# Star Trek: how do transporters work **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 11, 2016, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797 "2016-02-11T06:01:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/21 "2016-02-11T19:53:13Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > In fact, it does NOT work “fine”. > > First, there’s the whole “good Kirk/evil Kirk” split, the Riker split, the “what we got back didn’t live long…fortunately” scene in ST:TMP, the Tuvix Incident, the poor souls lost in transport that Reg Barclay had to rescue, not to mention mirror universe beaming. > > Sometimes I’d rather drive a Pinto in stop-and-go traffic with a full tank of gas than use a transporter. It’s all part of **Teleportation Angst** [http://www.teemings.net/series\_1/issue14/calmeacham.html](http://www.teemings.net/series_1/issue14/calmeacham.html) ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/22 "2016-02-11T19:59:32Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > It doesn’t. It’s one of those things you have to accept. The actual process of converting mass into energy isn’t impossible, but it would be extremely hot. It’s essentially the process of combining matter with antimatter to get energy. Only about a gram of matter/antimatter is needed to have the same explosive power of the first atomic bomb. > > We have to accept that there’s some sort of process indistinguishable from magic that converts matter into what they call “energy” that is relatively cold. Personally, I fanwank that “subspace” gets involved–the same process that lets them disable inertia and travel faster than light. Somehow, subspace significantly reduces the energy requirements. It’s explicit in TNG that subspace is involved. But subspace is just Trekspeak for magic. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/23 "2016-02-11T20:45:10Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > It’s explicit in TNG that subspace is involved. But subspace is just Trekspeak for magic. I know, but you can at least sorta make it consistent. If subspace is something you can transfer momentum to, then it lets you do all those other things. Heck, if you treat subspace like a “different dimension” like they did in that one TNG episode, you can just say that you transfer people to subspace and then bring them back. That would allow for how people are conscious on transport. There’s just that one DS9 episode “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” that makes this troubling. Unless they keep the digital patterns in order to locate them in subspace. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/24 "2016-02-11T21:02:39Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > In fact, it does NOT work “fine”. > > First, there’s the whole “good Kirk/evil Kirk” split, the Riker split, the “what we got back didn’t live long…fortunately” scene in ST:TMP, the Tuvix Incident, the poor souls lost in transport that Reg Barclay had to rescue, not to mention mirror universe beaming. > > Sometimes I’d rather drive a Pinto in stop-and-go traffic with a full tank of gas than use a transporter. “But the animal is inside out.” [the pig-lizard explodes] “And it exploded.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/25 "2016-02-11T21:23:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Ellis Dee** : > > They make a perfect scan of your body – which is of course impossible due to the uncertainty principle… It’s only impossible if you’re trying to make a classical scan. For a quantum scan, though, it’s no problem: The uncertainties in quantum variables in the original translates into a corresponding uncertainty in the quantum variables in the medium you’re translating it into. This process incidentally also decorrelates the final state of the original from its initial state, which guarantees that it can’t produce duplicates. And yes, the Star Trek transporters have on occasion produced duplicates nevertheless, but I view that as the discrepancy, not the transporters themselves. As for the claim that it kills you: If you can cut a person in half with a very sharp knife and then do surgery to put the two halves back together, and the patient walks away at the end, then I maintain that the person never actually died. Death is, by definition, what you can’t come back from. Ergo, if you do come back, then you must not have actually died. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/26 "2016-02-11T21:30:13Z")
> [@EllisDee](#): > > They make a perfect scan of your body – which is of course impossible due to the uncertainty principle – then disintegrate your body, killing you. > > At the same time, somewhere else, they use the info from your scan to create a simulcrum of you that fools everyone (including itself) into thinking you’re not dead. That’s not you. You’re a [color xerox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIsauNJ392o). It’s science. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/27 "2016-02-11T22:00:12Z")
