The Real Science Behind Babylon 5’s Jumpgates
When you think of realism in science fiction, you think of The Expanse, but a classic series also decided to apply real science to the practical problem of navigating around the galaxy. At the heart of all commerce and military operations in Babylon 5 are the jumpgates, large structures of unknown origin that allow interstellar travel, and amazingly, there are actual scientific principles behind how they work. Going into hyperspace is only a theory, but what’s not up to debate is the proper usage of the Doppler effect.
Judge Sci-Fi Franchises By Their FTL Technology
Different sci-fi franchises handle the concept of faster-than-light travel (FTL) in different ways, from the warp drives creating bubbles of spacetime in Star Trek to the folding of space in Dune, and then there’s Warhammer 40k and traveling through Hell. Babylon 5’s jumpgates are fixed points in space that utilize an energy vacuum to rip open a hole into Hyperspace, a red-hued (that becomes important in a moment) dimension that allows for nearly instant travel.
The Doppler Effect In Action
When a jumpgate is open, pay attention to the colors unless you’re watching Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers, which ignores this rule, as this is the Doppler effect in action. The Doppler effect explains that waves, usually sound but light in this case, speed up as the object causing them is moving towards the observer, which in this case is a jumpgate, and slow down as the object moves away. In practice, this causes “redshift” and “blueshift” in both our galaxy and in Babylon 5.
Lightwave Length
Color is determined by the movement of lightwaves, with shortwaves registering as blue and longer waves appearing as red. That’s why, when a jumpgate is activated for a ship to travel into Hyperspace, it’s orange as the ship moves away (with longer wavelengths) and blue when a ship leaves Hyperspace, creating shorter wavelengths as it approaches the jumpgate. Within Babylon 5’s Hyperspace, the jumpgate exits are always red, as that’s the color of the dimension.
Wormholes
While the colors of the jumpgates are based on real, hard science, the actual function of the wormholes that they create is entirely the work of theoretical physicists. The prevailing theory, which Babylon 5’s jumpgates ignore for the sake of having any type of story, is that it takes the extreme mass of a black hole to “curve” spacetime enough that you can travel through existence. In theory, two points across the galaxy could be connected with an extreme enough “curve” or “bend” from the extreme gravitational forces at work.
The Hidden Origin Of The Jumpgates
It sounds cool, but no wormhole has ever been found in our reality. In the world of Babylon 5, the origin of the jumpgates is never confirmed, with hints that they were constructed by an ancient race. The Centauri and Minbari came across them while exploring the edges of known space, and the Vorlorn, though advanced, were ruled out as the designers, while the Shadows had no need for them.
J. Michael Straczynski, the series creator, was famous for sharing lore tidbits on his website in the nascent days of the internet, but on this point, he’s remained tight-lipped.
Regardless of where they come from, do watch the colors in every episode and marvel at the level of detail to accurately depict what the Doppler effect would be like as massive ships leave and re-enter our dimension. Babylon 5 isn’t the most scientifically accurate series out there, but its jumpgates are much more grounded than, say, Star Wars, which turned a hyperspace jump into a weapon.
