Stargate ZPM: how the zero point module works
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
- It’s the ultimate power source in Stargate but how does it work? What is the real science behind the zero point module if any? The ultimate Ancients invention considered.
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I remember Brian Cox explaining entropy by building a sand castle using a bucket that has low entropy. The winds would blow the sand away, increasing the entropy over time. Until the sand castle was no more than scattered grains of sand
That is a much better example
Also entropy increases over time. A complete entropy/chaos would be either a primordial "matter" the Big Bang occurred in, or the Heat Death of the universe.
You're right it is tapping into a subspace pocket created within the crystal itself. This was proven in one of the episodes of the Atlantis series when they found an experiment where the ancients were attempting to tap into the 0 point energy of the actual universe and failed miserably with dangerous results.
The thing contains a pocket of subspace, because, to quote Zelenka, collecting zero point energy from your own universe is problematic... because we have to live in it.
After watching the documentary lost century, it's crazy to think that this device is based off a real piece of lost technology
Now THESE are my favorite kinds of conversations!
In terms of entropy and randomness. The best way to understand it is in terms of energy types I think. You can convert between thermal, mechanical and chemical energy but some directions require more effort than others because of the inherent nature of how they work. Energy is never lost, but it does "degrade" in that it moves towards the most stable configuration, one can also consider the most stable configuration to be the one of least energy and of highest entropy, because to change it at that point always requires more energy put in than you get out. It is often tied to randomness because order requires maintenance, where as disorder requires no effort to maintain, as a rule.
The example often used is the ordered form of a teacup vs the disordered form of the remnants of the teacup after it is dropped. It requires little to no effort to break the teacup, but it requires a lot to put the teacup's materials in order as a teacup, certainly much more energy than you could pull out of the mechanical energy of the drop. In this example the teacup started with potential energy, which became kinetic energy during the drop, and converted mostly to thermal energy after the impact. Even if you could gather up all that thermal energy, it wouldn't magically reform the cup or put it back into a position where it had it's form and potential energy restored, you need to do additional work for that to happen, energy isn't lost, but the energy available for useful work is unavailable or "lost".
What this means for the ZPM and its subspace pocket would be that the subspace pocket is filled with energy in a higher order state and the ZPM pulls energy out by allowing the "teacup to fall" so to speak. A transformation of something inside the subspace pocket occurs and it gives off energy as this occurs. Eventually all of the contents of the subspace pocket have dropped into their lowest energy state, or their most stable state, which would be the most random and disordered state if one were to compare to the teacup example.
Since the subspace region is described as artificial, I guess we can assume the Ancients found a way to create these regions by pumping energy into them, and then essentially used them as batteries. Maybe they had a special facility making these near a source of massive power (like black holes are established to be in the SG universe). We have no information on how they achieved this, but it must have been damn hard to do or a slow process given how few of these things appear to exist or be used.
My biggest gripe is that I think if it truly drew zero-point energy from a subspace region, then I wouldn't foresee it reaching "maximum entropy," for all intents and purposes it would already be at such a state. Zero-point energy is already the highest entropy state, so unless they collapsed it even further using strangelets or something, then one wouldn't expect the zero-point energy to deplete due to entropy, but due to something else changing due to pulling it out.
Best explanation I can think of is simply that by pulling out out this energy energy is pulled out of the very structure sustaining the subspace region, and when enough is pulled out the entire thing collapse in on itself.
You should take a look at patent US7379286B2, "Quantum vacuum energy extraction". Patents can be dubious but this one is pretty interesting and it's definitely relevant to this discussion. It's a clever little hack, no idea if it would actually work though because I'm not a physicist
From what I remember and extrapolated from the show, tapping into the subspace energy of the actual universe (via project arcturus) wasn't doable by the Ancients as they couldn't solve the exotic particles that would cause the end of the universe if the exotic particles reached subspace. The episode with McKay's sister Mrs. Miller talked about it and something along the lines of the exotic particles reaching subspace would allow them to essentially be everywhere all at once and poof goes the universe.
