It is true that Transporter Special effects cost a lot less money than landing a Star Ship on a planet special effects, so it was a budget decision to do Transporters.
the transporter doesn't kill you because Barclay was able to grab things in the matter stream, meaning he is aware he can see and he can even move to interact with objects, thus alive.
"Soo, The transporter will take a series of really accurate pictures of me. Put me through a blender, mincing me into a very fine slurry, THEN dump the sludge at the target site and use that to assemble me? " "Yes sir" "I'll take the shuttle"
Well it does make some in universe sense. Imagine you might need to bean someone out who is running for their lives. Staying still long enough for the transporter to lock onto them might actually risk them getting captured or killed.
I think the confinement beam adds an opposite pressure equal to the amount being applied to stop movement. This would explain the ability to maintain momentum after it is released. Not that it actually stops it.
This is Star Trek. Every problem can be solved by either a) emitting a beam of NonExistiton Particles or b) reversing the polarity of the deflector dish. Or sometimes c) both. 😂🖖
"look chief… all I'm asking is you adjust the pattern to lose about 10 kilos of fat around the midsection, it's not like I'm asking you to make me younger…"
@@d.b.4671 Not only can it, it was actually done in the 2nd season of Star Trek: TNG. I forget the episode name, but in the one with the genetically modified children that created the 'aging virus' which infected Pulaski.
@@RPhillip Yep, that episode *Unnatural Selection* (where the Federation ban on genetic engineering of Humans apparently had a exemption clause - _continuity contradictions in Trek?_ … never!) and the ridiculous episode *Little Rascals* (where Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro become children due to a transporter accident) were my inspiration. And of course Little Rascals ends with the new tweened characters becoming adults again, instead of enjoying the opportunity of having all those extra years added to their lifespan - just have 6 years of growning (okay, longer for Guinan) and then they are a healthy mature teen/young adult… with decades of experience behind them. Still it did lead to some great child Picard memes.
For various reasons, it's clear there's something about the transporter process in Star Trek that maintains one's consciousness etc. through the whole thing, rather than just making a duplicate (at least in most situations), like how Barclay is shown to be continually conscious through the whole thing in one episode. For another example, to quote doctorwhom1 elsewhere in the comment section: "More evidence that transporters probably aren't suicide booths would be that telepaths are fine with them. If they really just killed and reassembled people then purely psychic entities (Spock's katra for example) would be ripped away from whatever's being transported."
@@Jeddostotle7 Clearly, they beam the soul along with the body. It's part of the energy pattern of consciousness. (Also, katras and souls are the same thing. I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to be a general consensus.)
Or creating some kind of interference, but knowing the shield frequency should do it. That's hard though especially in post-Borg world where most use dynamic frequencies(they change rapidly). Of course, overpowering the deflector array also works, I believe that's how Borg used to just beam to wherever they wanted.
IIRC, O’Brien used the shield rotation frequency to synchronize transport the the point where the shield would allow a transporter beam through. The rotation frequency is needed so the shield don’t block all energy simultaneously…preventing weapons from firing or being able to scan outside the shields.
The reason so many species develop transporters is because they all go through a stage in _SciFi TV series production_ when showing shuttles conveying main characters from PlanetSide to the Hero ship would take too much of the budget and episode time. The region around the Kazon in the Delta Quadrant ironically had a hard science SciFi history, their first major hit was based on *the Expanse.*
I imagine that the Heisenberg Compensators are a subcomponent - certainly an important one, but they are part of one of the larger systems that enables it to perform its overall function, rather than a discrete part of the process. Probably part of the process that scans and saves the quantum image, since said image would otherwise have a 'fuzzy' resolution that would not be safe for use. Sort of like how, for an exotic engine, you might need to engineer special bearings for its turbine-equivalents; those bearings are very important, in that they allow the component they're part of to function, but you wouldn't necessarily call attention to them in an overview of the engine's standard cycle, but you very much would talk about how the dang things keep failing and need replacing, or realigning, or etc if they were a common source of fault (i.e., brought up in the relevant episode as an issue)
I was also really surprised he didn't mention the Heisenberg Compensator, it was one of the main trivia things I knew about the transporter. Maybe he'll mention it in a later video, I only discovered this channel today :S
This has to be the most in depth analysis of a transporter system I've ever seen. Great job. I've heard a lot of these phrases said on the shows so many times and never put much thought into it. Figured it was just polt devices and science fiction jargon. Never realized how intricate these premises were.
