"look chief… all I'm asking is you adjust the pattern to lose about 10 kilos of fat around the midsection, it's not like I'm asking you to make me younger…"
@@d.b.4671 Not only can it, it was actually done in the 2nd season of Star Trek: TNG. I forget the episode name, but in the one with the genetically modified children that created the 'aging virus' which infected Pulaski.
@@RPhillip Yep, that episode *Unnatural Selection* (where the Federation ban on genetic engineering of Humans apparently had a exemption clause - _continuity contradictions in Trek?_ … never!) and the ridiculous episode *Little Rascals* (where Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro become children due to a transporter accident) were my inspiration. And of course Little Rascals ends with the new tweened characters becoming adults again, instead of enjoying the opportunity of having all those extra years added to their lifespan - just have 6 years of growning (okay, longer for Guinan) and then they are a healthy mature teen/young adult… with decades of experience behind them. Still it did lead to some great child Picard memes.
It is true that Transporter Special effects cost a lot less money than landing a Star Ship on a planet special effects, so it was a budget decision to do Transporters.
Well it does make some in universe sense. Imagine you might need to bean someone out who is running for their lives. Staying still long enough for the transporter to lock onto them might actually risk them getting captured or killed.
I think the confinement beam adds an opposite pressure equal to the amount being applied to stop movement. This would explain the ability to maintain momentum after it is released. Not that it actually stops it.
This is Star Trek. Every problem can be solved by either a) emitting a beam of NonExistiton Particles or b) reversing the polarity of the deflector dish. Or sometimes c) both. 😂🖖
For various reasons, it's clear there's something about the transporter process in Star Trek that maintains one's consciousness etc. through the whole thing, rather than just making a duplicate (at least in most situations), like how Barclay is shown to be continually conscious through the whole thing in one episode. For another example, to quote doctorwhom1 elsewhere in the comment section: "More evidence that transporters probably aren't suicide booths would be that telepaths are fine with them. If they really just killed and reassembled people then purely psychic entities (Spock's katra for example) would be ripped away from whatever's being transported."
@@Jeddostotle7 Clearly, they beam the soul along with the body. It's part of the energy pattern of consciousness. (Also, katras and souls are the same thing. I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to be a general consensus.)
"Soo, The transporter will take a series of really accurate pictures of me. Put me through a blender, mincing me into a very fine slurry, THEN dump the sludge at the target site and use that to assemble me? " "Yes sir" "I'll take the shuttle"
the transporter doesn't kill you because Barclay was able to grab things in the matter stream, meaning he is aware he can see and he can even move to interact with objects, thus alive.
A particularly nihilistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with transporters, because "persistent consciousness is a lie anyway". So I guess most people in Trek have come to terms with that.
I mean, who's to say that your "you" consciousness doesn't die every time you go to sleep, and everything you remember is just your brain filling the blanks when your next consciousness steps in as you "wake up"? How's that for some nightmare fuel?
@@moriskurth628 and time is perceived buy the individual and is not a universal constant so the process you speak of could sit beyond the individual's concept of time then you don't need sleep to kill the consciousness it could happen in the bink of an eye, or it could happen slap bang in-between what the individual perceives to be a continuous consciousness and the moment one consciousness takes over from the other sits in an increment of time that is inconceivable to the individual making the change from one consciousness to the other seemless.
Apparently you are conscious, in one show they were talking during transport and the conversation continued through materialisation. So I wonder how Scotty passed the time while locked in a pattern buffer for so many years.
I imagine that the Heisenberg Compensators are a subcomponent - certainly an important one, but they are part of one of the larger systems that enables it to perform its overall function, rather than a discrete part of the process. Probably part of the process that scans and saves the quantum image, since said image would otherwise have a 'fuzzy' resolution that would not be safe for use. Sort of like how, for an exotic engine, you might need to engineer special bearings for its turbine-equivalents; those bearings are very important, in that they allow the component they're part of to function, but you wouldn't necessarily call attention to them in an overview of the engine's standard cycle, but you very much would talk about how the dang things keep failing and need replacing, or realigning, or etc if they were a common source of fault (i.e., brought up in the relevant episode as an issue)
I was also really surprised he didn't mention the Heisenberg Compensator, it was one of the main trivia things I knew about the transporter. Maybe he'll mention it in a later video, I only discovered this channel today :S
The reason so many species develop transporters is because they all go through a stage in _SciFi TV series production_ when showing shuttles conveying main characters from PlanetSide to the Hero ship would take too much of the budget and episode time. The region around the Kazon in the Delta Quadrant ironically had a hard science SciFi history, their first major hit was based on *the Expanse.*
Or creating some kind of interference, but knowing the shield frequency should do it. That's hard though especially in post-Borg world where most use dynamic frequencies(they change rapidly). Of course, overpowering the deflector array also works, I believe that's how Borg used to just beam to wherever they wanted.
IIRC, O’Brien used the shield rotation frequency to synchronize transport the the point where the shield would allow a transporter beam through. The rotation frequency is needed so the shield don’t block all energy simultaneously…preventing weapons from firing or being able to scan outside the shields.
Transporters definitely handle momentum - otherwise everyone beaming down to Starfleet Academy from orbit would find themselves arriving in the Transporter Room at Mach 20.
The way i see the "does the transporter kill you" issue is basically the reverse of the common argument. Most people will argue that, if you were to enter a transporter, you would die and the transporter would generate a new version of you on the other side. But consider this; if you were a star fleet officer that used transporters every day of your life, you would never recall or experience a time that you entered a transporter and your cognisance was totally snuffed out. To you, ever time you entered a transporter, you always popped back out still being you.
Indeed, you still have all your memories, skills... everything that makes you you is still intact. Doesn't make it any less disconcerting to learn you get broken down to the quantum level, though. The time machine in Michael Crichton's _Timeline_ is worse, though, since it explicitly is described as breaking down the original body, and creating an exact duplicate at the destination point.
I mean, assuming that the stream of consciousness is the same as a regular ol' internet data stream actually makes the question moot. Why wouldn't we be able to handle breaks in the stream when we can just pause and buffer it?
Except that temporal beings die every second as their consciousness progresses to the next second. Your living mass is in constant flux. You may remember being a child, but that 2ft being no longer exists. Baby you is effectively dead. So really, in the grand scheme of life, having your matter broken down to the quantum level and reassembled is no different. Certainly it brings to question the plausibility of an afterlife. But what happened to 2year old you? Not much difference.
@@Humaricslastcall The internet is two machines communicating with one another. When communication is reinstated the machines can come to a consensus where the other left off. A transporter is a single machine reading data from a source that has been obliterated.
@@thomasreedy4751 There's also the fact that cells in your body are dying and being replaced constantly. I forget the actual math behind it, but I think it's fair to say that almost all of the cells in your body have been replaced by the time you become an adult; so, thinking of yourself as being a completely different person from when you were a child might be more accurate than you'd think.
This has to be the most in depth analysis of a transporter system I've ever seen. Great job. I've heard a lot of these phrases said on the shows so many times and never put much thought into it. Figured it was just polt devices and science fiction jargon. Never realized how intricate these premises were.
In the TNG episode The Wounded it's explained that some ships use a shield design where there is a fraction of a second gap in shield coverage every 5-6 minutes, and that with careful timing, and at high risk, you can get through.
Kinda reminds me of how the Falcon in The Force Awakens miraculously timed their approach to Starkiller at faster than light speeds to take advantage of the fraction or a second refresh rate of the base’s energy shielding. Did I just use a Star Trek topic as a springboard into a point about Star Wars? Yes and I feel great!
These are basically suicide booths, evidenced by the fact that we got a duplicate Riker once. Basically they make a clone of you in a new location, and to avoid the inconvenience of having you at your present location they kill you.