So the Ancients instead of having an infinite every-lasting energy source decided to create the power modules aka ZPMs with a pocket of artificial subspace time. It could provide massive amounts of energy over a long period of time but eventually the pocket of subspace/time would reach maximum entropy and collapse leaving nothing but a empty "depleted" module behind. (inferred not explicitly stated if I remember correctly)
Now the explanation would seem that Project Arcturus came before ZPM technology, this is possible and perhaps they revived the project in Pegasus during the Wraith war. However we know ZPM technology was in use before the Ancients left for Pegasus as SG1 found and used ZPM technology prior to Atlantis being found to power the Weapons Platform in Antarctica on Proclarush Taonas (nearly got the spelling without googling but alas not quite). There was also a Project Arturus lab on Atlantis itself which might suggest it was a continued pet project of the Ancients... or it was like the Manhattan Project and it started in Atlantis... before someone decided it was better to move it to the world where it was first encountered by McKay and the team. Or it was a continues experiment done in several locations over the years (kind of like fusion reaction labs here on earth).
There is also speculative theories that the device O'Neill made, that boosted the gate to connect to the Asgard homeworld, was a homemade ZPM. But that remains conjecture as of now. Another equally speculative theory was that the Ori ships were powered by the completed Project Arcturus and that they used ascended knowledge to complete the project.
The above is not definitive, I'm going of memory of 25 years of Stargate viewing but my last rewatch was in 2020.
O'Niell's gate booster was literally the first -human- Tauri made naquada generator. We actually see him fuel it up with the naquada from a captured staff weapon in the armory. They can't figure out how to get it working again until Dr Carter and Kawalski come through the quantum mirror. As I recall Cpt Carter having learned how to measure the decay rate of naquada by then from that race that lobotomized their own kids to learn let the two Carter's get it going again almost immediately.
It's got naquada in it. Making it work required a basic understanding of naquada generators and really not long after we finally get Earth made Mk1 naquada generators. Because it was the Mk0 all along.
(We can also broadly estimate an upper limit of it's output to between equal to and ten times the output of a compact nuclear reactor since the Gate draws ten times as much power as usual and the base runs off a "small nuclear reactor" normally.)
@@johnassal5838 I'm of the opinion it was a naquada generator as well, given that it had liquid naguada and Sam was able to make another or get that one working again to help parallel Sam contact the Asgard in Bizzaro world. But the theory of it being a ZPM persists online. I think the main argument for that was that it was used to boost the gate to dial another galaxy and it's later stated they need a ZPM to dial another galaxy... but largely people are overlooking those are two different galaxies Ida and Pegasus. So yeah I'm right there with you on it being naquada generator.
@@mkohlhorst It's never explicitly stated that Jack dialed another galaxy to contact the Asgard. Iirc we don't hear that their home planet is in Ida until later and we never do hear that this is in fact where Jack went. They could've had a colony much closer to or just outside the Milky Way just like Jack took them to Taonas for the ZPM instead of to "the lost city Atlantis". Once we do get a figure for the Asgard home galaxy where they set that temporal trap it's 4,000,000 light years away (corresponding approximately with the triangulum galaxy irl supposedly) which is clearly farther away than the 3,000,000 to Pegasus.
Considering they knew *exactly* what O'Niell made it out of, with a limited number of possible configurations even if they hadn't recorded every connection, with months studying the completed device AND even got it working again they should never have needed an ancient ZPM to reach Atlantis. Nor to supercharge their ships to make the trip faster, etc, etc. If it was a zpm they'd be making those instead of naquada generators. Therefore the Asgard world he went to was far enough to need an 8th chevron but far less than 3,000,000 (or 4 million) light-years away. Probably much closer like one of our galaxies satellites or the Magellanic Clouds less than 300,000 ly away.
Presumably that minimum of ten times the distance must equate to maybe 1000 times the power needed or they'd just have made it a priority to make the ten or fifty or whatever to let them reach Pegasus on a regular basis. But they didn't because it's clearly not a zpm and it would probably take all or more than all of their naquada generators made by the final season of SGA at once to power a connection to Atlantis without a zpm.