A particularly nihilistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with transporters, because "persistent consciousness is a lie anyway". So I guess most people in Trek have come to terms with that.
I mean, who's to say that your "you" consciousness doesn't die every time you go to sleep, and everything you remember is just your brain filling the blanks when your next consciousness steps in as you "wake up"? How's that for some nightmare fuel?
@@moriskurth628 and time is perceived buy the individual and is not a universal constant so the process you speak of could sit beyond the individual's concept of time then you don't need sleep to kill the consciousness it could happen in the bink of an eye, or it could happen slap bang in-between what the individual perceives to be a continuous consciousness and the moment one consciousness takes over from the other sits in an increment of time that is inconceivable to the individual making the change from one consciousness to the other seemless.
Apparently you are conscious, in one show they were talking during transport and the conversation continued through materialisation. So I wonder how Scotty passed the time while locked in a pattern buffer for so many years.
These are basically suicide booths, evidenced by the fact that we got a duplicate Riker once. Basically they make a clone of you in a new location, and to avoid the inconvenience of having you at your present location they kill you.
The way i see the "does the transporter kill you" issue is basically the reverse of the common argument. Most people will argue that, if you were to enter a transporter, you would die and the transporter would generate a new version of you on the other side. But consider this; if you were a star fleet officer that used transporters every day of your life, you would never recall or experience a time that you entered a transporter and your cognisance was totally snuffed out. To you, ever time you entered a transporter, you always popped back out still being you.
Indeed, you still have all your memories, skills... everything that makes you you is still intact. Doesn't make it any less disconcerting to learn you get broken down to the quantum level, though. The time machine in Michael Crichton's _Timeline_ is worse, though, since it explicitly is described as breaking down the original body, and creating an exact duplicate at the destination point.
I mean, assuming that the stream of consciousness is the same as a regular ol' internet data stream actually makes the question moot. Why wouldn't we be able to handle breaks in the stream when we can just pause and buffer it?
Except that temporal beings die every second as their consciousness progresses to the next second. Your living mass is in constant flux. You may remember being a child, but that 2ft being no longer exists. Baby you is effectively dead. So really, in the grand scheme of life, having your matter broken down to the quantum level and reassembled is no different. Certainly it brings to question the plausibility of an afterlife. But what happened to 2year old you? Not much difference.
@@Humaricslastcall The internet is two machines communicating with one another. When communication is reinstated the machines can come to a consensus where the other left off. A transporter is a single machine reading data from a source that has been obliterated.
@@thomasreedy4751 There's also the fact that cells in your body are dying and being replaced constantly. I forget the actual math behind it, but I think it's fair to say that almost all of the cells in your body have been replaced by the time you become an adult; so, thinking of yourself as being a completely different person from when you were a child might be more accurate than you'd think.
In the TNG episode The Wounded it's explained that some ships use a shield design where there is a fraction of a second gap in shield coverage every 5-6 minutes, and that with careful timing, and at high risk, you can get through.
Kinda reminds me of how the Falcon in The Force Awakens miraculously timed their approach to Starkiller at faster than light speeds to take advantage of the fraction or a second refresh rate of the base’s energy shielding. Did I just use a Star Trek topic as a springboard into a point about Star Wars? Yes and I feel great!
A lot of people (myself included) have been on a quarantine Star Trek binge. First time watching for me, gone through all of TNG and now on Voyager. Thanks for this explainer, I had most of it figured out but there was some useful info and visualisations in this
Transporters definitely handle momentum - otherwise everyone beaming down to Starfleet Academy from orbit would find themselves arriving in the Transporter Room at Mach 20.
As informatician of 16 years of experience and 20 years or above, probably above hehe, Fan of Star Trek, I must say, your level of understanding of that transportation technology is astoundingly shown very easy to understand. You must have noticed, that in the Manual there is a set of safety protocols in place and alot of programming supported by A.I. and quantum computing, I think in TNG era. The Manual of Okuda is HUGE and with bit of my help, you could even build transporter some day. Anyway, even for me is alot of fun and mystery. Kylie Desire
Please, please Rick, call the next video: transporters gone wild. Happy new year, and I can’t believe you managed to get through this whole video without mentioning Heisenberg compensators. I also can’t believe that Apple dictation managed to correctly spell Heisenberg compensators.
