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Jumpgate
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In science fiction, Jumpgate (or jump gate) refers to a device that creates wormholes, allowing fast travel between two points in space. Several works use this term extensively.
he Babylon 5 television series, a Jumpgate is an apparatus with the power to open a vortex that connects normal space with hyperspace, making interstellar travel a matter of days.
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Encyclopedia
In science fiction, Jumpgate (or jump gate) refers to a device that creates wormholes, allowing fast travel between two points in space. Several works use this term extensively.
Babylon 5
In the Babylon 5 television series, a Jumpgate is an apparatus with the power to open a vortex that connects normal space with hyperspace, making interstellar travel a matter of days. Jumpgates also provide beacons that allow navigation within hyperspace. The origin of the technology is unknown; all extant races learned to make jumpgates by examining already-existing ones. For example, humans acquired jumpgate technology by purchasing it from the Centauri.
Some ships are large enough to house jumpgate devices within them, enabling them to enter and exit hyperspace at will. Minbari warships have been known to exit hyperspace right next to enemy ships, destroying them in the backlash.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
In the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century television series a network of stargates has been set up for interstellar travel. In this context, stargates are the same concept as jumpgates. These stargates were shown as a diamond-shaped quartet of stars that shimmered when a vessel was making transit.
Doom
The DOOM series has their own jumpgates, called Anomalies, placed on the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. In the Doom 3 games a true version of a stargate appears. In Doom 3, it offers a direct link to Hell, where two Hell Knights come out to try to kill the protagonist. In Doom 3 - Resurrection of Evil, another stargate is opened when the player faces the first Hunter. All the Anomalies in both classic and new Doom are used to travel in space at an instant speed by using an alternate dimension as a shortcut, where the hellish and demonic race dwells.
Eve Online
In the MMORPG, Eve Online, jump gates allow travel between star systems. Due to the complex nature of their construction and the physics that they are based upon, in the official lore of the game, a jump gate must be placed between two stars of a star system with at least two stars - this makes "approximately one in every three" star systems unsuitable.
Recently the largest capital ships (Titans) have been given the ability to forge a similar gate towards a cynosural field, allowing them to temporarily connect one system to another and jump support fleets through before jumping itself. In Revelations II, a player owned structure called the jump bridge was added that allowed a more permanent jump bridge to be made. With the Trinity expansion pack another ship type (black ops) appeared which could generate 'silent' jump portals not visible on the system scanner (although the ships still appear, as cloaks cannot be used along with generators).
Fading Suns
In the fictional Fading Suns universe jumpgates are the only means to travel between the stars. They are huge structures left behind by some almost unknown alien civilization called the Ur. The jumpgates are long ring-like structures that have a diameter of several kilometers across, they are opened by a device called jump engine, and the route is controlled by another device called the jump key. The civilization of the known worlds has very little understanding of the principles at work behind the gates.
Freelancer
In the Freelancer game by Digital Anvil, the jumpgate is an apparatus which provides travel from system to system. After the Liberty landed on Planet Manhattan and began exploring the New York System they came across the natural phenomenon known as the Jumphole. Ageira Technologies researched it and developed the Jumpgate, and in conjunction with Deep Space Engineering, provided the rest of the Houses with the technology- for a hefty fee.
Jumpgates form choke points through which traffic entering a star system must pass, making them favored ambush points for criminal groups such as the Outcasts and Corsairs. To guard against this, naval or military checkpoints are commonly situated near Jumpgates, who also take advantage of the opportunity to scan for contraband being smuggled into the system (although smart smugglers and criminals tend to make use of jump holes, naturally occurring versions of jump gates, rather than risk detection and capture.) Jumpgates are also outfitted with defensive turrets in order to cover the immediate vicinity.
Jumpgate series
In the NetDevil MMORPGs Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative and Jumpgate Evolution, the titular jumpgates are used to travel from sector to sector of space.
Marvel Comics
In the Marvel Universe, Jump Gates are used by the United States Government to connect each state superhero team of the Fifty State Initiative with the Negative Zone's Prison 42 and in turn the other states Jump Gates. However, State jumps wear down the point between positive and negative space so the jumps are used sparingly.
An alien race called the Shi'ar, use Stargates which can transport matter across intergalactic distances. There is a large Shi'ar stargate on the edge of our Solar System, but it requires a massive amount of energy to activate, and is hazardous to use since it has the potential to destabilize a star.
