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It is shown in Stargate that there is a limited number of chevrons in each gate. Since we need a chevron for the origin point at the end of each "dialup", it can not be more origin planets than chevrons (e.g. 39).

Since there are obviously more than 39 planets shown on the TV show, how could the series be so long? How could it last long enough long to even Atlantis and Universe?

EDIT: Note: this is not a duplicate of Is there any indicator as to how many planets have Stargates? because there an estimation of the number of stargates is requested, and here the question is about how could that number be so high when you need Point of Origin chevrons and there are not so many different PoO chevrons available.

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Envite
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  • Answered here http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/2405/5297 – Binary Worrier Aug 05 '14 at 07:29
  • It is not answered there, but thanks, it was an interesting reading. What I want to know is: if there are 39 possible signs in stargates, there could not be more than 39 origin planets. Am I right? – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 07:47
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    @Envite - Each gate only has one unique symbol. All the others are standard across all gates. Think of the DHD as your cellphone keypad and the unique symbol as the green call button to initiate the call. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:12

4 Answers4

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Each gate contains 38 standard symbols as well as a single unique PoO symbol (Point of Origin). The 38 symbols are used as a way of addressing the gate with the 39th symbol acting as the final command to the stargate to begin the dialling sequence.

This means that each Stargate has 38 common chevrons and one different from all other gates.

As you can see, the standard DHD matches up with the standard gate. The unique symbol is the only one that's new (on both the DHD and the gate) and is the reason why the teams need a few seconds to work out how to dial home, despite knowing Earth's location.

Top-down diagram of a DHD showing the glyphs

Line drawing of a seven-chevron stargate

The mapping system used is described in some detail in the stargate film (along with a helpful diagram)

DANIEL : ** And uh...to find a destination within any three dimensional space, you need six points to determine the exact location.

[Daniel draws a cube and places a dot in the center of each of the six "sides" of the cube and then draws lines between them all to intersect at a spot in the cube.]

WEST : You said you needed seven points.

DANIEL : Well, no, six for the destination. But to chart a course, you need a point of origin.

[He draws a point some distance from a cube and then a line to where all the cube spots intersect.]

Daniel stands beside a whiteboard where he has sketched a drawing to visualize the above conversation