Please, please Rick, call the next video: transporters gone wild. Happy new year, and I can’t believe you managed to get through this whole video without mentioning Heisenberg compensators. I also can’t believe that Apple dictation managed to correctly spell Heisenberg compensators.
Things that often break on Starfleet vessels: Holodecks, transporters, consoles, warp cores, rock containment spaces within walls and ceilings. P.S. with how often Starfleet vessels explode from any damage I refer to them as "Space Pintos". I might be showing my age a bit with that too.
I'm definitely looking forwards to the follow-up video. But since when is the ACB meant to freeze a transport subject? I know in Ent and TOS it did, Discovery doesn't but that's a newer ship, and in TNG that super soldier (Roga Danar or something?) screwed up a transport by sorta karate chopping his way out of the ACB.
Well, since the equivalence principle says everyone can be right if they consider themselves to be stationary, not everything, as it still includes anything with displacement 0 on their own inertial frame (such as the ship, or a ship that's following in the same warp factor)
I remember ST:Enterprise had a moment of crew contemplating the existential implications of tech that was new to them. A small mention even of some civilians believing that whoever arrives via a transporter is just a copy that lacks a soul. So yeah, transporters create undead. Prove me wrong. 😄
Actually that's not how it works in science. you postulated a result, and thus it's your responsiblity to prove it TRUE first. Otherwise we can go into 'I can say whatever I want to be true cuz you need to prove it to be false' realm of nutty-folk :p
I understand how pad to pad works, but it really shouldn't work pad to site or site to site, I prefer the ring platform from stargate. Thro there was the asgard beam technology that seemed wishful thinking.
Good video! Still I'm confused about a few things. So are you turned into energy (photons) or quarks? The quark field you mentioned (it's not listed on memory alpha so I don't know where you got that from) seems to imply the latter but the show makes it explicit its the former. How can you transport through solid matter (like into another ship through its super dense hull or into a cave miles below the ground)? How can a personal transporter work if it dematerializes its own computer in order to beam itself to the destination, which would prevent itself from knowing how to reassemble itself? Also, why not just use a tractor beam with air and also inertial dampeners in the beam to move people from place to place, why bother with dematerialization? It seems unnecessarily dangerous.
This approach is both safer and has longer range, so it is preferred whenever possible. All you need to do is "Hand over" or receive the pattern, other side does the rest. It does not protect you from subterfuge by the other side however (See "Data's Day").
I don't believe the person being transported is in fact disassembled. Quite simply, if this were true Barclay would not remain conscious during transport. More, given how many people use transporters on a regular basis (surely in their trillions at the very least) it seems impossible beyond doubt the vast majority would use the things IF they knew they would be killed than duplicated. Hence I think the device is more precisely described by its name--it transports people as a whole rather than piece by piece. This is also why Picard was not copied in the first season of PICARD but actually moved. We dont really understand how because the science is too advanced. Consider. ENT is taking place roughly 200 years from now. Now imagine someone in 2021 trying to explain to a fairly ordinary college graduate in 1821 how an MRI works. Or a hydrogen bomb. Recombinant DNA therapy. Stealth technology. Radio telescopes. An x-ray machine. Now imagine that same college graduate trying to figure out how any of those work by watching a tv show in which these are regularly mentioned.
Until that episode that deals with Barclay's transporter fears, there really was a genuine reason for doubt about transporters killing you and then assembling another you. BTW, weren't transporters also somehow sub-space based? It's been ages since i consulted the lore, and much of what i was once fluent it, is now forgotten!
Hi Rick and happy new year to you! Great vid and very thoughtful. I wondered about the dodgy stuff Voyager would do keeping people in suspension in eps like Counterpoint but perhaps you'll touch on it next week. Looking forward to it. (Hope the DR Who special was a treat - I'm in Oz so today we finally have it).
As informatician of 16 years of experience and 20 years or above, probably above hehe, Fan of Star Trek, I must say, your level of understanding of that transportation technology is astoundingly shown very easy to understand. You must have noticed, that in the Manual there is a set of safety protocols in place and alot of programming supported by A.I. and quantum computing, I think in TNG era. The Manual of Okuda is HUGE and with bit of my help, you could even build transporter some day. Anyway, even for me is alot of fun and mystery. Kylie Desire
Here's an interesting thought. If shields are supposed to prevent all forms of energy from getting past it, then how can communications work with the shields up? Plot device?
A lot of people (myself included) have been on a quarantine Star Trek binge. First time watching for me, gone through all of TNG and now on Voyager. Thanks for this explainer, I had most of it figured out but there was some useful info and visualisations in this
Well, there's the TNG episode "Lonely Among Us" where Picard is beamed into a cloud as pure energy. So apparently the energy is preserved. They even managed to retrieve this energy from the computers, as apparently he was still able to do stuff in pure energy form, and recreate him. But he didn't remember anything, since the pattern they used was from before the beam-out so the memory connections weren't present. This part of the episode is so completely nonsensical and handwavy, but well, it's fiction.
Well there is a "plausible" way to have Transporters-traversable Wormholes 🌌 Of course, that wouldn't be a Transporter per se but it's at least a more probable way to do it than this Matter/Energy/Quantum/Heisenberg Stuff 😅 The Iconian Gateway(s) seem to work like that plus it would also make sense needing to be not too far away from your Destination (for example in the Orbit of a planet) because you'd still need to know the surroundings before opening a wormhole-gate (safety-precautions). You also wouldn't need as much energy to use person-sized wormholes for transport than you'd need for bigger ones 🤔 Btw, even smaller micro-wormholes would be the only known plausible way to have FTL-Communications as far as i know, so yeah that'd be neat 😁
Transporters don't kill you. Transporters are based on the real scientific principle that matter and energy are the same thing in different forms as proven by Albert Einstein's famous equation. Matter is basically "frozen" light (light being a type of energy) and light is basically matter in motion. Transporters convert matter to energy, move the person/item to a target location, then convert the energy back to matter. Conceptually it's similar to taking ice and turning it into a liquid, moving it, then refreezing it, probably which craft I'm sure, but saying water is no longer water because it's not ice is false. Of course doing this in reality would be a complex task beyond our current understanding, if it's even possible, but to a human 500 years ago jets and TVs would seem like magic.
Surely it would be used as a weapon. Disassemble a person and leave them dissembled scattered in space. It would almost be like the Gadget Kirk had in Mirror Mirror. There are probably some other horrific ways of using this technology as a weapon.
Riker found ,after 1 transport, that his TOOL was 2" shorter and Picard was pleasantly surprised to find an extra 2" added to his TOOL after a emergency transport.Data said "it was a happy accident,,,for the captain,,,and Troy".
In 'lonely among us' Capt. Pickard is taken over by a sentient energy cloud and ultimately Beams off the Enterprise 'Energy only' his consciousness is beamed into the cloud. Data later Beams the consciousness back into a stored file of the captain without any side effects. Plot devices Ho!
Using Transporters as a weapon has not been explored enough as well as the countermeasures to that kind of thing. Such as pressing highly reactive compounds against Shields. Also a sublight warp field say around a probe, could be used to transport objects inside that warp field and then disengage the warp bubble causing a projectile to be moving half the speed of light at a Target
The way I have theorized how transporters work is by way of quantum conversion of the matter itself into energy that is out of phase with time/space. Meaning that your being isn't really "taken apart" but rather the matter that makes you up is taken out of phase of time/space at that point the atomic structure becomes like an imprint to that place in time/space. The beam creates a quantum area the same pattern as where the being currently is making the two areas the same place at the same time. The phased matter then merely get's directed to the new place in time/space and de-phases from it's quantum energy form and comes back into phase in the new area of space/time. This way you are technically still intact just in a different quantum phase. In simpler terms, it's like the door system in monsters inc except on the quantum level. Just a thought.
if Scotty saved his life staying in the pattern buffer by looping then anything is possible, even stasis is unneeded anymore and since in Australia they did transport gas from tube to tube for 1 meter distance, not alot is needed to achieve real life place to place teleportation.
