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

[Luther Sloan]

Well, Barclay did say that he is being de-constructed molecule by molecule. But we know that the actual act of being de-constructed molecule by molecule is simply the process of being transformed into transferable energy for transport.

As for Barclay retaining his awareness (or sight) during transport during the energy matter transfer: Maybe we are seeing the parts where Barclay's mental awareness (or brain molecules) is in a state of where his molecules are still constructed within the transporter matter stream. Cause during the process of being de-constructed molecule by molecule (including the brain molecules) there might be no way for him to retain knowledge of the entire trip. Unless of course the consciousness mind is transformed into energy and it somehow retains it's awareness during transport while the physical body is being ripped apart and being put back together again.

Maybe his spirit body (i.e. his mental image of himself) and his mind stays in tact during transport while his physical body is de-constructed and reconstructed during the transport process.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Riker no 2 was quite alive, much like Riker no 1. And they are definitely different beings.

Proto:

They are both the same person that stepped onto the transporter pad. They are identical. Except for their experiences.

You have Riker no1 and, near him, Riker no2.
THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT PERSONS. They may have similar bodies and similar personalities, but the simple fact that one is on the enterprise and the other in a cardassian prison unequivocally shows they are two autonomous, distinct humans.

The transporter does not duplicate the original pattern (with loss of quality).

In Riker's case, the transporter DID duplicate the original. And, given the fact that matter and yes, energy (such as a signal) are very difficult to copy exactly, a random storm or whatever couldn't copy so exactly a human - unless the transporter was designed and calibrated to do exactly this.

The flower simply created the right set of circumstances to adapt the transporter to combine three life forms (including their clothes) together.

Tuvok/Neelix/flower were not only 'combined' together. They were a functional being! Normally, a combination of them would result in some organic goo and all their death. In 'Tuvix' thay were not just combined together; they were combined together in exactly the right way - a feat far beyond what starfleet medicine is able to accomplish - it's just that diffficult.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Another thing to consider is that we only see Barclay at the beginning and end of the transporter sequence, but there is a brief point in the middle where it's just glittery glowy stuff.

My interpretation is that this is what Barclay was seeing through his own eyes with his intact vision, that Barclay's eyesight never "switched off" and that he was aware all the way through the transporter process.

That's just the thing, though. There's a point during the transporter process that Barclay ceased to be corporeal. It only lasts a second--maybe even less than a second, I believe--but it's the moment in which Barclay is transmitted from one point to another.

Well, Barclay did say that he is being de-constructed molecule by molecule. But we know that the actual act of being de-constructed molecule by molecule is simply the process of being transformed into transferable energy for transport.

As for Barclay retaining his awareness (or sight) during transport during the energy matter transfer: Maybe we are seeing the parts where Barclay's mental awareness (or brain molecules) is in a state of where his molecules are still constructed within the transporter matter stream. Cause during the process of being de-constructed molecule by molecule (including the brain molecules) there might be no way for him to retain knowledge of the entire trip.

I tend to think that's the way it goes.

 

[xortex]

Did you see 'the Fly'? and that DS9 episode where they meet their descendants on a planet.

 

[Pauln6]

Well one assumes that the molecules of energy that are normally transmitted through subspace in the matter stream consist of the same protons and electrons that formed the matter before it was transformed so most of what is reformed is effectively the same person whose memories are re-produced by replicating the chemical signatures in their brain. It looks as though Heisenburg Compensators and Pattern Enhancers can 'adjust' to take account of matter that leaks in or out of the anular confinement beam in transit or filter out the matter/energy that piggybacks with the live subject like the flower pollen backed up by the bio-filters. The extent to which this can be carried out depends on what is stored in the Pattern Buffers for outgoing transports.

What isn't clear is why it isn't possible to store a pattern for longer to recreate a person from the memory in the system (or why this sometimes happens). I think it has to do with the fact that 90% of us is empty space with moving sub-atomic particles. Even with the Heisenberg Compensators the particles change so much that it is no longer possible to replicate that person after a few seconds without some kind of wierd intervention. However that doesn't make much sense because the stored pattern is frozen in time. It can't be a storage issue because the ship has dozens of transporters which would be unable to function if the ship's systems had insufficient storage space for multiple patterns.

Not only should transporters be able to clone people (subject to energy demands), they should be able to perform surgery, or take a copy of them before starting dangerous surgery so if anything goes wrong you can try again, restore a dead person to lie by recycling them through a transporter, and overcome aging by restoring somebody to an earlier stored state (although their memories would be reset also).

With the right skill and tech (way beyond Fed Tech), it might even be possible to edit somebody's pattern to insert memories, alter their genetics, or add stuff.

