The major headscratchers thread/this makes no sense!

[Captain Crimson]

Okay, this is a thread for describing headscratchers in popular SF work. Kind of a no-duh statement, but there it is. And then we hash it all out. The first one I shall contribute is this.

For the SG-1 episode Window of Opportunity the explanation is that the subspace bubble that's being generated to lock a portion of the Stargate network out of sync to the flow of time is pretty cool, from an SF perspective. From a more logical perspective, however... since the episode then ends with the reveal the Tok'ra have been trying to contact them for three months, and that it's just a tiny portion of the universe locked out... how does that work? Does that extend to the solar system Earth is part of? Because with three months the orbit of the Earth around the sun would have significantly changed, with shorter or longer day length and seasonal changes, especially once the device was turned off. How does this work? Makes no sense.

[Darth Wedgius]

Even if the slow-time bubble covered the whole solar system (but not much more), I think some astronomers probably would still have noticed. Barnard's star gas a high proper motion (it'll move about half the moon's angular size in a human lifetime), and there is probably stuff I don't know about that astronomers do. Relative positions of stars in binary pairs, maybe.

Even with a bubble extending to a few thousand light years, astronomers might have noticed, if they were looking at a pulsar at the right time.

IIRC, they left the boundaries of the effect vague. Probably for the best.

[Madner Kami]

Note how time slowing down also means, that it takes light longer to reach a given point within a system, if you are looking at it from the outside. Funny thing is, time from the perspective within the "bubble" (it's actually an infinite amount of layers, but let's not be too pedantic) keeps running normal still. It stands to reason that from within such a warped spacetime you are not going to notice much within such a relatively short amount of time. The really funky moments should happen, once the system rebounds back into "normal" time and all the slowed down light from the "missed" time just suddenly arrives, like as if a dam broke.

[Captain Crimson]

Note how time slowing down also means, that it takes light longer to reach a given point within a system, if you are looking at it from the outside. Funny thing is, time from the perspective within the "bubble" (it's actually an infinite amount of layers, but let's not be too pedantic) keeps running normal still. It stands to reason that from within such a warped spacetime you are not going to notice much within such a relatively short amount of time. The really funky moments should happen, once the system rebounds back into "normal" time and all the slowed down light from the "missed" time just suddenly arrives, like as if a dam broke.

The only explanation I can offer is that, despite Major Carter's statements to the contrary, it's a universal-ranging effect, with a reset where anyone trapped within the bubble has no memories, but those outside it still possess it even as they repeat whole days. So, not even time travel so much as mass memory manipulation. No wonder the Ancients abandoned it.

[Darth Wedgius]

Note how time slowing down also means, that it takes light longer to reach a given point within a system, if you are looking at it from the outside. Funny thing is, time from the perspective within the "bubble" (it's actually an infinite amount of layers, but let's not be too pedantic) keeps running normal still. It stands to reason that from within such a warped spacetime you are not going to notice much within such a relatively short amount of time. The really funky moments should happen, once the system rebounds back into "normal" time and all the slowed down light from the "missed" time just suddenly arrives, like as if a dam broke.

I think all the light coming from outside the bubble would look blue-shifted when it finally got to an observer. Of course if the bubble is several hundred light-years big then the blue-shifted light would take centuries to get to the telescopes on Earth, so...

Edit: come to think of it, that would take care of any astronomical observations. If the bubble is a few light-centuries big, all the light that Earth sees for a few hundred years will be OK, including pulsar signals, proper motions, cepheid variable star pulsations, whatever.

[Captain Crimson]

Another headscratcher is that a geomagnetic storm is causing this. Granted, you could make a similar case for the solar flare sending the Stargate matter stream back to 1969, but... that was, I think, based on STIV. The stuff with the episode seems like they had invented it all upon their own, probably for plot reasons. Which is fine. But I just don't understand how a disruption to the planet's magnetosphere would induce those kind of short-term causal loop effects. Were the Ancients attempting to deliberately short-circuit out the Stargates, like the Carrington Event so long ago? Again, no wonder it didn't work.

[Madner Kami]

I just realized, I had a completely different episode in mind and such a different effect. I was thinking about the episode with the black hole and conflated the two.

So let's get back to start:

Option 1) The entire solar system is locked out of time

The astronomers and noone else inside the solar system is going to notice much of anything. Space is huge. Mindblowingly huge. It is in fact so absurdely huge, that it's borderline impossible to really comprehend how truely huge it is, for our little monkey-brains. Remember, the closest star to us, is some 4 lightyears or so away. The light from that star literally reaches us only 4 years after it was sent out by that star. Where exactly our solar system is in relation to stars that are multiple houndreds or even thousands of lightyears away, matters little within a 3 months time-span. It's as if you are relating your position to a visible object that is 100 km or miles away from you, say a particular mountain peak. Whether you are 500m more to the right or left, doesn't really change your perspective on that peak. You'll only notice your change in position because of the objects closer to you, but imagine a flat plane without any distinctive feature between you and the mountain, where the closest object to you is already 4km away. You'll need to look really hard to make out any relative change in the triangle of you, the object (say, a cactus) and the mountain. At first glance, you won't. Same is true for 99.999% of the population on Earth.