DavidW
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    Wouldn't that seventh point also need a set of coordinates for itself. Also why would one need a set of 6 coordinates for a 3D system, 3 coordinates would suffice, wouldn't they? – Rick Sanchez Aug 05 '14 at 07:45
  • Does that "unique PoO" thing mean that there is one chevron which is different from gate to gate? – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 07:48
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    @KushtrimP. - The diagram suggests that you need to locate each point, then draw connective lines between them. The destination gate is at the centre of that grid. And yes, I'm aware that that makes no sense. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:09
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    @Envite - Precisely so. The Stargate wiki maintains a list of known points of origin seen in the films, TV shows and cartoon - http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Point_of_origin – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:10
  • @Richard so each stargate has 38 common chevrons and one different from any other stargate? – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 08:22
  • @Envite - Yes. Exactly this. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:23
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    @KushtrimP. Planets move, presumably "center" is a simplification and you're really just defining the area in which the gate can be in. You can see the results of this when considering what happens when multiple gates are in the same basic area--one of them has to cut off the others. (Presumably the point of origin knows its own co-ordinates, because that's where it is. I don't know why it isn't implicit, but interface design is hard) – Phoshi Aug 05 '14 at 08:51
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    @Richard: To be perfectly honest, the whole chevrons on the gate don't make any sense either, since you don't need them for dialing. This is like having an old dial-operated phone with an attached number pad for dialing. So you'd enter the number on the keypad, which would cause the dialplate to rotate to establish the connection. Well, this sounds really technologically advanced and similar... Great, I'll never ever be able to watch Stargate again without having to think of that old dial sound knack knack knack... :D – Mario Aug 05 '14 at 08:52
  • @Richard Thanks, accepted. Could you please edit and clarify that point? – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 08:57
  • @Phoshi - It actually made a lot more sense in the original film (e.g. where the target gate was limited to one per galaxy). – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:58
  • @Envite - Happy to do so. Is this to your liking? – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 09:01
  • @Richard Wonderful. I requested edit in order for the answer to be useful to somebody who comes after me. Thanks – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 09:07
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    What happens if you dial something other than the point of origin, can you initiate a connection between two other stargates? Btw. the original movie didn’t mention the existence of more than these two stargates which raised the question why you had to dial at all… – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 09:46
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    @Holger The address keeps getting longer until you enter the point of origin "terminator"; such as 8 cheveron addresses to other galaxys. To be honest given how the "point of origin" thing doesn't make any sense I have always thought of it as each gate has a terminator cheveron but they are all different for purely artistic reasons (as in in-universe artistic reasons) – user20310 Aug 05 '14 at 09:49
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    @holger - The clear implication in the movie is that there's more than one (set of) gate(s). They were considering a sequel or series of films – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 10:06
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    @user20310: but there’s that big button in the middle which is pressed at the end of the dialing sequence anyway. It’s only the earth’s dialing where a terminator symbol would make sense but the stargate was never designed to be dialed that way. – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 11:15
  • @holger yeah, it does make no sense except for manual dialing – user20310 Aug 05 '14 at 11:18
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    @Richard: but in the movie, O'Neill was supposed to destroy “the” other stargate if he sees signs of danger. That wouldn’t make much sense if an arbitrary number of other gates exist. Even in the first episode, everyone seemed to assume that the intruders must have come from Abydos. – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 11:20
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    @Holger It's important to seperate out what the characters at the time believed and what was actually true – user20310 Aug 05 '14 at 11:21
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    @Holger - He was supposed to nuke the Abydos gate to prevent it from being used as a beachhead to Earth. That doesn't mean that they weren't planning to take precautions with the other end. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 11:24
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    @user20310: Sure, but the complicated dialing sequence should make someone ask whether there might be other stargates. This is essential as Daniel has assumed that the very first glyphs he found on Abydos will bring them back to earth. Turns out they had a lot of luck… – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 11:25
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    @Richard: but they didn’t. For a year. They assumed to be safe. – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 11:27
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    @Holger - Well, it's still under 24/7 armed guard in one of the most secure facilities in the world. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 11:30
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    @Richard: secured against attacks from the outside, yes. But the guards of the first episode seemed to be completely surprised. It turns out, that once the command were aware of the threat they could easily install the iris very fast. They could have done that a year before. Or just buried the gate again as it had no use for them anymore. Leaving poker playing guards at it not knowing what a stargate is was a really strange choice. – Holger Aug 05 '14 at 11:35
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    @KushtrimP. Some of us think Daniel got the Point of Origin's purpose (partially) wrong – Izkata Aug 05 '14 at 11:48
  • @Holger - I don't disagree. For the level of risk, the security was unforgiveable. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 11:48
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    In the Movie they assumed there was only one gate, because they had the computer dial sequences automatically and only ever connected to Abydos. Only the Gods (at the time only Ra) could dial the gates, its how they kept power, using technology (inc stargate) that appeared as magic to their followers, that and the combination being like a password are reasons for the dialling sequence. The reason for the symbols on the gate is for manual dialling and recognising incoming wormholes. – Jonathan. Aug 05 '14 at 13:45
  • Folks, take the discussion to chat. –  Aug 05 '14 at 14:42
  • The DHD diagram, and the Stargate diagram don't have the same number of glyphs. 38 on the DHD (2 rows of 19 = 38), and 39 on the gate. The DHD central button acts as the Point of Origin. –  Aug 23 '14 at 03:40
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From what I gather the are 39 symbols and 6 chevrons for most gate addresses (the maths stays the same for longer addresses ) as the 7th chevron is fixed.

This means that was have 39C 6 (mathematics for out of 39 choices pick 6 Combinations.

Mathematically, this is calculated by saying once we pick symbol one we have n-1 choices, after we pick symbol two, n-2 choices. This continues until we get n-k choices where we stop. Where k is our number of chevrons, and n is our number of symbols. We now have, n!/ (n-k)! , e.g 39*38*...*33 We also need to discard correction sets that are the same besides order, so we divide as well by k! which is the number of ways we can order a set a k items (following a similar logic as above)

This lead us to having this formula

combinations

more

And if we plug those numbers into Wolfram Alpha we get 3,262,623. Which is how we can have so many stargates.

