[Forerunner Technology]
Index
- Gateway: History and Introduction
- Gateway: Morphological Description
- Gateway: Function Description
- Gateway: Network Extent
3. Function Description
All functioning Gateways emit low levels of electromagnetic radiation in standby mode, but this is only detectable within several hundred meters. Currently there is no way to pin point the location of a gateway at ranges greater than that. Theoretically, when in operation for the fraction of a second where a force field is generated and a wormhole is open between two Gateways, a gravimetric pulse or anomaly should be detectable but no one has successfully monitored a transit this way, yet.
The Niode Matrix
The function of the Gateways is closely tied to the operation and data storage capabilities of networked niodes, or niode matrices. Standard niodes keep a space-time location address record of every Gateway they have been in a tetrahedral event zone of. Once the basics of the Forerunner operational system code were discovered, the niodes and Gateways could be communicated with electromagnetically. By selecting an address from a niode's records to another Gateway that the Gateway the niode's matrix or network is in contact with it allows the creation of a wormhole that will instantaneously transport everything within the tetrahedral event zone to the target Gateway. Once an address is used it is, for some unknown reason, unavailable for a period of several hours preventing any niode matrices from using the gateway they have just arrived on for that time period. This may have been considered a safety feature by the Forerunners.
There must be a niode matrix with enough niodes for the gateway to activate; the more mass in the transport envelope, the more niodes the matrix must include. This mass includes the atmosphere, be it gas or liquid within the gateway envelope as well. Though the niodes used in mecha will work for this, most transport is done using shipping containers with a matrix embedded in them. An additional Forerunner safety feature is that a force field pushes everything out of a receiving gate a moment before anything comes through. However, this means when traveling from a gateway in the vacuum of a dwarf planet and going to a gateway on the ocean floor of an earth-like world, whatever is being transported should be designed to withstand what happens when the ocean that has just been pushed out of the transport envelope comes crashing back into the void on the gateway, and vice versa when you transport any atmosphere or liquid to a gateway in the vacuum of space as it either instantly boils or freezes.
The Gateway Transporting Envelope
The tetrahedral event zone is a tetrahedron transport envelope where each edge measures exactly 12 meters where the bottom side of the tetrahedron is the Gateway itself. The tetrahedral envelope is approximately 9.797 meters tall, has a volume of approximately 203.647 cubic meters and can contain a sphere with a radius of 2.449 meters. Not until the beginning of the 34th century was it made public knowledge that a larger transport envelope could be created with the right access code creating an icosahedron transport envelope, again with each edge measuring exactly 12 meters and the bottom side being the Gateway itself. The icosahedral envelope is approximately 18.138 meters tall, has a volume of approximately 3769.969 cubic meters and can contain a sphere with a radius of 9.069 meters.
(By Sean Wadey - 356597)
