When a person is beamed up it's not the same person

[The Badger]

Perfectly true. Though it must be pointed out that if we were to apply twenty first century scientific knowledge to the descriptions given on Star Trek, precious little would work. Warp drive, anti-gravity, deflector shields, phasers etc. all run contrary to what we know. How many times have we seen ships in motion come to a dead stop because the impulse engines are turned off? I guess the writers weren't up on minor details like Newton's Laws of Motion.

So, even though it's workings are beyond our comprehension, the transporter is not a kill-and-copy machine.

 

[T'Girl]

cookies make you fat.

Perhaps "Cookies" is the lovename of barnaclelapse's girlfriend?

Someone on here has a girlfriend? Doesn't seem likely, but I'll roll with it... Cookies makes you PHAT.

Hate to burst your bubble Pauln6, but I have a girlfriend (truthfully I have two).

Given the respect for individuality and sentient life within the Federation, would they ever use a device that routinely KILLS and REPLACES it's users?

You know, that's the biggest argument in favor of individual personality survival. The Federation's hallmark is it's over all high ethical position, no they don't alway live up to it, but it is what they hold up. Given the seemingly pervasiveness of the transporter in their society and the large number of people from a wide variety of races and cultures who understand how it actual works, it would seem to be impossible for the "death of personality" to remain a secret for two plus centuries.

Surely the majority won't agree with the philosophy of a copy is just a good as the real me.

 

[3D Master]

Perfectly true. Though it must be pointed out that if we were to apply twenty first century scientific knowledge to the descriptions given on Star Trek, precious little would work. Warp drive,

It's a genuine scientific theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

anti-gravity,

There are several indications that there are multiple ways of achieving an anti-gravitational effect.

deflector shields, phasers etc.

Maybe you should watch "That's Impossible" episode 5. You get to see the military is actively working toward energy weapons, and shields. Not entirely the way Trek shows it, but then, Trek's another three centuries beyond that.

all run contrary to what we know.

Not so much.

How many times have we seen ships in motion come to a dead stop because the impulse engines are turned off?

Uhm, let's see... oh, yeah: NEVER.

 

[Luther Sloan]

I think people are getting hung up on the English meaning of particular words used rather than applying the correct legal test, which is to apply the meaning that would be conveyed to an objective observer in possession of the relevant background knowledge i.e. what is actually seen in the episodes and what is scientifically possible when compared to both real and established Trek physics.

Pauln6:

Hung up on the english language? A good majority of things we learn from Star Trek is from what is said. I mean, why so little regard for the english language used on the show?

Oh, and you can't say that it is the writers fault either. All six series and the films are canon. Even the flaws. You either believe the universe as it was presented to us, or you don't (including those silly little words spoken by the characters, too).

The issue is that when 'molecules in your body are converted into energy' they lose the properties that they used to have as matter and gain new properties as energy in much the same way that radium gradually turns into lead as its sub-atomic particles leak off as energy. We can't change the total amount of matter & energy we have to work with either (unless it's added in from an external source). So the person can't be matter and energy at the same time unless the total matter and energy is equal to the total matter you had to start with, in which case SOME of the matter must be losing its properties. Aren't these fundamental laws of physics?

Throw your physics book out the window. We are talking about a fictional device that was created mostly by a bunch of writers and not scientists. If Star Trek says that the transporter phases you into marsh-mellow fluff and kitten hair balls during transport. Then we have to find a way to make sense of it or just leave it as an unsolvable physics puzzle. Plus, you can theorize about the scientific possibilities within Trek all you like. Doesn't mean your right. Many physicists and scientists have been proven wrong (scientifically) repeatedly thru out history. I mean, at one point: many people didn't think man could fly. However, that is a thing of the past, now. Where you see obstacles, I see challenges to push my imagination further.

If 'dematerilisation' means that the matter is phased into another dimension and replaced with energy displaced from that dimension then that's fine; the same person is 'rematerialised' when they snap back into our dimension and the transport is akin to being in temporary stasis. This is NOT how transporting has been described even in Realm of Fear and the phased matter in that episode seems to contradict what we are being told about how transporters work so that is very unhelpful.

I was looking at the script for "Realm of Fear" more closely and it actually doesn't contradict the copy machine transporter theory. It states that Reg was simply suspended (in the matter stream) right at the point where he was going to lose molecular cohesion. During this suspension he was in a primarily phased energy state that was half matter and half energy. The episodes that directly contradict the transporter copy machine theory is TOS's Savage Curtain, ENT's Daedalus, DS9's Our Man Bashir, and DS9's Field of Fire.

