Imagine, then, that you've stepped onto the transporter pad, issued the fateful command "energize," and had your atoms turned into phased matter. Now you're all set to go. Your matter stream is fed into a pattern buffer a hyperlarge computer memory that briefly stores your entire atomic blueprint , piped to one of the beam emitters on the hull of the starship, and then relayed to a point on the ground where, all being well, the ACB will put you back together again.
There's even a component of the transporter, called the Heisenberg compensator , designed to sidestep one of the most basic laws of quantum physics — Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This frustrating little rule insists that you can never know exactly where something is and exactly how it's moving at the same time. Unnoticeable in the everyday world, it comes into effect with a vengeance at the subatomic level and, at first sight, seems to pose one of the biggest obstacles to practical teleportation.
How can an exact copy of you be made somewhere else if it's impossible to establish the state of every particles in your body at the outset? His answer to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the Heisenberg compensator. Once asked how it worked, Okuda replied, "Very well, thank you!
Anyone wondering whether he or she would have the guts to step up to the transporter plate along with the other crewmembers and be boldly sent needs to bear two thoughts in mind. First, teleportation could probably never work along the lines just described hint: a "Heisenberg compensator" is physically impossible. Well, of course they can go wrong — that's part of the fun.
One or two of William Shatner's better performances as Kirk came in Star Trek 's first-season episode, "The Enemy Within," written by the top-drawer science fiction author Richard Matheson, who also penned some of the more memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone including "Nightmare at 20, Feet" in which Shatner sees a gremlin on the wing of a plane. Having beamed up from a mission on the planet Alpha , Kirk feels faint and is helped from the transporter room by Mr. A moment later a duplicate Kirk appears on the pad.
Apparently the magnetic effects of an ore on the planet's surface interfered with the transporter and caused it to split the captain into two selves: one good but incapable of making decisions, the other evil and strong-willed. In this interesting twist on the Jekyll and Hyde theme, it becomes clear that the two halves can't survive apart and that the violent, animal-like component is just as essential in making Kirk an effective leader as his benign side.
Transporter fission turns to fusion in the Voyager episode "Tuvix," when crewmates Tuvok, the Vulcan security officer, and Neelix, the spotty Talaxian, longtime antagonists, are merged during a teleportation into one person. The resulting Tuvix harbors the memories of both progenitors but has a single consciousness.
They do place some limitations on the where, but for the most part, those limits involve extremely dense materials mountains, rocks and sometimes if there is a force field blocking the signal. Once the matter stream has been beamed to the location, your atoms and molecules are reassembled.
The problem involved here is that in order for this to work, there would need to be a second device on the receiving end. Now, that sounds like a death sentence right there. The key to making science fiction work for its viewers is to make it as believable as possible.
This means there has to be some possibility that it could be real. There are actual formulas that measure the amount of energy needed to convert a human being into a matter stream. Or how much radiation would be needed to beam and reassemble a human.
The amount of energy to convert you into a matter stream is unobtainable. As an example, the amount of energy needed would be equal to roughly thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb from Gamma radiation is the highest level of radiation known to man, and even that is too weak to send the amount of energy a matter stream would contain.
Think about those levels of energy and radiation. Then think about exposing the human body to enough of both. No wonder some of the characters are nervous about using it! Take a look at the five-minute video below for a quick recap of how transporters work and the trouble they can cause:. There are characters on the show who have voiced these concerns as well. Doctor McCoy is well known within the franchise for voicing his fears of using the transporter device.
If your body is being ripped apart at the atomic level and put back together somewhere else, are you actually just a copy? While there are characters who fear the transporter, there are others who try their best to reassure them of their safety. Since there can only be one of you, it would stand to reason that the copy is, in fact, the new original. This is because there are serious distortions that can occur when atoms try to reassembly at different speeds. Transporting at warp speed could be possible, and was accomplished in-universe.
The best way to accomplish this was to ensure both destinations were traveling at the exact same speed. The range is important to keep in mind as well. The limitations of the technology at that time made it highly probable that any error would result in the subject rematerializing within a bulkhead, deck, or other structure. As such, the procedure had rarely been attempted. TOS : " Day of the Dove " The first occurrence of this procedure was used without incident, a century earlier.
ENT : " Chosen Realm ". In , Commander William T. Riker and Lieutenant Tasha Yar used intraship beaming, during a rescue. When cargo instead of passengers was beamed aboard, Riker ordered Yar to beam the cargo to the hold, without a second thought. TNG : " Symbiosis ". Intraship transport was apparently both safe and commonplace by the s, as, beyond the aforesaid example, the technique was used a number of times aboard the USS Enterprise -D :.
The earliest known example of site-to-site transport carried out by Federation personnel occurred in , though the transporter was on board a vessel that had traveled back in time from The craft which possessed site-to-site capabilities was Klingon in origin but had been stolen by the crew of the late starship Enterprise.
