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The term is derived from the Phase Transition Coil which comes from the TNG tech manuals as part of a Transporter.
Phase transition coils. Located in the transport chamber platform. These wideband quark manipulation field devices accomplish the actual dematerialization / materialization process by partially decoupling the binding energy between subatomic particles. All personnel transporters are designed to operate at quantum resolution (necessary for successful transport of lifeforms). Cargo transporters are generally optimized at the more energy-efficient molecular resolution, but can also be set at quantum resolution if necessary.
In "Lonely Among Us" the dialogue clearly states that the transporter didn't have any of Picard's matter to start with since he was brought back starting as energy only and the transporter had to use his physical pattern to recreate his physical form, albeit it's not the Picard that came back.
The Phase transition coil dematerializes & rematerializes you at the atomic level, ergo changing you from matter to energy and back to matter again so you can cover the vast distances near instantaneously.
The only difference is that the aliens in "Lonely Among Us" didn't have Picard change back into matter, he got left in the cloud as energy.
The Transporter system retains the data for your physical form, that's standard practice.
The Picard that came back, according to the show, is the same Picard.
He's just really tired after the BS that the aliens put him through.
I would be too if my atoms were left in an energy state and I had to some how move my way back to the StarShip.
Humans aren't used to being in a energy state. We're single form solids.
Picard had his body hijacked by the energy being alien and was abandoned out in space once his purpose was served.
From Unnatural Selection, if not all the way back to the TAS series finale, there is absolutely no reason the transporter shouldn't be an immortality machine.
From Unnatural Selection, if not all the way back to the TAS series finale, there is absolutely no reason the transporter shouldn't be an immortality machine.
The higher the technology, usually the larger the population and resource base needs to be to be able to build/maintain it, regardless of knowledge.
For example. One man can create a bow and arrow. No single man can create an advanced computer, even if he had all the required knowledge. Put the world's 100 greatest computer engineers on an isolated continent, and they still couldn't create computers as advanced as the ones we have today, simply because there's a huge base industry required for that, with all kinds of advanced machines for creating high-grade intermediate products. A nation of 10 million people can have all required knowledge yet building the ISS might still be out of its reach because that would require far more resources than they can miss.
Perhaps this is also true for the post-burn Federation given the scattered state they're in. Perhaps they do have knowledge of all kinds of fancy propulsion technologies, but simply lack the resources to build them, and have to make do with old, regular warp, since the advanced facilities required to build those super-duper-drives are out of their reach in terms of manpower and resources. They seem to be glad to even have a single extra ship from the 22nd century, suggesting that even 'regular' shipbuilding is something they cannot, or only very rarely, engage in.
I came across the above and some B5 vs ST chatter in the comments section. TLR There was some comparison to technologies used by the ancient races in B5(Shadows, Vorlons etc) to ST. This got me think, how are the Federation still using old propulsion systems like impulse drives well into the 32nd century? Shouldn't there be a fundamental technology shift?
Youtube comments - generally a great source of wisdom
Who says they use old-style impulse drives? As far as I remember, there are no visible sublight engines on 32nd century ships except for the converted Discovery-A which indeed uses "impulse" but likely supposed to be hyper-impulse (or more advanced), whatever the hell that is.
Material science and programmable matter have improved, but it doesn't seem much else has considering where we left off after Voyagers return.
Neutronium (and comparable hull compositions) alone is a big deal, the Borg had not managed to get their hands on it in hundreds of thousands of years.
A heavily damaged relay station with a 600-light-year sensor range or 30 sectors without long-range sensors. For comparison, the highest 24th century starship range I am aware of is 10 ly, as for stations:
ROSS: It's enough to make you think they were smarter than we are. But they're not. They just had an edge that we didn't know about until yesterday. Starfleet Intelligence located a massive sensor array hidden on the periphery of the Argolis cluster. Damn thing's capable of monitoring ship movements over five sectors.
The planet with artificial decagon pockets of oxygen ("Far From Home").
"Advanced phasers of some kind" - whatever they are but different.
Faster than traditional warp plus multiple other forms of FTL including quantum slipstream.
...
This is what we got to know after 21 episodes so far which is not bad considering most of those episodes deal with the protagonists arriving in the future, searching for the Federation, investigating mysteries (Burn, DMA), Georgiou's "MU" farewell story, and other side plots where showing super future tech wouldn't necessarily make sense.