In fact, not just the transporters, but virtually all of the technology portrayed in the various incarnations of _Star Trek_ is essentially magical. It all routinely violates everything we currently understand about thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, materials science, genetics, linguistics, et cetera ad nauseam. Just the fact that they “beam” down to a vast multitude of planets with no environmental gear or filtering apparatus is implausible in and of itself, as are the tiny “phasers” that can vaporize a person or cut through metal but somehow don’t heat up in the user’s hand. And all of the interspecies breeding is incomprehensible to anyone with even a junior high school level of understanding of genetics and reproduction. _Star Trek_ is more magical than _Harry Potter_. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/28 "2016-02-11T22:29:49Z")
Am I the only person who yearned for an episode where Kirk said, with feeling, the Shatner Comma, and true necessity, “Very, funny Mister, Scott. Now beam down, my pants!” On a somewhat more serious note, I gave up on trying to relate ST transporters to any sort of yet to be invented reality when it occurred to me that fer the love of all, there’s no device at the receiving end. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/29 "2016-02-11T22:33:44Z")
And the holodeck makes a lot more sense if you think of it like the masque that Prospero puts on for Miranda and Ferdinand. They’re spirits called from the spirit world to entertain us mortals, but occasionally a mischievous or even malignant spirit gets through. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2016, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/30 "2016-02-11T23:46:48Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > Am I the only person who yearned for an episode where Kirk said, with feeling, the Shatner Comma, and true necessity, “Very, funny Mister, Scott. Now beam down, my pants!” > > On a somewhat more serious note, I gave up on trying to relate ST transporters to any sort of yet to be invented reality when it occurred to me that fer the love of all, there’s no device at the receiving end. Hmm, good point! ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/31 "2016-02-12T01:54:53Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > It’s sci-fi, and not hard sci-fi, at that. It works because the plot needs it to work, and there’s really not a good scientific explanation for it… That actually happened to Deanna & Lwaxana Troi when the Ferengi kidnapped them. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/32 "2016-02-12T02:15:10Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I gave up on trying to relate ST transporters to any sort of yet to be invented reality when it occurred to me that fer the love of all, there’s no device at the receiving end. How do you know it needs one? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/33 "2016-02-12T10:53:35Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > If I cut you in half, top to bottom, and let you wriggle until dead, then carried you across the room, and had a team of surgeons use advanced microsurgery to put you back together and resuscitate you, no one would say that it wasn’t you. > [@Chronos](#): > > As for the claim that it kills you: If you can cut a person in half with a very sharp knife and then do surgery to put the two halves back together, and the patient walks away at the end, then I maintain that the person never actually died. Death is, by definition, what you can’t come back from. Ergo, if you do come back, then you must not have actually died. In both those examples, it’s your same matter. The transporter appears (in all episodes except the Barclay one-off) to reconstitute your body using different particles. Thus, it’s no longer you. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/34 "2016-02-12T14:14:26Z")
And you reconstitute your body using different particles, too. Doesn’t mean that you kill yourself every time you eat. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/35 "2016-02-12T15:41:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And yes, the Star Trek transporters have on occasion produced duplicates nevertheless, but I view that as the discrepancy, not the transporters themselves. > > As for the claim that it kills you: If you can cut a person in half with a very sharp knife and then do surgery to put the two halves back together, and the patient walks away at the end, then I maintain that the person never actually died. Death is, by definition, what you can’t come back from. Ergo, if you do come back, then you must not have actually died. I’ll buy the latter – but if you’re going to just handwave the occasional duplicate as a discrepancy, I’d kinda like to hear a half-assed specific. \* “He was dis-integrated here and re-integrated there”\* – okay. _“He was disintegrated, and a Riker integrated at Point A right as a Riker integrated at Point B”_ – please, give me some tiny strand to grasp at. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/36 "2016-02-12T19:05:37Z")