By at least , limitations in pattern buffer and targeting scanner technology had been sufficiently overcome that it was now possible to transport from one location directly to another without the need to re-materialize the subject in between.
TOS : " A Piece of the Action " In the 24th century, this operation was enabled and controlled by the site-to-site transport interlocks. A Klingon transporter performs a site-to-site transport. Transporter systems had to be manually configured to prepare for site to site transport. This included resetting the pattern buffer controls and checking the targeting scanners.
VOY : " Twisted ". Site-to-site transport held the matter stream in the pattern buffer while the ACB was re-targeted. Afterward, the matter stream was redirected to the new location and normal re-materialization was carried out.
Using this technique, any computer terminal with access to the main transporter sub-systems, or any applicable subroutine, could be used to control transporter operations, including bridge terminals. This technique could only be utilized when sufficient energy was available to the transporters; all normal transporter limitations would still apply.
This procedure was particularly useful in emergency medical situations where time was of the essence. Subjects could be beamed directly to sickbay , where treatment could be carried out quickly. In , Ensign Wesley Crusher used this method in an attempt to outrun those especially Riker and Worf whose minds had been taken over by a Ktarian game.
TNG : " The Game ". Seven of Nine once initiated a site-to-site transport into Chakotay's quarters. Instead of the door chimes sound, the comm tone is heard not the boatswain whistle. She thinks it would be inappropriate to be seen carrying flowers to the first officer's quarters VOY : " Endgame ". By the 23rd century , it was common practice to store a "transporter trace" a stored copy of a subject's molecular pattern as scanned during a normal transporter cycle. While it was usually kept for security purposes, in extreme situations, the transporter could be modified to use an older trace pattern in place of the latest scan for the purpose of re-configuring the matter stream during molecular conversion, effectively replacing a subject with a younger version of itself during matter re-construction.
The first known use of this technique was in , when it was used to restore the crew of the USS Enterprise , whose aging had been reversed, to their adult versions. TAS : " The Counter-Clock Incident " Another notable use of a transporter trace was in , to restore Captain Jean-Luc Picard after an unsuccessful attempt by an alien energy being to merge with him.
The transporter trace itself was regularly stored for the duration of the person's tour of duty; when that person was reassigned, his or her trace was deleted. TNG : " Unnatural Selection ".
When necessary, a person's DNA could be used to create a transporter trace. Transporter traces were also used as a medical tool, to help in spotting anomalies at the molecular level. When comparing the transporter ID traces of Deanna Troi , Data and Miles O'Brien before and after they were taken over by Ux-Mal criminals, Doctor Beverly Crusher was able to detect that their nervous systems were generating high levels of synaptic and anionic energy. VOY : " Favorite Son ".
A transporter beam could be deflected to different coordinates by a tractor beam , so that the objects being transported would rematerialize at a point other than the intended target coordinates. Such action could only be detected by examining the transporter log.
An unusual amount of antigraviton particles would be present in the emitter coil , as those particles do not occur naturally but are used by tractor beams. Locating the coordinates at which rematerialization took place was not possible; however, it was possible to calculate the point of origin of the tractor beam itself. TNG : " Attached ".
A transporter could be programmed to only allow one particular person to be transported to and from the transporter pad. Thus programmed, no other persons could use the transporter. If the use of the transporter was further prohibited, by use of an unknown access code, using the transporter was almost impossible.
The only way to circumvent this lock-out was to use the transporter trace from the person who re-programmed the transporter and to input this into the transporter while it was in its testing mode.
When in testing mode, a transporter would accept simulated inputs. When the main computer could not be used, several tricorders could be networked together to control the transporter.
To circumvent the lock-out, access codes from a few bridge officers were necessary to force it in a recall loop. Consequently, anyone and everyone who transported would be seen by the transporter as the person who had re-programmed it in the first place. A transporter accident could be faked in such a way that a transporter chief would think a person died during transport.
For example, this could be done by adjusting the carrier wave of a second transporter to the carrier wave of the first. The person would then beam off the first transporter while the second transporter beamed in a small amount of genetically identical material. Only a doctor could determine if this material was really the person in question. The transporter trace could be used to compare the logged DNA pattern "trace" to the "dead" person. Single-bit errors might be detected, if the "dead" material was replicated.
Only transporters that operated on the same subspace frequency as the spoofed transporter can be used for this type of ruse. For example, some Romulan transporters were capable of this. Another indicator of such a ruse would be a temporary increase of the matter to energy ratio, while transport was in progress. However, this increase could fall within the nominal operational parameters of the transporter in question.
Investigation of the transporter logs would be necessary to find evidence of a second transporter signal. Some transporters could transport large numbers of people, and either rematerialize them simultaneously, or in groups. However, this was not often done, due to safety reasons. In , the crew of the USS Enterprise used their transporters in this manner to capture members of the crew of a Klingon ship.