I don't think that's the problem here. Discovery has travelled 950 yrs into the future and the federation are still using rocket to propel their ships to sublight speeds. Still using warp drive knowing that there are more efficient ways to travel faster. I can't believe they haven't cracked some sort of transwarp technology by the time the 32nd century has rolled around.
Their "warp drive" IS transwarp. The galactic map from "Die Trying" shows Federation outposts in the Delta Q., and Osyraa had visited the planet Benthos IV which is probably the same place as Benthos (or "fourth planet of the Benthan system") in the DQ from VOY "Vis A Vis", the creators also notoriously like referencing Voyager.
More obvious 4x07: "Representatives from across all four quadrants are coming today."
The Traveler from TNG somehow manipulates the ship's warp field allowing them to cover millions of light-years very quickly, it's faster than any other FTL/ transwarp propulsion other than teleportation/ portal drives, and proves that the potential of "regular" warp is far from being exhausted.
The infamous warp-10 drive from "Threshold" is based on the standard technology as well, interestingly, the Voth's transwarp shares the same effect.
Threshold:
Distant Origin:
It appears 32nd century warp is a much more sophisticated version too.
Transporters the size of a commbadge (although retconned in one Disco S4 episode to going through the ship, that definitely wasn't the case in season 3) is a huge deal too.
All that said, Disco barely scratch the surface of what SHOULD be possible, and in fact possible since Kirk's time (transporter as a cure-all and gateway to eternal life, for example)
If we come up with "what should be possible", you may as well complain about why humanity and others had not evolved into Qs.
Transporters as a cure-all and source of eternal youth is one of those "byproducts" writers didn't think through. Another one would be subspace transporters with a multi-light-year range and the capability to beam through shields.
For example. One man can create a bow and arrow. No single man can create an advanced computer, even if he had all the required knowledge. Put the world's 100 greatest computer engineers on an isolated continent, and they still couldn't create computers as advanced as the ones we have today, simply because there's a huge base industry required for that, with all kinds of advanced machines for creating high-grade intermediate products. A nation of 10 million people can have all required knowledge yet building the ISS might still be out of its reach because that would require far more resources than they can miss.
Good points. Even Spock endeavored to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins.
SPOCK: Unless that is true, Captain, we have no hope. Frustrating. Locked in here is the place and moment of his arrival, even the images of what he did. If only I could tie this tricorder in with the ship's computers for just a few moments.
KIRK: Couldn't you build some form of computer aid here?
SPOCK: In this zinc-plated vacuum-tubed culture?
KIRK: Yes, well, it would pose an extremely complex problem in logic, Mister Spock. Excuse me. I sometimes expect too much of you.
SPOCK: Captain, I must have some platinum. A small block would be sufficient, five or six pounds. By passing certain circuits through there to be used as a duodynetic field core...
KIRK: Mister Spock, I've brought you some assorted vegetables, baloney in a hard roll for myself, and I've spent the other nine tenths of our combined salaries for the last three days on filling this order for you. Mister Spock, this bag does not contain platinum, silver or gold, nor is it likely to in the near future.
SPOCK: Captain, you're asking me to work with equipment which hardly very far ahead of stone knives and bearskins.
KIRK: McCoy'll be along in a few days, perhaps sooner. There's no guarantee that these currents in time will bring us together. This has to work.
SPOCK: Captain. Captain, in three weeks at this rate, possibly a month, I might reach the first mnemonic memory circuits.
It's more of a Super First Aid Kit / Elixer from Final Fantasy.
You're not going to spend all your time in the transporter.
At some point, you got to get out of the machine, and live life normally.
Then you'll age as normal. Eventually you'll die of old age.
That's normality and people are fine with it. Most people just don't want to die due to outside factors. Usually old age is fine since that's inevitable.
If we come up with "what should be possible", you may as well complain about why humanity and others had not evolved into Qs.
Transporters as a cure-all and source of eternal youth is one of those "byproducts" writers didn't think through. Another one would be subspace transporters with a multi-light-year range and the capability to beam through shields
That is exactly what I'm saying, and what the 3100's should be like. It wouldn't be much like the Trek we know but it could be fascinating. What does it mean to be human when humanity is a technologically-assisted proto-Q?
It was DISCO S4.E01 that it happened on the Space Station "Deep Space Repair Beta 6"
When Tilly & Adira were beamed over to help fix the small space station, there was too much interference for the Tricom Badge's personal portable transporters to work once the Methane Ice was incoming on a collision course with the Space Station after the incident with 10C and their Anomaly that caused all this in the first place.
