Project Arcturus

"It is the ultimate power source -- something that would make Zero Point Modules seem like alkaline batteries in comparison."

- Dr. Rodney McKay

Project Arcturus was an attempt by the Ancients to extract zero point energy from their own universe.

Technical information
"Project Arcturus was attempting to extract vacuum energy from our own space-time, making it potentially as powerful as the scope of the universe itself."

- Dr. Radek Zelenka

Project Arcturus is capable of generating astronomical amounts of energy. Unlike the Zero Point Module, which extracts zero-point energy from an artificially-created region of subspace, Arcturus was an attempt at extracting zero-point energy from our own universe. In the words of Dr. Zelenka, this could potentially make it as powerful as the scope of the universe itself. It was described as the Ancients' last and possibly greatest discovery before Ascension, a vaunted title usually reserved for the Stargates (recent information suggests that the Ancients had knowledge of Ascension and had built the Stargates before they even came to the Milky Way galaxy).

The core of Project Arcturus is a small white sphere with six spikes inside a large space. The region is surrounded by a powerful containment field, and Arcturus extracts zero-point energy from within this region.

The Atlantis team later revised the process to try and extract zero-point energy from a parallel universe via matter bridge, which would solve the exotic particle problem that plagued the original project.

Background
"The outpost was ordered by the Ancients in Atlantis to defend the Dorandan people using their weapons powered by this new power source."

- John Sheppard

The ultimate goal of Arcturus was to replace ZPMs. Work on Arcturus began on the world Doranda when the Ancients were already a century into their war with the Wraith. Arcturus was originally intended to power the weapons of the Dorandan people.

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 behaviour 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.

Current times
"I've waited too long -- the weapon can't discharge enough power to avoid a catastrophic overload. This whole planet's gonna go up."

- Dr. Rodney McKay

The Atlantis expedition discovered the Stargate address of Doranda in the city's database. After the discovery of the Ancient outpost still intact on the planet, Dr. McKay and a team of scientists attempted to finish the Ancients' work, not knowing about the particle containment problem.

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. Despite protests from Dr. Weir and various other scientists, 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.

Thanks to intervention from the Daedalus, McKay and Sheppard managed to escape with their lives, but 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. While being reprimanded by Dr. Weir for destroying "three-quarters" of a solar system, McKay (in his classic pompous precision) objected that it was actually "five-sixths, but it's not an exact science."

Subsequent zero-point energy projects
"Your brother, along with many others, has been trying to figure out a way to draw zero point energy from a parallel space time."

- Dr. Samantha Carter

The Atlantis team later resurrected the project using a revised system of zero-point energy extraction. The process used a bridge between realities, extracting zero-point energy from a parallel reality - the energy could be transmitted through the bridge, but the exotic particles would remain on the other side. This simply moved the exotic particle problem to the other reality, however this was considered acceptable as the odds of the bridge linking to an inhabited reality were astronomically small. Unfortunately, the reality was inhabited. An alternate Rodney McKay appeared from the alternate reality to warn them of the problem and that it threatened to destroy his universe. When faced with this dilemma, the Atlantis team decided to cancel the project and close the matter bridge. In shutting down the matter stream and returning the alternate Rodney to his universe, the Atlantis ZPM was depleted.

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.