Get out your hip waders and be ready to duck the handwaves. I’m about to engage in some heavy-duty retconjuration. In a [previous Trek thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=730491), I argued that transtators–stated to be tech that many major Federation technologies are based on–are devices used to manifest quantum-scale effects on a macro level. I made a guess as to their role in transporter technology in that post, but I will now attempt to correct and refine that guess. Transporters do not–despite what certain Luddite-leaning physicians might say–actually disassemble anyone. In a limited sense, it does “scatter” one’s molecules all over the galaxy, but not as individual particles. Transporters use transtators to induce a macro-scale superposition of a large number of eigenstates of the target object or person. Then it “observes” the destination and collapses the wave function such that the target is at the destination, rather than at its previously observed location. In essence, it analyzes a probability cloud of possible locations of the target and selects the probability that coincides with the desired location–“condensing” the cloud. The pattern buffer contains a detailed scan of the initial state of the target, not so that it can be reconstructed particle-by-particle, but so that the transporter can identify an appropriate state to select. Otherwise, it would have no way to tell which of the possible versions of the target at the destination to select. It could beam “you” down, only to have a sapient arthropod from a different variation on Earth’s evolutionary history appear. Or a version of you that had just impacted the surface at meteoric velocity. Most transporter problems are related to pattern buffer glitches–the “split” Kirk, for example, was the result of the transporter observing the location of two different possible versions of Kirk, thereby manifesting both. Transporters generally can’t be used through shields because the scanners can’t get a sufficiently precise reading on the remote location. The other part of the job is handling specific energy differences between the states. The transporter has to at least approximately match the velocity of the target to the destination environment. This is handled by the Heisenberg compensators, a specialized application of inertial dampers. Some excess energy is often allowed to bleed off as visible light during the process for aesthetic reasons. (Otherwise, other possible states might be briefly visible, something observers may find disturbing.) Biofilters work by isolating eigenstates in which the target is not infected. This is why the filter needs a pattern for the infectious organism; it has to select a state in which it is not present, but which is as close as possible to the target’s initial state. This also explains why certain potential applications of the transporter are shunned. Any time you mess with the pattern buffer to change something, you’re taking a serious risk, and the bigger the change, the bigger the risk–and the likeliest things to go wrong are in your head. Want to materialize as a younger you? Most probabilities that put a younger you on that platform involve you having been trapped in stasis for an extended period. Congratulations–you’ve erased most of your memories. Want to restore a limb you lost in combat? The transporter can find a “you” that has that arm…because he’s a coward who ran away from that fight and left his best friend to die. So, people only pull stunts with the buffers if they’re reckless or desperate enough to risk fates potentially worse than death. In essence, the transporter functions by observing that wherever you want to go, there you are. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/37 "2016-02-12T19:29:08Z")
Now THAT’s ^ a fan wank, worthy of becoming canon. It adds believable detail without contradicting\* what has been seen in the show. \*mostly. But what can you do with fiction written over time by different people. Rascals doesn’t fit, neither really does Relics. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/38 "2016-02-12T20:33:13Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I gave up on trying to relate ST transporters to any sort of yet to be invented reality when it occurred to me that fer the love of all, there’s no device at the receiving end. > [@terentii](#): > > How do you know it needs one? 😕 Larry Niven pointed out in his essay on teleportation: If your teleporter does not need a transmitter, then thieves can steal anything from anywhere. If your teleporter does not need a receiver, then terrorists can plant a bomb anywhere. Unless it needs both a transmitter and a receiver, you don’t get a society. You get a short war. Star Trek had to handwave this by the “cannot beam through deflector shields” rule. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/39 "2016-02-12T21:46:06Z")
I want **Balance** on my science/tech advisory committee! Beautiful tech analysis and fanwank! (Strange, that the “transtator” never got mentioned again. It would have been meat and potatoes for Wesley Crusher.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797/40 "2016-02-12T23:07:45Z")
It works like this: You step on the platform, and it magically saves the production the cost of showing a shuttle landing and docking every time the crew goes somewhere. It also magically prevents the plot from screeching to a halt every time the crew move from place to place. It’s brilliant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-how-do-transporters-work/745797.md?page=3)