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Food replicator produce.

I figure it's kinda like how otherwise perfectly intelligent people keep telling me that CRTs and GPS satellites have to account for relativistic effects in order to work properly. It's a pervasive myth, but it's one that gets a lot of traction because alot more people THINK they know how these things work than actually do.

I'd always figured that CRTs work by firing an electron beam that is magnetically guided at a phosphor coated screen causing stuff to be displayed.... They don't have any need for working at relativistic speeds.
 
You just need the nitrogen and oxygen required to synthesize caffeine chemically.
And hydrogen and carbon.

Gw8dJMq.jpg

If the replicator is making this molecule from scratch, it will need to make 9*10^25 ...

90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

...of them for a single cup of coffee.
 
While the replicator could be able to make water, I think the ship probably has water tanks and that water is reclaimed/sterilized/stored for re-use.
 
Which speaks volumes as to the efficacy of replicators, doesn't it? Because ll the OTHER shit that goes into ten years worth of coffee is equally compact when you reduce it down to base molecules and strip the water from it. And in anhydrous storage, most of it can be vacuum sealed and sterilized so it'll stay good for DECADES, totally inert, until you plug it into the replicator system for use.

Which still doesn't answer the logistical issue of managing MILLIONS of different compounds at a time. The Internet says coffee has about 1500 compounds in it, even if most of those can be combined from other molecules, that's still just one item.

Nor does it answer the question of how they can synthesize new compounds or the fact we have never, ever heard of them talk about caffeine supplies in the first place.

You're out on a limb with little to back up your theory.

I figure it's kinda like how otherwise perfectly intelligent people keep telling me that CRTs and GPS satellites have to account for relativistic effects in order to work properly.

Except GPS satellites (specifically their clocks) *are* built with an offset (they run slow) to counteract relativity. Might want to check your facts before taking on your smug aura of superiority.

http://www.aticourses.com/global_positioning_system.htm

Specifically:
GPS satellites revolve around the earth with a velocity of 3.874 km/s at an altitude of 20,184 km. Thus on account of the its velocity, a satellite clock appears to run slow by 7 microseconds per day when compared to a clock on the earth’s surface. But on account of the difference in gravitational potential, the satellite clock appears to run fast by 45 microseconds per day. The net effect is that the clock appears to run fast by 38 microseconds per day. This is an enormous rate difference for an atomic clock with a precision of a few nanoseconds. Thus to compensate for this large secular rate, the clocks are given a rate offset prior to satellite launch of - 4.465 parts in 1010 from their nominal frequency of 10.23 MHz so that on average they appear to run at the same rate as a clock on the ground. The actual frequency of the satellite clocks before launch is thus 10.22999999543 MHz.
 
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Which still doesn't answer the logistical issue of managing MILLIONS of different compounds at a time.
It wouldn't be "millions." Actually, I suspect you could create a pretty good imitation of just about any food item imaginable with about a dozen amino acids, a few common proteins, six kinds of lipids and three or four different sugars. The "slightly off" taste for some of those items comes from the fact that they're using ANALOGS that behave chemically the same way but aren't the same substances that nature would produce, nor arranged the same way (replicators probably won't bother to reproduce the actual cell structure of a lettuce leaf, for example).

The Internet says coffee has about 1500 compounds in it, even if most of those can be combined from other molecules, that's still just one item.
Sure. But the important part of coffee is the taste, the aroma and the caffeine. You can probably reduce that to, say, 20 compounds and arrive at something that looks, smells and tastes like coffee and has 100mg of caffeine in it.

Nor does it answer the question of how they can synthesize new compounds
They can't. At least, not in the replicator, as far as I can tell. They can reproduce it if they have the base materials for it, but that seems to require A LOT of time and power.

or the fact we have never, ever heard of them talk about caffeine supplies in the first place.
There's that absence of evidence fallacy: we never hear them talk about toilets, but we're pretty sure they have one.

The basis of the theory is that replicators are assembling items based on pre-fabricated bulk material chemically similar to whatever it is they're trying to make. We're not sure what the threshold for "chemically similar" means, but again, most of the substances that go into edible food can be stored in pretty high density once you remove all the water from them. And the Enterprise-D -- which, incidentally, never gets very far from a starbase -- has LOTS of cargo space.

Except GPS satellites (specifically their clocks) *are* built with an offset (they run slow) to counteract relativity.
Of course they are. But GPS calculations don't take relativity into account, and don't have to, because ground receivers don't have atomic clocks of their own and the time difference is irrelevant. The calculations for position are based on the time difference between two or more satellites broadcasting at all times, and that gives the receiver's distance from each.