In the year 2058, Earth will soon be uninhabitable after the irreversible effects of pollution. The United Global Space Force serves as the planetary government. Professor John Robinson, lead scientist of the Jupiter Mission, will lead his family to the habitable planet Alpha Prime to prepare it for colonization by building a hypergate in orbit. The Jupiter 2 is equipped with a hyperdrive that allows faster-than-light travel, which will eventually be employed to evacuate the citizens of Earth. However hypergates must be constructed on Earth and Alpha Prime to provide stable points of departure and arrival. The project is accelerated after Global Sedition terrorist forces send two armed fighters to destroy the hypergate under construction. Major Don West, a fighter pilot from the hypergate defense force, manages to destroy the enemy fighters and is unwillingly drafted as the new pilot of the Jupiter Mission, as the previous pilot has been assassinated.
Unfortunately, without a hypergate to warp to, the ship and its crew end up in a random (and apparently uncharted) part of the galaxy. They then go through a "hole in space" and presumably go to the future.The Space Family Robinson thus become lost in space, as they did in the TV series and various comic projects.
Prehistoric Park
See Prehistoric Park#Technology for more information.
Stargate
In the Stargate film & television series universe, Stargates are ring-shaped devices with 9 'chevrons' equally spaced around their circumference, and 39 symbols displayed on an inner ring. They were created by an extinct alien race known as the Ancients (or the Alterans), who scattered them on Earth-like planets throughout the Milky Way and other galaxies. They are occasionally collectively referred to as the "Stargate Network".
If given enough power, the inner ring unlocks and can be rotated mechanically. Rotating the ring so that a certain symbol is lined up with a chevron makes the chevron light up, move inwards then back; it is then said that the chevron is 'locked' or 'encoded'. Once six symbols are entered (they are actually constellations as they are visible from Earth or Lantea), the gate searches for another one at the coordinates specified by the sequence of symbols entered and if there is one, entering a seventh symbol (which signifies the gate connecting to the other) establishes a subspace wormhole between the two. Only whole objects can travel: if something is partially beyond the event horizon, it can be pulled out without problem, but if it goes through completely, the gate starts matter transmission. The reason to this is that gates break down matter and store it in a buffer until everything is through so that it can come back out freely. Once the object is disintegrated, its molecular makeup is transmitted to the other gate, which reassembles it inside its own buffer then reintegrates the object at the event horizon. Travelers perceive this as instantaneous travel similar to stepping through a doorway (since their brains and sensory organs are broken down into their constituent particles, they can't perceive at all while in transit) - except if the other side is blocked, meaning there's a barrier several micrometres from the event horizon (like Earth's iris), which prevents matter from properly reintegrating. In layman's terms, trying to exit a blocked gate results in the traveler essentially cease to exist. The same happens if someone tries to travel backwards, the gate isn't programmed to reintegrate matter going the wrong way.
Communication from one end to the other of a wormhole can be conducted by using radio signal transmissions, which are able to travel in both directions through the wormhole. Because of stability issues with the wormholes that the Stargates generate, the wormholes last only 38 minutes per dialing under normal circumstances. Non-normal circumstances include continous matter travel (the gates can't be shut down if something is in transit), huge amounts of energy continously fed into the gate, time dilation due to a black hole, among others.
A major problem about Stargates is that upon establishing a connection, both gates briefly eject an unstable vortex that vaporizes matter on the subatomic level. If a significant obstruction is present inside the gate (e.g. it is buried), it won't even connect. Since the gate is made of a superconducting heavy metal, it is nearly indestructible (surviving millions of years, nuclear detonations and even direct asteroid hits), though if enough energy is channeled into it, it will explode (as shown when a gate was being fed with energy from the other side of a wormhole by means of a subatomic particle beam which is the only thing that can defeat a 'protected' gate; eventually it exploded with a force of several gigatons). It is shown on one occasion that humans have the necessary materials (not knowledge) to construct Stargates, as one was built from titanium, wires, optical fibers and an industrial-strength capacitor feeding from a house's electrical supply.
Dialling is done with the use of a 'DHD' (Dial Home Device) found near most gates. When the workings of the one on Earth was determined, the DHD was missing (it was in Russia), so they developed a computer program that can interface with the gate and dial manually, albeit slower than with a DHD (and with some errors, such as when the other gate's DHD was destroyed, connection was interrupted and one of the protagonists was trapped in the matter buffer). It was later found out that Earth actually is the only known planet with two Stargates, probably because it was the Ancient's capital world until 65 million years ago. The Beta Gate (Antarctica) was used as backup to the Alpha Gate (Giza), until the latter was destroyed. Both DHDs are inoperational (the Alpha was captured by Nazi Germany, looted by Russia and finally burned out in the aforementioned accident, while the Beta ran out of power a long time ago). Atlantis also has its own type of DHD, a console with triangular crystals engraved with the symbols. This one also has some unique capabilities, such as blocking certain adresses, putting up a shield similar to the Earth Gate's iris or dialling other galaxies.