 

[xortex]

Didn't that Voyager episode store people in the transprter to hide them in 'counterpoint'. The one with the Mahler symphony. so a fountain of youth - gain the world and lose your soul kind of stuff and just add stuff. Like that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Tuvok/Neelix/flower were not only 'combined' together. They were a functional being! Normally, a combination of them would result in some organic goo and all their death. In 'Tuvix' thay were not just combined together; they were combined together in exactly the right way - a feat far beyond what starfleet medicine is able to accomplish - it's just that diffficult.

But it was the flower being beamed up with them, that made that all possible. Without that, the transporter would never have been able to do what it did.

 

[Luther Sloan]

You have Riker no1 and, near him, Riker no2.
THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT PERSONS. They may have similar bodies and similar personalities, but the simple fact that one is on the enterprise and the other in a cardassian prison unequivocally shows they are two autonomous, distinct humans.

Proto:

There is no evidence suggesting that Riker #1 is different genetically from Riker #2. Just because they are separate from each other and have lived in different locations doesn't mean they are not identical on a physical level. In fact, DS9's "Defiant" suggests that they are identical...

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/67320

In Riker's case, the transporter DID duplicate the original. And, given the fact that matter and yes, energy (such as a signal) are very difficult to copy exactly, a random storm or whatever couldn't copy so exactly a human - unless the transporter was designed and calibrated to do exactly this.

Even Memory Alpha states they are identical (and not some kind of second rate duplicate or faded copy)...

After examining the transporter logs, Geordi La Forge informs the crew that apparently there was a massive energy surge in the distortion field around the planet just at the moment Riker tried to beam out. The transporter chief at that time tried to compensate by initiating a second containment beam. However, Commander Riker's pattern maintained its integrity by just the one containment beam. And even though the second beam was shut down, somehow it was reflected back to the surface, and another William Riker materialized there. The containment beam must have had the exact same phase differential as the distortion field – hence the two identical Rikers;

Tuvok/Neelix/flower were not only 'combined' together. They were a functional being! Normally, a combination of them would result in some organic goo and all their death. In 'Tuvix' thay were not just combined together; they were combined together in exactly the right way - a feat far beyond what starfleet medicine is able to accomplish - it's just that diffficult.

Yes, as mentioned before. It was the unique properties within the flower that was the key factor that made the actual transporter fusion of all three life forms possible in the first place.


Sources:
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Second_Chances_(episode)

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Luther Sloan

Riker 1 may be physically and mentally identical to Riker 2, but he IS a different person.
How can one tell?
By putting them in the same room and seeing TWO people instead of 1. These two people have their own distinct life, thoughts, etc.

Apropos the technobabble explanation - the ONLY way one can create a duplicate of a person is to...well, duplicate the person. This means the transporter DOES duplicate people.

Apropos Tuvix - that plant is not even close to an acceptable explanation.
It 'melded' Tuvok/Neelix - every cell, even the clothes? A plant that, biologically, has nothing in common with Tuvok/Neelix, has not evolved to do this to aliens? Yeah, sure.

 

[Pauln6]

In Riker's case, the transporter DID duplicate the original. And, given the fact that matter and yes, energy (such as a signal) are very difficult to copy exactly, a random storm or whatever couldn't copy so exactly a human - unless the transporter was designed and calibrated to do exactly this.

Even Memory Alpha states they are identical (and not some kind of second rate duplicate or faded copy)...

After examining the transporter logs, Geordi La Forge informs the crew that apparently there was a massive energy surge in the distortion field around the planet just at the moment Riker tried to beam out. The transporter chief at that time tried to compensate by initiating a second containment beam. However, Commander Riker's pattern maintained its integrity by just the one containment beam. And even though the second beam was shut down, somehow it was reflected back to the surface, and another William Riker materialized there. The containment beam must have had the exact same phase differential as the distortion field – hence the two identical Rikers;

There is no doubt that the transporter is just recreating a copy of the dissolved person. The question is whether a person's consciousness remains intact when they are reduced to energy. The answer for me is an obvious no, since you have no neurons to transmit signals and no brain cells to maintain memories until the copy is fully up and running. Saavik talking mid transport doesn't really make sense.

This is curious though. If the transporter can't maintain sufficient energy to maintain or produce two copies they could never engage in the transport of multiple people or have emergency transporters that can deal with 20+ people at a time.

What is clear is that it takes a massive amount of energy to create a person from a transporter signal. When you beam somebody, most of that energy is converted from the matter that made up the individual. Creating a whole new person is possible but the energy required is too large for a starship.