Even if those satellites DIDN'T account for gravitational time dilation, they'd still be just as accurate, so long as they were all dilated by the same quantity and therefore still in synch. That, plus the fact that the clocks are manually re-synched every few days anyway to iron out the small differences in altitude and gravitational density, means GPS satellites DON'T have to account for relativistic differences in order to work properly.

It's one of those scientific urban myths, like "people only use 10% of their brains" or "humans evolved from monkeys"
 
I'd agree that replicators cannot and do not turn energy (whatever that is) into matter.
Except they do. We see it every damn time it's used. That's what "dematerialization" (or in this case, rematerialization) means, FFS.

And if you wanna go with non-canon stuff, Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, Fourth Season Edition, p. 12, explicitly states the technology converts matter into energy and vice-versa (and which, despite being non-canon itself, is actually used to create canon). "Replication technology: The ability to convert matter into energy and back again implies the ability to replicate objects. This is done in the ship's food service units which instantly recreate any dish in the computer's memory."
 
Except they do.
Your own link says they don't. They reorganize and existing storage of matter into a new form. Actually converting a physical object into "energy" can only be achieved by colliding matter with equal parts of antimatter (hence the existence of warp cores) and even then the conversion isn't total.

So re/dematerialization, is often simplified "matter into energy and back into matter" because the reality is FAR more complicated.
 
They reorganize and existing storage of matter into a new form
If it's just energy, then what the hell is in the "matter stream?"

Sounds to me like it's ... matter.

The replicator takes existing physical substances, changes them, and sends the result to a location in the ship (or station).
 
Of course they are. But GPS calculations don't take relativity into account, and don't have to, because ground receivers don't have atomic clocks of their own and the time difference is irrelevant. The calculations for position are based on the time difference between two or more satellites broadcasting at all times, and that gives the receiver's distance from each.

Even if those satellites DIDN'T account for gravitational time dilation, they'd still be just as accurate, so long as they were all dilated by the same quantity and therefore still in synch. That, plus the fact that the clocks are manually re-synched every few days anyway to iron out the small differences in altitude and gravitational density, means GPS satellites DON'T have to account for relativistic differences in order to work properly.

It's one of those scientific urban myths, like "people only use 10% of their brains" or "humans evolved from monkeys"

Thats called "moving the goal posts" and you're still wrong. If a relativity offset is intrinsic to the clock, then every calculation based on said clock (by the transitive property) accounts for it as well. Your whole point is contrarin for its own sake. The general consensus may be reductive, but it is *not* wrong.

And, in case you weren't aware, geolocation isnt the only thing GPS is used for. Walk down to a department store and you'll find a cheap clock that never has to be programmed because it syncs with GPS. If the satellite didn't account for relativity every one of those clocks would instead. It's simply good engineering to put the offset in the 24 satellites instead of the millions of devices.

See next post for a response to the rest of your argument.
 
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Except they do. We see it every damn time it's used. That's what "dematerialization" (or in this case, rematerialization) means, FFS.

And if you wanna go with non-canon stuff, Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, Fourth Season Edition, p. 12, explicitly states the technology converts matter into energy and vice-versa (and which, despite being non-canon itself, is actually used to create canon). "Replication technology: The ability to convert matter into energy and back again implies the ability to replicate objects. This is done in the ship's food service units which instantly recreate any dish in the computer's memory."

Matter = energy. Energy is always stored in matter, indeed energy is merely the effort need to accomplish the goal of moving or altering matter. So the TNG manual really doesn't tell you anything. Particularly when the question is "What is the nature of the matter storage and how is it converted".

My point is storing everything as dueterium and fusing/convering it into whatever via is wasteful. While storing a million compounds (and no, a dozen amino acids would *not* get you close to the many many flavors and aromatics humans alone can detect) is asinine, even if you reduce the technical challenge to one not more difficult than what we can do now.

I'm saying there is a middle ground that would make the most sense from a logistics, engineering and flexibility perspective.
 
Thats called "moving the goal posts"
Moving them to what? Read my original post:
"GPS satellites have to account for relativistic effects in order to work properly."

Which they don't. They work just fine WITHOUT accounting for relativistic effects. So when someone says "the GPS system wouldn't be accurate without accounting for relativistic time dilation," they're wrong. Same as the people who say "humans evolved from monkeys" and "humans only use 10% of their brains." Inaccurate statement is inaccurate.

I could explain in more detail why this statement is inaccurate, but I'm not sure you actually care.

