The transporter in Star Trek is one of the most fascinating theoretical technologies on board the starship Enterprise. The concept was created by the late-Gene Roddenberry. He needed his characters to get from the ship to the planet within a short period of time. Originally, Roddenberry set out to have his characters on a shuttlecraft, but was unable to afford the necessary budget to do so, hence, the transporter was born. From a creative point-of-view, it served as an excellent plot device, however, scientifically it will never work. To find out why let's examine how the transporter operates.
The transporter works by disassembling crew members at the atomic level and converting them into energy. Once the energy arrives at the appointed destination, the process is reversed. The problem is when you convert matter into energy, you're basically creating a huge explosion, equilvalent to a nuclear missile. Another problem is that the second law of thermodynamics tells us that in any conversion of matter, some energy is inevitably lost. However, you could compensate by disintegrating some rocks and adding in that energy too.
The problem is there no way to actually account for the first person point-of-view, or know if the person would survive the procedure, unless you or I decide to undergo it. Still, it's rather chancy, but I would think that the individual who first underwent this form of teleportation has ceased to exist and replaced with a replica, who would have all your memories and experiences.
It seems to work more like the replicator, maybe converting energy that is already at the planet or wherever they are transporting to. Otherwise, it would not be quite as instantaneous.
The problem is of course that humans are not just a bunch of cells. We have memories. (Okay, so there are many problems, but it's a really neat idea.)
And yes, technically the original person is no more if the energy doesn't actually travel.
Well some energy must travel in the form of data to reconstruct the person, and to tell the person when to be reconstructed (otherwise it would be a cloning device and the original copy would never actually have to be destroyed, turned into energy whatever).
Star Trek transporter? Ok this one is simple and has been addressed in several of the Star Trek paperbck novels. The orginal is actually destroyed! Yep...when you get in the transporter you are commiting suicide. The product at the other end of the transporter is not the orginal but a reconstructed duplicate. It doesn't matter if the matter of the orginal is converted into energy because the all the states of matter of the orginal are lost when converted into energy. The system has to record all the states of matter such as number and type of atoms of a person before energizing them and use that information at the recieving end to reconstruct them. So in fact if a machine could record such information and reconstruct a person then the source of energy could be anything so long as it is the same amount of energy as the mass of a person.
Ok, assuming that procedure takes place, and that the person that arises from it is a replica of the original being, with all it's memories and experiences encarved in itself... Who could then tell the difference between the original and the new? Is that a new person, or the exact same one? What do you guys think?
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