All you ever wanted to know about the 9th chevron

[Steelbox]

Rush theorized that the ninth chevron was used to lock onto moving targets though.

And where did you hear that?

[actuallyliam]

The Ninth Chevron idea of it tracking doesn't make sense given stargates don't jump connections at least not safely. if the Gate was to move it would leave a location causing it to cut out. Because it would have left the location it was originally.

Would it not make more sense for it to be a further extension given the sheer number of planets, moons, dwarf planets, asteroids. So rather it's to dial between the clusters.

This would make sense given MilkyWay and Pegasus are in the Local group. Thus only an 8 digit address is needed.

123456-Point of origin-Galaxy(In this galaxies same group)-Cluster(To jump between groups)

I'm not saying that it's not possible for them to not assign a gate location for some reason (maybe they didn't chart a cluster for them to assign it, maybe they keep one aside for use later maybe like 555 is used in US films) and assign that to a special program in all the DhDs for certain ships. So that it scans through the network until it gets a gate that is identified as Destiny gate. Then opens the gate between here a destiny.

Maybe to dial 9 chevrons it requires this special planet energy. Possibly even the Subspace ZPM thingy (The One that Mckay couldn't make work, Blew up a solar system trying) Or a different power source.

I just don't think it makes much sense to use the 9th chevron given the sheer number of gates. if it's used to track a moving gate.

[Nth Chevron]

The Ninth Chevron idea of it tracking doesn't make sense given stargates don't jump connections at least not safely. if the Gate was to move it would leave a location causing it to cut out. Because it would have left the location it was originally.

Mckay said in Adrift (4x01) that to use a Stargate it must remain in a small area space, when anyone dials Destiny she drops to sub-lights, maybe even stops completely to allow the transfer to take place. The ninth chevron is just a range and location finder for the Destiny gate, as Destiny doesnt move very far when her stargate is being used for either incoming or outgoing wormholes, she doesnt leave the small area of space which the current dial-in address correlates to.

Or the ninth chevron is a signal to Destiny to drop out of FTL and remain stationary to facilitate transfer.

N.C

[wabbit42]

Rush theorized that the ninth chevron was used to lock onto moving targets though.

Every gate is moving. If it is on a planet then it moves as the planet spins on its axis and while it orbits the star.

[JoseP927]

But compared to FTL, they are moving very slowly. Even so, the DHDs have to update the coordinates every several hundred years or so (Avenger 2.0). The ninth cheveron could be thought of a command to do an instant correlative update, or more accurately, an integral of a correlative update (it updates ∆position/∆t).

[mikebmix]

Okay, we all know the basic deal: 1-6 are for a location, 7th is a Point of Origin.

So Normal Address:
XXXXXXY
X-Location
Y-Point of Origin

Okay, now from the 5th race and Atlantis we have 8-Chevron address:
XXXXXXAY
X-Location
A-"Area Code" (Galaxy Address)
Y-Point of Origin

Alright, now we have the 9th Chevron which has yet to be used, now here is an idea i read and i kinda like it: an Extension. This would come into play when there is more than one gate in a given area. Now i know you already think: well, duh, that cant be true because we had two gates, and we never needed to use the 9th chevron. Well right you are, because if the Ninth isnt used it goes the to the Primary gate, which so happened to be ours.

Okay, so here is how i think a 9 Gate Address would go.
XXXXXXABY
X-Location
A-"Area Code" (Galaxy Address)
B-"Extension" (Gate Selector)
Y-Point of Origin.

Now if you wanted to go to a planet with more than one gate in the same galaxy you just ignore the area code, which would just mean that it activates a different chevron.

In other words, each chevron has a duty, even in a 8 or 9 glyph address

1-6 are ALWAYS destination glyphs
7 is ALWAYS point of origin
8 is ALWAYS galactic addresses
9 is ALWAYS a gate selector

all thats different is the order the chevrons activate.
for a normal connection its: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7
for a out of galaxy its 1-2-3-4-5-6-8-7
for an extension its 1-2-3-4-5-6-8-9-7 if out of galaxy
for an extension in galaxy is 1-2-3-4-5-6-9-7

okay, what do you think?

the thing is with a 7 you have 6 points which makes the center where the point are crossed that is the destintion,7th being begaining point,so in order to dail a different galaxy a MW gate would have to have constlations of the stars in pegasuse,right,which means you would need 6 symbols that you cannot use for anything other then dailing pegause,so being that destiny is so far out and no one knows where it is,how would you get the markings to dail it,you have to have 6 points in space to get a single point,how would a MW gate have sybols that have not been seen yet,does not make sence at all its another writers error

[bra'tec]

I never thought of it like that

[jeremyadamson]

The theory is different. However it seems flawed and unlikely. Knowing that using the 8th Chevron takes a whole load of energy, we can establish that the 9th chevron would take up so much more energy. But it would seem pointless then to waste a ZPM just to get to a second gate on some planet! Maybe it would have strategic advantages... but still.. Why?

Alternate Universes are cooler and more likely.

The power required for the 8 chevron address is so great due to the distance traveled, (E.G. earth to othala, earth to atlantis, supergate to ori galaxy), and the same for the 9th chevron. However, the ninth chevron address is not an address per se, but a type of code. In the series opener, using the point of origin as the final chevron yielded no result, and only using earths symbol could get the gate open. This suggests that (presuming Destiny is the only ship of its kind) there is only two 9 chevron addresses (Destiny, and Earth). The ancients had built transporters all over Atlantis and were the originators of the ring transporters and the builders of the "puddle-jumper" ships, which means that the need for travelling to get to the other side of a planet would be a non-issue. That said, i suppose it wouldnt be impossible to travel from one gate to another on the same planet, especially with only one DHD involved, but it would take intricate calculations and it would most likely only be a seven chevron address, maybe even six since both gates are on the point of origin planet.