Matter = energy.
No, MASS is EQUIVALENT to energy through the equation E=mc^2. This is a mathematical equivalence that tells us that any time a particle releases energy, it also loses an equivalent amount of mass; conversely, adding mass to a particle requires requires a certain amount of energy.

When you force two particles together, and the resulting product of the combination has less mass than the sum of its parts, this is because energy has been released (as in a fusion reaction). When the energy released exceeds the energy needed to fuse those atoms in the first place, you have fusion energy. Same for a fission reaction: when it takes less energy to split an atom than the atom releases in the splitting, you have fission energy. With me so far?

So:
Energy is always stored in matter
No. Energy is stored in forcefields BETWEEN particles of matter. Chemical energy is stored in the electromagnetic bonds between molecules and atoms, and is released when those bonds are broken. Nuclear energy is stored in the week forces between protons and neutrons, and is released when atomic nuclei are fused or split. Annihilation energy is stored in the strong/gluonic forces between quarks and is released when protons, neutrons and electrons collide with their anti-particle twins, splitting them into quarks and neutrinos.

MATTER does not convert into energy, MASS does. Matter is composed of both mass AND energy; a given quantity of matter can become less massive and more energetic or less energetic and more massive. But you cannot "convert matter into energy" anymore than you can "convert matter into mass."

While storing a million compounds (and no, a dozen amino acids would *not* get you close to the many many flavors and aromatics humans alone can detect) is asinine, even if you reduce the technical challenge to one not more difficult than what we can do now.
Current food science has detected a sharp disconnect between what foods are made out of and what they actually taste like. Scientists are finding it's not hard to trick taste receptors into thinking they're tasting something that they're not. To that extent, artificial flavoring is going to be ALOT easier to store than the compounds that make up the natural flavors of a million different kinds of foods. Mix and match them like so much paint and you can probably reproduce any flavor you want (much like we already do with colors; your laser printer doesn't have a million cartridges, one for each different hue and color variation; it has three primary colors and a black cartridge and it combines them as needed).

If the subroutine that adds appropriate flavors to a beverage aren't programmed correctly or haven't been adjusted to match the flavor correctly, you get a cup of coffee that has all the nice coffee-like features in it:
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But actually tastes like Worf's underwear after taco night.
 
There really is no point arguing with you. When the DoD built GPS they decided they needed the offset. It exists for a reason and I gave an example of an actual product which takes advantage of said offset. You're simply sticking your fingers in your ears at this point. Its not even pedantic and this has certainly stopped being fun.

Good day. Do not bother responding.
 
There really is no point arguing with you. When the DoD built GPS they decided they needed the offset.
Yes. Physicists working on the project included it because it was a known quantity that they wouldn't have to account for later. And still the GPS system doesn't depend on relativistic considerations to maintain accuracy; they'd be just as accurate if they HADN'T included the offset, so long as all of the satellite clocks were off by the same degree. The fact that they aren't always off by the same amount (masscons, perturbations, etc) is the reason they're manually re-synchronized every few days from a ground station.

That's just the way the math works out. Relativistic time dilation DOES NOT affect the accuracy of GPS triangulation. They correct for it for engineering reasons, not for accuracy.
 
For your comprehension, reread in its entirety:

There really is no point arguing with you. When the DoD built GPS they decided they needed the offset. It exists for a reason and I gave an example of an actual product which takes advantage of said offset. You're simply sticking your fingers in your ears at this point. Its not even pedantic and this has certainly stopped being fun.

Good day. Do not bother responding.
 
For your comprehension, reread in its entirety:
For you comprehension, re-read in its entirety, especially the bolded part:

Yes. Physicists working on the project included it because it was a known quantity that they wouldn't have to account for later. And still the GPS system doesn't depend on relativistic considerations to maintain accuracy; they'd be just as accurate if they HADN'T included the offset, so long as all of the satellite clocks were off by the same degree. The fact that they aren't always off by the same amount (masscons, perturbations, etc) is the reason they're manually re-synchronized every few days from a ground station.

That's just the way the math works out. Relativistic time dilation DOES NOT affect the accuracy of GPS triangulation. They correct for it for engineering reasons, not for accuracy.
 
For you comprehension, re-read in its entirety, especially the bolded part:

You first...
And, in case you weren't aware, geolocation isnt the only thing GPS is used for. Walk down to a department store and you'll find a cheap clock that never has to be programmed because it syncs with GPS. If the satellite didn't account for relativity every one of those clocks would instead. It's simply good engineering to put the offset in the 24 satellites instead of the millions of devices.
 
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