You die... Even in Star Trek they die. But they will never be able to find it out, how could they? The rebuild you will think it survived, but you aren't there anymore.
Wonder why there aren´t medical teleporters, in many episodes there was signifiant interventions into persons (mixing dna, duplicating, reversing artificial aging), yes it happened as accident but it also prooved that those interventions are possible, also in these episodes it didn't take much time to figure out how use teleporter to fix something, so it cannot be so difficult.
My guess is they figured out how to bend space enough that it turns into a pocket universe, which would allow them to store an arbitrary amount of equipment "in" a portable device, so long as the device could maintain the connection to the pocket universe
So just occurred to me. Every time you are transported, you are killed, then recreated. Life where there was no life, a freshly created human existence. So doesn't that mean the ship is your mother?
they're not perfect in one episode the transporter takes Captain Kirk to the mirror universe in deep space nine the transporters failed and they had to put the crew in the hollow suite buffer
So, will your coverage on transporters include 31st century combadges which somehow do all the things "older" transports could do, bi-screen and go through shields just to name a few, all while dissembling/resembling themselves along with those using them?
If a transporter technically kills you when it takes you apart, but it reassembles you with the exact same matter you had before (i.e. it beams your matter to the destination, not use local matter to form a duplicate), in the exact same arrangement they were previously, does that technically count as resurrection?
It does pose a bit of an issue because any time someone died there would be the temptation to go into the transporter buffer memory and just produce them as they were last time they used the transporter. Any time you stepped into one you'd wonder if you were going to be duplicated in the future based off that moment.
1. Take a picture of platform 2. Take a picture of you standing on a platform 3. Throw some glitter onto platforms 4. Walk next door to second set 5. Throw some glitter 6. Take a picture of set 7. Take picture of you on set Transporters are awesome.
What about applications where some molecules getting scrambled is acceptable? Mining an ore vein a bit beyond normal transporter reach. Beaming out a section of power conduit from an enemy ship. Beaming in a chemical weapon.
The TR-116 rifle made by Starfleet, which fires slugs like a modern gun, will just ignore scrambling fields and whatnot when firing through walls. Makes sense, cuz if you get the atoms out of place in a high speed slug, you just get a deformed high speed slug, which is usually will have a similar effect in most cases. It wasn't widely used cuz it lacked a stun mode, and Starfleet likes their stun modes Also in TNG there was an experimental mining technique which pulled ore from a planet into orbit, possibly using some type of continuous-fire transporter beam, but don't quote me on that it's been a while since I've seen the episode, plus most of the episode focused on the droids that were semi alive. Also, I have a semi-supported head cannon that replicators from the 24th century forward basically just teleport atoms into the shape of whatever there replicating by using a synthetic transport pattern and whatever waste is available as the base matter. The limitations of creating a synthetic pattern would explain why some things are transportable but not replicatable, at least sorta, cuz apparently duplicating a transporter pattern is possible, but that would imply you could duplicate any object that could be transported by using the backup pattern the transporters make after the first transport... I suspect if transporters ever exist, they will probably move stuff around using small temporary wormholes which they quickly pass over whatevers being transported, as that would remove all the possible failure points of keeping track of patterns and signal integrity and whatnot. Either the wormhole is stable and in the right position or it isn't, so no mid-transport errors, probably
If consistency is what we desire, then we should completely ignore Discovery. As far as I am aware, there is no Michael Okuda or Rick Sternbach type figure providing technical consultations - striving for in-world consistency. Discovery writers and show runners seem more interested in emotions than any of this tricky world-building stuff.
Question: Why does the transporter operator alway have 3 “leavers/sliders” to move for transport to happen. What does each one do, why do all 3 need to be present, what if you only move one or two of them?
You CAN’T beam through the shields! Side note I did some back of the envelope calculations and I figured the power required to run a real life transporter would be greater than what we can achieve with contemporary power generation. That said I do think a warp core could be adequate, which makes a lot of sense since obviously that’s a federation ship’s primary power source. My question is how do we have transporters on the ground? Do we have warp cores at Starfleet in San Francisco? That’s never really explained.
Barclay was shown to be conscious during transport, when he was attacked by 'parasites'. It even showed his POV. Being conscious during transport is something alluded to by others in-universe as well. I remember someone mentioning that the transporter worked by shifting space around, comparible to a wormhole or warp, and that the deconstruction/reconstruction is to move you through that distortion. So that it really IS you who emerges on the other side. Dang, wish I could remember where I heard that, cuz it is certainly something more convoluted than I would be able to think of.
I forget which show it was exactly, maybe Enterprise, but I remember one character describe that they could feel standing at two places at the same time. Which would mean the transporting process happens so fast that there is little time for the subjects brain to full register what is fully happening.
@@MandalorV7 that also indicates a continued consciousness between sites, making it less of a murdermachine than the brundle-teleporter which explicitly does deconstruct you...
tl;dr: I don't agree (Star Trek) transporters totally disassemble and rebuild you in a way that introduces the existential concerns (Trek has been clear it's definitely you in and out). It is NOT like breaking apart a LEGO build and rebuilding it because if so, you simply have raw material (sub-atomic particles / LEGO bricks), and the exact previous locations of each brick / particle don't matter, and my LEGO instruction book won't degrade, and mistakes are near impossible, and I can lose any amount of bricks and replace with spares. Instead, I imagine the completed LEGO build has a ton of strings connecting each brick to every other brick it MUST connect to, and transporters pull the build apart, keep the strings intact (strong, weak, or undiscovered sci-fi force), but bunch them all up in the matter stream, then reform everything by putting everything back in its place, sustaining and preserving all functions and thus consciousness; limited edits are possible, but breaking too many strings means you'd no longer build the original, which would be a concern in the brain. Maybe I'm putting too much weight on the Barclay episode (I feel this was seen elsewhere, though), but a lot of how transporters are shown and how people talk about them make me think they don't fully "disassemble" you in the scary way one might imagine. All particles retain some cohesion with each other which is why you're conscious through most of the process and the trip. Only at some point are you not conscious but I always saw it as more like a stasis. I don't remember anyone saying they black out, but limited movement has been possible (Barclay grabbing someone is the most extreme), people are aware of "rough" transports, etc. The ACB freezing people was - in real world - likely just about keeping people still to make the transport effect, so once that tech improved, we can also assume Trek tech improved to not need to freeze people. I'm sure there are inconsistencies depicted though I'd be willing to chalk that up to real world budget, again, and people will naturally want to stand still anyway. Even pattern degradation feels like it could involve that lack of cohesion. After all, if you truly disassembled things and people to subatomic particles (ie., lets assume THE single most fundamental "base material" of the universe), then pattern degradation and transporter failures make no sense. As long as you have the data stored on a computer somewhere and you have all the raw material, you can rebuild the thing without caring for where exactly each part was originally. Every time I destroy and rebuild a LEGO set, I have no care to remember exactly which brick went where. I just need the same types to go into the right places, following the instructions, which can't after degrade in 4 minutes. This does sound like potentially killing and making a new person out of your parts. It would technically be a Frankenstein's monster where subatomic particles were all rearranged differently than the original.
Here is the real truth about how transporters work. Every time you step in one you are instantly killed and replaced with an exact duplicate. The real Kirk and Spock died the first time they stepped in a transporter, after that they were all just recreations.
Even as a kid I wondered why it is a ship can fire phasers and photon torpedoes through its shields but no one could transport through. As a cranky old fart now I have to wonder why no one has scanned an enemy torpedo for the shield frequencies being used.
