Zero Point Module

"It's kind of like a miniature universe in a bottle."

- Rodney McKay on the power potential of a ZPM

A Zero Point Module, often abbreviated ZPM, is an incredibly long-lived power source of great magnitude capable of powering entire cities and intergalactic spacecraft for thousands of years. They have also been referred to as Power Modules.

Overview
"It extracts vacuum energy from this artificial region of subspace time until it reaches maximum entropy."

- Dr. Radek Zelenka

Created by the Ancients millions of years ago, ZPMs are capable of generating massive amounts of energy, which they draw from a contained region of subspace-time known as the quantum foam (subatomic wormholes constantly opening and closing in and out of subspace).

ZPMs have a potential life of many millions of years, and the amount of power generated by three of them is sufficient enough to power an energy shield over a city the size of Manhattan for 10,000 years, as well as for intergalactic and interstellar travel.

City-ships, such as Atlantis, utilize ZPMs as their primary source of power generation and require three to be fully functional. However, only one is needed to activate most systems. Even then, Naquadah Generators can provide enough power for most of the city's day-to-day systems.

Like many types of Ancient technology, Zero Point Modules are crystal-based. The crystals that compose the shell of the ZPM are similar in many ways to the crystals adapted by the Goa'uld and Tok'ra: red crystals contain the necessary progams to allow ZPMs to interface with Ancient technology when a ZPM is linked to a device, while yellow crystals act as a buffer to prevent catastrophic overload. The crystals of a ZPM are virtually indestructible and can remain functional for hundreds of thousands of years.

Encountered ZPMs
SG-1 procured a ZPM on Proclarush, which was used to power the Ancient Outpost in Antarctica. It was used to power drone weapons to destroy the Goa'uld fleet under the control of Anubis. It was later used to power the gate for the Atlantis Expedition, in order to reach the Pegasus Galaxy and Atlantis.



There were three ZPMs in Atlantis originally when they arrived, but two of them were depleted and the third was on its last leg powering the shield of Atlantis, but that too was eventually depleted.

A ZPM was found by Dr. McKay on M7G-677. It powered a strong electromagnetic field around the planet's Stargate, used to disrupt Wraith technology and thus protect the planet from the Wraith. McKay brought it to Atlantis, but returned it after it turned out to be too depleted to be of much use there.

Camulus found an Ancient outpost with a fifty percent charged ZPM. However, Camulus could never make it work (possibly because he lacked the ATA gene) so he tampered with the ZPM, rigging it to explode if linked to an electrical charge. Bill Lee estimated that if detonated, the tampered ZPM had the energy potential to destroy Earth, while Samantha Carter estimated that it could have destroyed the entire solar system.

There was a ZPM in Dagan, left behind from the Brotherhood of the fifteen. Atlantis would have gotten hold of it. Unfortunately some of the people of Dagan formed a new brotherhood and took the ZPM when they realized the people from Atlantis weren't the ancestors, no matter how much McKay argued.



SG-1 also found a ZPM in Egypt which had previously belonged to the Supreme System Lord Ra. This one was used by the crew of the Daedalus to arrive in Atlantis in only four days, which was then used to shield Atlantis from a Wraith assault, and to trick them into believing that Atlantis was destroyed by a nuclear warhead. This ZPM was depleted to allow an alternate Rodney McKay to return to his own reality.

The Genii had access to a ZPM. Ladon Radim claimed that he stole it from the Brotherhood of the fifteen. However, Atlantis found out that they had the ZPM in the old archives and has been long depleted. Ladon used this scheme to help him in his coup.

When the Asurans attacked and occupied Atlantis, they brought three ZPMs to power the city. Atlantis 1 was able to destroy the Asurans and acquire the ZPMs. Despite McKay's protests, two were sent back to Earth to protect the planet from an attack by the Ori, while one remained on Atlantis.

In an alternate reality, Earth never found Atlantis and therefore had their ZPM almost depleted from an Ori attack.

Later, the ZPM in Atlantis was nearly depleted by an attack by the Asurans with a laser through a satellite. The team eventually used their one remaining ZPM, along with additional power from the drilling platform, in order to gain the extra power needed to get Atlantis up into the air. However, due to damage incurred from the beam to the power conduits, Atlantis dropped out of hyperspace far too early, leaving the city-ship stranded in empty space. The damage had caused them to leak power, and by the time they repaired enough of the damage they didn't have enough power left to jump to back into hyperspace and only had about 30 hours left to power the reduced shield. Realizing that Asuras was close enough to jump to with a Puddle Jumper equipped with an experimental hyperdrive, Lt. Col. John Sheppard, Dr. Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex and Dr. Elizabeth Weir traveled to the planet to steal one of the Asuran's ZPMs.

Thanks to Weir's newly-activated nanites they stole one easily but after activating the Replicators attack code, they only escaped with this ZPM thanks to Weir's sacrifice and the timely arrival of the Apollo which had finally located Atlantis and came to Asuras to help them out. Using this new ZPM they jumped Atlantis to M35-117, its new home and landed it there. This ZPM has taken on the role of powering Atlantis from the now depleted other ZPM and although they used a lot of power bringing Atlantis to its new home, there's still plenty of power for Atlantis left in it.

When the Wraith fought alongside humans in the battle of Asuras, they secretly plotted to steal a few ZPMs from the planet before the planet was destroyed. They took at least three and used it to power up a Wraith Cloning Facility. The ZPMs were most likely destroyed when the Wraith hive ship Atlantis possessed rammed right into the facility.