Things that often break on Starfleet vessels: Holodecks, transporters, consoles, warp cores, rock containment spaces within walls and ceilings. P.S. with how often Starfleet vessels explode from any damage I refer to them as "Space Pintos". I might be showing my age a bit with that too.
I'm definitely looking forwards to the follow-up video. But since when is the ACB meant to freeze a transport subject? I know in Ent and TOS it did, Discovery doesn't but that's a newer ship, and in TNG that super soldier (Roga Danar or something?) screwed up a transport by sorta karate chopping his way out of the ACB.
Terrific video! And thank you for effectively articulating why I DON'T think "Transporters kill you"! (i.e. The "you die in one location & a copy of you is created in a different location" argument.) !) Physical Matter YOU at Location A gets converted to Energy YOU. 2) Energy YOU gets transmitted via particle beam to Location B. 3) Energy YOU get reconstituted back into Matter YOU at Location B. It is ALWAYS still "You". (at least that has always been MY feeling on the subject)
Hi Rick and happy new year to you! Great vid and very thoughtful. I wondered about the dodgy stuff Voyager would do keeping people in suspension in eps like Counterpoint but perhaps you'll touch on it next week. Looking forward to it. (Hope the DR Who special was a treat - I'm in Oz so today we finally have it).
Barclay was shown to be conscious during transport, when he was attacked by 'parasites'. It even showed his POV. Being conscious during transport is something alluded to by others in-universe as well. I remember someone mentioning that the transporter worked by shifting space around, comparible to a wormhole or warp, and that the deconstruction/reconstruction is to move you through that distortion. So that it really IS you who emerges on the other side. Dang, wish I could remember where I heard that, cuz it is certainly something more convoluted than I would be able to think of.
I forget which show it was exactly, maybe Enterprise, but I remember one character describe that they could feel standing at two places at the same time. Which would mean the transporting process happens so fast that there is little time for the subjects brain to full register what is fully happening.
@@MandalorV7 that also indicates a continued consciousness between sites, making it less of a murdermachine than the brundle-teleporter which explicitly does deconstruct you...
The research you do for these videos is incredible and deserves high praise. The transporter is confirmed to just be a cloning/murder machine!! I've always agreed with barclay and bones on their transporter phobia.
the fact that the transporter channels your actual matter to the destination, and not just a blueprint for assembling matter, pushes the "does it kill you" debate into overlapping with the 'ship of theseus" debate.
Your explanation though " brief" is very, very good as non devices go. It's pretty much as I assumed they worked. It seems that a computer would have to work on the quantum level to function as it does. Also an organism tends to want to stay in the form it was in. In situ. I look forward to pt2
Well, since the equivalence principle says everyone can be right if they consider themselves to be stationary, not everything, as it still includes anything with displacement 0 on their own inertial frame (such as the ship, or a ship that's following in the same warp factor)
The way I have theorized how transporters work is by way of quantum conversion of the matter itself into energy that is out of phase with time/space. Meaning that your being isn't really "taken apart" but rather the matter that makes you up is taken out of phase of time/space at that point the atomic structure becomes like an imprint to that place in time/space. The beam creates a quantum area the same pattern as where the being currently is making the two areas the same place at the same time. The phased matter then merely get's directed to the new place in time/space and de-phases from it's quantum energy form and comes back into phase in the new area of space/time. This way you are technically still intact just in a different quantum phase. In simpler terms, it's like the door system in monsters inc except on the quantum level. Just a thought.
Until that episode that deals with Barclay's transporter fears, there really was a genuine reason for doubt about transporters killing you and then assembling another you. BTW, weren't transporters also somehow sub-space based? It's been ages since i consulted the lore, and much of what i was once fluent it, is now forgotten!
I remember ST:Enterprise had a moment of crew contemplating the existential implications of tech that was new to them. A small mention even of some civilians believing that whoever arrives via a transporter is just a copy that lacks a soul. So yeah, transporters create undead. Prove me wrong. 😄
Actually that's not how it works in science. you postulated a result, and thus it's your responsiblity to prove it TRUE first. Otherwise we can go into 'I can say whatever I want to be true cuz you need to prove it to be false' realm of nutty-folk :p
1. Take a picture of platform 2. Take a picture of you standing on a platform 3. Throw some glitter onto platforms 4. Walk next door to second set 5. Throw some glitter 6. Take a picture of set 7. Take picture of you on set Transporters are awesome.