Not only “why not just beam the bad guys/crew away?” But also what’s to stop an adversary from beaming away sections of hull? Once the shields are down, you could weaponize the transporter and turn a ship into Swiss cheese.
Terrific video! And thank you for effectively articulating why I DON'T think "Transporters kill you"! (i.e. The "you die in one location & a copy of you is created in a different location" argument.) !) Physical Matter YOU at Location A gets converted to Energy YOU. 2) Energy YOU gets transmitted via particle beam to Location B. 3) Energy YOU get reconstituted back into Matter YOU at Location B. It is ALWAYS still "You". (at least that has always been MY feeling on the subject)
Yes. It was a specific cycle of the sensor, wich required a opening in the shields. O'brien knew it and thus knew the shield frequency for that very short window.
How does the transporter know the exact location and identity of each atom when it disassembles and reassembles the individual without breaking the hisenberg uncertainty principle?
I prefer Robotech's space folding to Star Trek's teleport. I am sorry Trekkers, I like breathing and staying in planer-astal sync with my human meat sack! Also, Star Trek never went Gundam/Mech/etc so well. Let's just say.... I believe the Enterprise is as big as an Arms Fort....vs....A next....Yea, we all know how an Arms Fort handled against an Elite Next pilot in Armored Core. Check please, I think this Trekker is done.
1. I would work on writing out the Transporter because it is literally too complicated and too problematic to ever actually be, considered by any competent civilization, and its organizations, any kind of SAFE. To be honest my own Star Trek Fan Universe does away withe Transporter for a number of practical reasons, some to follow... 2. While obviously the writers not giving a flip or any who do losing their jobs or privileges for ever bringing it up, Transporters are too easy to interfere with or even make absolutely unsafe. Why no one has even just used specifically made Transporter weapons, designed to prevent transport and/or kill anyone who does. is beyond me. It would be no big thing for a Capital ship to irradiate the area with the interference field that, on a fundamental level, prevents the Transporter from being safely used. Trying o get through or around the fields only makes things worse. You are literally making it impossible to pass something as delicate as a Transporter beam through and area of space. Some fancy techno-babble is NOT going to beat that. Seriously, the Navigational shields, those things that make simple space flight at even minor relativistic speeds safe, are enough to stop a Transporter beam. Charged hull plating does the same thing. Ship to ship transport has to be SO COMPLETELY CONSENSUAL, that is IMPOSSIBLE to beam in or out uninvited, unannounced, and unplanned. 3. Too many natural phenomena far too easily futz with Transporter beams. A simple electrical storm, a local CEM, solar flare, the ambient radiation of the planet (How do they transport so close to Saturn or Jupiter?). The Transporter is literally the definition of a Sunny Day Technology. It only ever actually works safely in optimal, or "sunny day", conditions. 4. Star Trek TV and Cinema Productions now has Shuttles and Runabouts that are so robust now, and special effects are more than cheap enough, to use Shuttles and Runabouts to get people to and from a planet easily and reliably. It does not seem as advanced/magical but it makes more sense and is more realistic/believable that the Transporter beam. 5. Transporters are Suicide Booths and creeping faults in the transporter process results in "Transporter Psychosis", and mental disorder that easily could be epidemic, if not for "just because" writing, but is severe and frequent enough to actually call for an in-canon ban on all NON-EMERGENCY Transporter use by living beings. 6. Transporting through shields, leaving or entering is BS! This just another big and stupid hole in Star Trek logic.
"With enough force to punch through plot shields"
"look chief… all I'm asking is you adjust the pattern to lose about 10 kilos of fat around the midsection, it's not like I'm asking you to make me younger…"
...although now that I think about it, a transporter could probably do that.
@@d.b.4671 Not only can it, it was actually done in the 2nd season of Star Trek: TNG. I forget the episode name, but in the one with the genetically modified children that created the 'aging virus' which infected Pulaski.
Possibly an alternative for male enhancement but I'm sure "humanity has progress beyond that sort of thing".
Man I'd pay for that.
@@RPhillip Yep, that episode *Unnatural Selection* (where the Federation ban on genetic engineering of Humans apparently had a exemption clause - _continuity contradictions in Trek?_ … never!) and the ridiculous episode *Little Rascals* (where Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro become children due to a transporter accident) were my inspiration.
And of course Little Rascals ends with the new tweened characters becoming adults again, instead of enjoying the opportunity of having all those extra years added to their lifespan - just have 6 years of growning (okay, longer for Guinan) and then they are a healthy mature teen/young adult… with decades of experience behind them.
Still it did lead to some great child Picard memes.
Transporters! Helping Roddenberry deal with pesky little budgeting concerns (and being a handily abused plot device) since 1965!
It is true that Transporter Special effects cost a lot less money than landing a Star Ship on a planet special effects, so it was a budget decision to do Transporters.
@@davidgrisez Roddenberry 'invented' the Transporter concept because they couldn't pay to make a Shuttlecraft mock-up for the pilot :D
Hes allowed to be lazy seeing that he considered predicting the cell phone correctly
Do you think this way while enjoying ANY fiction?
It may have started as a quick plot device to avoided budgeting for a shuttle landing, but they become much more as a staple of the entire universe.
My understanding is that confinement beams can be automatically activated and deactivated (as needed) by inconsistent scriptwriters.
Well it does make some in universe sense. Imagine you might need to bean someone out who is running for their lives. Staying still long enough for the transporter to lock onto them might actually risk them getting captured or killed.
I think the confinement beam adds an opposite pressure equal to the amount being applied to stop movement. This would explain the ability to maintain momentum after it is released. Not that it actually stops it.
@@MandalorV7 is beaning someone out like flicking a bean?
@@MandalorV7 staying still relative to what, though? The surface of the planet or the orbiting space craft? 😁
This is Star Trek. Every problem can be solved by either a) emitting a beam of NonExistiton Particles or b) reversing the polarity of the deflector dish. Or sometimes c) both. 😂🖖
Ah yes, the "disassemble me and create quantum duplicate me in a different place" machine. I'm with Bones on this one, I'll stick to shuttles.
Until the movies, Bones used to beam down all the time
Are we the same exact beings we were at birth or from last night, quantum permanence is silly if you start to think about it..
For various reasons, it's clear there's something about the transporter process in Star Trek that maintains one's consciousness etc. through the whole thing, rather than just making a duplicate (at least in most situations), like how Barclay is shown to be continually conscious through the whole thing in one episode. For another example, to quote doctorwhom1 elsewhere in the comment section:
"More evidence that transporters probably aren't suicide booths would be that telepaths are fine with them. If they really just killed and reassembled people then purely psychic entities (Spock's katra for example) would be ripped away from whatever's being transported."
"One to beam down."
The transporter malfunctions. Again.
"Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good..."
@@Jeddostotle7 Clearly, they beam the soul along with the body. It's part of the energy pattern of consciousness. (Also, katras and souls are the same thing. I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to be a general consensus.)
"Going through a transmat beam is unpleasantly like being drunk...."
"What's so bad about that?"
"go ask a glass of water....."
"I'll never be cruel to a gin and tonic again."
Do we need to put a paper bag on our heads?
That is hyperspace.
@@jamesbutters6115 Yes, if you like. It won't help, though.
@@daviniarobbins9298 But it becomes "Hyper-vomit" apparently...
"Soo, The transporter will take a series of really accurate pictures of me. Put me through a blender, mincing me into a very fine slurry, THEN dump the sludge at the target site and use that to assemble me? "
"Yes sir"
"I'll take the shuttle"
"Is that you Dr McCoy?!" LOL
kinda what Archer's Enterprise thought of it :P used in absolute dire situation in first, or even second season.
the transporter doesn't kill you because Barclay was able to grab things in the matter stream, meaning he is aware he can see and he can even move to interact with objects, thus alive.