If transportees are completely converted to energy then the 'person' is no longer alive. Their DNA doesn't exist any more and their memories, if they can exist in some kind of energy lattice at all, are just copies of the persons memories in the same way that cutting and pasting information from one PC to another is just making a copy on the second computer or a person downloading their memories into a robot body is just making a copy. The scientific data regarding DNA and memory encoding wasn't available to the writers when the fundamentals of the transporter were created so it isn't surprising that they thought the human mind was some kind of floating thing that is just resting in our brain case rather than the result of a mixture of chemical and bio-electrical processes.

But that is just a false assumption on your part. We know from the series that in over 200 years the transporter does not kill you when it converts you into energy. Sure it may not make sense to you. But you have to find a way to use your imagination to explain the unexplainable. Personally, I don't have a problem with someone (and their kinetic energy) existing briefly as living energy during transport.

During rematerialisation the matter is rebuilt using the scanned pattern as a template. This is no more the original than if one had re-downloaded the data back onto the original computer from the second computer. You could indeed end up with two indentical copies if you use additional resources and different locations on the same computer as per Tom Riker.

But who is to say that the energy state a person experiences during transport is not just a new brief living phased state of being? Sure you may not be conscious. But that doesn't mean you are not alive as living energy for the brief time that you are transporting. Also, who is to say that your body is a copy. Who is to say that the re-materialization process is just a set of instructions to help your phased energy state come back to the physical world?

Well, the problem is not in the fact that the transporter doesn't work as a car ride theory (as shown to us on Trek). The problem is that you have a hard time trying to apply your real world physics to a fictional device.

The rematerialised being isn't really the original person any more unless you ascribe to the unproven, unscientific, and never mentioned concept that a transportee's 'soul' actively retains cohesion even if the physical properties of the body are destroyed. If we're applying evidence from the background that we see, this makes no scientific sense and is never mentioned. It may be the simplest way to explain some of the apocryphal transporter episodes where people remain 'alive' in the transporter for long periods, akin to being in stasis, but the same argument remains even then, that they are copies or 'approximations' of the original in some kind of alternative state. Cloning, copying, and Tuvix also lead to unexplained and unexplainable situations as far as the 'soul theory' is concerned.

It's still not cloning because for all we know... your body could just be in phased state and your transporter pattern is just the set of instructions to bring you back out of phase (re-materialization).

I like both the phasing and reconstruction theories but there is far more evidence to support the destroy and rebuild theory. Scienticifically the rematerialised person is a copy.

Not according to Star Trek it isn't.

 

[Luther Sloan]

Perfectly true. Though it must be pointed out that if we were to apply twenty first century scientific knowledge to the descriptions given on Star Trek, precious little would work. Warp drive,

It's a genuine scientific theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

anti-gravity,

There are several indications that there are multiple ways of achieving an anti-gravitational effect.



Maybe you should watch "That's Impossible" episode 5. You get to see the military is actively working toward energy weapons, and shields. Not entirely the way Trek shows it, but then, Trek's another three centuries beyond that.

all run contrary to what we know.

Not so much.

How many times have we seen ships in motion come to a dead stop because the impulse engines are turned off?

Uhm, let's see... oh, yeah: NEVER.

3D Man:

I think the point was to say that there ARE things within Star Trek that will...

a) Never happen.

b) Don't make scientific sense.


Side Note:

Granted, you can believe what you like. I just know that the guy who is making a TOS cloaking device out of radio shack parts is not going to succeed in creating a real one any time soon.

 

[T'Girl]

The molecules in your body are reconverted back into their original pattern

It may be the simplest way to explain some of the apocryphal transporter episodes where people remain 'alive' in the transporter for long periods, akin to being in stasis, but the same argument remains even then, that they are copies or 'approximations' of the original in some kind of alternative state.

from Relics

LaForge: "What in the world made you think of using the transporter pattern buffer to survive?"
Scott: "Well, we didn't have enough supplies to wait for a rescue, so we had to think of something."

Can you explain why Captain Scott, a man who knows more than anyone what happens when you're dematerialize, would seek to survive by entering the transporter? If your interpretation is true, then Scotty would have known that entering the transporter was personal suicide. That while a copy might one day emerge, he was doomed. On the other hand, if my own interpretation of the transporter in correct, then both Scotty and his friend Franklin would have fully expected to personally walk out of the transporter one day.

Can you explain why?