You gave me some ideas for my own scifibstuff by reminding me to the limitations of tge technology amd its harsh realworld problems... Thank you so much and a happy new year everyone.
Since you can see the ship, that means visible light frequencies are getting through the shields hence set your phasers to visible light, and transporters to visible light, and you could shoot or beam through any shields
Most of the time when they beam through shields there's some explanation about "normally we can't do it but we're exploiting the fact that we know the shielding's refresh rate and slip through the split second it's weakest where we need to punch through" or "we know the exact energy frequency of the shield and if we match the matter stream's carrier frequency it's like the shields aren't there." And then there was at least one time the explanation was "the beam is going through subspace, so it essentially tunnels around the space where the shield is".
The Outer Limits episode Think Like a Dinosaur has a very interesting explanation on transporting, called 'Balancing the Equation'. In effect, you are scanned, put into stasis while the digital scan of you is transported and when your scan is received and made into matter the original suspended being is destroyed.
At the shows edit: A sound guy queues the transport sound and records it over the top of a still shot of Riker and is recorded over the top of the stock film... Then graphics guy does a fade between the sill shot of Riker and a shot of the empty transport pad - and this is edited into the still shot of Riker, when some sparkles are added on a computer using a CAD package.... 👍👍
There is actually a canonical way to beam through shields. It has to do with how different shield vectors don't drain each other at the points where they overlap. It is also this mechanic that allows weapons to pass through when frequency matched to the shields of the target enemy. When you want to beam through shields, you match the frequency of the transporter beam to that of the other ship's shields.
IIRC, O'Brien was somehow (in the best NextGen technobabble tradition) able to slip the transporter beam through the refresh rate of the deflectors on the ship of his old captain, who'd gone rogue against the Cardassians. As you said, the deflectors work against transporter beams until the plot says they don't!
I always figured that transporters worked on two levels. One is matter disassembly/reassembly and the other is a warped space approach. The first is like Legos with taking things apart; the second is like sliding a box from one space to another where the item is not disassembled. When considered this way the limitations and capabilities can both be reconciled - depends on what your story needs.
I think the confinement beam just holds the subject within the beam area, doesn't allow you to exit but otherwise, movement is still possible. We never see someone exit a confinement beam once established. In one episode Picard was held as they tried to beam him off a planet while another ship captain he was with was attacked and Picard was unable to go to the other captains aid until the transport process was aborted and he was released.
Should've covered the Heisenberg Compensator. Which is the key part of the transporter which "compensates for" the otherwise intractable problem of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Transporting through shields was a common thing in the early days of the tech. However, when some event happened (I dont remember exactly what), shields were altered to prevent this from happening. The same thing can be seen in Stargate Atlantis when the Tauri use the Asgard beaming tech to beam nukes aboard a Wraith hiveship. Eventually this was prevented. There are some other parts of the transporter that you didnt mention, such as the Heisenberg compensator. Oh, then there is the ludicrous transwarp beaming that allows anyone to beam from one place, to anywhere else in the universe. But that is in the Kelvin timeline.
Shields are obviously not solid objects, so it is possible to punch transporter beam through the holes in the shield, but that requires knowledge of the location of the holes in the shield emitters. There is several shield emitters and the signals don't overlap to avoid cancelling each other. This is obvious from various episodes including the ST:D episode few days ago when Osyraa transports her crew onboard Discovery during battle...
Riker found ,after 1 transport, that his TOOL was 2" shorter and Picard was pleasantly surprised to find an extra 2" added to his TOOL after a emergency transport.Data said "it was a happy accident,,,for the captain,,,and Troy".
Here's an interesting thought. If shields are supposed to prevent all forms of energy from getting past it, then how can communications work with the shields up? Plot device?
This approach is both safer and has longer range, so it is preferred whenever possible. All you need to do is "Hand over" or receive the pattern, other side does the rest. It does not protect you from subterfuge by the other side however (See "Data's Day").
Beaming into areas of different pressures could be painful as well. The entire away team could develop the bends quite suddenly upon rematerialization.
