Transporter - Beaming Into Water?

[Loneknight]

(I hope I'm posting this in the right section, since it is tech-related).

Having seen the new 'Trek film, something's been bugging me about Scotty's transporter trick:

We've seen what happens when foreign matter enters the subject being transported (i.e.: ENT - Strange New World), and we've also witnessed foreign microbes somehow entering a person via transport (i.e.: TNG - Realm of Fear), or other people entering the annular confinement beam (ACB), as seen in Star Trek 4.

What I don't get, is how someone can be transported into a tank of water without his or her body having an excess of water trapped, say, in the lungs, or other 'water=bad' organs. Scotty's transporter trick re-materialized him in a tank of water onboard the Enterprise...

When someone is being transported from a location, the ACB doesn't block foreign matter from entering the beam. How then, would the ACB re-assemble someone in a tub of water without detrimental health effects? One would think that the ACB should work the same on both sides of the transport sequence, thus having no way of preventing foreign matter from entering the beam during the de-materializing/re-materializing sequence. I suppose there is the theory that Scotty was beamed inside the tank but it wasn't full to the brim, so he re-materialized in the empty top and then dropped into the water...

But suppose he was in fact beamed INTO the water? Any thoughts?

 

[Ziz]

Well, look at it from a normal transport sequence. When the person materializes, there's oxygen in the air in the space they're beaming to, so why don't pockets of oxygen end up inside their body in places where it shouldn't be, like in the bloodstream? I'm guessing the ACB creates a vacuum of sorts before the matter comes in, which is why you see the glow of the beam before the human form becomes recognizable.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well, technically people are always transported into a fluid: air. I suppose the molecules of the fluid are just pushed away while the rematerialization happens. The fact that water is somehow denser should not impose an insurmountable problem.

The only one I can think now is wherever the tank is completely packed full of water: being incompressible and without any place to move, the water could cause problems during rematerialization. But if there is some empty space, the water will just rise by a volume equal to the person transported.

 

[Londoner]

The only one I can think now is wherever the tank is completely packed full of water: being incompressible and without any place to move, the water could cause problems during rematerialization. But if there is some empty space, the water will just rise by a volume equal to the person transported.

That could only happen if the mass of the person existed to displace the water gradually and from their centre outwards.

 

[Christopher]

We've seen what happens when foreign matter enters the subject being transported (i.e.: ENT - Strange New World), and we've also witnessed foreign microbes somehow entering a person via transport (i.e.: TNG - Realm of Fear), or other people entering the annular confinement beam (ACB), as seen in Star Trek 4.

What I don't get, is how someone can be transported into a tank of water without his or her body having an excess of water trapped, say, in the lungs, or other 'water=bad' organs. Scotty's transporter trick re-materialized him in a tank of water onboard the Enterprise...

When someone is being transported from a location, the ACB doesn't block foreign matter from entering the beam. How then, would the ACB re-assemble someone in a tub of water without detrimental health effects? One would think that the ACB should work the same on both sides of the transport sequence, thus having no way of preventing foreign matter from entering the beam during the de-materializing/re-materializing sequence. I suppose there is the theory that Scotty was beamed inside the tank but it wasn't full to the brim, so he re-materialized in the empty top and then dropped into the water...

As stated, the issue is the same with air, dust, smoke, etc. as it is with water. Whatever has been shown onscreen, it is obviously necessary to displace local atmosphere before beaming someone into it, otherwise every transport subject would quickly die from embolisms, the bends, dust motes in the brain and organs, and so forth. So your postulate can't be correct. ACBs do expel foreign matter in the rematerialization sequence.

As for those instances of matter entering the beam during dematerialization, the ultimate answer is that the story called for it. But one can rationalize it by treating the ACB not as a solid wall, but as an outward push (which is a far more realistic interpretation of a forcefield). It's something that acts to clear the transport area of obstructions by pushing them out of the way, but it is possible to push back harder and thereby counteract the effect. One could also surmise that the ACB takes time to form fully and that the things that entered the beam did so before it was at full force.

 

[Ziz]

That also would explain why the "glowing effect" starts small and at the center of the transport subject and grows as they materialize...it's pushing air and other molecules out of the way.

 

[Da'an]

The air (or in this case the water) is displaced before whatever is being transported is re-materialised.

I'm pretty sure that was stated in one of the Trek technical manuals, but I'm not certain.

