Replicators: Matter

[LikeDaniel]

So, I've been wondering about Replicators. Looking on the Memory Alpha Wiki, it says that it uses energy and "matter" to create whatever it forms.... my question is:

Is the "matter" it uses specific or general? Meaning to make a hamburger does the replicator need access to all the various elements (meaning "Periodic Table Elements") that are found in a hamburger? Or just the generic term "matter"?

Thanks in advance!
-LD

 

[DonIago]

My understanding is that the replicator can rearrange matter on a molecular level, so it doesn't need the elements themselves; it can synthesize them.

I am by no means an expert on the subject, though.

 

[LikeDaniel]

Cool! That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure. Thanks, man!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The tech manual describes that the replicator system stores a certain amount of inert protein of some kind that's very easy to rearrange into a broad range of food items. It isn't clear if it actually replicates a facsimile of the real food item or simply arranges the proteins such that it looks and tastes like the thing you ordered. Given the non-existence of obesity among the human population, though, I would guess the latter.

Industrial and mechanical replicators draw from different matter supplies containing metals, polymers and other bases found in tools and mechanical parts. In this case, the stock materials ARE rearranged into a new shape, so replicators are only used to create common but seldom-needed items that it doesn't make sense to keep in storage.

 

[ngc7293]

It has been said in various episodes that the replicator makes a fake version of the real thing. People can tell the difference. That is why you get Riker cooking up a real dinner or Sisko going back to his Dad's place for real food and Scotty not wanting any of that synthetic alcohol

 

[Timo]

OTOH, that's just the subjective side of the equation. For all we know, replicated products are perfect imitations of the real thing.

That is, they are probably heavily "averaged" for computational simplicity, but the resulting "pseudo-natural" structure could still be functionally identical to the "natural" equivalent, down to such a fine degree of resolution that neither human senses nor most tricorders on basic settings could tell the difference.

At very high resolution, sensors have revealed various fakes, but not before the fakes have served their role in temporarily confusing our heroes (say, "Data's Day").

The ability of the replicators (or some other shipboard machinery) to synthesize elements is canonically established in "Night Terrors" - it's said there that this ability has been temporarily lost due to a power shortage. There's nothing to establish that this ability would be key to the replication of Earl Grey, hot, though; indeed, nothing in that episode suggests that the replicators would be underperforming in any other respect when the element-synthesis ability is lost.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[LikeDaniel]

@Timo

The ability of the replicators (or some other shipboard machinery) to synthesize elements is canonically established in "Night Terrors"

I'm just a NewB at Star Trek stuff, is this a TNG episode?

There's nothing to establish that this ability would be key to the replication of Earl Grey, hot, though; indeed, nothing in that episode suggests that the replicators would be underperforming in any other respect when the element-synthesis ability is lost.

I think you might have lost me here... are you just saying that during this power shortage when elemental synthesis was offline Piccard was able to replicate Earl Grey, hot and apparently not tell a difference?

Thanks everyone, again, for your responses!

 

[Timo]

It's a TNG fourth-season episode, yes. Our heroes need a substance for defusing the crisis of the week, they don't quite know what that substance ought to be, and their power is waning because of the crisis, so Data remarks that some substances are right out because they no longer can reproduce "complex" elements. This is in response to a query by Riker whether they can replicate such elements, so the means of "reproducing an element" would appear to be replication.

At that point, nobody replicates tea. But nobody says replicators are offline, either. One certainly ought to comment on a food shortage, as the ship remains trapped by the crisis of the week. Guinan also continues to serve drinks and the replicator behind her appears as active as ever.

So either Guinan's drinks and other beverages and foods don't require "complex elements", whatever those are, and thus can be replicated by synthesizing "simple elements", or then replication of food and drinks does not involve synthesis of elements.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[LikeDaniel]

Ah! Very cool! Thanks for taking the time to explain!

 

[Myasishchev]

Replicators don't turn raw energy into matter. That's silly, silly, silly.

Even if you could confine all that energy, all you'd get are proton-antiproton pairs at a nearly 1:1 ratio. Hope you like your hydrogen well-done.

 

[Deks]

Replicators don't turn raw energy into matter. That's silly, silly, silly.

Even if you could confine all that energy, all you'd get are proton-antiproton pairs at a nearly 1:1 ratio. Hope you like your hydrogen well-done.

Check TNG episode 'Hollow pursuits'.
In one of the scenes when the glass ended up with destabilized molecules due to one of the engineering personnel touching it with Invidium particles (unknown to him at the time), Data analyzed the glass and said: 'Nucleosynthesis'.
Followed up with Geordi's: 'Something wrong with the replicators?'

Directly implying the replicators indeed turn raw energy into matter just like nucleosynthesis is occurring in some stars which turns raw energy into matter, or matter into raw energy (except, our heroes were able to duplicate the process through technology on a smaller scale).