Still, with custom made transporters fuelled by a gigantic energy source it is clearly possible. Maybe this is how the Arcturian reproduction works.

What this also does is throw the regular use of replicators into question. If it takes massive amounts of energy to create something from nothing then creating heavy elements such as metals is going to multiply that energy requirement. This makes sense to me and would explain why ships can't ordinarily just replicate weapons or what they need for repairs and it explains why TOS only had 'Protein Synthesisers' to create soft materials. The absence of replicator rations as standard in TNG leaves the whole thing looking rather fuzzy though.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Pauln6

The transporter is creating a copy of the transported person, but the original is retrievable after this is done - as Riker 1 and Riker 2 prove.

This means that each time a person is 'beamed up', the transporter makes a copy of the person and then KILLS the original.

 

[Pauln6]

If a person's memories can be copied at all - and that must be the case because we know of Thomas Riker - then yes, I think the act of transporting does effectively 'kill' the person. Think about it. All your molecules are being broken down. How could the biological entity still be said to be alive when none of its bodily functions, including the brain activity exist except as a stream of information in a pattern of energy?

Think what Delenn said in B5 - 'We're all star stuff.' All matter is made up of the same sub-atomic particles that has just been transformed down through the millennia. I don't see why a transporter can't just convert energy to mimic the stored pattern - in fact this is precisely how I thought transporters DID work.

Now since neural impulses are energy I suppose it is theoretically possible that something in the transporter beam matrix allows a consciousness to remain active so the 'person' doesn't die, but this has never been expressly stated on screen as far as I'm aware and without a physical brain to link chemical signatures together and without DNA, I really don't see how that energy can constitute the person.

Our memories are chemical signatures burned into our brains. That would obviously have to form part of the information in the signal and therefore it is capable of being copied. An individual is only the sum of their genes and memories after all.

What isn't clear is why a pattern stored in the buffer degrades so quickly. Strikes me that it is little more than a sub-atomic photograph that is used to put the person back together properly when they rematerialise. There might be an issue about the number of patterns that can be stored at any one time in the ship's memory banks but I can't think of any reason why an entire landing party couldn't be reconsitited from a stored pattern unless it requires wibbly wobbly timey wimey neural energy of the original to produce a live copy.

Personally I think that any new 'copy' would be dead on rematerialisation and would have to be resussitated as part of the transport process anyway. That's why they spend a moment in stasis as they rematerialise.

 

[C.E. Evans]

What isn't clear is why a pattern stored in the buffer degrades so quickly. Strikes me that it is little more than a sub-atomic photograph that is used to put the person back together properly when they rematerialise. There might be an issue about the number of patterns that can be stored at any one time in the ship's memory banks but I can't think of any reason why an entire landing party couldn't be reconsitited from a stored pattern unless it requires wibbly wobbly timey wimey neural energy of the original to produce a live copy.

I think it's simply a case that the longer a transporter subject stays in the buffer, the more likely that errors occur and that's what causes signal degradation, IMO. It eventually reaches a point where it's no longer safe to bring someone back due to data loss (anything less than 100% is probably fatal). There are presumably still limits to 24th-Century technology, and this is likely one of them.

IIRC, the only reason why Scotty was able to survive for some 75 years in a transporter beam is that he used the entire resources of the Starship Jenolen to keep his pattern constantly cycling through the vessel's systems--but even that wasn't enough to keep the transporter pattern of someone called Franklin from degrading to the point of no return. The same thing likely would have happened to Scotty if he hadn't been rescued in time.

Scotty's trick was ingenious, but probably far from a recommended way of using a transporter.

 

[DevilEyes]

I really hope that no not-fans of Trek ever see this thread. It would only confirm that Trekkies/Trekkers are incredibly geeky.

 

[Pauln6]

I think it's simply a case that the longer a transporter subject stays in the buffer, the more likely that errors occur and that's what causes signal degradation, IMO. It eventually reaches a point where it's no longer safe to bring someone back due to data loss (anything less than 100% is probably fatal). There are presumably still limits to 24th-Century technology, and this is likely one of them.

IIRC, the only reason why Scotty was able to survive for some 75 years in a transporter beam is that he used the entire resources of the Starship Jenolen to keep his pattern constantly cycling through the vessel's systems--but even that wasn't enough to keep the transporter pattern of someone called Franklin from degrading to the point of no return. The same thing likely would have happened to Scotty if he hadn't been rescued in time.

Scotty's trick was ingenious, but probably far from a recommended way of using a transporter.