@@johnassal5838 It was an eight chevron address. It was another galaxy. And it was stated it was "leaving our galaxy" before Jack went through the gate by Sam. The Fifth Race was the episode that established eight chevron address dials another galaxy and requires more power to do so.
@@mkohlhorst Ok they specifically say "outside the galaxy" but that doesn't mean Ida. I wrote that it was an 8 chevron address. I also said, if not as simply, that it was a destination outside the milky way. Both the large and Small Magellanic Clouds are _other galaxies._ "Only" about 270,000 and 180,000 ly away respectively. About as big as Pegasus in fact, which is based on a galaxy that exists in real life. There are also several other much smaller dwarf galaxies, some even smaller clumps and separate clusters and an unknown number of single stars that either got ejected from our galaxy or orbit much further out than the edge is considered to be.
The show also tells us that the maximum range of a 7 symbol address is about 80,000 light-years. That's why the gate bridge to Pegasus needed 37 or 38 gates to cover the distance; they needed to be no farther from each other than 80k ly. So all we really know is that the planet Jack gated to was more than 80,000 light years away from Earth and probably more than that far from the edge of our galaxy or he'd be able to skip the booster and just gate to a world less than 80k ly from Earth in the right direction and then from there to the destination. So the Magellanic Clouds are good bets.
Other _"galaxies"_ but not even a tenth as far as Pegasus.
You ever play the Dyson Sphere game? Could be a game you might like. I saw a pre-release version... but I think a full version will come out soon (or already has). You start off using the resources from a planet to build production needed to travel to other planets and to build satellites around a sun... and then work your way up until you can finally build a full scale dyson sphere (or maybe several of them).
still in early development but a great game, gets frequent updates too
@@cryptohobo4589 K. Thanks. Will check it out. Probably a lot different by now. Has been a while since I've seen it. (I think only the original release). Heard it was supposed to be very different when done (with enemies and a story-line).
High entropy = high uniformity. Temperature, energy states, etc. At maximum entropy, the universe will be uniform in those respects.
*I am not a scientist, I just play one in UA-cam comments.
Think about the ISS. If you poke a hole in one of the modules, it will leak energy (air pressure) until the pressure inside and out are the same. Making an area of high entropy. Just that in the ZPM, we keep the vacuum side on the inside.
The challenge with any energy sources as were described here is that we are limited in how we capture and transmit the energy. We are an electricity transmission based civilization and are limited in how we convert the available energy to electricity. Our most efficient method is via heating a medium, usually water, and using the medium to spin a generator. Unfortunately the energy sources discussed are only partially composed of particles with kinetic energies or characteristics we are capable of converting via this method. The much vaunted fusion reactor generates much of its emitted energy as gamma rays, neutrons, and neutrinos. All these are not directly convertible to electricity. So, we need to overcome this limitation or move to a different transmission method. Star Trek uses the magic plasma conduits, but even these at some point must convert back to electricity given the quantity of sparks thrown off by the equipment when damaged. No explanation of what “plasma” is but I doubt it is what we currently define plasma as.
Shame we never found the battery factory.
Really. But as infrequently as they would've need a new ZPM, it's unlikely they would have anything approaching a factory to make them. In their world, they're probably pretty easy to make.
Speaking of "plugging in", @0:40 Rodney ejects the ZPM, but it is inverted and connected at the flat side rather than at the tapered end depicted in all other instances i can recall. Seems odd to me it would function that way.
Place 2 crystal sheets in between 2 di electric meta material plates use electromagnets to separate the plates . Push against the plates from the outside that will squeeze the em field. Using di electric would keep the energy inside from escaping . Use a signal generator apply a frequency to the crystal . Create a loop so it can recharge it self if it needs to. Piezoelectric crystals, metamaterials , di electric, all could help harness zpe
My random maybe non scientific ideas n bad grammer
Look how zpm looks
On show make use the same materials to make it look like it
It's funny to watch you be all sciencey and quote scientists et al. I watch a lot of science feeds particularily around space like @AntonPetrov and many other. It's fun to theorize though. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the ZPM.
