Can you transport anti-matter?

[Timo]

The transporter is also established right from the start as being capable of moving intricate pieces of machinery that would cease to function or start to malfunction after fairly minimal faults in the process - say, human beings. Crude magnetic fields (or forcefields) are probably a breeze in comparison.

As for the issue of long distance beaming, it would seem the cooperation of Scotty and future Spock resulted in reproduction of the technology of the masters of Gary Seven. That one was a conventional transporter (since our heroes were able to intercept the beam with their systems) but with extremely long reach, both in terms of endurance and targeting. No doubt Starfleet considered sensor readings on that beam the greatest intelligence payback from the mission to 1968... But reverse-engineering even bits or pieces of the technology might have taken them, or the Vulcan Science Academy, five quarters of a century. Competing star empires are probably far behind. So the question becomes, does "Scotty's" technology remain open to inspection, or did future Spock make a black box out of it, so that Starfleet will again have to struggle until the 2380s to make heads or tails of it?

Timo Saloniemi

[bryce]

Didn’t that Ferengi guy with the vendetta against Picard (Damon Bok?) also use some sort of ultra-long distance "subspace transporter" beaming technology too?

Though Scotty's "transwarp beaming" didn't just involve super long-distance beaming, but also beaming to a starship moving at warp speed (and potentially from one ship at warp to another ship at warp...)

[publiusr]

That's a pretty nice thing to have. Beaming at speed.

[Pauln6]

bryce wrote:

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Didn’t that Ferengi guy with the vendetta against Picard (Damon Bok?) also use some sort of ultra-long distance "subspace transporter" beaming technology too?

Though Scotty's "transwarp beaming" didn't just involve super long-distance beaming, but also beaming to a starship moving at warp speed (and potentially from one ship at warp to another ship at warp...)

I think subspace beaming was done using a tranceiver at the other end and then by piggy-backing on the signal on the way back. It's still not clear how it differs from conventional transporting but it must be a less safe version or the Federation would use it as standard.

I don't have a major issue linking local tranceivers to chain-beam a signal to effectively double the distance but given the rate at which information leaks on these transports because of the energy needed to maintain a pattern (Scotty's genius took pretty much all the shuttle's power to prevent the patterns from degrading I think) if a signal is being sent through subspace it should be a real bitch to maintain for long. And subspace travel isn't instantaneous. It can take hours for messages going via several relays to reach Starfleet Command. Nothing should be surviving that (I realise that this is an issue from the recent comics rather than the movie).

Beaming inanimate objects with not complex working parts should be fine though. And with your anti-matter bomb, it doesn't matter if your signal degrades over long distances since you only need your magnetic shielding to last while you dematerialise. If it explodes immediately on rematerialisation, so much the better.

It's also worth noting that transporter pads can divert a signal and can deactivate weapons as part of the standard failsafe. Presumably if the transport is rerouted to a pad, your own systems could simply not re-materialise the anti-matter, although exactly how it could tell that in time is anybody's guess.

[krovikan]

I was gonna say no... Transporters transport matter... not anit-matter... however,

In Voyager they beam a torpedo onto a borg scout ship and Torpedos contain matter and anti-matter... Done

[throwback]

I see transporting as like this.
* A transportee is transported out of the conventional universe
* A transportee travels through a subspace corridor
* A transportee reenters the conventional universe

(On a transporter console aboard the Enterprise-D, there are controls for the subspace field compensation. See here - http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x...one_hd_018.jpg)

I feel there are safeguards on at least one of the 'portals', which is used to weed out biological contaminants. or to disable weapons. As long as the cargo is secured, there is no danger to the crew or to the ship.

[Carcazoid]

This thread title makes me wonder how Scotty might describe a particularly inept crewmember ...

"Couldn't transport antimatter in a bucket."