In , the USS Voyager transported over two hundred Klingons off a battle cruiser by expanding the transporter's buffer capacity. Setting a transporter's annular confinement beam to a narrow width would sometimes allow it to penetrate some types of shielding or other interference. One noteworthy application of this was to penetrate Borg shields, a procedure developed by scientists Magnus and Erin Hansen.
VOY : " Dark Frontier ". USS Voyager Chief Engineer B'Elanna Torres invented an emergency measure of locking a transporter beam onto minerals in the target's skeletal system, in order to allow transport when bio-signs could not be detected from transporting origins. This allowed personnel to be transported back to the ship, even if regular means of transporter lock failed.
She came up with it after a conventional signal lock failed, during an emergency beam-out from a Borg cube in VOY : " Scorpion ". In , Nyrians used a long-range transporter to take control of the USS Voyager by beaming aboard the ship one person at a time, replacing a member of the crew in the process. Initially feigning ignorance and confusion, the Nyrians did not raise suspicion until they had already outnumbered the Voyager crew.
By then, however, it was too late; the Nyrians commandeered Voyager and incarcerated the crew inside a simulated Earth-like environment aboard a massive prison ship. It was later revealed that this was an often-used Nyrian strategy, as it was far less costly than engaging in open hostilities.
VOY : " Displaced ". In , pirates used transporters to steal the USS Voyager 's main computer and other critical equipment, rendering the ship's weapons, navigation and propulsion inoperable. This led Tom Paris to remark, " I feel like we've just been mugged. The Vulcan Chu'lak modified a projectile weapon by adding a micro-transporter, allowing him to fire bullets through walls into other rooms.
During Chakotay 's Starfleet career, he was involved in a transporter malfunction. His uniform ended up in a pattern buffer ; he materialized wearing only his combadge. VOY : " In the Flesh ". Removal of clothing using a transporter can also be done deliberately, as a group of Ferengi did to Deanna and Lwaxana Troi in The transporter was developed by the production staff of the original series as a solution of how to get crewmen off a planet quickly.
The only alternative was to either land a massive ship each week, or regularly use shuttles for landings, both of which would have wreaked havoc on the production budget. Star Trek Encyclopedia 3rd ed. It can be done only across relatively short line-of-sight distances. Materials and supplies can also be moved in this same manner, but require a less critical power expenditure.
Gene Roddenberry considered the invention of the transporter to be highly fortunate and "one of many instances where a compromise forced us into creative thought and actually improved on what we planned to do. The script of " The Cage ", the first Star Trek pilot episode, referred to the transporter as consisting of a device that dominated the transporter room and "could be an artist's nightmare-conception of a futuristic x-ray machine," as well as a "glassed-in transporter chamber" that the device hovered over.
The depiction of the transporter in TOS : " The Man Trap " was instrumental to that installment becoming the first to ever be broadcast. Johnson relayed, " He told me, 'By going with yours, we were able to open the series with the crew getting aboard the transporter device and beaming down to the planet. By letting the audience watch the transporter in action, and letting them see the crew materialize and dematerialize, we were saved from having to try to explain it.
In a series of research notes dated 11 May , however, Kellam de Forest pointed out, " 'Scramble' implies that objects are mixed in an unorganized fashion. The transporter converts the matter of the body into energy. Arthur Singer , the story editor for the third season of TOS, had some uncertainty about the function of the transporter, which he expressed around three months after D. Fontana left the series as story editor.
Regarding how Singer voiced his confusion about the device, Fontana recalled, " [He] wandered onto the set and asked our set decorator, 'By the way, what does that transporter thing do again? The series writers' guide third revision, dated 17 April stated about the transporter, " Its range is limited to about 16, miles.
Gene Roddenberry briefly considered — early one day, while Star Trek: The Next Generation was in preproduction — vastly increasing the power of the transporter in The Next Generation to such an extent that no main starship was to have been featured in that series. This unusual suggestion was scrapped by the end of lunch on that particular day.
Just throwing that out. Starlog issue , p. The transporter and the term "beam" were so relatively easy to account for that they were among multiple reasons for Rick Berman and Michael Piller deciding that a new science fiction series they were asked to create, which ultimately became Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , would be in the Star Trek mold, rather than a brand new show. Since the design parameters of the series were very well defined, putting a Starfleet-usable transporter aboard space station Deep Space 9 turned out to be "not difficult at all," in Production Designer Herman Zimmerman 's words.
The transporter in the station's Operations Center was designed by Ricardo F. Delgado and illustrated in a concept sketch by him. Trek: Deepspace Nine , p. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors.
Share Flipboard Email. John P. Millis, Ph. Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Updated January 10, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Millis, John P. Star Trek: Instantaneous Matter Transport.
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