I like to think they do pull zero point energy from the universe, the reason they become depleted is because the parts inside them wear out after a certain ammount of use.
Imagine if the ancients that used zpms as ammunition
I think you're right that it's a microverse within the ZPM. Remember that ancient lab episode and that alternate Rodney episode when they tried getting power from other universes and it failed horribly? You should try to talk to Mika McKinnon, a science advisor for Atlantis and Universe. She did an interview with Andrew Heaton on his sci-fi podcast (he also does The Political Orphanage, a great political podcast). Linked here. ua-cam.com/video/FPA2bd7RXKw/v-deo.html
Everything starts off as brand-spanking NEW, and entrophy means moving away from NEW to USED and it can never go back to NEW. As such the NHS is well and truly entrophied. Hope that helps.
A Mark-XII Naquada generator works too.
(Micro) Black holes are more likely to come some day after the artificial fusion. Hawking radiation is the actual zero point energy being released. It's possible to utilize them, maybe to mine with a Dyson Swarm, maybe even as a generator for a ship. There are caveats however, incl. their size, because micro-singularities evaporate and larger explode at the end of their existence. You wouldn't lug around a time-frozen star, but smaller artificial construct. Also no touching.
Yeah touching would be... ouch. Hell, we can barely contain the energy from fusion reactions although we are getting better at it. I think what you're suggesting is much more feasible than matter-antimatter power generation though
how does atlantis transfer power around the city from the show it looks like an eps system. and u should do a vid on how an asgard neutrino ion reactor could work
ZED PM
It's funny how the old "Aether" theories are coming back now. Of course, we can't call them that because it would be heretical to the physics community but that's what it is. Space is not empty. It is not just a passive background within which everything important happens, it is a major player itself
Entropy is analogous with homogeneity . Or the Mountains eventually crumbling to the PERFECTLY FLAT and Even Sea bed . All potentials equalised .
That's not quite true. A perfectly flat surface actually has very low entropy, the opposite of it increasing over time. Because very little information is needed to describe it.
@@drndn . I used the Mountains crumbling example as a Visualisation aid for anyone who didn't understand what Homogeneity might be . Entropy is a NEGATIVE force .
When Entropy reaches infinity , the Universe will be Cold , absolute zero throughout , and all remaining Matter and energy will be so evenly distributed throughout , that it doesn't interact sufficiently to even produce gravity .
In other words Every Single Particle is attracted equally in all directions , thereby producing a Net Interaction result of Zero .
No Stars , No Nebulas , No Energy conversion , Nothing . Just a thin , barely discernible mist , slowly collapsing into a Final Singularity .
@@johncunningham4820 I get what you're saying and its a fair analogy. Although some details of what you're saying are self-contradictory or wrong, unless you know something I don't. At the very least, there is no Final Singularity in any scenarios consistent with everything else you said. The only way all particles would stop interacting via gravity is if they're moving apart greater than the speed of light, meaning the big rip scenario, or alternately if they all became massless, which is the more likely scenario of everything eventually decaying to photons. But these both have the universe continuing to expand forever, the opposite of it contracting back into a singularity.
@@drndn . I am glad you noticed my Deliberate Contradiction . I was checking if you Did actually understand the concepts .
I believe the Actual end of this Universe will in fact be a BIG CRUNCH , however , it could simply fizzle out as an Inert thin Fog of inactive subatomic particles spread beyond the range to interact .
@@johncunningham4820 Deliberate huh? Anyway, I seem to recall that the theory of a big crunch end was from before it was discovered in 1998 that the universe's expansion is accelerating, and so given this discovery, there isn't much support for a big crunch anymore, but rather just eternal expansion, given the new evidence. In order to have a big crunch, that would have to be explained by something for whose evidence is not yet discovered or theorized, as far as I know.
this is awesome
You mean ZedPM, right? 😉😄
entropy here regards to the conservation of matter, energy, and information.
