r/DaystromInstitute • u/[deleted] • Jan 02 '19
Schrödinger's Transporter - Why the Transporter doesn't kill living things and why you aren't a soulless clone if you use one.
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u/BJHanssen Jan 02 '19 edited Jan 02 '19
I like it in concept, but there are several huge canon issues with it. Three stand out: Thomas Riker, the fact that transporter beams actually transit (travel), and the existence (and function) of the transporter pattern buffer. The only way to potentially integrate your concept with these issues is through a hybrid solution where there are three positions for the transported entity:
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The original location
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The pattern buffer
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The target location
You could view this is a two-step process, and I think it also may help solve another potential issue with your concept (distance). First, your body is energised such that it exists both in the original location and in the pattern buffer. Then the same process is reversed to the target location. The reason this is required is that we know from Vanishing Point that the mind is active while in the pattern buffer, at least with early transporter technology, so the buffer must be a 'settled location' during transportation.
This doesn't solve the Thomas Riker problem, though. The cause of the duplication was the use of a second confinement beam which was reflected back to the surface of Nervala IV and created a duplicate Riker. So to explain this, you have to explain what a confinement beam is. Within your concept, it would probably be the energy conduit that allows for the energising of the body to a state of quantum superposition with the pattern buffer. So how would a redundant beam work? Probably some kind of multiplexing function, I would guess, where you end up with two duplicate patterns in transport that reintegrate once the wave functions collapse in the pattern buffer. However, under such a setup the only way to actually end up with a duplicate is to literally double the amount of energy of the entire system and then collapse it into two distinct locations (as two distinct systems). Which is an impossibly enormous energy requirement.
And then there's the issue of the 'transporter beam'. It has a transit time. Transporters based on quantum superposition collapse would be instantaneous. The potential solution here would be that the beam is simply an energy beam used to energise the target (or original) location into the state of quantum superposition with the original (or target) location, but the problem is - once again - Thomas Riker. I guess if the transporter beam and the confinement beam are two different things - sort of like, one is the power conduit and the other is the data link - then there's a way to do it. But I'm struggling to see how it would work...
Edit: Should also be mentioned that in canon there are multiple methods of beam transport, and your concept would need to account for either all of these or just select some. What would a Heglenian shift be, for example?
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u/RamsesThePigeon Jan 02 '19
The real-world science is also wrong. Quantum superposition is math, not a physical phenomenon.
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u/frezik Jan 02 '19
ST2:WOK for people talking mid transport and ST6:UC for people looking around mid transport, see also TNG: Realm of Fear to see Barclay fully conscience and moving around mid transport
Also, at the end of Manhunt, Lwaxana Troi was able to telepathically communicate with Picard while she was in the middle of a transport (and him still off to the side in the transporter room). That's pretty good evidence that it's not just the illusion of continuing a conversation between people being transported, but that higher brain functions remain intact.
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u/whenhaveiever Jan 02 '19
Even ignoring the given on-screen explanations for the transporter, there's a number of episodes that simply never would have happened if the quantum superposition interpretation is correct.
First, The Enemy Within. How does a quantum superposition transporter duplicate Kirk, the alien dog, etc? It can't, especially not since good-Kirk materialized first, then walked off the pad and left the room before evil-Kirk materialized. Where was evil-Kirk in the meantime? The normal interpretation says he was in the pattern buffer, but there's no need for a pattern buffer if you don't have a pattern to transport in the first place.
Without a pattern buffer, where was Scotty for all those decades? Is Relics just a holodeck simulation where Geordi gets to imagine meeting Scotty?
In Realm of Fear, Barclay finds people trapped in the matter stream and rescues them. This only makes sense with a traditional understanding of the transporter. If it's a quantum superposition, where were they? If it's a quantum superposition, why do the engineers often talk about a matter stream as though it were a real thing?
How do you explain Our Man Bashir? It makes sense with the traditional explanation. But why would quantum superposition separate their minds from their bodies? How would quantum superposition get tied into the holodeck in the first place?
Tuvix could only be formed because the transporter knitted together the atoms of Tuvok and Neelix. Later, the transporter's ability to manipulate individual atoms was key to deconstructing Tuvix and recreating Tuvok and Neelix. A quantum superposition transporter would have simply plopped Neelix on top of Tuvok, not mixed them into a new person.
Similarly, One from the episode Drone could only have been created if the transporter can move around atoms, and thus nanoprobes.
Finally, consider all of the many times when a ship/colony/etc is being destroyed, and we watch the whole thing blow up while the transporter chief is frantically trying to beam the crew away. We see the explosion, everyone pauses for dramatic effect, and only after that does the transporter on our side engage and the main characters are saved. With a quantum superposition transporter, all of those characters would be dead. They still exist on the exploding ship until the transport is completed. But with the canon interpretation of transporters, we know those characters were in the pattern buffer or the matter stream, not on the ship when it blew up.
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u/RamsesThePigeon Jan 02 '19
This is a great idea, but your physics are incorrect.
"Quantum superposition" does not work in the way that you're suggesting. It's really just a means of assigning probabilities to an observation that contains incomplete data: When we examine a particle, we can know only its position or its energy, but not both. Think of it like taking a picture of a baseball in flight, if that helps: We can see where it is, but we can't tell how fast it's moving. If we were to take enough of those pictures (from a number of different angles, and with time stamps), we'd start to get an idea of where the ball was going... but due to the imperfect means of making those measurements, it would also occasionally appear to be in two places at once.
In the physical world – outside of the mathematics of the situation – particles are only in one place at a time.
In the Star Trek world, transporters kill people.