 

[Pauln6]

Yes, I agree, this is a philosophical debate that is easily solveable if you shrug your shoulders and say oh well, the writers didn't understand the laws of physics, or more likely, assumed that it will be possible to break the laws of physics by the 23rd century, or more accurately, could not know information about DNA and memory that hadn't been discovered at the time that they were writing so lets just assume, if I may paraphrase Lucy Lawless, 'an engineer did it.'

Nobody seems to have come up with a counter-argument for my computer donwload analogy though, except to say that the dialogue in Trek suggests that the person isn't a copy. I don't find that to be all that satisfactory. Pragmatic, scientific 23rd century people may well know that all that we are is bound up in our physicality and therefore an identical 'copy' IS the real person. Stargate Atlantis touches on this with its clone resurrection storyline (although they made very little mileage out of it as a plot point).

The line in Realm of Fear that Barclay is both energy and matter is a bit silly. We're all energy and matter all the time but whatever our body is made of the total of the energy and matter must still equal E=MC2 so not a lot of his body could have been energy.

I keep yo-yo-ing between my preferred explanation but I'm inclined to agree that an explanation that kills the person doesn't really chime with Trek's Utopian philosophy (maybe that's why I like it). I think the idea that dematerialisation is converting the person to multi-dimensional energy is the best theory so that a 'live' and intact copy is preserved in an other-dimensional phased state while existing in our dimension only as the energy displaced by the phasing process and that a 'live' pattern must be recorded in order to re-attach markers to the phased person and draw them back into our dimension when they rematerialise. At least this chimes in slightly with the Next Phase.

P.S. Two girlfriends? How do you find time to post on here? I haven't had a girl since I was 18... but ahem, that's rather a different story...

 

[The Badger]

Though it must be pointed out that if we were to apply twenty first century scientific knowledge to the descriptions given on Star Trek, precious little would work.

...Not entirely the way Trek shows it, but then, Trek's another three centuries beyond that.

And that was the point I was trying to make. Even if we insist on treating treknology as real as opposed to a writers tool, we simply cannot apply our current level of knowledge and expect a 100% correlation. Just because we are unable to accurately describe a non lethal transporter system should not preclude it's existence in Trek.

How many times have we seen ships in motion come to a dead stop because the impulse engines are turned off?

Uhm, let's see... oh, yeah: NEVER.

Thank you for clarifying that point. Obviously I was mistaken to think that the Excelsior came to a halt after it's systems failed in TSFS, or that traffic in Space Dock did the same when power failed in TVH. Clearly my memory is at fault.

 

[3D Master]

I just know that the guy who is making a TOS cloaking device out of radio shack parts is not going to succeed in creating a real one any time soon.

And that's got what to do with anything?

Though it must be pointed out that if we were to apply twenty first century scientific knowledge to the descriptions given on Star Trek, precious little would work.

...Not entirely the way Trek shows it, but then, Trek's another three centuries beyond that.

And that was the point I was trying to make. Even if we insist on treating treknology as real as opposed to a writers tool, we simply cannot apply our current level of knowledge and expect a 100% correlation. Just because we are unable to accurately describe a non lethal transporter system should not preclude it's existence in Trek.

How many times have we seen ships in motion come to a dead stop because the impulse engines are turned off?

Uhm, let's see... oh, yeah: NEVER.

Thank you for clarifying that point. Obviously I was mistaken to think that the Excelsior came to a halt after it's systems failed in TSFS, or that traffic in Space Dock did the same when power failed in TVH. Clearly my memory is at fault.

The Excelsior was powering up its warp drive. The point of warp drive, is that you stand essentially still within a warp bubble and bend space and time around you. That means when engaging the warp drive, you stop the ship at the same time. The warp drive failed to engage, but the stopping still occurred. Nothing to do with turning off the impulse engines.

I can't remember this happen in TVH at all, but if it did seem that way, no doubt something similar is happening there.

 

[barnaclelapse]

cookies make you fat.

Perhaps "Cookies" is the lovename of barnaclelapse's girlfriend?

Someone on here has a girlfriend? Doesn't seem likely, but I'll roll with it...

Cookies makes you PHAT.

I somehow have a fiance.

This whole argument makes me wish I had been a better science student. Sorry for the aside.

 

[The Badger]

The Excelsior was powering up its warp drive. The point of warp drive, is that you stand essentially still within a warp bubble and bend space and time around you. That means when engaging the warp drive, you stop the ship at the same time. The warp drive failed to engage, but the stopping still occurred. Nothing to do with turning off the impulse engines.

That's an intriguing hypothesis. Might I ask the source of this information, so I can examine it further?