Valorum
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    This is of no help. Each of these stargates needs to be an origin point, and the question is how could that be done if there are no 3 millions of chevrons to be used as origin point in order to dial back to Earth. – Envite Aug 05 '14 at 08:21
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    Except that the final symbol must be the point of origin symbol. This means that you're choosing from a mixture of 38, not 39 symbols. Your calculation should be 2,760,681 combinations. – Valorum Aug 05 '14 at 08:26
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    Its actually 1987690320 possible adresses - 3837363534*33 - permutations, not combinations - adresses (a b c d e f x) and (f e d c b a x) are not the same. http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph – Milan Halada Aug 05 '14 at 11:33
  • @Uriel_SVK Given Daniel's explanation of the coordinate system in the movie, some symbols can be swapped and still have the same destination (but not all of them, so combinations isn't correct even given that). That said, while it was never retconned and is still the official explanation of how the coordinates work, other dialogue does indicate permutations is correct – Izkata Aug 05 '14 at 11:57
  • @Uriel_SVK, you should add this as an answer. You can incorporate Izkata's notes about it. If we go by the original movie explanation, then swapping pairs (e.g. 1 & 2) should lead to the same destination but not swapping between pairs (e.g. moving symbol 2 to the 3rd position). This makes sense per the episode in which Carter tweaks the dialing routine. We can assume she rewrote the dialing routine to swap symbols in their pair in order to minimize the total distance between symbols during dialing (a variant of the traveling salesman problem). – Jim2B Mar 23 '15 at 14:18
  • I think the number is drastically reduced. As Daniel explains, the connecting lines between the glyphs have to intersect. Because many combination of glyphs will produce 3 lines that will not intersect all in a single point that combinations should be invalid. In fact I doubt that you can come up with a system of 38 glyphs (giving them points in space to draw lines from or to) that produce more than a handfull of "valid" addresses. – Hothie Sep 01 '15 at 12:22
  • In case anyone looks at this again: The math in this answer is on the right track, but not quite all the way there. See the talk page the to which Uriel_SCK linked, I wrote there some math (under the name QuicksilverTurin12). Start with all the permutations of the 38 non-point-of-origin symbols: 1,987,690,320. Then we have to divide by 8 to correct for repeats from simply reversing the endpoints. Then we have to divide by 6 to correct for simply rearranging the lines within an address. This leaves us with 41,410,215 unique addresses to dial. – Jelsema May 05 '16 at 14:37
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Short Answer

Most Stargates use a normal glyph as a Point of Origin – these are not unique. Some Stargates have a special Point of Origin – these are typically thought to be unique, but might act as the same missing glyph.

Long Answer

In a number of episodes, it can be seen that a normal glyph is used as the Point of Origin for a planet. Knowing Earth's address, the extra lit glyph on the DHDs in Shades of Grey, New Ground, and Memento must be the Point of Origin for the respective planet. You can see that Memento's Tagrea and New Ground's P2X-416 have the same Point of Origin glyph. Thus, there does not appear to be a problem with reusing Point of Origin glyphs, and logically cannot be given the number of Stargates in the Milky Way network.

However, this raises a different issue. If a planet's Point of Origin is a normal glyph, this would mean that any other planet that contains that glyph in their address would not be able to be dialed. This would imply that a single location would not be able to reach every Stargate in the galaxy, unless under special circumstances.

Related to this is the point that Milky Way Stargates have 39 glyphs on the inner track. However, Milky Way DHDs only have 38 glyphs. Thus, one glyph from the Stargate is always missing on the DHD. In the image of Abydos' DHD, the Aquila glyph is missing (most other planets' DHDs are missing this glyph as well). We often see that Earth's special glyph appears on the DHDs of planets that use a normal glyph as their Point of Origin, including in The Tok'ra, Part 1, Cure, Memento, and Demons. This could mean that the special glyph is completely unused on those planets, that it acts as the missing Aquila glyph only on those planets, or that it is not as special as first assumed and is in fact a normal glyph.

@Richard – Izkata beat me to it; Destiny's hardware address specifically requires the symbol used for Earth's Point of Origin. It is on the Icarus Base's DHD (kind of blurry, but you can just make it out).