Hmm but I still don't really understand how the buffer works. Perhaps in order to generate a live subject the sub-stomic particles need to be kept active so it isn't as simple as reproducing a copy from a static stored pattern but from a living pattern where the particles are in motion? This would be consistent with compensators to account for the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle and fits with Scotty's jury-rigged long term buffer and would explain why the patterns can't be stored long term as errors start to occur because the uncertainty principle starts to take hold?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think it's simply a case that the longer a transporter subject stays in the buffer, the more likely that errors occur and that's what causes signal degradation, IMO. It eventually reaches a point where it's no longer safe to bring someone back due to data loss (anything less than 100% is probably fatal). There are presumably still limits to 24th-Century technology, and this is likely one of them.

IIRC, the only reason why Scotty was able to survive for some 75 years in a transporter beam is that he used the entire resources of the Starship Jenolen to keep his pattern constantly cycling through the vessel's systems--but even that wasn't enough to keep the transporter pattern of someone called Franklin from degrading to the point of no return. The same thing likely would have happened to Scotty if he hadn't been rescued in time.

Scotty's trick was ingenious, but probably far from a recommended way of using a transporter.

Hmm but I still don't really understand how the buffer works. Perhaps in order to generate a live subject the sub-stomic particles need to be kept active so it isn't as simple as reproducing a copy from a static stored pattern but from a living pattern where the particles are in motion? This would be consistent with compensators to account for the Heisenburg Uncertainty principle and fits with Scotty's jury-rigged long term buffer and would explain why the patterns can't be stored long term as errors start to occur because the uncertainty principle starts to take hold?

Actually, that's very much what I think.

It's not canon, but I recall the TNG Technical Manual implying that a pattern buffer isn't designed to hold a transporter subject long to begin with. I think it was intended simply to hold a matter stream long enough (anywhere from a few seconds to just a fraction of a second) to compensate for any movement between a ship and a target site.

 

[xortex]

But the ship and the target site had to be constant so it would only take long enough to beam.

 

[Pauln6]

I think that could be a red herring. It's not the fact that the ship is moving; it's that the electrons in our bodies are moving, our hearts are pumping and our neurons are firing. That is what I think the Heisenberg compensators have to compensate for.

 

[C.E. Evans]

But the ship and the target site had to be constant so it would only take long enough to beam.

But that isn't always the case, though. There are times when a ship is in standard orbit rather than synchronous orbit above a target site. Even the smallest variation in movement or velocity probably would require some form of "Doppler compensation" to make sure everything lines up perfectly between a ship and the target site, especially over any appreciable distance, IMO.

 

[Luther Sloan]

There is no doubt that the transporter is just recreating a copy of the dissolved person. The question is whether a person's consciousness remains intact when they are reduced to energy.

Pauln6:

It's a process of conversion of a person. Even the creator of the transporter said that it did not make copies...

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/67546

What you were seeing in "Second Chances" was a special circumstance where the person (that was deconstructed physically) and transformed into energy (during transport) was re-materialized (on a physical level) twice. In other words: a copy was not made but a re-materialization or a conversion of that person happened twice from the conversion process of that one individual (who stepped onto the transporter pad). In other words: The transporter just converts physical matter into energy and then re-converts it back into it's original state again.

It's sort of like converting water into steam and then converting that steam back into water again.

And somehow this freak incident just created the same exact identical water two times instead of just once.

The answer for me is an obvious no, since you have no neurons to transmit signals and no brain cells to maintain memories until the copy is fully up and running. Saavik talking mid transport doesn't really make sense.

Yes. There has to be a point where the person (that is being transported) is not going to have memory at a certain point in his trip during transport. I imagine this happens when the person is being deconstructed physically and converted into energy in order to be converted (or re-materialized) back into his physical form again. The only time he might retain his memory is when his mind is formed and he is being checked over by the transporter (in the transporter stream).

This is curious though. If the transporter can't maintain sufficient energy to maintain or produce two copies they could never engage in the transport of multiple people or have emergency transporters that can deal with 20+ people at a time.

They meant that during active transport of one individual or matter, the transporter is set at an energy level for just the amount of matter or that person who entered the transporter beam. Meaning, that the transporter cannot duplicate matter during mid transport on it's own under normal circumstances.

What is clear is that it takes a massive amount of energy to create a person from a transporter signal. When you beam somebody, most of that energy is converted from the matter that made up the individual. Creating a whole new person is possible but the energy required is too large for a starship.

Well, that's the magic of the technology. Now, I am not saying that we will ever have transporters in real life. Gosh no. But people from the colonial days would be blown away if they seen a cell phone, computer, or a HD TV with surround sound. And they wouldn't even know where to begin in understanding it, if they did see one.