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right now I'm thinking about mounting one of these on it. I'll give the quantum teleportation technology a little time to mature before I start using it. Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I have to agree with Scott Adams on teleportation. I only want the technology if I'm the only person who has it. Then I can have nice things...yessssh....
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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You know, something that always bugged me about Star Trek teleportation technology--when they beamed somebody someplace, there was a period of time when the data necessary to recreate that person elsewhere was stored in what was referred to as a "pattern buffer", right? So why couldn't they store people's patters, and use them to effectively resurrect the people if they died on an away mission? Or use it to, say, create a couple dozen Datas? Or for that matter, they could find the best person at doing job X in the federation, and equip every starship with their pattern. Need a phenomenally good engineer? Just materialize a copy of Tom. Need a good diplomat? Pull up Dick's file. Need an army of almost fanatical soldiers, all highly skilled in some martial art? Materialize an entire squadron of Harrys.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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They did play with that "ability" with two Rikers. I guess when they're both alive, it really messes with your sense of self.
Posts: 1892 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Didn't the use that on STNG the season Crusher was gone. The other doctor went to some planet and contracted a disease that was going to kill her. In the end, they teleported her back to the ship, but used the pattern buffers to remove the disease. The big deal was she was the one who hated teleporters so they had trouble tracking down her buffer.
That was another one of those duh, you didn't think of this 100 years ago.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Ah, transporter mishap episodes. I love the one where Captain Picard, Ensign Ro, Guinan, and someone else were being beamed up, but some section of DNA or something got left out and they ended up as twelve-year-olds. 'Cause, you know, a transporter uses their DNA to reconstruct them, rather than scanning them particle by particle.
And then there was the Voyager episode where a transporter mishap split B'Elanna into human and Klingon halves. I wonder where the extra matter to make a whole extra person came from.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I didn't see the one with the doctor, but I do remember the two Rikers plotline (albeit vaguely). Starfleet didn't intentionally split Riker did they? I had thought that that somehow his transporter beam was split or something like that.
Ever read David Brin's Kiln People? It deals with a society in which it is the norm for people to make multiple short lived duplicates of themselves, who have a built in "biological" drive to return home and upload their memories into their "parent" before dying. It's one of the better pieces of fiction I've read lately (and I was able to get a hard back copy of it for 50 cents at a library booksale this past weekend, which was pretty cool).
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Where does the matter come from to reconstruct anyone, using the star trek transporters? I mean, it seems to me that if a technology like that were to actually be implemented, receiving stations would have to exist, and they'd have to have tanks of bio-goo from which to reconstruct the people. Of course, that's assuming that what is transmitted is just the "blueprint" for the person. Do the Star Trek transporters supposedly actually convey matter somehow?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Yeah, they were beaming Riker up, and the transporter beam was split and reflected back to the planet, leaving a duplicate Riker stranded there for several years, unbeknownst to anyone.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Where does the matter come from to reconstruct anyone, using the star trek transporters?
Energy–matter conversion, I believe. Don't ask me how they beam someone to a planet, though. Apparently, transporter beams are capable of sending energy to a planet's surface and converting it into matter. Or something.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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There's never a receiving station where they're beaming too. That's one of the things I could never quite stomach about ST. I could buy it if they're beaming to a receiving station, but what the heck is reconstituting them when they beam to a planet.
Why can't the food replicators use the same technology and just beam the food right to the dinner table instead of getting it out of the box?
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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For that matter, what about using the transporter as a weapon? Beam a ball bearing into the middle of someone's heart and they aren't going to take it too well. That wouldn't work against the Borg, since they have personal shielding technology, but since no one else seems clever enough to do implement something like that, it seems like it would generally work.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Noemon, the matter supposedly comes from the person being teleported. In addition to the "pattern buffer," you also often hear references to a "matter stream." The matter is supposedly converted to energy (that's the layman's explanation the characters always use) and moved along with the information. However, it being a TV show and all, the writers don't seem to have any qualms about breaking the rules, hence we have episodes like "Second Chances" (the one with the two Rikers).
One of the things that I didn't like was how in "Ship in a Bottle," they couldn't bring Moriarty out of the holodeck. They say all the time that the holodeck uses a similar technology to the transporter, so presumably they have a pattern, and since the matter in a transporter is being completely converted to energy, I don't see why they couldn't just convert some bulk steel or something into energy and then reconvert it into a human, using the pattern they already had.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:It actually seems more like you could use this technology to duplicate items.
Yes and no. The target ion (or particle, if you want to speak generally) can certainly be considered a duplicate, since it is identical to the source ion at the time of "teleportation," but the source ion loses its state in the process. Abstracted out to, say, a teacup, you would see a new teacup materialize at the destination as the old one disintegrated.
Moreover, the article seems to suggest (not certain of this) that the source and destination ions have to be of the same type, and differ only in details of state. None of this is at all limiting where quantum computing is concerned, but it certainly would pose a problem for, say, transportation of objects whose exact composition is not known beforehand.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Good point. And since Moriarty was created simply by Data's instructing the computer to create an Moriarty worthy of his Holmes, it seems like it would be fairly easy, with no programming at all, to create holobeings with whatever attributes you wanted, and then, using your technology, make them flesh. Just say "computer, make me an Engineer more brilliant than O'Brian, and --hey presto!-- you'd have one.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Wow. It's like I'm back in high school. Except we all managed to get a date at some point in spite of this type of discussion.
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: Or heck, just beam their head a foot to the left. That would probably do the trick as well.
You make me nervous sometimes. Maybe exoskeleton technology shouldn't make it into your hands.
Was Moriarty completely on his own or was the computer still running his character. It's one thing to ask the computer to create a character that could match Data, but another thing to ask it to replicate a brain from scratch that is brilliant.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Noemon, it's thinking like that that made me stop enjoying Star Trek. I felt like the writers never considered what they could actually do with the technology.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Yeah, and do the warp drives use direct matter-energy conversion nowadays? Cause if you can do it with the transporter, why would you still be using matter-antimatter reactions for your power source?
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Probably because the transporter requires more energy to operate than you'd get back out of it.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Jun 2004
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For that matter, why do they use impulse power? Why not just use their artificial gravity technology to put a gravitational field directly in front of their ships? Give them a little while, and they'd be moving at quite a clip. When you've attained your desired speed, just shut off the field. You could steer by moving the field, changing the direction in which your ship is falling.
Seat belts would probably be a nice addition too. And environmental suits for away parties. And not having the highest ranking officers constantly putting themselves in jeopardy by leading away teams (as OSC points out in How to Write Science Fiction). The list goes on. I enjoy the shows despite all of this though.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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