Option 2) It's only the Earth that is locked.
Now this will get tricky, because Earth moves a lot in relation to the sun. 3 months is a lot of time within this system and people will notice that almost instantly, because of the rather sudden change of season and if that is not clue enough, then the sudden realization that Earth's orbit changed rather drastically will be a dead giveaway and this can and will have some rather drastic consequences on Earth's general habitability.

[Captain Crimson]

I just realized, I had a completely different episode in mind and such a different effect. I was thinking about the episode with the black hole and conflated the two.

I didn't wanna say anything, but I was scratching my own head here a bit with this headscratchers thread.

Option 1) The entire solar system is locked out of time

The astronomers and noone else inside the solar system is going to notice much of anything. Space is huge. Mindblowingly huge. It is in fact so absurdely huge, that it's borderline impossible to really comprehend how truely huge it is, for our little monkey-brains. Remember, the closest star to us, is some 4 lightyears or so away. The light from that star literally reaches us only 4 years after it was sent out by that star. Where exactly our solar system is in relation to stars that are multiple houndreds or even thousands of lightyears away, matters little within a 3 months time-span. It's as if you are relating your position to a visible object that is 100 km or miles away from you, say a particular mountain peak. Whether you are 500m more to the right or left, doesn't really change your perspective on that peak. You'll only notice your change in position because of the objects closer to you, but imagine a flat plane without any distinctive feature between you and the mountain, where the closest object to you is already 4km away. You'll need to look really hard to make out any relative change in the triangle of you, the object (say, a cactus) and the mountain. At first glance, you won't. Same is true for 99.999% of the population on Earth.

I'm aware of that, though I'd imagine if, say... you were trapped in the loop for... you know, six years or something... then the accumulated light build-up would have those effects you'd indicated prior. I merely said the solar system because trying to comprehend the looping of time in one small area, and nowhere else is confusing. You'd notice some kind of radical change once the loop stopped and with a space the size of the solar system, that's lessened significantly, with the only real observable changes being the light from other far-distant stars and galaxies reaching you. But then the Ancients were also a spacefaring society, so no doubt if they really did spend years trying to refine this, then any kind of delayed light bleed-over would be both minimal as well as something they were prepared for. As in, it wouldn't turn heads. I suppose I am thinking perhaps too much in the context of the military cover-up of the SGC.

Option 2) It's only the Earth that is locked.
Now this will get tricky, because Earth moves a lot in relation to the sun. 3 months is a lot of time within this system and people will notice that almost instantly, because of the rather sudden change of season and if that is not clue enough, then the sudden realization that Earth's orbit changed rather drastically will be a dead giveaway and this can and will have some rather drastic consequences on Earth's general habitability.

I'm thinking now in retrospect it locks out the solar system because the only tangible changes applied here which would work would be the solar system's relative position to the larger galaxy, although I'm assuming the closed loop of planets might be synced together within the galaxy through a variation of high-level gravitational warping, or they would float free into the gaps between galaxies with enough time, and that's a no-no to life on those planets.

Actually, in this respect, because the device wipes memories, I'd assume that there's a built-in safety feature, perhaps in relation to not just suppressing memories, but in overwriting them and replacing them with new ones. The time frame given in the show would be pronounced to an extent where any changes once the loop ended would hardly be noticed especially by a tired Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill. Plus they would have been offworld at the time it happened. Now I come to think of it, I'm wondering just how the geomagnetic storm caused the Stargates to pull this. And to why these specific planets?

[Artabax]

Astronomers notice that Barnard's star is slightly out of place and double check before they report it. Then Time-loop resets. Then Astronomers notice that Barnard's star is slightly out of place and double check before they report it. Then etc etc etc.

[Darth Wedgius]

Astronomers notice that Barnard's star is slightly out of place and double check before they report it. Then Time-loop resets. Then Astronomers notice that Barnard's star is slightly out of place and double check before they report it. Then etc etc etc.

Up to the point that it doesn't reset. Then Barnard's Star is three months out of position, but the astronomers might not see it.

Let's say that the affected volume is one light year centered on earth's gate. One year minus three months, or nine months, after they stop playing Groundhog's Day, astronomers star seeing Barnard's star stutter forward at an accelerated rate.

I think that the implication was that all the systems connected to the gate Malikai was zapping formed one big volume of space that kept repeating. If so, then I would guess a volume tens of lightyears in diameter was repeating, probably including Barnard's Star (one of the closer stars).

So decades from the end of the episode, the light from unaffected sources begins to hit earth. The governments of the world have to concoct a story to keep everyone in doors and keep people from making astronomical observations with anything better than a backyard telescope.

I dunno, maybe a global pandemic or something.