Stargate imagines a world where ancient alien technology allows people to step from one planet to another through wormholes, without the need for any ship or hyperdrive. Could such a thing be possible — theoretically — in the real world? What do scientists think real-life wormholes might be like? And what would a person need to safely traverse one?
To answer this question “Dial the Gate” host David Read called upon Mika McKinnon, not only a brilliant scientist but also for many years the Stargate franchise’s official on-set science consultant.
Mika is joined by none other than on-screen fictional genius David Hewlett, who played Dr. Rodney McKay on Stargate Atlantis.
So … if the Stargate was real, could human beings actually survive a trip through a subspace wormhole? Or would we need to travel inside some kind of containment vessel (like … a Gate Ship)?
On Stargate “we wanted it to be a specific size,” McKinnon says of the particular kind of wormhole that the shows imagine. “And the real key trick to them is you need negative energy density in order to make them happen. And what negative energy density means is you take vacuum and then you suck more out of it. And then, surprise! You’ve got negative energy density. Scientifically it works out; mathematically it works out. Engineering problem … [it’s] a little bit of an issue!”
The real science allows for at least the possibility of people with super-advanced technology (such as the Ancients) creating an artificial wormhole, if they could manage to solve that pesky engineering problem. But what about a human or other organic being stepping through it?
The real problem is that these wormholes would have “a lot of radiation to go with them.”
Watch this short clip for more:
“You can do most things once,” she added, but due to radiation exposure “the long-term issue with traveling through Stargates too much is everyone’s life expectancy gets lower. We might have issues like in the real life space programs, [where] we actually limit how long astronauts can do flight missions because they have a lifetime radiation exposure limit.”
In the full clip McKinnon and Hewlett also explore Stargate’s version of time travel, and how the math of solar flares, gravity, and wormholes actually holds up — as well as the real dangers of sending humans out into space today.
Watch the clip above for more from Stargate science consultant Mika McKinnon, and then head over to “Dial the Gate” on YouTube for the full-length, 90-minute conversation with her and David Hewlett. You can also subscribe to GateWorld on YouTube for new Stargate content each and every week!
On Twitter: @mikamckinnon
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Forgive me if I'm wrong but I thought the stargates are essentially like a star trek transporter. you walk through it and it stores your pattern and transmits it to the other gate which reassembles you.
(They say this in 48 hours - Teal'c is stored in the buffer)
so in fact there may be no actual wormhole -- the gates could be really powerful subspace transmitters.
This is kind of the case, by which I mean that in reality the event horizon and the Stargate's demolecularization process seems to work however the writers need it to work in a given week. ;) We've seen instances for example where a person partially passes through the event horizon (including their brain or part of it) and then comes back out again, as if they remain fully conscious and able to use their bodies to exert force behind the event horizon.
I'm thinking here specifically of RepliCarter in "Gemini," but also Kawalsky's head in the struggle with Teal'c at the end of "The Enemy Within." If RepliCarter was demolecularized cell by cell as she passed the event horizon, she wouldn't have been able to play tug-of-war with Teal'c. She would have had no feet planted anywhere to pull with. I think the closest thing to an explanation to that one is that there is some "space" behind the event horizon, so that a person or object is not dematerialized at all until all of them has entered.
As for your question of whether the Stargate basically converts you into energy and transmits you: we do get "buffer" language in "48 Hours," though I think it is used as familiar shorthand more than a direct analog to Star Trek transporters or computer memory. As far as I can recall the show never actually suggests that the Stargate converts a person into energy for transmission. Rather it's your physical, material molecules themselves that are broken down and reassembled. (But correct me if you find something in a transcript somewhere.) In that case you do physically pass through the wormhole, bit by bit.
In the sga episode where the jumper gets stuck they say the gate doesn’t send anything until it’s completely thru the puddle.
Of course I don’t know how it would know if would tell if an object were totally in. Maybe it scans for pressure on the puddle? That could be why a gate covered in water will stay active (did they ever say that it was pouring water through maybe in the episode where Rodney almost died from the parasite?)
That tracks with what they showed in the movie. Daniel remained whole until he was completely in the puddle and then he got broken down and sent through.
To what you said at the end of the 2nd paragraph, we need to remember how it looked in the movie. When Daniel goes into it he remained whole until he was fully in the puddle and then he gets broken down and sent through to the other side. So it seems like you remain whole until all of you is inside the puddle and then it breaks you down and reassembles you at the end of the other Stargate.
Yeah, I think that shot of Daniel's face in the film more or less demonstrates (aside from simple creative license) that there is some "buffer" space past the event horizon, where a person is -- ever so briefly -- not yet dematerialized. Daniel could still think and open his eyes. RepliCarter could exert force against Teal'c, etc.
I just thought of this. There could be an actual wormhole with what I said. Rather than deal with radiation and other bad stuff that physical travel they could open the wormhole and transmit the pattern to the other gate (I didn’t consider range problems with transmitters/receivers)