randomnessosityism
Also, something still confuses me about Stargate to this day, so help me out: they establish in the very first movie that to dial a Gate in the same galaxy, you need seven coordinates. The first six establish a point in space where you plan to travel, and the seventh is the point of origin that determines where the wormhole will form from. Each Gate has a unique point of origin specific to that Gate.
Except…for the point of origin to be an actual, you know, point, a physical location: don’t you need another set of six symbols to establish it? Does the single point of origin encapsulate those six symbols? In that case, why do you need to dial the first six? Shouldn’t Stargate addresses be two symbols? Am I just missing something?
math-boy
The Gate has 38 constant symbols with a 39th that is unique to each Gate. If Gate Addresses consisted of only two symbols, the destination symbol and that of the Point Of Origin, you would have to have thousands or perhaps millions of symbols on the DHD for each Gate in the network. The multiple symbols serve a double purpose. They not only pinpoint a spot in space (and most gate addresses do change due to spacial drift, with the exception of one’s like Destiny’s) they also make it possible for there to be an infinite number of combinations and therefore room for more gates in the network. One day, the address to Abydos (for instance) will change, but going from Earth the Point Of Origin will always be the same because you’re still leaving from the same place.
In the case of a dialing to a point outside of the galaxy, one has to use an eighth (or in the case of Destiny’s address, which is really more of a password lock, a ninth) symbol for the sake of moving the other six points for the destination to another galaxy. Basically like dialing an area code. Therefore it is possible that gates in other galaxies have the same addresses as those in the Milky Way, which also allows for the combinations not to run out.
