Project Arcturus

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

During the war with the Wraith, the Atlantean Council ordered the scientists working on Arcturus to set up an outpost on Doranda, to create a new power source that would help with the battle against the Wraith. Though they were able to begin extracting zero point energy from their universe, they ran into a number of problems. The extraction process resulted in the creation and destruction of new and exotic particles which reacted with the containment field, eventually overpowering it. To prevent a catastrophic overload, the Ancients linked an energy weapon to the generator, which would allow the weapon to fire repeated shots without having to recharge. Eventually, a Wraith hive ship and escorts came to cull Doranda. The Ancients then started the weapon, which was able to destroy the Wraith fleet, but no matter the setting, the field was unable to contain the amount of energy. The Ancients manually shut down the field, but the hard radiation wiped out all life on Doranda. Arcturus was then abandoned.

10,000 years later, the Atlantis Expedition attempted to restart Arcturus. After a test run that resulted in the death of Dr. Collins, John Sheppard and Rodney McKay went back and tried to manually adjust the shield strength. McKay was unable to maintain the field, causing a massive overload. Sheppard and McKay were able to escape by Puddle Jumper throught the Stargate orbiting Doranda, but the explosion wiped out 5/6s of the solar system.