The no-deletion theorem suggests that the person who reappears on the other end of the beam is still you. It also suggests that if you were to upload yourself to a computer and die before the digital version is activated, it would be you, not a copy. I’m not a quantum physicist. Just a guy who has read Bobiverse
Ad conservation of energy momentum: if fully implemented that would have hilarious side effects! Just consider the different orbital velocities of a person standing on either the poles or the equator of a planet, not to mention the ship in orbit. Without some arresting it would be very obvious that the transport kills you - not necessarily in the metaphysical way, but by smearing you as a hypervelocity impactor across the bulkhead! Also genesis somehow extracted enough energy to allow the nebula to collapse into something solid. That would involve setting e&m of every involved molecule or atom.
Inspired by the 1958 movie, "The Fly", there was a bit of a teleportation craze in the early 1960's, leading to Star Trek's fabulous transporter. Unlike other teleportation devices, the transporter in Star Trek is unique in the ability to materialize at the target location without the need of a "receiver" mechanism . Before Star Trek all teleporters were from transmitter pods to receiver pods - the device that sends you requires a receiving device to catch you. Plus saying "transporter" sounds waay cooler than "teleporter" 😎
I was given to understand that the annular confinement beam was needed to maintain the organization of the matter pattern. I think that the TNG tech manual says that they dispose of trash, by beaming it into space, without the ACB. The result is that the trash materializes as disassociated atoms.
Using Transporters as a weapon has not been explored enough as well as the countermeasures to that kind of thing. Such as pressing highly reactive compounds against Shields. Also a sublight warp field say around a probe, could be used to transport objects inside that warp field and then disengage the warp bubble causing a projectile to be moving half the speed of light at a Target
I remember in the TNG S5 Darmok episode they tried to beam Picard up through heavy interference or some blocking system an alien species used. They couldn’t get a complete lock so for a moment he was half on the ship and half on the planet, then they canceled the beam. I was like “Why did they even try?!”
Yes. It was a specific cycle of the sensor, wich required a opening in the shields. O'brien knew it and thus knew the shield frequency for that very short window.
Warping through shiflfd can be explained through related ships of the same faction knowing their shield frequency. If you know the shield frequency of a vessel, then you cam shoot through it too.
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 พฤศจิกายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wPd7VFfWHIA/mqdefault.jpg)
Transporters! Helping Roddenberry deal with pesky little budgeting concerns (and being a handily abused plot device) since 1965!
It is true that Transporter Special effects cost a lot less money than landing a Star Ship on a planet special effects, so it was a budget decision to do Transporters.
@@davidgrisez Roddenberry 'invented' the Transporter concept because they couldn't pay to make a Shuttlecraft mock-up for the pilot :D
Hes allowed to be lazy seeing that he considered predicting the cell phone correctly
Do you think this way while enjoying ANY fiction?
It may have started as a quick plot device to avoided budgeting for a shuttle landing, but they become much more as a staple of the entire universe.
"With enough force to punch through plot shields"
the transporter doesn't kill you because Barclay was able to grab things in the matter stream, meaning he is aware he can see and he can even move to interact with objects, thus alive.
"Going through a transmat beam is unpleasantly like being drunk...."
"What's so bad about that?"
"go ask a glass of water....."
"I'll never be cruel to a gin and tonic again."
Do we need to put a paper bag on our heads?
That is hyperspace.
@@jamesbutters6115 Yes, if you like. It won't help, though.
@@daviniarobbins9298 But it becomes "Hyper-vomit" apparently...
"Soo, The transporter will take a series of really accurate pictures of me. Put me through a blender, mincing me into a very fine slurry, THEN dump the sludge at the target site and use that to assemble me? "
"Yes sir"
"I'll take the shuttle"
"Is that you Dr McCoy?!" LOL
kinda what Archer's Enterprise thought of it :P used in absolute dire situation in first, or even second season.
"what we got back didn't live long, fortunately" ~best summary of the risks of the Transporter.
"It turned inside out!"
"And it exploded."
@@richardleeskinneriii9640 Now, now- THAT wasn't actually Star Trek... ;)
Galaxy quest
My understanding is that confinement beams can be automatically activated and deactivated (as needed) by inconsistent scriptwriters.
Well it does make some in universe sense. Imagine you might need to bean someone out who is running for their lives. Staying still long enough for the transporter to lock onto them might actually risk them getting captured or killed.
I think the confinement beam adds an opposite pressure equal to the amount being applied to stop movement. This would explain the ability to maintain momentum after it is released. Not that it actually stops it.
@@MandalorV7 is beaning someone out like flicking a bean?