Discovery's personal Transporter Systems were down due to the impacts with the frozen methane ice impacting the expanded shields which caused a power surge that blew out the Heisenberg Compensators. Repairing the Heisenberg Compensators would take 3 hrs (minimum) to repair.
3 hrs that they didn't have when the station was going to be destroyed in a matter of minutes and Discovery's Shields were greatly expanded to cover the entire Space Station and was barely holding due to the semi constant bombardment of Methane Ice from the Oort Cloud like layer in that system.
Given the miniaturization & integration of Personal Portable Transporters into Combadges, it's pretty easy to guess that they're easily jammed via local radio / subspace radio interference.
The TricomBadge doesn't have the power to cut through any local interference like a larger StarShip or StarBase would with fully dedicated Transporter systems.
It's like the difference between the Radio Transmission Power levels of SmartPhone Radio Transceivers and dedicated Radio Transceivers on larger vessels.
They're just order of magnitudes more powerful in terms of signal, range, distance, etc.
Each one has it's place of usefulness in our daily lives, but one doesn't completely replace the other.
And one's power level of transmission is completely different than the other.
The term is derived from the Phase Transition Coil which comes from the TNG tech manuals as part of a Transporter.
Phase transition coils. Located in the transport chamber platform. These wideband quark manipulation field devices accomplish the actual dematerialization / materialization process by partially decoupling the binding energy between subatomic particles. All personnel transporters are designed to operate at quantum resolution (necessary for successful transport of lifeforms). Cargo transporters are generally optimized at the more energy-efficient molecular resolution, but can also be set at quantum resolution if necessary.
I have the TNG Technical Manuals and the Illustrated Technical manuals.
The TNG era is pretty consistent on how the transporter works.
The Phase transition coil dematerializes & rematerializes you at the atomic level, ergo changing you from matter to energy and back to matter again so you can cover the vast distances near instantaneously.
Given that no episode has described what the "phase transition coils" do and connected that to "phased energy state" in dialogue that's not a confirmation of how transporters work. The TNG TMs are pretty to read but unfortunately not accurate to the TV series. Of course, YMMV.
Just pointing out details here... the Picard that materialized is the same Picard at the time he before left but not the Picard that left and was in trouble and came back. It's right in the dialogue
PICARD: What the devil am I doing here?
RIKER: Sounds like our Captain.
TROI: But confused. This Picard pattern was formed before he went out there.
PICARD: What's happening to me, Number One? I was preparing to beam out to somewhere. And I remember there was talk of an entity? But it all seems so vague.
PICARD: What's happening to me, Number One? I was preparing to beam out to somewhere. And I remember there was talk of an entity? But it all seems so vague.
Well, if you get aged 100 years in a few days, I'm sure you can be cured by the Transporter.
If you try to use the Transporter to restore yourself to 100 years ago version of yourself, after you aged 100 natural years, I wouldn't be surprised if there are severe side effects or problems trying to combine the old you and the current you.
Well, if you get aged 100 years in a few days, I'm sure you can be cured by the Transporter.
If you try to use the Transporter to restore yourself to 100 years ago version of yourself, after you aged 100 natural years, I wouldn't be surprised if there are severe side effects or problems trying to combine the old you and the current you.
Or just to any previous pattern. Apparently you can just save a hair follicle if you're using a new transporter for the first time. I'm not sure what about Pulaski de-aging you think makes it unique or why you seem to think it only works for such huge age gaps.
Or just to any previous pattern. Apparently you can just save a hair follicle if you're using a new transporter for the first time. I'm not sure what about Pulaski de-aging you think makes it unique or why you seem to think it only works for such huge age gaps.
Actually it's the opposite. I think it only works for smaller age gaps, not the larger ones. The smaller the gap, the better.
Pulaski was only artificially aged by the genetically engineered children in a matter of days. Alot of the differences seem superficial.
Where as if you actually aged 100 years and tried to reconstitute yourself into a 100 year old physical pattern of yourself, there might be too many differences between the current 100 year older version of you, and the 100 year younger pattern of yourself.
It's about time and how many changes occur naturally in your body and how the machine needs to figure out how to reconstitute what is current with what was the past.
Think of it as doing a diff between code bases.
Is it easier to do a diff between codes that haven't had much change over a short span of time, or one that has had decades of change and you're comparing the current version with the original code?
Remember, you're on a time limit, generally you don't want to live in the transporter buffer.
So the computer only has a finite amount of time to recombine and reconfigure your physical pattern.
Actually it's the opposite. I think it only works for smaller age gaps, not the larger ones. The smaller the gap, the better.