Hence the constantly used term that replicators convert energy into matter.
Same with the holodecks (and why both utilize lots of energy).

TNG manuals aren't canon.
And the technology in TNG is more than advanced to accommodate for nucleosynthesis in replicators.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Replicators don't turn raw energy into matter. That's silly, silly, silly.

Even if you could confine all that energy, all you'd get are proton-antiproton pairs at a nearly 1:1 ratio. Hope you like your hydrogen well-done.

Check TNG episode 'Hollow pursuits'.
In one of the scenes when the glass ended up with destabilized molecules due to one of the engineering personnel touching it with Invidium particles (unknown to him at the time), Data analyzed the glass and said: 'Nucleosynthesis'.
Followed up with Geordi's: 'Something wrong with the replicators?'

Directly implying the replicators indeed turn raw energy into matter just like nucleosynthesis is occurring in some stars which turns raw energy into matter, or matter into raw energy

Nucleosynthesis does NOT convert "raw energy" into matter, or vice versa. For two reasons:
1) There is no such thing as "raw energy." That energy is always possessed by other particles, and a net gain or less in energy is transferred via those particles.
2) It converts MASS to energy, not matter. Those are two very different things, as matter possesses a certain amount of mass and energy and a given quantity of matter can always trade one for the other.

Nucleosynthesis is when nuclei of atoms are fused together to form new atoms. This releases energy, because the mass of the resulting nuclei is lower than the mass of the atoms that created it. A helium nuclei, for example, has slightly less mass than two hydrogen nuclei, and the difference in mass is identical to the energy released. That energy is released as an emission of photons, which are immediately absorbed by surrounding atoms as heat.

In this case, the "nucleosynthesis" occurring in the replicator would be the fusion or fission of atomic nuclei to form new elements. THAT CANNOT OCCUR WITH ENERGY ALONE.

 

[Albertese]

I wonder where the bonus matter came from to make an evil Captain Kirk or a clueless Lieutenant Riker. Seeing as how replicators and transporters are evidently related technologies, it follows that if one is dependent on having matter to convert, then the other probably does too. In other words, if the replicator needs matter to convert to objects instead of just energy, then where did the transporter get the extra matter to make replicas of our show's heroes? If it is just energy, then the transporter accidents make more sense. OTOH, I've always thought the replicator did indeed need matter. But having it just rely on energy to matter conversion (certainly a tall order by our understanding of physics today) would explain the transporter accidents...

--Alex

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I wonder where the bonus matter came from to make an evil Captain Kirk or a clueless Lieutenant Riker. Seeing as how replicators and transporters are evidently related technologies, it follows that if one is dependent on having matter to convert, then the other probably does too. In other words, if the replicator needs matter to convert to objects instead of just energy, then where did the transporter get the extra matter to make replicas of our show's heroes?

I'd bet there's probably a man-shaped hole in the ground somewhere on that planet where the wayward confinement beam scooped up 70kg of porous rock and superimposed Riker's pattern onto it. Something similar might have happened to Kirk.

OTOH, you then have to ask yourself how come Tuvix didn't wind up with twice his original body weight when Neelix and Tuvok were fused together.

If it is just energy, then the transporter accidents make more sense.

Except there's no such thing as "just energy." Energy can't exist without a medium, nor can you move it from one place to another without some amount of matter--or at least some sort of wave/particle structure--to carry it. For some reason, in order to construct a person you need to be able to transport the original matter that he was made of in the first place; a set of incredibly special circumstances have to be in place in order to duplicate an object without using its source matter.

 

[Timo]

I wonder where the bonus matter came from to make an evil Captain Kirk or a clueless Lieutenant Riker.

Well, the transporter operates in the "phase realm". Hiccups regarding that realm have included cross-circuiting to another universe altogether ("Mirror, Mirror"), or moving ever-so-slightly forward or backward in time ("Time's Arrow", probably "The Next Phase"). Both would be practical supplies for extra body mass: steal from the Mirror Kirk, or borrow from the Two-Milliseconds-in-the-Future Riker.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I wonder where the bonus matter came from to make an evil Captain Kirk or a clueless Lieutenant Riker.

Well, the transporter operates in the "phase realm". Hiccups regarding that realm have included cross-circuiting to another universe altogether ("Mirror, Mirror"), or moving ever-so-slightly forward or backward in time ("Time's Arrow", probably "The Next Phase").

Or not-so-slightly in the case of "Past Tense").

And somewhere in downtown San Francisco there's a mental hospital populated entirely by people who have been "killed" in transporter accidents. Occasionally, these people vanish without a trace and somehow get re-patterned into transporter duplicates every time Chekov sneezes on the heisenberg compensators.