@@MandalorV7 staying still relative to what, though? The surface of the planet or the orbiting space craft? 😁
This is Star Trek. Every problem can be solved by either a) emitting a beam of NonExistiton Particles or b) reversing the polarity of the deflector dish. Or sometimes c) both. 😂🖖
"look chief… all I'm asking is you adjust the pattern to lose about 10 kilos of fat around the midsection, it's not like I'm asking you to make me younger…"
...although now that I think about it, a transporter could probably do that.
@@d.b.4671 Not only can it, it was actually done in the 2nd season of Star Trek: TNG. I forget the episode name, but in the one with the genetically modified children that created the 'aging virus' which infected Pulaski.
Possibly an alternative for male enhancement but I'm sure "humanity has progress beyond that sort of thing".
Man I'd pay for that.
@@RPhillip Yep, that episode *Unnatural Selection* (where the Federation ban on genetic engineering of Humans apparently had a exemption clause - _continuity contradictions in Trek?_ … never!) and the ridiculous episode *Little Rascals* (where Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro become children due to a transporter accident) were my inspiration.
And of course Little Rascals ends with the new tweened characters becoming adults again, instead of enjoying the opportunity of having all those extra years added to their lifespan - just have 6 years of growning (okay, longer for Guinan) and then they are a healthy mature teen/young adult… with decades of experience behind them.
Still it did lead to some great child Picard memes.
Ah yes, the "disassemble me and create quantum duplicate me in a different place" machine. I'm with Bones on this one, I'll stick to shuttles.
Until the movies, Bones used to beam down all the time
Are we the same exact beings we were at birth or from last night, quantum permanence is silly if you start to think about it..
For various reasons, it's clear there's something about the transporter process in Star Trek that maintains one's consciousness etc. through the whole thing, rather than just making a duplicate (at least in most situations), like how Barclay is shown to be continually conscious through the whole thing in one episode. For another example, to quote doctorwhom1 elsewhere in the comment section:
"More evidence that transporters probably aren't suicide booths would be that telepaths are fine with them. If they really just killed and reassembled people then purely psychic entities (Spock's katra for example) would be ripped away from whatever's being transported."
"One to beam down."
The transporter malfunctions. Again.
"Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good..."
@@Jeddostotle7 Clearly, they beam the soul along with the body. It's part of the energy pattern of consciousness. (Also, katras and souls are the same thing. I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to be a general consensus.)
Beaming through shields is a simple matter when you know the shield frequency, and adjust the matter stream to match .
Geordi's visor..lol
Or creating some kind of interference, but knowing the shield frequency should do it. That's hard though especially in post-Borg world where most use dynamic frequencies(they change rapidly). Of course, overpowering the deflector array also works, I believe that's how Borg used to just beam to wherever they wanted.
Is it..?? If it's "so eaay" why haven't we even got energy shields yet..?? 🤣
IIRC, O’Brien used the shield rotation frequency to synchronize transport the the point where the shield would allow a transporter beam through. The rotation frequency is needed so the shield don’t block all energy simultaneously…preventing weapons from firing or being able to scan outside the shields.
The reason so many species develop transporters is because they all go through a stage in _SciFi TV series production_ when showing shuttles conveying main characters from PlanetSide to the Hero ship would take too much of the budget and episode time.
The region around the Kazon in the Delta Quadrant ironically had a hard science SciFi history, their first major hit was based on *the Expanse.*
A few series were good about it without going full hard sci fi: Dark matter is a good one.
I doubt the kazon are smart enough for the expanse
@@theomnissiah-9120 Kazon as belter fanboys who don't understand how belter society would work is actually pretty on point, IMO.
that's the same reason for shields - to avoid showing the ship in repair dock all the time
I am surprised that moving target transportation was mentioned but the Heisenberg compensator was omitted.
I imagine that the Heisenberg Compensators are a subcomponent - certainly an important one, but they are part of one of the larger systems that enables it to perform its overall function, rather than a discrete part of the process. Probably part of the process that scans and saves the quantum image, since said image would otherwise have a 'fuzzy' resolution that would not be safe for use.