Although Stargates are human-sized (diameter is around 3-4 metres), larger ones exist: the Ori offshoot of the Ancients built massive Supergates which were large enough to permit intergalactic travel with battlecruiser-class ships. They consist of several dozen pieces small enough to fit through a normal Stargate and then assemble in orbit. Only three of these gates are known to be built: one was destroyed before completion while another was utilized by humans to defeat the Ori for good. Another anomalous type is the so-called Spacegates in the Pegasus galaxy. They are normal Stargates placed in geosynchronous orbit rather than on a pedestal on the ground. They are equipped with three stabilizers placed equally around their circumference which keep the gate in orbit and return it to its previous place if pushed away. Because of their position, these gates are only accessible with an Ancient Gateship or Wraith Dart, both which are capable of travelling through Stargates. Otherwise, Pegasus Stargates are a newer model with some cosmetic differences, such as blue chevrons and computerized dialling (the latter means that these gates cannot be dialled manually; if the DHD is missing or faulty, the traveler is essentially stuck).
Power requirements are various. Normally, only the dialling requires energy to function, then the other end can take over powering both gates. A 'standard' wormhole only requires so much that can be sustained by Earth technology, while intergalactic wormholes require astronomical amounts of energy only sustainable by Ancient-made Zero Point Modules (small "bottles" that extract vacuum energy from an artificial mini-universe). The fact that another galaxy was being dialled is informed to the gate with the inclusion of eight chevrons: six as normal coordinates, seventh as a galaxy-specific marker and an eight as point-of-origin. The purpose of the ninth chevron is unknown, though fans speculate it might dial the ship which originally 'seeded' the galaxy with Stargates.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
In the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series, famous dimensional portals appear. These machines can within some seconds transport people from one place to another. Krang has one, and Donatello develops one later (during season three), however, Donatello's seldom work. Typically, Krang opens the dimensional portal in the Technodrome for transportation between Earth and Dimension X.
Transformers
The original Transformers cartoon featured the Space Bridge, which created a subspace tunnel from one point to another — typically, from an Earth station to Cybertron. The Earth station resembled a giant ring lying down, with an opening gate. When activated, the gate would close and sections of the ring would light up, the light spinning until a subspace tunnel was opened and whatever was in the ring was pulled in. The Cybertron receiving station was built into a large tower. Only one Space Bridge was ever shown, and it was under Decepticon control; but one station existing on Cybertron may be a hint that there were other Space Bridge stations on Cybertron. It was a key plot device in the first two seasons, phased out afterwards in favor of more standard space travel.
Unlike some examples (see Stargate above), matter is not broken down when sent through the Space Bridge — the objects stay intact inside the subspace tunnel.
The X Computer Game Series
The jumpgate in the X computer game series by Egosoft is a large device which uses a wormhole to connect itself to another jumpgate. These devices have changed in appearance through the series although this is accepted as a graphical enhancement, not actual gate altering.
The jumpgates create a web of connections to 163 known sectors within the X Universe. Within the sector the jumpgates are roughly located in the north, south, east and west. Not all sectors have 4 discovered jumpgates, some have slightly more, many have less.
The jumpgates and their current configuration are believed to be designed by ancient beings who are currently nowhere within the X Universe gate system. They are believed to be observing the sectors but direct contact has not occurred in generations. They are also blamed for the re-routing of some jumpgates every now and again, cutting off some sectors or connecting undiscovered ones.
The current intelligent biological residents of the X Universe, the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split and Teladi do not understand the technology behind the jumpgates but the Humans of the Sol system successfully created their own jumpgates in the mid 21st century. The Earth jumpgate connected to the alien jumpgate system. The humans began colonising using the prearranged alien jumpgates although every sector they visited was strangely devoid of intelligent life. The Earth jumpgate was destroyed to trap the destructive terraformer fleet in the X Universe, away from Earth.
The only race in the X Universe to possibly understand the jumpgates are the Xenon, which are the “descendants” of the robotic terraformer fleet from Earth. They created a jumpdrive to get back to Earth to destroy it. The first jump-ship managed to jump close to the Earth system but it was badly damaged. The Kha'ak race also appear to have an understanding of jump systems, although they never use gate, preferring to use a jump system of their own design, which creates a momentary wormhole by joining several ships together and drawing power from all of them.
See also
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