How The Stargate Device Actually Works

In 1994, Roland Emmerich gave us "Stargate," a standalone sci-fi adventure replete with lost civilizations across the galaxy and an antagonist masquerading as a god. Although plans for a "Stargate" trilogy unfortunately fell through, the film spawned a long-standing franchise of beloved television shows and tie-in comics. Among these entries, the "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" shows do most of the heavy lifting, expanding the foundational lore in Emmerich's film in substantial ways. Although all "Stargate" stories are loosely connected, the only common denominator that binds them together is the titular Stargate, a device that allows instantaneous travel between two distant locations across galaxies. But what exactly is a Stargate and how does it work?

In Emmerich's film, the Stargate expedition team is assembled years after a capstone (also known as cover stone) is unearthed at Giza, Egypt in 1928. While the capstone is found engraved with hieroglyphs, the archeologists also find a massive metallic ring beneath it, and are stumped by its purpose and relation to the artifact. The mystery surrounding these objects gets solved once Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) comes on board, deducing that the ring and the capstone form a wormhole once they're calibrated. Being a brilliant linguist and archeologist, Jackson solves the puzzle and helps create Earth's first functional Stargate, which transports the expedition team to the desert planet of Abydos.

Although the 1994 sci-fi adventure doesn't reveal too much about this device, its sequel series "Stargate SG-1" injects it with enough lore and prevents it from becoming a MacGuffin. As "Stargate" lore can be pretty convoluted, let's look at the device's straightforward origins, along with the basic characteristics that have defined it over the years.

You might have heard the term "Einstein–Rosen bridge" being thrown around in sci-fi media, and the Stargate can be understood as a variation of that. In the simplest terms, an Einstein–Rosen bridge is a wormhole (a short-cut, if you will) that allows one to travel between points A and B, which are located far enough to be in different points in spacetime. "SG-1" provides us with necessary context by revealing that these Stargates were made by the Ancients, who are a race of ascended beings with near-infinite knowledge about life, the galaxy, and what lies beyond. The portals themselves were perfected over time by other races, including the Tollan and the Ori, who used them for their convenience.

"SG-1" also explains why the Stargate Command was established in the first place: it was a frontline of defense against invading a vicious alien species known as the Goa'uld. Expedition teams (such as the SG-1 and Atlantis teams) were sent through Stargates to help gather intelligence about other species who could help humans fight the Goa'uld and protect Earth. In season 6 of "SG-1," Daniel Jackson (played by Michael Shanks) learns the buried truth about the Ancients, their role in making the Stargates, and their underwater city of Atlantis. These revelations completely alter the history of the boundless galaxy, carving space for deeper lore that differentiates between varying prototypes of the Stargate device. For example, the events of "Stargate Universe" point towards a third generation of Stargates that have a limited range, and function quite differently than the traditional portals we know.

Remember the hieroglyphs on the capstone that need to be calibrated to activate a Stargate? Well, a combination of these symbols forms unique addresses, which are essentially coordinates to various points across the universe. In most cases, dialing these symbols in the correct order allows expedition teams to travel through the gate. With this in mind, let's take a look at how these devices work.

Without getting too much into the convoluted science of it all, let's figure out how the Stargate device facilitates time hops from point A to B. If you take a closer look at these gates, you will notice a blue, shimmering vortex of energy powering the portal on both ends. This shimmering energy acts as the fuel necessary to keep the connected gates open and send people through, meaning that lower energy levels might lead to complications (such as people getting stuck somewhere in the galaxy, or worse, disintegration). The glyphs mentioned above help pinpoint exact coordinates, locking in a destination (both known and unknown) that a designated team can directly travel to. Of course, the scientific aspect of this process is much more complex, but the best way to understand it is to divide the journey into three parts: dematerialization, transmission, and reintegration.

When a person or object passes through the gate, it needs to be dematerialized, or broken down into a "hyperspatial buffer" that can easily make the journey from A to B. The journey itself is the transmission, and by the time a person/object emerges through the arrival portal, reintegration occurs. Reintegration ensures that all states of matter are reverted to their original form, stabilizing anything that might have glitched during the landing process. Any kind of time hop or movement across space-time is bound to change you, so it often creates alternate timelines or leads to deaths that affect these branched realities (this has happened in "SG-1" several times).

Is this kind of (potentially) timeline-altering time hop viable in real life, even on a purely theoretical level? Mika McKinnon, the franchise's official on-set science consultant says it's possible, with some limitations, of course. We might not live in the boundless fictional world of "Stargate," where humans are blessed with enhanced genes that can easily adapt to such methods of travel, but we can make do. That said, these portals in "Stargate" are used as frequently as one would ride a taxi or catch a train, so caution is advised!