I can't remember this happen in TVH at all, but if it did seem that way, no doubt something similar is happening there.

I would be indebted to you if you could expand further on what this 'something similar' might be.


At any rate, I don't see how this affects my proposition. Even if it is possible to one day build devices analogous to warp drive, shields, anti-gravity etc. the technology used in Trek is fictional. So arguing, as some do, that real world constraints must apply is pointless.

Within the Star Trek universe the use of the transporter by the idealistic Federation would rule out the possibility of it being a kill/copy machine.

If people wish to devote time and effort to explain how it works, in that manner, then I applaud that. Such activity can be a challenging and fun mental exercise. The results, whilst maybe not strictly accurate in real world terms, can add flavour and verisimilitude to a fictional universe.

 

[Luther Sloan]

And that's got what to do with anything?

3D Master:

I was joking.

The way you were defending Trek-fiction in your previous post, it sounded like you were expecting the TOS cloaking device to come out sometime next week.

But I am just kidding with ya, man.
Please carry on.

 

[Luther Sloan]

Just watched "Our Man Bashir".

In the episode they store the physical patterns of the DS9 command crew within the Holo-suite and they store their neural patterns through out the rest of the station (because they are so frigging huge).

This suggests that the mind continues on in a suspended energy state and is not destroyed like some type of physical brain that gets de-constructed. So as long as the neural patterns exist as pure energy (i.e. the mind or the soul), then the person never really dies. The core electrical magnetic essence is preserved through out the process. And the body remains in an energy like flux (waiting to be re-materialized) or phased back.

 

[3D Master]

The Excelsior was powering up its warp drive. The point of warp drive, is that you stand essentially still within a warp bubble and bend space and time around you. That means when engaging the warp drive, you stop the ship at the same time. The warp drive failed to engage, but the stopping still occurred. Nothing to do with turning off the impulse engines.

That's an intriguing hypothesis. Might I ask the source of this information, so I can examine it further?

A warp drive works by warping space and time around your ship. This bending provides the propulsion. There is thus no reason to be moving within the bubble, in fact, if you were moving within the bubble, you still be getting that pesky slowing down of time from relativity, which you can avoid by standing still. It would also be a waste of energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

You can see the scientific concept above again; now you say, that's not Star Trek, however Alcubierre is a Star Trek fan, and literally plugged Star Trek's warp drive in the equations, and they work. This is the warp drive as explained in the original TOS Technical Manual as written by Franz Joseph.

Sadly, Gene was greedy and declared his stuff void, and ever since Warp Drive hasn't been explained, except in vague terms that something get warped. However, after Gene's passing, the producers of Star Trek once again put stuff from the Technical Manual into Star Trek that Gene had voided from the manual, most notably, uneven number of warp nacelles.

It seems to me then, if it is scientifically accurate, and it comes from the original Star Trek technical manual, that's exactly how the Star Trek warp drive works.

I can't remember this happen in TVH at all, but if it did seem that way, no doubt something similar is happening there.

I would be indebted to you if you could expand further on what this 'something similar' might be.

An automated safety procedure, like an inertial damping field to stop exactly a ship losing power from crashing into the base, that managed to do its job just before the base fully lost power, for example.

At any rate, I don't see how this affects my proposition. Even if it is possible to one day build devices analogous to warp drive, shields, anti-gravity etc. the technology used in Trek is fictional. So arguing, as some do, that real world constraints must apply is pointless.

Within the Star Trek universe the use of the transporter by the idealistic Federation would rule out the possibility of it being a kill/copy machine.

If people wish to devote time and effort to explain how it works, in that manner, then I applaud that. Such activity can be a challenging and fun mental exercise. The results, whilst maybe not strictly accurate in real world terms, can add flavour and verisimilitude to a fictional universe.

The elegant thing about my concept, of a quantum mechanical super position allowing someone to be both his physical intact body and dematerialized into energy at the same time, is that it avoids the real world truth that if you reduce a person to just energy you kill them, while at the same time satisfying Star Trek's truth that a person gets turned into energy.

 

[Pauln6]

Just watched "Our Man Bashir".

In the episode they store the physical patterns of the DS9 command crew within the Holo-suite and they store their neural patterns through out the rest of the station (because they are so frigging huge).

This suggests that the mind continues on in a suspended energy state and is not destroyed like some type of physical brain that gets de-constructed. So as long as the neural patterns exist as pure energy (i.e. the mind or the soul), then the person never really dies. The core electrical magnetic essence is preserved through out the process. And the body remains in an energy like flux (waiting to be re-materialized) or phased back.