Pulaski was only artificially aged by the genetically engineered children in a matter of days. Alot of the differences seem superficial.
Where as if you actually aged 100 years and tried to reconstitute yourself into a 100 year old physical pattern of yourself, there might be too many differences between the current 100 year older version of you, and the 100 year younger pattern of yourself.
It's about time and how many changes occur naturally in your body and how the machine needs to figure out how to reconstitute what is current with what was the past.
Think of it as doing a diff between code bases.
Is it easier to do a diff between codes that haven't had much change over a short span of time, or one that has had decades of change and you're comparing the current version with the original code?
Remember, you're on a time limit, generally you don't want to live in the transporter buffer.
So the computer only has a finite amount of time to recombine and reconfigure your physical pattern.
But what are you basing any of this on? And how does it square with April and his wife? Or the four characters de-aged in Rascals? And if Scotty could up the time limit to decades in the 2390s or 2400s, surely that's not an issue by the 32nd century. I mean, the whole crew took refuge in the buffers recently, and Voyager hid telepaths in theirs for prolonged periods.
Logic & how much actual time passed between the incident that caused their Pre-mature Aging / De-aging.
And how does it square with April and his wife? Or the four characters de-aged in Rascals? And if Scotty could up the time limit to decades in the 2390s or 2400s, surely that's not an issue by the 32nd century. I mean, the whole crew took refuge in the buffers recently, and Voyager hid telepaths in theirs for prolonged periods.
Scotty's situation was different, he MacGuyvered his way to survival via Transporter Suspended animation.
And he was only 50% successful, his friend that was also in the Transporter Buffer died.
And storing the Telepaths repeatedly in the Transporter Buffers during inspection by the Devore:
In ST:VOY "CounterPoint" "To hide the refugees, along with their three telepathic crew members, the crew stores their patterns in a transport buffer during the period of inspection, but this is found to ultimately have cumulative deleterious effects on the refugees. It is decided the method should be avoided if at all possible."
You generally don't want to stay inside the Transporter Buffer if you don't have to.
People's bodies were not designed to reside as energy inside the Transporter Buffers.
I'm not sure Spock would approve of your logic...
What does the amount of time passed have to do with anything?
Even outside of transporters (as far as we know), 24th century can, with the smallest bit of your DNA, return you to normal from glowing ultraviolet alien, hyper-evolved salamander, and straight up doll. I'm not sure even decades of normal aging would change you more than those.
Scotty's situation was different, he MacGuyvered his way to survival via Transporter Suspended animation.
And he was only 50% successful, his friend that was also in the Transporter Buffer died.
Yes, but if one person (even Scotty) can MacGyver that in a crashed ship, surely they could figure out how to do something like that as a feature over 800 years later.
I'm not sure Spock would approve of your logic...
What does the amount of time passed have to do with anything?
Even outside of transporters (as far as we know), 24th century can, with the smallest bit of your DNA, return you to normal from glowing ultraviolet alien, hyper-evolved salamander, and straight up doll. I'm not sure even decades of normal aging would change you more than those.
The DNA was used as a differential factor, usually to revert the affected person back to status quo.
Time affects the internal body dramatically, vs a disease or outside factor affecting you in a short period of time and changes are usually localized or very specific changes.
Look at how much your body has changed since childhood to adulthood.
Now look at your parents and notice how much they've changed from adulthood to old age.
If you don't like the rules, you can always have your own set of head canon that is different from mines.
That's the joy of fandom. We can all have slightly different head canon.
Yes, but if one person (even Scotty) can MacGyver that in a crashed ship, surely they could figure out how to do something like that as a feature over 800 years later.
If you want to be the Guinea Pig for that, go right on ahead.
I sure as heck won't volunteer my body, and I wouldn't force anybody else to do it either.
It has to be a completely voluntary step to hide your body in the transporter buffer for 800 years and hope "Nothing Happens" to the hardware that is holding your body.
No technical failure of any component of the Transporter System, the power source, the Computers, or something outside coming in and blowing up your Transporter room.
That's too many X-factors IMO to want to risk my own body.
I think it would be easier to create a Temporal Portal or Light Speed Time Jump around the Sun then to hide your body in the Transporter to go 800 years into the future.
R There was some comparison to technologies used by the ancient races in B5(Shadows, Vorlons etc) to ST. This got me think, how are the Federation still using old propulsion systems like impulse drives well into the 32nd century? Shouldn't there be a fundamental technology shift?
