Destiny's Ultimate Destination

[Arania]

Apologies if this has been posted before, or if I'm in the wrong section. The search was a bit unhelpful in this matter.

Re-watching a couple of SGU episodes, I spotted something when I examined the starfield in 'Sabotage' (Season 1, Episode 16).

M81_Small.jpg
This is an (admittedly low-resolution) screencap of the galaxy that the Destiny is flying towards during that episode. Despite it being fuzzy, the shape is fairly distinctive, and being a bit of an astronomy buff, I was able to make a bit of a logical leap-


800px-Messier_81_HST.jpg
This is a very high-resolution shot of M81 taken by the hubble space telescope. Apart from the degraded quality, the first image is essentially a mirror image of the actual M81 shot (the telltale signs are the long trailing arm underneath, and the split pair of arms on the right side of the destiny image match up with an identical structure on the left of the M81 image).

The fact that it's mirrored also gives away another critical piece of information: The only place one could get a shot like that would be from directly behind M81 relative to Earth, and considering Destiny is flying TOWARDS M81, it's destination is similarly obvious.

Destiny is heading to Earth.

[thekillman]

Uhm, you do realize it went away from Earth in the first place?

[Arania]

Uhm, you do realize it went away from Earth in the first place?

Yes, i do realise that. I did watch the show. I simply made a logical leap based on visual evidence. To account for the departure point ALSO being Earth, I have two possible explanations-

1. Destiny was programmed to fly a roughly circular course in space and return to its starting point eventually (less likely)
2. Destiny has simply been flying for so long that it's followed the natural curvature of the universe, looping back around to its starting point (more likely)

If you've got an alternative explanation as to why they're flying towards what is obviously M81 (Apart from 'CG Laziness'), i'd be happy to hear it.

[psl1]

The designers wanted the picture of the Galaxy to look as realistic as possible so they took something from the NASA files and reversed it to look some what different?

[LtColCarter]

The designers wanted the picture of the Galaxy to look as realistic as possible so they took something from the NASA files and reversed it to look some what different?

I tend to agree with Arania's theories. This explanation seems to be similar to CG Laziness

[ZRFTS]

The designers wanted the picture of the Galaxy to look as realistic as possible so they took something from the NASA files and reversed it to look some what different?

That seems to be it... I mean what purpose could Destiny have towards returning to Earth? Additionally it would look so similar to Stargate Atlantis who's city also returned to Earth in mostly the same way.

The ultimate destination I'm guessing was to be some entity which is beyond comprehension but ultimately viable to the ancients; what that is, we don't know but from the environmental data being gathered, it was going to be important.

[AlexanderD]

Yes, i do realise that. I did watch the show. I simply made a logical leap based on visual evidence. To account for the departure point ALSO being Earth, I have two possible explanations-

1. Destiny was programmed to fly a roughly circular course in space and return to its starting point eventually (less likely)
2. Destiny has simply been flying for so long that it's followed the natural curvature of the universe, looping back around to its starting point (more likely)

If you've got an alternative explanation as to why they're flying towards what is obviously M81 (Apart from 'CG Laziness'), i'd be happy to hear it.

Your 'most likely' assumption is based on the belief that the universe is spherical. That's a wonderful theory, but at this point unconfirmed. If Destiny has as yet to gather enough message fragments to decipher the message, arriving back at the embarkation point would mean the voyage itself was a failure. When you consider the sheer scope of the universe and the unbelievably high number of galaxies, consider for a moment that two galaxies could look similar. Statistically speaking, as the number of galaxies continues to grow, the probability of two resembling each other from a distance grows also.

[StargateWatcher]

I tend to agree with Arania's theories. This explanation seems to be similar to CG Laziness

lol

[StargateWatcher]

Your 'most likely' assumption is based on the belief that the universe is spherical. That's a wonderful theory, but at this point unconfirmed. If Destiny has as yet to gather enough message fragments to decipher the message, arriving back at the embarkation point would mean the voyage itself was a failure. When you consider the sheer scope of the universe and the unbelievably high number of galaxies, consider for a moment that two galaxies could look similar. Statistically speaking, as the number of galaxies continues to grow, the probability of two resembling each other from a distance grows also.

Alex--yo again, buddy ! :-D

Good points--I guess you're saying we don't even yet know the shape of the universe b/c we haven't been to any of its ends. This is neat stuff to know--dunno if one classifies this concepet as cosmologry or one of O'Neill's favorite pasttimes, astronomy.

[AlexanderD]

Hey there!

[Pond Hopper]

Maybe the ultimate location is where a bunch of ascended beings from a universe before the big bang are hanging out, waiting to be found..

[mikebmix]

ive been reading these threads for a little while and i am a stargate fan form way back when the movie was new,i watch it everyday and have all eps and interviews and every little posable thing i can find,if you listen to rush when he lets everyone listen to the recording of the so called begaining of time,that is where there are heading,so lets see if you belive in the big bang that means it would be from the center of the universe where it works itself outward,seems to me this could be the only place they could be going,think about it,if the universe was started with a big bang[i sorry but i know in my heart it was] then the radio wave came form the center of the big bang where it started,coming full circle back to earth might be posable but it would take way longer then a millon years to circle navagate the universe might even take ,how did my first wife tell me it would take her to forgive me,oh ya forever

[Asgard Flu]

I believe the ultimate destination was to head in the direction of what was believed to be the centre of the universe. Along the way they decided it logical to build stargates in the galaxies in that direction just incase the Destiny was ever destroyed and lost. With no destiny they could at least, with the straight line seeded stargate network create a gate bridge to the centre of the universe and walk through.
I think this also explains why the Destiny gates were not required to connect to distant gates and only needed to connect to nearby gates and also explains why no dialling devices were left on the planets.
The entire Destiny gate network was simply a direct line bridge to destinys and the seed ships final destination.

[LupoCani]

Didn't Rush say that destiny didn't have a specific destination, and just explored the universe in general?

[dr.chrismckay]

The Mission of Destiny was not to get to a specific destination, but to fly along and accumulate knowledge. The Ancients abandoned the project in favor of ascension. This leads me to conclude that some information had been sent back to the ancients. The next statement is purely speculation based on the show, The ancients instead chose to research ascension which would have given them the same information as that which destiny was accumulating, bypassing that gradual accumulation of knowledge and doing what ancients had been notoriously guilty of which was cutting corners. Again this is just speculation.