Matter bridge

A Matter bridge is a device which draws energy from a parallel universe.

Project Arcturus


Project Arcturus was an attempt by the Ancients to extract zero point energy from their own universe. The scientists who were working on the project did not feel that it was ready to be tested under battle conditions, but they had no choice, and Arcturus failed. Extracting zero point energy from a region of space randomly altered the laws of physics drastically within that region. This resulted in the continuous creation of exotic particles within the containment field. As they were created in a region with radically different physical laws, their behavior could not be predicted and the containment field could not contain them - they would breach as hard radiation.

During the original test, the Dorandan weapons acted as a release valve in an attempt to prevent a catastrophic overload - using up the excess power by shooting randomly into space. The Ancients working on Arcturus barely managed to shut down the weapon, but it was too late; it had already obliterated the planet's surface and the Wraith fleet in orbit. Due to the automatic containment field adjustment system the Ancients had in place, the overload finally ended on its own with a massive release of hard radiation, which killed the researchers nearly instantly.

In 2005, the Atlantis expedition discovered the project. In their first power-up, an overload occurred, and the containment field shifted asymmetrically in the direction of the command access tube, killing a scientist who was attempting to manually adjust the containment field. McKay was allowed to attempt one last power-up of Arcturus, which he attempted to do by trying to manually adjust the field to compensate for the particles. His attempt failed, and resulted in another overload, which was significantly more catastrophic than the two previous ones. The weapon armed and began firing at random targets to prevent a catastrophic overload. However, it was too late for Arcturus. Because McKay had disabled the containment field monitoring system, and was adjusting the field manually, there was nothing left in place to automatically shut it down after they escaped. The power source overloaded and caused a massive explosion destroying five-sixth of the Doranda system.

Jeannie Miller's bridge
In 2006, Jeannie Miller developed calculations, which helped solve the problems that plagued Project Arcturus. Instead of trying to draw zero point energy from our own universe and release hazardous exotic particles, McKay planed to draw energy from a parallel universe via a matter bridge so the exotic particles would be vented into the hopefully uninhabited parallel universe instead. Working together, McKay and Jeannie managed to resurrect Project Arcturus and successfully activated it without releasing exotic particles.

However, while being tested, a Rodney McKay from a parallel universe materialized inside the containment chamber. Alternate McKay explained to the Atlantis team that he was sent to this universe in order to warn them that his universe was slowly being destroyed by the exotic particles being created by Project Arcturus, and the project was immediately shut down to prevent any more damage. However, even though Project Arcturus had been shut down, the matter bridge was still open and Rod's universe was still being destroyed.

McKay realized that there is an alternate way to close the matter bridge without having to destroy either universe, which involved using massive amounts of energy to forcibly close the matter bridge using the ZPM. They successfully closed the bridge, but McKay kept the energy running in order to give Rod time to beam back to his own universe, draining Atlantis' only ZMP in the process.

Parallel universe's bridge
Another method of extracting zero point energy from alternate universes was developed in a parallel universe. Although Atlantis had not been discovered in this reality, their Samantha Carter conducted an experiment to extract minute amounts of zero point energy from many parallel universes simultaneously, thus avoiding the build up of exotic particles in any one universe. However, the experiment linked to our reality's SGC where our Colonel Carter was experimenting with phase-shifting using Merlin's Device. While the experiment would not have an effect on normal matter, the phase-shifted Colonel Carter and her lab were not normal matter at the time and were pulled through the bridge, causing the alternate Carter's experiment to explode - killing the alternate Carter. Although Colonel Carter was eventually returned, along with the technical details regarding the experiment, this technique has not yet been tested in our universe.

Related articles

 * Zero point energy
 * Zero Point Module
 * Alternate reality
 * Project Arcturus