Roll Gamers guide to:
The Chevrons in the Stargate
and their use
The purpose of the chevrons in the Stargate world is to uniquely identify a source and destination gate. Both the source and destination gate must be known for the gates to form a wormhole connecting them. As explained in the movie and then further developed during the television series, this identification is done using the system of chevrons.
In a three-dimensional space, six reference points are required to uniquely identify a point within this space. In order to uniquely and exactly identify a point in a three-dimensional space, three coordinates must be known, the x, y, and z position. Establishing a plane in the x direction, in the y direction, and in the z direction does this. Therefore, three planes, one in each of the three dimensions, exactly and uniquely identifies an arbitrary point in the three dimensional space. In order to uniquely and exactly determine a plane, two points are required. Therefore, six points are required to make the necessary location specification.
This
can be seen my examining the image to the right. Here, points P1 and P4 identify
a plane that uniquely identifies the the x coordinate of our destination point.
Note that these two points have the same x coordinate; the y and z coordinates
are not relevant. P2 and P5 uniquely identify the y coordinate in the same way,
as they have the same y coordinate. P3 and P6 uniquely identify the z
coordinate. Therefore, by using these six points, we have uniquely identified
our destination.
As explained in the original Stargate movie, the reference points used in the Stargate system are constellations (sets of stars). Each chevron is shaped like, and represents, a star constellation. The first six chevrons of an address are these six constellation chevrons. The seventh symbol is the Point of Origin. Evidently, each gate has its own, unique, Point of Origin chevron. This chevron is the final symbol in the address. Therefore, to dial to the planet Abydos from Earth's primary gate, the address would be the six chevrons that specify Abydos as the destination followed by the chevron that is Earth's Point of Origin.
This system offers a number of obvious questions. First of all, we know that we need to uniquely identify two Stargates, between which we are going to create a wormhole. Now, if we need to identify the two points, why is there a different system of identification for the source and destination gates? Why do we need six chevrons to identify the destination and only one to identify the source? Well, the obvious answer is that each gate is specifically made for the planet it is on. The gate must possess some knowledge of where it is for this type of addressing to occur. As each gate has a unique Point of Origin symbol, this makes sense. So, why do we not simply encode an address using the two unique chevrons for source and destination? Well, that would require too many symbols on each gate. We have seen the network of gates numbers in the thousands. If we used the two chevron addressing method, each gate would need to have thousands of chevrons, as opposed to thirty-nine.
We clearly see that each Stargate has a different set of thirty-nine symbols. This is also shown in the original movie and the television show. So, is there a set of chevrons that appear on each gate which allow the specification of every gate in the network? Or is it not possible to reach some gates from others? We have seen that atleast some of the symbols repeat from gate to gate. It has not been established weather there is a consistent set of symbols which appear on every gate. However, this must be the case if a traveler can reach any gate from any other gate. A reasonable method would be to have a set of thirty-eight chevrons on each gate plus one Point of Origin chevron. However, this cannot be the case as chevrons from Earth's primary gate have been shown to be the Point of Origin chevron for gates on other planets. Therefore, we must conclude that there is a set of chevrons which can allow the specification of any gate in the network, and that the total number of chevrons in this set is less than thirty-eight.
Does this system offer the potential to specifiy a large enough number of gates? The answer to this is clearly yes. We know the number of chevrons in the set that should appear on each gate must be less than thirty-eight. For argument, let us assume twenty-five chevrons appear on each gate and those chevrons are used to specify the destination gate. For twenty-five chevrons, one hundred twenty seven million, five hundred and twelve thousand different combinations exist. If we further reduce the number of chevrons in the "all-gate" set to twenty, we still can specify twenty seven million, nine hundred and seven thousand, two hundred destinations. Therefore, even only if half of the chevrons are repeated on every gate, we can specify an enormous amount of destinations. Clearly, this system of repeating a set of chevrons on each gate and using those chevrons to speicfy the destination gate, could work.
Stargate Coordinate Symbols* (Chevrons*)
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Now try to create your own destination with the STARGATE