"what we got back didn't live long, fortunately" ~best summary of the risks of the Transporter.
"It turned inside out!"
"And it exploded."
@@richardleeskinneriii9640 Now, now- THAT wasn't actually Star Trek... ;)
Galaxy quest
A particularly nihilistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with transporters, because "persistent consciousness is a lie anyway".
So I guess most people in Trek have come to terms with that.
I mean, who's to say that your "you" consciousness doesn't die every time you go to sleep, and everything you remember is just your brain filling the blanks when your next consciousness steps in as you "wake up"?
How's that for some nightmare fuel?
@@moriskurth628 in that case I'm probably the longest person alive on earth rn
@@moriskurth628 and time is perceived buy the individual and is not a universal constant so the process you speak of could sit beyond the individual's concept of time then you don't need sleep to kill the consciousness it could happen in the bink of an eye, or it could happen slap bang in-between what the individual perceives to be a continuous consciousness and the moment one consciousness takes over from the other sits in an increment of time that is inconceivable to the individual making the change from one consciousness to the other seemless.
Apparently you are conscious, in one show they were talking during transport and the conversation continued through materialisation. So I wonder how Scotty passed the time while locked in a pattern buffer for so many years.
@@moriskurth628 science is to say, you dont stop existing when you sleep.
I am surprised that moving target transportation was mentioned but the Heisenberg compensator was omitted.
I imagine that the Heisenberg Compensators are a subcomponent - certainly an important one, but they are part of one of the larger systems that enables it to perform its overall function, rather than a discrete part of the process. Probably part of the process that scans and saves the quantum image, since said image would otherwise have a 'fuzzy' resolution that would not be safe for use.
Sort of like how, for an exotic engine, you might need to engineer special bearings for its turbine-equivalents; those bearings are very important, in that they allow the component they're part of to function, but you wouldn't necessarily call attention to them in an overview of the engine's standard cycle, but you very much would talk about how the dang things keep failing and need replacing, or realigning, or etc if they were a common source of fault (i.e., brought up in the relevant episode as an issue)
I was also really surprised he didn't mention the Heisenberg Compensator, it was one of the main trivia things I knew about the transporter. Maybe he'll mention it in a later video, I only discovered this channel today :S
Surprised that the fact it's nothing more than a clever edit as none of this actually exists - hasn't been mentioned yet... 🤣
The reason so many species develop transporters is because they all go through a stage in _SciFi TV series production_ when showing shuttles conveying main characters from PlanetSide to the Hero ship would take too much of the budget and episode time.
The region around the Kazon in the Delta Quadrant ironically had a hard science SciFi history, their first major hit was based on *the Expanse.*
A few series were good about it without going full hard sci fi: Dark matter is a good one.
I doubt the kazon are smart enough for the expanse
@@theomnissiah-9120 Kazon as belter fanboys who don't understand how belter society would work is actually pretty on point, IMO.
that's the same reason for shields - to avoid showing the ship in repair dock all the time
Beaming through shields is a simple matter when you know the shield frequency, and adjust the matter stream to match .
Geordi's visor..lol
Or creating some kind of interference, but knowing the shield frequency should do it. That's hard though especially in post-Borg world where most use dynamic frequencies(they change rapidly). Of course, overpowering the deflector array also works, I believe that's how Borg used to just beam to wherever they wanted.
Is it..?? If it's "so eaay" why haven't we even got energy shields yet..?? 🤣
IIRC, O’Brien used the shield rotation frequency to synchronize transport the the point where the shield would allow a transporter beam through. The rotation frequency is needed so the shield don’t block all energy simultaneously…preventing weapons from firing or being able to scan outside the shields.
Matter Stream can be stored for 420 seconds... then you gotta exhale, bro.
Quantum death machines as they have been called elsewhere.
Or silent holocaust machines.
In STD they have all this and more built into a small metal... I can't find a word. How were they called?
Ah, yes, the MICRO HOLOCAUSTERS 9000
When you think about transporters, physics gets unhappy
A lot of things get very unhappy like me. What to be
Transporters definitely handle momentum - otherwise everyone beaming down to Starfleet Academy from orbit would find themselves arriving in the Transporter Room at Mach 20.
and there's also that time they beamed a probe going at warp 9 into the enterprise
It's basically magic.
"A wizard did it." - Lucy Lawless in The Simpsons
The way i see the "does the transporter kill you" issue is basically the reverse of the common argument. Most people will argue that, if you were to enter a transporter, you would die and the transporter would generate a new version of you on the other side. But consider this; if you were a star fleet officer that used transporters every day of your life, you would never recall or experience a time that you entered a transporter and your cognisance was totally snuffed out. To you, ever time you entered a transporter, you always popped back out still being you.
Indeed, you still have all your memories, skills... everything that makes you you is still intact. Doesn't make it any less disconcerting to learn you get broken down to the quantum level, though. The time machine in Michael Crichton's _Timeline_ is worse, though, since it explicitly is described as breaking down the original body, and creating an exact duplicate at the destination point.
I mean, assuming that the stream of consciousness is the same as a regular ol' internet data stream actually makes the question moot. Why wouldn't we be able to handle breaks in the stream when we can just pause and buffer it?
Except that temporal beings die every second as their consciousness progresses to the next second.
Your living mass is in constant flux. You may remember being a child, but that 2ft being no longer exists. Baby you is effectively dead.
So really, in the grand scheme of life, having your matter broken down to the quantum level and reassembled is no different.
Certainly it brings to question the plausibility of an afterlife. But what happened to 2year old you? Not much difference.
@@Humaricslastcall
The internet is two machines communicating with one another. When communication is reinstated the machines can come to a consensus where the other left off.
A transporter is a single machine reading data from a source that has been obliterated.
@@thomasreedy4751 There's also the fact that cells in your body are dying and being replaced constantly. I forget the actual math behind it, but I think it's fair to say that almost all of the cells in your body have been replaced by the time you become an adult; so, thinking of yourself as being a completely different person from when you were a child might be more accurate than you'd think.
This has to be the most in depth analysis of a transporter system I've ever seen. Great job. I've heard a lot of these phrases said on the shows so many times and never put much thought into it. Figured it was just polt devices and science fiction jargon. Never realized how intricate these premises were.
Another video i clicked on which i expected to be old and just saw the date is 2021
Good job!
In the TNG episode The Wounded it's explained that some ships use a shield design where there is a fraction of a second gap in shield coverage every 5-6 minutes, and that with careful timing, and at high risk, you can get through.
Kinda reminds me of how the Falcon in The Force Awakens miraculously timed their approach to Starkiller at faster than light speeds to take advantage of the fraction or a second refresh rate of the base’s energy shielding. Did I just use a Star Trek topic as a springboard into a point about Star Wars? Yes and I feel great!
We were transported to a new year. Happy New Year, everybody.
@Tesla-Effect Year of Hell, Part 2
@@hawkeye5955 Who's gonna tell Janeway-
“If you have to take me apart to get me there, I don’t want to go!” Douglas Adams
These are basically suicide booths, evidenced by the fact that we got a duplicate Riker once. Basically they make a clone of you in a new location, and to avoid the inconvenience of having you at your present location they kill you.
In FTL it is no problem beaming through shields, unless you are encountering Zoltan spacecraft.
Zoltan shield bypass solve problem.
[SPOILERS]
I feel like this is a direct response to the EC beaming onto the bridge of Disco with their shields up still.
Please, please Rick, call the next video: transporters gone wild.
Happy new year, and I can’t believe you managed to get through this whole video without mentioning Heisenberg compensators. I also can’t believe that Apple dictation managed to correctly spell Heisenberg compensators.