What entropy actually means is the amount of information needed to describe a system. This tends to correlate with randomness but isn't the same. There are several good UA-cam explanations of it. Here's one of several good videos I recently watched: ua-cam.com/video/T6CxT4AESCQ/v-deo.html
so im sure you wont see this because its a comment on a "year old" video but ive been rewatching atlantis and ever since my second watch through i stopped and wondered...the ancients/altlanteans build ZPM to power the city and outposts and boost power to their ships. it would be safe to assume that they built them somewhere in atlantis right? its not like they built them in the milkyway or something. like there has to be a room somewhere in atlantis that can make them. i doubt that they made, lets say 50, then went "yup that enough for the rest of eternity deconstruct the room that makes these". why did McKay never just search the data base for any and all things zpm and just doom scroll till he found the section that talked about creating them. like even if they didnt have a factory that could make them he and all the other scientests there should be able to get something together. like who knows maybe there is a storage create with like 10 just chilling in a room somewhere. i know that would break the plot of never having power and not being able to get from galaxy to galaxy easily but they could have theoreticly been able to create more seeing as they where more than likely in the city that created them in the first place. having the raw meterials okay i could see that being a problem but again the data base im sure has a gate code or something too a planet that has them. McKay could have made 10 3 for atlantis 2 for earth (one sgc one antartic base) 1 for each of their ships (2) then still have 3 left over for the travelers the experimental jumper and a spare for when they find another aurora class ship. the travelers even tho they had their own agenda and kinda only thought of them selves they still where good alies having both the deadels class ships sooped up with a zpm would have been amazing for the ori and the wraith having quick resupply and comunication between atlantis and earth is huge earth best defense is importand and atlantis being at full power is just amazing they could essentially keep the sheild up indefintly. like i said i just always wondered if there was a room that made them somewhere lost in atlantis and why mckay wouldnt have thought of that himself with how obsessed he was with getting them.
The quantum torpedoes of star trek uses zero point energy
Wasn't that Yeoman Rand (I guess lieutenant or something) working the transporter in that scene? I'm not a big fan of "Star Trek The Motionless Picture", but if that is her it's good to see her back in the show, if only for a cameo.
The real physics zero point module would not deplete.
It’s a shame they never understood how to create one. Could have been helpful ❤😂
I had hoped for the expedition to find where the ZPM's were made and learned how to make them . Lots of arguments between Sam and Rod.
Its not like they need the full power of a sun in a literal bottle though. Only the ancients would rely on all the power you can fit in siutcase to power an entire city _through a war._ I mean it's cool how advanced their tech is but even the "can't think as dumb as us anymore" Asgard devote around a quarter of a ship to just it's generators. Simply doubling the power on tap for atlantis would probably let the city tank everything the wraith had while it flys through hive ship after hive ship itself. Doubling not enough for that? Ok. Then put three in all five piers. Or ten in every single tower... They only had thousands of years and an arbitrary supply of some to do it with.
It does go a long way towards explaining how the Tauri do so much better with so much less than the ancients but you could almost stuff the city with Honda emergency generators, never mind naquada generators and be better off. No matter how dear that stuff is supposed to be Anubis or someone tried to hit earth with an asteroid that supposedly had a miles wide core of pure naquada. It can't be that rare. We should at least see them add a dozen or so naquada generators after a few years of regular supply and that many more each year after especially once the system lords were gone.
Theoretically I see no reason why the asgard materializing tech couldn't recreate it if it were able to be scanned
I have to think that zpms are like non rechargeable subspace batteries in that they need to put that energy into them in order to make them and to get it out later.
Of course in reality the writing of the show when it comes to zpms and their power gets really uneven in Atlantis with the city burning through half full and even full units just as fast as the writers need to get them out of the way to preserve the threat and drama. Never mind the ancients lost a war with presumably as many as they'd ever want but meh.