Or maybe in this new Trek, whatever you're transporting into is disintergrated. Maybe the matter where you're going to appear is converted into extra energy to help the transporter.

 

[Christopher]

^Convert that much matter into energy and you have an explosion on the scale of megatons. The whole matter-into-energy idea is ridiculous, and I'm glad Sternbach and Okuda retconned it into a particle stream.

 

[Da'an]

Sorry, I meant direct that energy back into the Transporter system's power supply. Like recharging it's "batteries".

 

[SilentP]

The pushback effect of the beam before the transportee arrives could also explain why you can transported into liquid and gas without harm, but killed if attempted if being transported inside something solid, the field can't push the solid outwards.

 

[Karnbeln]

Yet grass can still be pushed down by the field, and well as ground debris like pebbles can be pushed aside.

(I mention that because this has been bugging me lately. I'd started to think maybe transporters should beam people to just above ground and let them drop an inch after rematerialization. For some reason, the fact that they were ALWAYS being into something didn't occur to me when I was considering this, which is stupid because I'm in fluid dynamics classes and the first words of the classes are "AIR IS A FLUID!" Guess I'm not a good student.)

 

[SilentP]

Yet grass can still be pushed down by the field, and well as ground debris like pebbles can be pushed aside.

(I mention that because this has been bugging me lately. I'd started to think maybe transporters should beam people to just above ground and let them drop an inch after rematerialization. For some reason, the fact that they were ALWAYS being into something didn't occur to me when I was considering this, which is stupid because I'm in fluid dynamics classes and the first words of the classes are "AIR IS A FLUID!" Guess I'm not a good student.)

Well, the difference between being beamed onto a patch of grass, and being beamed inside a mountain are fairly different

As to being beamed just above the ground rather than on it, I remember a particular reference to such a thing in the 3rd book of the Fury series, the one for Deep Space 9. In that fragment Sisko makes a point of being annoyed about being beamed off by the Vulcan science ship captain mid-argument, even noting that she had beamed him precisely enough that he didn't feel the usual drop from the safety margin.

 

[Loneknight]

Displacing the molecules seems like the most plausible theory, then. Lots of good points being made, though (I like the one about the grass...never thought about that before).

And Ziz, I was going to say something similar to your last post: you would think that the re-materialization process would start from the inside and work its way out.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Convert that much matter into energy and you have an explosion on the scale of megatons. The whole matter-into-energy idea is ridiculous, and I'm glad Sternbach and Okuda retconned it into a particle stream.

Which still must have some pretty heavy duty energy requirements. Accelerating and decelerating a 50-70kg object to near light speed doesn't get easier because it's in particle form.

The disintegration and reintegration processes I can't much fathom--I have a vague and preposterous theory that involves breaking baryons into quark matter and using the strong force to reconnect them into the desired pattern later, which sort of works in a dodgy, treknological sort of way for a beam down but no explanation welcomes belief for a beam up. It's always been apparent that whatever mechanism they're using to smash the structures of individuals thousands of kilometers below would be a rather devastating weapon. Forget phasers, here's my transporter beam.

Indeed, what I wonder is why the ceiling doesn't explode when someone's beamed into a building. Why does a 70kg object's particles not interact with it? I mean, I'm interacting with my downstair's neighbor's ceiling right now. The ACB obviously doesn't clear the path, since it doesn't smash a hole through it. Or maybe it does, and the ACB is actually only a few angstroms wide?

 

[Christopher]

^The Sternbach/Okuda explanation is that a transporter beam travels through subspace and thus doesn't pass through intervening matter. Which is hard to reconcile with TNG: "Bloodlines," which treated a subspace transporter as a rare and special technology that allowed interstellar transport. But then, Trek writers have never let technical details get in the way of the story.

 

[Myasishchev]

^Aw, subspace is no fun.

 

[Loneknight]

^Aw, subspace is no fun.

With subspace, anything is possible!

 

[Ronald Held]

Has anyone been beamed into water onscreen?

 

[Ziz]

Read the OP. That's what started this discussion.

And, for the record, I always preferred the answer I heard Okuda give in a "Science of Star Trek" special.

One of the writers came up to me early on and asked "How does the transporter work?" And the only answer I could give him was "Very well, thank you."

 

[Myasishchev]

Well, based on how many times a flaw in the transporter has been used as a plot device, that's a lie.