[Bladed]

i would think that the 9th chevron is as Rush and Eli theorized, it's a code. Like a key in a lock.
So let us suppose the ancients like us tend to put an identifier code in each and every gadget, such as DHD's gates, ships or what have you. This Ninth chevron tells the gates that this is a gate identifier and NOT a location. This would make the gate system easier to manage in that any gate could be at any given location and it would not make a difference, except when two gates are present. Such has happened before. Like the Antarctic gate, Russian gate, SGC, and the one on Apophis' ship. So in effect the ninth chevron tells the gate to ignore location and dial this gate no matter where it is, and makes the gate available to use maximum power to see that it gets through.

[thekillman]

i would think that the 9th chevron is as Rush and Eli theorized, it's a code. Like a key in a lock.
(..) So in effect the ninth chevron tells the gate to ignore location and dial this gate no matter where it is, and makes the gate available to use maximum power to see that it gets through.

It's not as simple as that. Stargates require the address to know where a stargate is, but even with a complex grid with 7-ish billion solutions in the galaxy, you're still ending up with each piece of the grid being lightyears across (after all: there are far more billions of planets and thousands of billions of stars).

So we're talking about a 6-ish meters across device trying to "hit" -i assume- a second 6-ish meters across device across thousands of lightyears with it's precision being like... +/- 2 lightyears? that makes no sense.

It tells us that the way SG puts it is incomplete.

It makes no sense that such an imprecise system is used to tell which gate you want except in the case where this is half the system. I would say that it makes no sense to aim so precisely at a stargate since it's not just moving around the planet but also around the star it orbits. But how do you lock on to that gate? If you're making a wormhole from two sides then surely something must align or aim them properly.

How it (probably) works:
The most simple answer is that the stargate, upon receiving it's sixth symbol, already knows which gate to dial (after all, you know where to look from the actual coordinates) and then sends out a subspace pulse with it's identification code in the direction of the stargate being dialed. The signal passes a bunch of gates (but do nothing with it) and then "hits" the dialed gate. This happens in a matter of milliseconds. The dialed gate registers that it's being dialed (and knows the identification of the dialling stargate) and prepares it's wormhole systems for receiving(shown as "chevron locking"), at the same time sending a signal back with it's exact (as exact as it can be) location, that it is still functional etc. As this information returns, the dialler has either already punched the 7th symbol (usually, the red central DHD button) or is about to and the gate generates the wormhole the moment it's instructed.


How the 9th chevron works

For the 9th chevron things will be different mostly because it's a physical address (to destiny) rather than a relative one (dial a gate in an area). The only way i can think of for this to be achieved is to use the aforementioned system at a grander scale.

There are two solutions:
When the 8th of 9 chevrons is dialed, the Stargate registers this and sends out a very powerful subspace pulse in every direction to "ping" stargates. It does this until Destiny picks up the transmission, recognizes it as a dial to itself and preps the gate for an incoming wormhole while pinging back the relevant data.

Since i find aspects of this very unlikely (e.g. a spherical wave propagating far enough that it can reach Destiny, because of the inverse square law) there is a second solution:
The dialing gate "pings" all nearby stargates like it did before, but with a limited range. When it reaches the first Stargate in the chain, this gate recognizes that (because of numbering?) and starts the Destiny Protocol: it too starts "pinging" stargates and every next (or certain amount of gates) does this too, meaning that a chain of "pings" occurs and that the stargates act as a way of figuring out where Destiny went, each gate previously in the line pinging the next (or the last in the galactic chain) and so tracing it to Destiny which then directly fires a (very narrow) beam back (or uses the same piggyback system).


In essence, in stead of just being a code, it unlocks an algorithm where it searches for the appropriate gate.

[garhkal]

Sort of like the carter-mccay space bridge used an algorithm to dial the next gate in line and so on..

[thekillman]

Sort of like the carter-mccay space bridge used an algorithm to dial the next gate in line and so on..

yea except there's no actual dialing going on: it's just one gate contacting the next. This is necessary because the dialling gate would have no clue how far along Destiny is, and if the gates had some "status update" function, that would be noticeable.

[Bladed]

Think of it like this; 7 chevron addresses are like web addresses. They tell you what website you want to go to, no matter what server or country they are in. The .com, .net, .gov, and now the .ru, .tx can identify which country the host is located in (8th chevron). An ip address (9th chevron) tells you the exact computer on the internet you want, no matter which country it resides in.
Domain name registry look up computers which control the internet use the website name to resolve the servers location and ip address. The user never sees this nor cares as long as the correct location is opened. Places like facebook and google use multiple servers, users don't care which one they get as long as they get there. By using the ip address tells the system you are specifically looking for this computer at this location, no exceptions.
IT might not be the best analogy, but in my estimation the ninth chevron is telling the system go to this gate, no exception. Since it has no fixed location the 7 and 8 star patterns are meaningless to the system other than to identify a specific gate, ie Ninth chevon tells the system it not an address but but that the user wants this gate and only this gate no matter where it is.

[thekillman]

Think of it like this;

I don't see the difference with what i said.

[tlw]

I was never able to finish watching Universe. I would get about halfway through the first season and I couldn't stand it. This is trying 2 times to get interested in it. I don't feel like reading all 100 pages in this thread now. So my question is, the ninth chevron was for locking on to Destiny no matter where in the universe it was and nothing else?

I have read it got more interesting and better later on, but I no longer have access to Netflix to watch it.