Somebody with better skills than I needs to create a schematic of the Heisenberg Compensator.... And you know damn well who needs to be in that pic!
Things that often break on Starfleet vessels: Holodecks, transporters, consoles, warp cores, rock containment spaces within walls and ceilings.
P.S. with how often Starfleet vessels explode from any damage I refer to them as "Space Pintos". I might be showing my age a bit with that too.
If I remember correctly, knowing a shield's frequency does allow transporters to bypass them.
And yet there have been numerous times of “we’d use the transporter but we can’t drop our shields.
@@the_kraken6549 Yeeep, besides if the Shield Frequency is known, you can just shoot through them. Like in Voyager and Star Trek Generations.
I'm definitely looking forwards to the follow-up video. But since when is the ACB meant to freeze a transport subject? I know in Ent and TOS it did, Discovery doesn't but that's a newer ship, and in TNG that super soldier (Roga Danar or something?) screwed up a transport by sorta karate chopping his way out of the ACB.
"Beaming to moving targets is harder".
So... literally everything in space?
Well, since the equivalence principle says everyone can be right if they consider themselves to be stationary, not everything, as it still includes anything with displacement 0 on their own inertial frame (such as the ship, or a ship that's following in the same warp factor)
@@DrVictorVasconcelos I am about 30 billion braincells short of being able to understand this
I assume they mean under acceleration or with an unpredictable trajectory.
That's it, I'm buying a Danube class runabout. No more scrambling my molecules.
Make sure it’s the “Rio Grande;” she lasted all 7 seasons.
The perfect size for a bachelor(ette) to fly around space on their own, like a future version of getting a houseboat, or an RV.
I think it is really cool that we can get so many facts from a science fiction show! That why I love Star Trek! Also happy new year! 🎆
I appreciate your work and wanted to wish you a Happy New Year!
I remember ST:Enterprise had a moment of crew contemplating the existential implications of tech that was new to them. A small mention even of some civilians believing that whoever arrives via a transporter is just a copy that lacks a soul. So yeah, transporters create undead. Prove me wrong. 😄
Actually that's not how it works in science. you postulated a result, and thus it's your responsiblity to prove it TRUE first.
Otherwise we can go into 'I can say whatever I want to be true cuz you need to prove it to be false' realm of nutty-folk :p
[CGP Grey has entered the chat...]
They should've just gone with Hitchhiker's "Law of Indeterminacy."
I believe the most feasible way of transporting one place to another is through "Inter-Dimensional". #Gene Roddenberry Earth final Conflict
I understand how pad to pad works, but it really shouldn't work pad to site or site to site, I prefer the ring platform from stargate. Thro there was the asgard beam technology that seemed wishful thinking.
Imagine taking a shower and someone transport you in to the middle of a city!
Good video! Still I'm confused about a few things. So are you turned into energy (photons) or quarks? The quark field you mentioned (it's not listed on memory alpha so I don't know where you got that from) seems to imply the latter but the show makes it explicit its the former. How can you transport through solid matter (like into another ship through its super dense hull or into a cave miles below the ground)? How can a personal transporter work if it dematerializes its own computer in order to beam itself to the destination, which would prevent itself from knowing how to reassemble itself? Also, why not just use a tractor beam with air and also inertial dampeners in the beam to move people from place to place, why bother with dematerialization? It seems unnecessarily dangerous.
I think it's a sort of quantum entanglement related thing, and it's just easier to transport energy rather than matter ith it. :P
Id "accidently" transport everybody naked, if I was the transporter dude.
Transporter room to transporter room beaming makes a lot more sense than say, transporter room to random area or random area to random area beaming.
This approach is both safer and has longer range, so it is preferred whenever possible. All you need to do is "Hand over" or receive the pattern, other side does the rest.
It does not protect you from subterfuge by the other side however (See "Data's Day").
@@christopherg2347 It's the transporter that scans, broadcasts you, and disassembles /rebuilds you.
Is this why replicators work instead of getting a pattern from someone standing on transporter, the pattern come for the computer instead?
"But, the animal is inside out..."
And it exploded
I don't believe the person being transported is in fact disassembled. Quite simply, if this were true Barclay would not remain conscious during transport. More, given how many people use transporters on a regular basis (surely in their trillions at the very least) it seems impossible beyond doubt the vast majority would use the things IF they knew they would be killed than duplicated.
Hence I think the device is more precisely described by its name--it transports people as a whole rather than piece by piece. This is also why Picard was not copied in the first season of PICARD but actually moved.
We dont really understand how because the science is too advanced. Consider. ENT is taking place roughly 200 years from now. Now imagine someone in 2021 trying to explain to a fairly ordinary college graduate in 1821 how an MRI works. Or a hydrogen bomb. Recombinant DNA therapy. Stealth technology. Radio telescopes. An x-ray machine. Now imagine that same college graduate trying to figure out how any of those work by watching a tv show in which these are regularly mentioned.
I guess you can also beam through shields if you know the shield frequency.
Until that episode that deals with Barclay's transporter fears, there really was a genuine reason for doubt about transporters killing you and then assembling another you. BTW, weren't transporters also somehow sub-space based? It's been ages since i consulted the lore, and much of what i was once fluent it, is now forgotten!
Hi Rick and happy new year to you!
Great vid and very thoughtful.
I wondered about the dodgy stuff Voyager would do keeping people in suspension in eps like Counterpoint but perhaps you'll touch on it next week. Looking forward to it.
(Hope the DR Who special was a treat - I'm in Oz so today we finally have it).
As informatician of 16 years of experience and 20 years or above, probably above hehe, Fan of Star Trek, I must say, your level of understanding of that transportation technology is astoundingly shown very easy to understand. You must have noticed, that in the Manual there is a set of safety protocols in place and alot of programming supported by A.I. and quantum computing, I think in TNG era. The Manual of Okuda is HUGE and with bit of my help, you could even build transporter some day. Anyway, even for me is alot of fun and mystery.
Kylie Desire
Here's an interesting thought. If shields are supposed to prevent all forms of energy from getting past it, then how can communications work with the shields up?
Plot device?
Visible light gets through it just fine too.
A lot of people (myself included) have been on a quarantine Star Trek binge. First time watching for me, gone through all of TNG and now on Voyager. Thanks for this explainer, I had most of it figured out but there was some useful info and visualisations in this
4:50 yes, I was indeed thinking that😆
Well, there's the TNG episode "Lonely Among Us" where Picard is beamed into a cloud as pure energy. So apparently the energy is preserved. They even managed to retrieve this energy from the computers, as apparently he was still able to do stuff in pure energy form, and recreate him. But he didn't remember anything, since the pattern they used was from before the beam-out so the memory connections weren't present.
This part of the episode is so completely nonsensical and handwavy, but well, it's fiction.
Well there is a "plausible" way to have Transporters-traversable Wormholes 🌌
Of course, that wouldn't be a Transporter per se but it's at least a more probable way to do it than this Matter/Energy/Quantum/Heisenberg Stuff 😅
The Iconian Gateway(s) seem to work like that plus it would also make sense needing to be not too far away from your Destination (for example in the Orbit of a planet) because you'd still need to know the surroundings before opening a wormhole-gate (safety-precautions).
You also wouldn't need as much energy to use person-sized wormholes for transport than you'd need for bigger ones 🤔
Btw, even smaller micro-wormholes would be the only known plausible way to have FTL-Communications as far as i know, so yeah that'd be neat 😁
Transporters don't kill you. Transporters are based on the real scientific principle that matter and energy are the same thing in different forms as proven by Albert Einstein's famous equation. Matter is basically "frozen" light (light being a type of energy) and light is basically matter in motion. Transporters convert matter to energy, move the person/item to a target location, then convert the energy back to matter. Conceptually it's similar to taking ice and turning it into a liquid, moving it, then refreezing it, probably which craft I'm sure, but saying water is no longer water because it's not ice is false.
