Quantum Mirror question

[Rohan]

My question is, does anyone have any ideas/theories where it was drawing power from? or why it was able to create stable bridges into other universes?

Just watching Atlantis Mckay and Mrs. Miller (3x08) and Brainstorm (5x16) that matter bridges would take a ridiculous amount of energy to create/maintain and also were inherently unpredictable.

So it just made me curious how a mirror that could fit in a closet could have that kind of power and stability unless this was just a hand wave situation for later episodes.

It also made me curious if they kept the mirror they might have found a reality where the Ancients were still around or even took advantage of a reality where they still had a usable repository of knowledge.

[StargateMillennium]

I'll rewatch that EP later but just recalling from memory, it's not the matter bridge was unpredictable.

The original plan was to draw zero point energy from our own reality. But doing so creates exotic particles while creating a zone that murders the laws of physics. So the containment is unpredictable since you can't use physics to predict something in an area that no longer follows the laws of physics. Hence the original plan ended in disaster.

McKay came up with a new plan in which he would create a matter bridge and draw zero point energy from there and let the hopefully uninhabited alternate reality suffer the consequences.

While Jeanie said it would take a lot of energy, her brain was still tuned to Earth-levels of energy like nuclear and petroleum. In stargate, we've seen naquadah bombs go exterminatus on planets so high by normal energy standards is probably normal for them. So for all we know a naquadah generator could do the trick.

[Rohan]

The matter bridge itself was causing issues.

From what I can gather from both episodes of 'Mckay and Mrs. Miller' and 'Brainstorm', leaving the bridge open for long periods of time has detrimental side effects. The exception was in the episode of 'Road Not Taken' was an alternate Carter creating bridges for moments at a time before closing them.

Yet the quantum mirror hasn't shown any side effects which I found interesting.

[StargateMillennium]

I recently rewatched the ep. It wasn't the matter bridge causing issues. My previous description was correct. It was trying to extract zero point energy from local space time that was causing issues. They wanted to use the matter bridge because they hoped they could extract the energy from an alternate reality and have the uninhabited alternate reality suffer the consequences.

Carter: About a year ago, your brother came across an abandoned alien experiment called Project Arcturus. It was an attempt to generate zero point energy.

JEANIE:That would be virtually limitless power. What happened?

MCKAY:A slight problem. It was the creation of exotic particles in the containment field.

CARTER:Your brother along with many others has been trying to figure out a way to draw zero point energy from a parallel space-time.

MCKAY:Which would get us around the whole problem of the creation of dangerous exotic particles in our own space-time.

Issues arose because they accidentally started harvesting it from an inhabited alternate reality. Rodney-2's reality got to suffer the consequences.

RODNEY-2: Please stop me if I'm wrong. One: I presume you're running some sort of experiment that's designed to bridge between parallel universes? And two: it has something to do with power generation. Warm? Cold?

JEANIE: Uh, hot.

RODNEY-2: Well, I'm sure the experiment's been a success on this side, but it's having some rather serious repercussions in my universe.

JEANIE: Dangerous exotic particles that don't belong in either of our universes are being created on your side of the bridge.

In both Miller and Brainstorm, the issue was not the matter bridge itself but them not knowing how to close it. In Miller them not knowing how to close it meant they were still harvesting zero point energy. And in Brainstorm, not being able to close it meant they couldn't control how much heat they were dumping. Rodney became concerned about the endeavor not because of the matter bridge having negative consequences but the consequences of not being able to shut it off. If it's not being used to harvest energy then there's no problem.

You saw a paper about a matter bridge, a project that was shut down due to the adverse effects of exotic particles. You read it. You realized that if the bridge was used merely as a transfer of energy, say, heat, there would be no exotic particle creation, and thus no adverse effects.

Yes, having the bridge open for brief periods should negate the fallout, it was because Alternate Carter was also trying to harvest energy from alternate realities.

And hence the quantum mirror doesn't have any issue because since it's not trying to harvest energy the only issue they have to worry about is successfully collapsing the bridge which only occurred because the humans were still unfamiliar with the process of making these tings.