DavidW
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  • Can you back this up with some pictures? Obviously it's a production error but it would still be interesting to see some evidence. It may even merit its own question... – Valorum Aug 06 '14 at 14:43
  • @Richard It was a plot point of the pilot episode of Stargate Universe, Earth's point of origin was on the Icarus stargate. And aside from that, I remember what Silence describes as well - I think it was around season 2 or 3 where they zoomed in so close to an off-world gate that only about 3 symbols were visible at once, and made a point to zoom in on Earth's point of origin on that gate as well. – Izkata Aug 06 '14 at 23:32
  • I have added more links to pictures now that I have the ability to do so. – Silence Aug 07 '14 at 00:05
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There is a problem of misunderstanding or confusion with the original question which the other answers do not seem to address directly.

That is that the concepts of constellation glyphs/symbols (of which there are 39 which are distributed around the rotating inner ring of the Stargate, 38 of those represent constellations, and the last one is for the point of origin) are being confused with, or not completely/accurately differentiated from chevrons (trapezoid shape created by cutting off a corner of a triangle) (of which there are 9 which are distributed around the immobile outer/main ring of the Stargate).

Once that distinction is pointed out and understood, the question is moot. But I will nonetheless continue to explain the basic premise of how the Stargate works as depicted by the TV series, since the question is based in that realm, as opposed to the feature film which provides less information and seems to contradict some aspects of what is seen in the TV series.

The 39 symbols are used as references to known locations which are used to chart a destination, and the chevrons are used to select and enter that information to open a wormhole- known as "dialling" an address/the gate.

The top central chevron seems to be used for selecting the desired glyph. When the glyph is in place under it, the chevron moves/clicks down and back up again "encoding" that symbol; which causes the appropriate actual chevron to light up. It seems as though the last chevron to lock is always the top center chevron. Therefore, presumably, if the 7th symbol is not the point of origin then it will be encoded on the next chevron, and the same for the 8th symbol. At that point, the next symbol must be encoded/locked onto the top central chevron because no more chevrons remain unused on the Stargate.

There is a discrepancy in the TV series involving the point of origin glyphs. Most of the Stargates of other worlds do not actually seem to have a unique point of origin glyph, in fact at least some use one of the constellation glyphs as the point of origin. This seems to be a logistical art department prop issue (only two Stargate props were made, and only one was capable of dialling- having an inner ring that was capable of rotating), basically a way to save a bunch of time & money allowing them to recycle footage of the gate dialling by not having to design a unique glyph and replace it on the Stargate and DHD for each world.

Although, I think it's clear that we are supposed to believe that there is a unique point of origin glyph on each Stargate, and it was hoped that it wouldn't be a major issue that there actually wasn't.

It should be noted that there actually were unique point of origin glyphs created for a few worlds, but that really was rarely relevant to the plot, so it was "glazed over".

So, to recap: the first 6 symbols of a gate address specify the location (or a location vector of an 8 symbol address) and they must be comprised of the 38 constellation glyphs. For an 8 or 9 symbol address, the 7th and 8th symbols must also be one of the 38 constellation glyphs. Except for 9 symbol addresses (if now than one exists), the last symbol much be the point of origin. For a 9-symbol address it seems as though it may be possible for the 9th symbol to be any of the symbols on the gate.

The symbols on the Stargate are "encoded" using the chevrons- in other words: the chevrons are used to select and dial the symbols of an address. The number of symbols used for an address corresponds to the number of chevrons used to dial that address. Since each Stargate has 9 physical chevrons, it is possible to dial addresses using up to 9 symbols.

The pilot of Stargate Universe creates an impossible scenario of a stargate apparently having an additional point of origin symbol, and hence an additional symbol or it only has 37 constellation glyphs. Additionally bizarre and unlikely/impossible is that the extra point of origin symbol is that of Earth, but not the original glyph for Earth designated by the Ancients; the glyph for Earth found on the Stargate supplied by Ra. This is obviously a "detail" not considered by the writers, or one that they choice to ignore, hopefully without fully realizing the magnitude of the implications and how it undermines the very basis of how the Stargate system works.

Jenayah
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    There is an answer in there, but there's also a lot of commentary (not uninteresting; just not always relevant) stuff in here. I suggest you [edit] your answer to focus more on the bits that do actually answer the question. – Jenayah Oct 03 '19 at 06:10