Of course doing this in reality would be a complex task beyond our current understanding, if it's even possible, but to a human 500 years ago jets and TVs would seem like magic.
Surely it would be used as a weapon. Disassemble a person and leave them dissembled scattered in space.
It would almost be like the Gadget Kirk had in Mirror Mirror.
There are probably some other horrific ways of using this technology as a weapon.
Riker found ,after 1 transport, that his TOOL was 2" shorter and Picard was pleasantly surprised to find an extra 2" added to his TOOL after a emergency transport.Data said "it was a happy accident,,,for the captain,,,and Troy".
Why not just be fun like 40k and telyport through space, time and HELL? Sounds fun and safe, don't it? :)
In 'lonely among us' Capt. Pickard is taken over by a sentient energy cloud and ultimately Beams off the Enterprise 'Energy only' his consciousness is beamed into the cloud. Data later Beams the consciousness back into a stored file of the captain without any side effects. Plot devices Ho!
Using Transporters as a weapon has not been explored enough as well as the countermeasures to that kind of thing. Such as pressing highly reactive compounds against Shields. Also a sublight warp field say around a probe, could be used to transport objects inside that warp field and then disengage the warp bubble causing a projectile to be moving half the speed of light at a Target
I think it's also important to discuss the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, and how Star Trek use the Heisenberg compensator to overcome this problem
The way I have theorized how transporters work is by way of quantum conversion of the matter itself into energy that is out of phase with time/space. Meaning that your being isn't really "taken apart" but rather the matter that makes you up is taken out of phase of time/space at that point the atomic structure becomes like an imprint to that place in time/space. The beam creates a quantum area the same pattern as where the being currently is making the two areas the same place at the same time. The phased matter then merely get's directed to the new place in time/space and de-phases from it's quantum energy form and comes back into phase in the new area of space/time. This way you are technically still intact just in a different quantum phase. In simpler terms, it's like the door system in monsters inc except on the quantum level. Just a thought.
They lost me when the need for a pad at the receiving end was eliminated. Thankfully, I can suspend by belief in reality to enjoy the show.
if Scotty saved his life staying in the pattern buffer by looping then anything is possible, even stasis is unneeded anymore and since in Australia they did transport gas from tube to tube for 1 meter distance, not alot is needed to achieve real life place to place teleportation.
You die...
Even in Star Trek they die.
But they will never be able to find it out, how could they?
The rebuild you will think it survived, but you aren't there anymore.
Transporters, Possibly an alternative for male enhancement but I'm sure "humanity has progress beyond that sort of thing".
Wonder why there aren´t medical teleporters, in many episodes there was signifiant interventions into persons (mixing dna, duplicating, reversing artificial aging), yes it happened as accident but it also prooved that those interventions are possible, also in these episodes it didn't take much time to figure out how use teleporter to fix something, so it cannot be so difficult.
"transporterphobe" yes, that'd be me :D
When Rick said you can lock on to the calcium in bones and now I have the nightmarish image of someone having their bones beamed out. Just the bones.
Ever since they introduced transporter tags, I always thought it would be great if they just gave officers tag guns to beam enemies right to the brig
Or just have the transporters "forget" to reassemble them. Seems like a pretty powerful weapon.
@@BoopSnoot that's some Section 31 thinking there... I like it. "Transport accidents" when capturing enemies...
Can you explain the concept of portable trans-warp beaming devices?!
Or should we stay away from the alternate star trek timeline?
In the Kelvin timeline they stopped trying to make their tech sound probable. So why care?
Super micronization on a quantum scale? They got programmable matter etc...
My guess is they figured out how to bend space enough that it turns into a pocket universe, which would allow them to store an arbitrary amount of equipment "in" a portable device, so long as the device could maintain the connection to the pocket universe
So just occurred to me. Every time you are transported, you are killed, then recreated. Life where there was no life, a freshly created human existence.
So doesn't that mean the ship is your mother?
The ship is your mother *and* your killer.
@@happyslapsgiving5421 Kinky, I like it. :D
I suspect real transporters would work via quantum entanglement.
It make a digital copy of you, disintegrates you, then creates a physical copy at a different location.
they're not perfect in one episode the transporter takes Captain Kirk to the mirror universe in deep space nine the transporters failed and they had to put the crew in the hollow suite buffer
So, will your coverage on transporters include 31st century combadges which somehow do all the things "older" transports could do, bi-screen and go through shields just to name a few, all while dissembling/resembling themselves along with those using them?
Toilets have site to site transporters that beam human waste from inside the body directly to replicators to use.
If a transporter technically kills you when it takes you apart, but it reassembles you with the exact same matter you had before (i.e. it beams your matter to the destination, not use local matter to form a duplicate), in the exact same arrangement they were previously, does that technically count as resurrection?
It does pose a bit of an issue because any time someone died there would be the temptation to go into the transporter buffer memory and just produce them as they were last time they used the transporter. Any time you stepped into one you'd wonder if you were going to be duplicated in the future based off that moment.
1. Take a picture of platform
2. Take a picture of you standing on a platform
3. Throw some glitter onto platforms
4. Walk next door to second set
5. Throw some glitter
6. Take a picture of set
7. Take picture of you on set
Transporters are awesome.
😆
Hope you touch on the Heisenberg compensator :)
What about applications where some molecules getting scrambled is acceptable? Mining an ore vein a bit beyond normal transporter reach. Beaming out a section of power conduit from an enemy ship. Beaming in a chemical weapon.
The TR-116 rifle made by Starfleet, which fires slugs like a modern gun, will just ignore scrambling fields and whatnot when firing through walls. Makes sense, cuz if you get the atoms out of place in a high speed slug, you just get a deformed high speed slug, which is usually will have a similar effect in most cases. It wasn't widely used cuz it lacked a stun mode, and Starfleet likes their stun modes
Also in TNG there was an experimental mining technique which pulled ore from a planet into orbit, possibly using some type of continuous-fire transporter beam, but don't quote me on that it's been a while since I've seen the episode, plus most of the episode focused on the droids that were semi alive.
Also, I have a semi-supported head cannon that replicators from the 24th century forward basically just teleport atoms into the shape of whatever there replicating by using a synthetic transport pattern and whatever waste is available as the base matter. The limitations of creating a synthetic pattern would explain why some things are transportable but not replicatable, at least sorta, cuz apparently duplicating a transporter pattern is possible, but that would imply you could duplicate any object that could be transported by using the backup pattern the transporters make after the first transport...
I suspect if transporters ever exist, they will probably move stuff around using small temporary wormholes which they quickly pass over whatevers being transported, as that would remove all the possible failure points of keeping track of patterns and signal integrity and whatnot. Either the wormhole is stable and in the right position or it isn't, so no mid-transport errors, probably
If consistency is what we desire, then we should completely ignore Discovery. As far as I am aware, there is no Michael Okuda or Rick Sternbach type figure providing technical consultations - striving for in-world consistency. Discovery writers and show runners seem more interested in emotions than any of this tricky world-building stuff.
I still don’t know why they didn’t bring the okudas on for the new shows unless they’re working on the Orville as well.
@@Atlas_System01 the orwell tv show is s great star trek show
The only thing in Star Trek that has never failed is Red Alert. What would happen if that failed?
They'd simply replace the faulty bulb.
@@thefurrybastard1964 but do I have to? I just changed it yesterday when we went to yellow alert. 😂 clearly you’ve seen Red Dwarf.
@@FriendlyNeighborhoodNitpicker It's that easy to spot?
Question:
Why does the transporter operator alway have 3 “leavers/sliders” to move for transport to happen. What does each one do, why do all 3 need to be present, what if you only move one or two of them?