The battery idea makes sense when you look at the failed vacuum device from the episode Trinity in the solar system Rodney blew up trying to make it work. That device would be an actual energy source instead of just energy storage. Possibly small enough to shoehorn into a city ship if it worked if a lot bigger than three ZPM. Ordinarily they probably used some version of scooping a star like in SGU to power them up and being under siege by the wraith probably meant they gave up and left once they were down to the last three charged units they had, the handful of others possibly left elsewhere not really worth it to them or making a big difference to their decision.
Just watched that episode and the idea is fascinating. I'd argue that we really don't know enough about the topology of spacetime to conclusively say whether something like this could actually work. Someday, hopefully, we'll be able to answer the question. Sci-fi drives innovation in the next generation of scientists who grew up watching/reading it. We had better figure it out though because in the long term humans will need to leave this solar system or go extinct
I wonder why, on a "science"-channel one deems the onlookers so dump, that one has to tell them to subscribe and so on. Would an intelligent person interested in science and capable of understanding science no already know, that one can subscribe and why that would be useful?
Dr Steven Greer said this technology already exists and gravity propulsion.
Sorry to have to point it, but you said a wrong info : Atlantis as powered with 3 ZPMs, in its 10.000 years under the sea , not just 1 . Watch "Before I Sleep" again .
It HAS three, but to last 10,000 years, they needed to be plugged in one at a time.
The ZPM reminds me of another technology from another franchise, a Romulan forced quantum singularity core, which they used instead of matter/antimatter.
Extracting virtual particles from the universe to replace the ones producing " energy" in the sub-space
While handwaving this into existence I have decided there could be two modes. Mode 1 has particles borrowed for powering whatever the zpm is hooked to being replaced by the universe. Mode 2 creates a virtual pathway where you draw energy from the univese and send those to power stuff, thereby always having a zpm at 100 %.
Well I took this from my knowledge of microwave devices, where you get a device doing whatever because of " spin ", where " lines of force ( + in one side - on other) are arranged haphazardly; the + end is pointed random directions. Shooting electrons at it causes those to now switch to all of them having the plus side arranged in rows all pointing the same direction.
I actually believe we could hit a Type I or II civilization much faster than we realize. The concept of the metaverse (an extension of the internet) is essentially us entering and controlling, to a degree, the 10th Dimension. Of 11 conceivable ones, of the 26 known dimensions. We currently live in the 3rd and 4th Dimensions. If we can grow at that kind of rate; who knows what's possible!
I'm so glad I just started SG: Atlantis. So much Sci-Fi goodness!
Rodney: It's pronounced Zed-P-M.
Nidavellir...
10^13 vs 10^17 ... not far off? only a factor of 10,000 (aka 4 orders of magnitude) (aka 0.01%) ... still great talk so far and I'm not even half way through (@6:10 so far)
Only not far off as in compared to zero. Still take a century to reach
Jay, you lost me at "Welcome to SCI-TREK... ". I still prefer Rodney McKay.
the only true way to say it is Zed PM
Zero point,is the keys. Only one zero point exists and that is at the center of the Universe.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not accurate because it assumed a fictional zero point. Everything in the Universe moves about the one true zero point.,hence it's uncertainty.
Interdimentional zero points may or may not apply. That is uncertain.
Sorry bro your explanation reached maximum entropy at 3:51 for me.
🤣🤣
Everyone in this Room is Now Dumber
Actually nobody that has tried to define the tech has come remotely close. If it was explained to the alleged smartest Scientists in this world it would still be way off parameters wise. The main problem with understanding anything is to remove the fact that you know everything and replace it with you haven't even scratched the surface and would be considered idiotic in circles that matter. One could literally start with words and interpretations of such. All of human tech is based on ,"I know everything until I tell myself I don't" and that's the 0 point flaw with you people. Icmtsudfl
Zed PM. You’re British so it’s Zed. The exact way Rodney says it as they partially speak British English as well. Weird as you said Petrol and not gas 🤭