BY LETTER
Fargate, The
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| The Fargate has no apparent external support structure, yet is completely stable; if it is the product of alien technology, it is extremely sophisticated and presumably very ancient. | |
| Location | Taurus, 4291 ly from Sol, near HIP 21575 |
|---|---|
| Radius of Throat | 25km |
Conditions at the far end
The far mouth of this wormhole opens into intergalactic space, as such there are no nearby stellar systems. This means that the Fargate is not particularly useful as a means for colonising new territory, unlike the other xeno-wormholes which have been discovered within the Milky Way. The closest star is sixty light years away and has a low metallicity and few planets, having been probably ejected from a distant galaxy many billions of years ago. Other stars are more distant. The interstellar medium in this location is very sparse, and there is a net flow of particles from the Milky Way to the far end, though this is very small. Despite that, The Other Side, as it is called, is subject to careful control by the Metasoft transapients on site; a range of defences have been deployed, apparently to protect the Other Side from blights.Possible origin of the Fargate
There is no detectable control infrastructure inside the Fargate, but it is apparently completely stable and is therefore qualitatively different from any other wormhole yet discovered. One possibility is that the Fargate is an entirely natural phenomenon. In the earliest phase of the existence of the universe, the Inflation Era, extremely high energy events may have caused a wide range of topological defects such as primordial black holes, cosmic strings, domain walls or textures, and wormholes of various kinds. A wormhole created in the earliest stages of inflation could have been separated by the expansion of the universe into two distant mouths which could be millions or billions of light years from each other. Most estimates of such wormhole pairs predict that the wormhole mouths would not be traversable, and could collapse when particles passed through the throat; but certain rare topological defects might contain enough natural exotic energy to remain stable for an indefinite period.Another possibility is that such a topological defect may have been found, and artificially stabilised, by an early xenosophont civilisation, perhaps the hypothetical Alpha civilisation that may have existed in the Inflationary Era (or even earlier). There may even have been several such civilisations which may have co-operated in this early era, or they may have fallen into conflict (perhaps using the Fargate as a means of communication or escape). The Fargate may even be a completely artificial construct, a theory which is very popular among Metasoft researchers.
The mystery of The Other Side
The protections installed by the transapients, its distance from the wormhole Nexus and its relatively recent discovery have prevented telescopes from being assembled on The Other Side. This prevents us from being able to have a clear idea on its locations relatively to the Milky Way. Nevertheless, some observations have arrived from the ship sent by the Metasoft outer volumes. For instance the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background at the far end is very close to the temeprature at this end, so it sees that the two mouths are not significantly displaced in a temporal direction.In the Current Era, the entire observable universe has been mapped in some considerable detail by telescope, but since the most distant galaxies are more than forty billion light years away in proper distance, and are seen in the state they existed in more than 13 billion years ago, it would seem to be very difficult to determine whether the distal end of the Fargate is located within the Visible Universe or beyond it.
 Image from Steve Bowers | |
| If the far end of this wormhole was located anywhere closer than 1.8 times the distance of the edge of the Visible Universe, there should be a recognisable match between the galaxies in the area shown in red on this diagram. Since no match can be found, this suggests the Other Side is more distant than that limit. | |
As confirmation of this finding, the observable universe is very heterogeneous in matter density even at the scale of millions of light years, and some large structures such as the Boötes Void would not have moved much since the beginning of the universe, and would help find an overlap between both observable universes and thus, the location of The Other Side. These observations indicate that it is very likely that The Other Side is located at more than 1.8 times the radius of our observable universe, and this distance will probably be increased as more detailed observations are made, as gravitational lensing makes the data difficult to interpret at present.
There are some other theories regarding the Fargate. Some researchers have suggested that the Fargate connects to a different universe, potentially a basement universe, either left by a very advanced xenosophont civilisation or that occurred naturally. Others have suggested that the two observable universes are completely unconnected causally, and that the resemblance in characteristics is merely a coincidence. One theory is that The Other Side is actually far closer to the Milky May than we might think, and that observations from The Other Side are distorted by conditions around the Fargate in some unknown fashion.
It is possible that the coordinates of The Other Side will be found when more precise measurements arrive, but if not the Fargate offers an intriguing opportunity to observe conditions far beyond the Hubble Volume.
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Development Notes
Text by Todd Drashner
Additional material by Steve Bowers and Grawa427
Initially published on 08 April 2002.
Major Update by Grawa427 September 2024
Additional material by Steve Bowers and Grawa427
Initially published on 08 April 2002.
Major Update by Grawa427 September 2024