Turn on, transport, dump and matter on standby
(I don't actually know)
Thanks for using the Nebula class ship in the video...one of my favorite ships and first Eagle Moss model I bought
You CAN’T beam through the shields! Side note I did some back of the envelope calculations and I figured the power required to run a real life transporter would be greater than what we can achieve with contemporary power generation. That said I do think a warp core could be adequate, which makes a lot of sense since obviously that’s a federation ship’s primary power source. My question is how do we have transporters on the ground? Do we have warp cores at Starfleet in San Francisco? That’s never really explained.
Barclay was shown to be conscious during transport, when he was attacked by 'parasites'. It even showed his POV. Being conscious during transport is something alluded to by others in-universe as well.
I remember someone mentioning that the transporter worked by shifting space around, comparible to a wormhole or warp, and that the deconstruction/reconstruction is to move you through that distortion. So that it really IS you who emerges on the other side.
Dang, wish I could remember where I heard that, cuz it is certainly something more convoluted than I would be able to think of.
I forget which show it was exactly, maybe Enterprise, but I remember one character describe that they could feel standing at two places at the same time. Which would mean the transporting process happens so fast that there is little time for the subjects brain to full register what is fully happening.
@@MandalorV7 that also indicates a continued consciousness between sites, making it less of a murdermachine than the brundle-teleporter which explicitly does deconstruct you...
tl;dr: I don't agree (Star Trek) transporters totally disassemble and rebuild you in a way that introduces the existential concerns (Trek has been clear it's definitely you in and out). It is NOT like breaking apart a LEGO build and rebuilding it because if so, you simply have raw material (sub-atomic particles / LEGO bricks), and the exact previous locations of each brick / particle don't matter, and my LEGO instruction book won't degrade, and mistakes are near impossible, and I can lose any amount of bricks and replace with spares. Instead, I imagine the completed LEGO build has a ton of strings connecting each brick to every other brick it MUST connect to, and transporters pull the build apart, keep the strings intact (strong, weak, or undiscovered sci-fi force), but bunch them all up in the matter stream, then reform everything by putting everything back in its place, sustaining and preserving all functions and thus consciousness; limited edits are possible, but breaking too many strings means you'd no longer build the original, which would be a concern in the brain.
Maybe I'm putting too much weight on the Barclay episode (I feel this was seen elsewhere, though), but a lot of how transporters are shown and how people talk about them make me think they don't fully "disassemble" you in the scary way one might imagine. All particles retain some cohesion with each other which is why you're conscious through most of the process and the trip. Only at some point are you not conscious but I always saw it as more like a stasis. I don't remember anyone saying they black out, but limited movement has been possible (Barclay grabbing someone is the most extreme), people are aware of "rough" transports, etc. The ACB freezing people was - in real world - likely just about keeping people still to make the transport effect, so once that tech improved, we can also assume Trek tech improved to not need to freeze people. I'm sure there are inconsistencies depicted though I'd be willing to chalk that up to real world budget, again, and people will naturally want to stand still anyway. Even pattern degradation feels like it could involve that lack of cohesion.
After all, if you truly disassembled things and people to subatomic particles (ie., lets assume THE single most fundamental "base material" of the universe), then pattern degradation and transporter failures make no sense. As long as you have the data stored on a computer somewhere and you have all the raw material, you can rebuild the thing without caring for where exactly each part was originally. Every time I destroy and rebuild a LEGO set, I have no care to remember exactly which brick went where. I just need the same types to go into the right places, following the instructions, which can't after degrade in 4 minutes. This does sound like potentially killing and making a new person out of your parts. It would technically be a Frankenstein's monster where subatomic particles were all rearranged differently than the original.
Congratulations on 100k!
Here is the real truth about how transporters work.
Every time you step in one you are instantly killed and replaced with an exact duplicate.
The real Kirk and Spock died the first time they stepped in a transporter, after that they were all just recreations.
We all know that transporters were invented by the R&D department at Federation Express...when it absolutely, positively needs to get there on time!
New Year, New Certifiably Ingame.
Even as a kid I wondered why it is a ship can fire phasers and photon torpedoes through its shields but no one could transport through. As a cranky old fart now I have to wonder why no one has scanned an enemy torpedo for the shield frequencies being used.
Not only “why not just beam the bad guys/crew away?” But also what’s to stop an adversary from beaming away sections of hull? Once the shields are down, you could weaponize the transporter and turn a ship into Swiss cheese.
Terrific video!
And thank you for effectively articulating why I DON'T think "Transporters kill you"! (i.e. The "you die in one location & a copy of you is created in a different location" argument.)
!) Physical Matter YOU at Location A gets converted to Energy YOU.
2) Energy YOU gets transmitted via particle beam to Location B.
3) Energy YOU get reconstituted back into Matter YOU at Location B.
It is ALWAYS still "You". (at least that has always been MY feeling on the subject)
O'Brien was able to beam through shields of the Phoenix (episode The Wounded). I believe it was in between the refresh cycle.
And he also beamed through the original Enterprise's shield cycle
Yes. It was a specific cycle of the sensor, wich required a opening in the shields. O'brien knew it and thus knew the shield frequency for that very short window.
How does the transporter know the exact location and identity of each atom when it disassembles and reassembles the individual without breaking the hisenberg uncertainty principle?
I prefer Robotech's space folding to Star Trek's teleport. I am sorry Trekkers, I like breathing and staying in planer-astal sync with my human meat sack! Also, Star Trek never went Gundam/Mech/etc so well. Let's just say.... I believe the Enterprise is as big as an Arms Fort....vs....A next....Yea, we all know how an Arms Fort handled against an Elite Next pilot in Armored Core. Check please, I think this Trekker is done.
1. I would work on writing out the Transporter because it is literally too complicated and too problematic to ever actually be, considered by any competent civilization, and its organizations, any kind of SAFE. To be honest my own Star Trek Fan Universe does away withe Transporter for a number of practical reasons, some to follow...
2. While obviously the writers not giving a flip or any who do losing their jobs or privileges for ever bringing it up, Transporters are too easy to interfere with or even make absolutely unsafe. Why no one has even just used specifically made Transporter weapons, designed to prevent transport and/or kill anyone who does. is beyond me. It would be no big thing for a Capital ship to irradiate the area with the interference field that, on a fundamental level, prevents the Transporter from being safely used. Trying o get through or around the fields only makes things worse. You are literally making it impossible to pass something as delicate as a Transporter beam through and area of space. Some fancy techno-babble is NOT going to beat that.
Seriously, the Navigational shields, those things that make simple space flight at even minor relativistic speeds safe, are enough to stop a Transporter beam. Charged hull plating does the same thing. Ship to ship transport has to be SO COMPLETELY CONSENSUAL, that is IMPOSSIBLE to beam in or out uninvited, unannounced, and unplanned.
3. Too many natural phenomena far too easily futz with Transporter beams. A simple electrical storm, a local CEM, solar flare, the ambient radiation of the planet (How do they transport so close to Saturn or Jupiter?). The Transporter is literally the definition of a Sunny Day Technology. It only ever actually works safely in optimal, or "sunny day", conditions.
4. Star Trek TV and Cinema Productions now has Shuttles and Runabouts that are so robust now, and special effects are more than cheap enough, to use Shuttles and Runabouts to get people to and from a planet easily and reliably. It does not seem as advanced/magical but it makes more sense and is more realistic/believable that the Transporter beam.
5. Transporters are Suicide Booths and creeping faults in the transporter process results in "Transporter Psychosis", and mental disorder that easily could be epidemic, if not for "just because" writing, but is severe and frequent enough to actually call for an in-canon ban on all NON-EMERGENCY Transporter use by living beings.
6. Transporting through shields, leaving or entering is BS! This just another big and stupid hole in Star Trek logic.