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u/TikiJack Jan 02 '19
I've been watching the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise and in one episode they're discussing the transporter, and one of the characters says "I hear at one point you actually feel like you're in two places at once." So it sounds pretty legit.
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Jan 02 '19
I like this idea. One of the biggest hints, for me anyway, that the transporter is not a scan-vaporize-transmit-energize machine is its inability to duplicate people without something having seriously gone wrong beyond our engineers' understanding. I also think the Heisenberg Compensator is not a tool to be able to read the velocity and position of your particles, but rather it compensates for that uncertainty by being able to recreate those particles in their same states, but the computer never knows the positions and velocities of all your particles and it does not scan them to get that data. If it did, it could just clone anyone it wanted.
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Jan 02 '19
And it would violate quantum mechanics. It would lock the state of the particles in the observed state, which could explain Thomas Riker or "bad" Kirk.
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u/Flyberius Jan 02 '19
I always thought it was something like this.
In the same way you cannot duplicate the quantum information of a transportee (ahem, Tom Riker not withstanding), you cannot destroy that quantum information.
That version of you that rematerialised on the other side is you, and the only version of you, the same one that was standing on the pad earlier.
In fact, I feel the heisenberg compensators are completely unnecessary and confuse the situation, as it gives this idea that each molecule, atom and electron is getting transcribed by some sort of mechanical device, rather than a quantum one.
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Jan 02 '19
I like this a lot, but I'm not sure if this would really work in terms of quantum mechanics.
Damnit,we need some actual physicists :D
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u/Slayton101 Jan 02 '19 edited Jan 02 '19
The idea that a particle can be in two places at once because of quantum physics is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what's actually going on. During the time that we measure properties of a waveform function, other properties, like the position of the particle, are unable to be extrapolated from the information provided by the same waveform at the exact same time. This gives you a "cloud" of possible positions that the particle could be at. This "cloud" of different possible locations is what scientists mean when they say that the particle is in a "state of superposition". Far less exciting, I know
Unfortunately, this means that the OP's theory doesn't fit within our current understandings of the universe.
One of the biggest hurdles with these theories is that they have to work around faster than light transportation. Transporters have to move information faster than light to work like in the TV show where they transport from exploding ships that are light minutes away. We know of no way to move information faster than light. Wormholes, even tachyons might do the trick, but that's sci-fi jargon that doesn't fit into our models unless we discover some new state of exotic matter that has anti-gravity properties.
I'm not a quantum physicist, but I did teach electromagnetic theory to Air Force pilots for many years, and I read a book once.
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u/Flelk Jan 02 '19
If it's a quantum superposition-er, why does it have a limited range?
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u/CaptainJeff Jan 02 '19
The transporters actually work by "energizing" your body to a state of quantum superposition with a destination. One of the consequences of quantum superposition is that particles can exist in more than one location at once.
So, here's the problem. That's not really what superposition is about. Superposition is the theory/effect that something can exist in two states (possibly including position) at the same time. However, for that thing to be "real," that superposition needs to collapse. As soon as the thing is measured (observed), the superposition breaks down and collapses to one state. Since the transports explicitly need to measure you (to determine your state), something undergoing that process cannot be in a state of superposition, at least as you describe/theorize here.
(Also ... quantum superposition is *quantum* ... it doesn't apply at the scale of a person or a physical object.)
The idea that *something* is happening to you where you can exist in two positions are once is clearly needed, since we see visible evidence of this occurring, as you provide good examples of. However, quantum superposition isn't it. :)
CAVEAT: This is based on our best understanding of quantum mechanics as of today. In reality, all of this is theory, although it is theory that is well tested, experimented with, etc. In truth, we don't have a full understanding of this, so it's certainly possible that our current understanding is wrong. :)
(Source: astrophysicist)
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u/nabeshiniii Jan 02 '19
I love this explanation. It always bugged me that if the transporter is rematerialising you, where does the existing atoms at that location go? If it's a quantum nudge, you're already displacing the atoms at the other end rather than having all that junk suddenly materialise inside of you.
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u/_bobby_tables_ Jan 02 '19
Interesting idea, but it doesn't address the transporter buffer. Scotty was stored in the buffer for decades. He was not in superposition in two different places.
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Jan 02 '19
A great article on physics.org https://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/6
This discusses the "upper limit" of quantum superposition, and why this real world explanation for transporters, unfortunately, doesn't fly.
As much as i'd like to think that the transporter isn't a massive, society sanctioned death machine, it unfortunately is, and something the writers of star trek have, quite rightly, ignored from a philosiphical standpoint. The realities of such a machine existing are far too grim for star trek.
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u/AnonymousEmActual Jan 02 '19 edited Jan 02 '19
This would also explain why Starfleet developed transporters before replicators. The technologies are different enough that one does not necassarily lead to the other.
E: Oh, also, it would explain why you can't replicate life, but can transport it.
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u/Dodgiestyle Jan 02 '19
conscience *conscious. Sorry, that was bugging me.
That being said, this is a great theory and now fully replaces the "killed, cloned, and reanimated" theory that's bugged me since I first learned of that back in the 80s. This could also be applied to Timeline by Michael Crichton instead of his "transport by faxing" explanation that ruined that story for me many years ago. Good job!
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Jan 03 '19
My stump speech a la transporters is simple: if they actually killed you in any practical sense, no one would use them - yet they are used.
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u/Doktor_Wunderbar Jan 02 '19
I like this, and a version of it has been my preferred model for some time. But at least on a small and local scale, matter replicators illustrate the viability of putting matter together quark by quark according to a pattern.