the quantum mirror. It posed too much of a threat.

Hammond only said he was gonna have it smashed. Who konws? We never saw its smashed remnats there are a plethora of reason why it wasn't destroyed. Maybe rogue NID stole it to use it in their own insidious schemes/

2. I think you're right. The creators of the Stargate system would almost definately have known at least of the possibility of time travel.
However, time travel is dangerous. No matter how you do it, you are likely to change the future.
As such, I would imagine the Ancients in their 'wisdom' would have discarded this idea.
but even if they didn't, perhaps they saw ascention as being the better road?

The ancients DID try to use time travel WoO anyone? Thye couldn't get it to work. This suggest the solar flare method is also un-useable for that purpose.

[SGSlugger]

And unless you have a convenient and predicted solar flare, using the gate for time travel isn't going to do you a lot of good. There's also the fact that, as I understand it, predicting how far back or ahead or even in which direction in time you travel is not going to be easy via the gate. The time device had (I assume) controls built in to manage the time functions to a greater degree than what could be managed via the gate, which was NOT built specifically for time travel.

If the Aschen can predict solar flares, then the Ancients surely could! Still, if the time device did not work, then you could use the gate as a last resort. As long as the time traveler arrived before the Ancients made contact with the Wraith, then they could try and stop it.

[ShadowMaat]

If the Aschen can predict solar flares, then the Ancients surely could! Still, if the time device did not work, then you could use the gate as a last resort. As long as the time traveler arrived before the Ancients made contact with the Wraith, then they could try and stop it.

And how do you predict how far back in time you go? Or how far back you HAVE to go? And how do you know which direction you'll be traveling in- forwards or backwards in time?

Then there's the fact that making changes of that nature could have unforseen repercussions. Obviously, that band of Ancients on Alaris were pretty desperate, but messing with the timeline is, generally speaking, a very bad idea. There are paradoxes, for one thing. And there's a possibility that changing that one thing could have a cascade effect that winds up making things WORSE than if you'd just left well enough alone.

Maybe instead of dying because of a plague, the Ancients become enslaved and their bodies and technologies are used to unleash unimaginable horrors that will rend the universe and destroy the fabric of spacetime. Maybe defeating the Wraith allows another, even worse species (whom the Wraith would have defeated) to gain dominance. Maybe defeating the Wraith will cause the Ancients to become arrogant and domineering so that they wind up being an even bigger threat to the universe than the Wraith were. Without knowing more about time, there's no way to predict the consequences.

[Teal'c]

Here's a crazy idea, maybe the Ancients didn't know the Stargate can send you through time... you know, since nobody else knows and SG-1 discovered it completely by accident...

[Jprime]

Uh dude, they built a machine SPECIFICALLY to use the gate for time travel, although not in the same way as a solar flare. They oviously new that the gate could be modified (to some degree) to act as a time machine.

[Teal'c]

Uh dude, they built a machine SPECIFICALLY to use the gate for time travel, although not in the same way as a solar flare. They oviously new that the gate could be modified (to some degree) to act as a time machine.

Yes, but they didn't know you could just fling a wormhole around a sun and travel through time, or else why would they have built the time machine?

[Jafana]

hehe. clever..

but perhaps the time machine used that same solar flare concept, but in a more efficient way?

[uknesvuinng]

The flare method of Stargate time travel is achieved by using the increased gravity from a solar flare to slingshot the wormhole back to it's dialing gate, which causes it's chronological destination to change (hence, the gate is actually connected to a seperate location, not physically, but chronologically). The change is most likely created by the flare, and therefore not immediately under willful control. So the Ancients built the time machine in order to dial another "time"; however, it seems that they never worked it out to be under their control either. The time loop effect itself could have resulted from the flaws of the machine, or it could have been a feature so the Ancients who did the travelling could examine the affects of their changes before making them permanant, a "print preview" of sorts.

EDIT: Just checked the transcript for Window of Opportunity and noticed that the loop was stated in the writings as a mistake. Preview theory is definately a no.

[Teal'c]

hehe. clever..

but perhaps the time machine used that same solar flare concept, but in a more efficient way?

Actually the WoO time machine was more to do with magnets than solar flares... well, I'm sure they're related.... let's see, it was powered by ionisation from the geomagnetic storm... the sun was flaring a lot... but it was a good bit different to the fling-around method, the WoO machine connected to 13 gates (Maybe all Ancient colonies?)...