Yeah but the evidence doesn't stack up one way or another. It the memory patterns are copies that 'think' they are the original (like the downloaded copy of a file on a computer) you are back at square one in the debate. Files stored on computers are copies of the original. You still need the 'soul' argument to make this one work.

The one thing it does suggest is that the transporter can't be storing the whole person in its buffers (Scotty, I'm looking at you here) or the memory space to transport 6 people would be gigantificusly enormous.

 

[SpyOne]

The transporter converts the matter in your body to energy, then sends that energy somewhere and reconverts that energy back into matter, right?

Energy is energy, regardless of what sort of matter was used to create it. And they have a vast amount of energy in the Warp Core. Why not use that to top up the transport system as required?

1) no, it doesn't.
2) the amount of energy required to make something as massive as a person is enormous. A better question would be, if the transporters work that way, why bother with the Warp Core at all: power the ship by dematerializing rocks in the transporter.

 

[Luther Sloan]

Yeah but the evidence doesn't stack up one way or another. It the memory patterns are copies that 'think' they are the original (like the downloaded copy of a file on a computer) you are back at square one in the debate. Files stored on computers are copies of the original. You still need the 'soul' argument to make this one work.

Pauln6:

No. I am not back at square one in the debate.

1. The brain transmits very important electro magnetic pulses. I am sure that these brain patterns (or energy signals) saved as energy in the transporter buffer is no coincidence.

2. The fact that the brain is not de-constructed as a means of storing a person's neural pattern and is actively stored separately suggests that it is a vital part of a person's essence (or soul (if you will)) during the transport process. This suggests that the brain does not indeed die and it's electro magnetic signals (or brain patterns) continues on as energy and not as some de-constructed mass of molecules that make up the brain that would eventually form thoughts, feelings, ECT.


Side Note:

Oh, and the fact that your theory fits within the confines of the episode is irrelevant. Even if you didn't buy into my defense above on the issue. Your copy machine theory is still completely blown out of the water due to the fact that the Star Trek universe doesn't transcribe or support the copy machine theory to the transporter in any way.

 

[SpyOne]

So, a person who's transported is reconstructed from a template taken at the moment of dematerialisation, using the energy derived from his original mass.

If that template is saved in the computer's memory, what's to stop anyone from using energy from the warp core to build another fully functioning person?

That's essentially how replicators are said to work, isn't it?

It is defined as taking WAY too much memory to store. (A bit flawed, that, but ...)
Replicators operate similarly, but use a much less detailed "image" and then use data-compression on top of that to get the file size down to something managable. Thus, replicators can't make anything alive, and their copies of non-living things often seem a litte "off" (ie: replicated foods are said to taste different).

 

[SpyOne]

Just search the transcripts for the phrase "matter stream".

I have, and they simply refer to a person while they are in an energy state during the transporter process.

Once again, total semantics. It's a form of energy, specifically the energized state matter becomes once it's converted to by the transporter.

Again, only in that all matter is a form of energy: matter and energy are just two forms of the same thing. A bit like ice and steam.
So while it is true that a stream of subatomic particles is a "form of energy", it is definitely energy in the form of matter.

EDIT: had more to say.

What you're talking about isn't in regards to a transporter, but rather deuterium streams typically injected into a matter/antimatter reactor within a warp core. Matter streams have also been used to describe concentrated particles in space.

No, what I'm taking about is this one: "The molecular imaging scanners derive a realtime quantum-resolution pattern image of the transport subject while the primary energizing coils and the phase transition coils convert the subject into a subatomically debonded matter stream."
And this one: "The matter stream is briefly held in the pattern buffer, which allows the system to compensate for the Doppler shift between the ship and the transport destination."

I feel the need to point out that you have cited no examples of your position.

That's definitely the pot calling the kettle black. Your whole argument is based on your opinion that people aren't converted into energy, whereas onscreen dialogue has constantly said otherwise.

So you say, but at the time you asked me for episode citations, you had provided none, whereas I had cited my sources.

Where, exactly, in Realm of Fear? Because the quotes others have cited refer specifically to being disassembled, not converted to energy.

 

[Luther Sloan]

1) no, it doesn't.

Spy One:

Yes it does.

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/69595

2) the amount of energy required to make something as massive as a person is enormous. A better question would be, if the transporters work that way, why bother with the Warp Core at all: power the ship by dematerializing rocks in the transporter.

Irrelevant. Just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean that it doesn't operate or is not powered in a completely different way than you think it is.