Sort of like how, for an exotic engine, you might need to engineer special bearings for its turbine-equivalents; those bearings are very important, in that they allow the component they're part of to function, but you wouldn't necessarily call attention to them in an overview of the engine's standard cycle, but you very much would talk about how the dang things keep failing and need replacing, or realigning, or etc if they were a common source of fault (i.e., brought up in the relevant episode as an issue)
I was also really surprised he didn't mention the Heisenberg Compensator, it was one of the main trivia things I knew about the transporter. Maybe he'll mention it in a later video, I only discovered this channel today :S
Surprised that the fact it's nothing more than a clever edit as none of this actually exists - hasn't been mentioned yet... 🤣
This has to be the most in depth analysis of a transporter system I've ever seen. Great job. I've heard a lot of these phrases said on the shows so many times and never put much thought into it. Figured it was just polt devices and science fiction jargon. Never realized how intricate these premises were.
A particularly nihilistic friend of mine is perfectly fine with transporters, because "persistent consciousness is a lie anyway".
So I guess most people in Trek have come to terms with that.
I mean, who's to say that your "you" consciousness doesn't die every time you go to sleep, and everything you remember is just your brain filling the blanks when your next consciousness steps in as you "wake up"?
How's that for some nightmare fuel?
@@moriskurth628 in that case I'm probably the longest person alive on earth rn
@@moriskurth628 and time is perceived buy the individual and is not a universal constant so the process you speak of could sit beyond the individual's concept of time then you don't need sleep to kill the consciousness it could happen in the bink of an eye, or it could happen slap bang in-between what the individual perceives to be a continuous consciousness and the moment one consciousness takes over from the other sits in an increment of time that is inconceivable to the individual making the change from one consciousness to the other seemless.
Apparently you are conscious, in one show they were talking during transport and the conversation continued through materialisation. So I wonder how Scotty passed the time while locked in a pattern buffer for so many years.
@@moriskurth628 science is to say, you dont stop existing when you sleep.
“If you have to take me apart to get me there, I don’t want to go!” Douglas Adams
These are basically suicide booths, evidenced by the fact that we got a duplicate Riker once. Basically they make a clone of you in a new location, and to avoid the inconvenience of having you at your present location they kill you.
The way i see the "does the transporter kill you" issue is basically the reverse of the common argument. Most people will argue that, if you were to enter a transporter, you would die and the transporter would generate a new version of you on the other side. But consider this; if you were a star fleet officer that used transporters every day of your life, you would never recall or experience a time that you entered a transporter and your cognisance was totally snuffed out. To you, ever time you entered a transporter, you always popped back out still being you.
Indeed, you still have all your memories, skills... everything that makes you you is still intact. Doesn't make it any less disconcerting to learn you get broken down to the quantum level, though. The time machine in Michael Crichton's _Timeline_ is worse, though, since it explicitly is described as breaking down the original body, and creating an exact duplicate at the destination point.
I mean, assuming that the stream of consciousness is the same as a regular ol' internet data stream actually makes the question moot. Why wouldn't we be able to handle breaks in the stream when we can just pause and buffer it?
Except that temporal beings die every second as their consciousness progresses to the next second.
Your living mass is in constant flux. You may remember being a child, but that 2ft being no longer exists. Baby you is effectively dead.
So really, in the grand scheme of life, having your matter broken down to the quantum level and reassembled is no different.
Certainly it brings to question the plausibility of an afterlife. But what happened to 2year old you? Not much difference.
@@Humaricslastcall
The internet is two machines communicating with one another. When communication is reinstated the machines can come to a consensus where the other left off.
A transporter is a single machine reading data from a source that has been obliterated.
@@thomasreedy4751 There's also the fact that cells in your body are dying and being replaced constantly. I forget the actual math behind it, but I think it's fair to say that almost all of the cells in your body have been replaced by the time you become an adult; so, thinking of yourself as being a completely different person from when you were a child might be more accurate than you'd think.
In the TNG episode The Wounded it's explained that some ships use a shield design where there is a fraction of a second gap in shield coverage every 5-6 minutes, and that with careful timing, and at high risk, you can get through.
Kinda reminds me of how the Falcon in The Force Awakens miraculously timed their approach to Starkiller at faster than light speeds to take advantage of the fraction or a second refresh rate of the base’s energy shielding. Did I just use a Star Trek topic as a springboard into a point about Star Wars? Yes and I feel great!
A lot of people (myself included) have been on a quarantine Star Trek binge. First time watching for me, gone through all of TNG and now on Voyager. Thanks for this explainer, I had most of it figured out but there was some useful info and visualisations in this
We were transported to a new year. Happy New Year, everybody.
@Tesla-Effect Year of Hell, Part 2
@@hawkeye5955 Who's gonna tell Janeway-
Transporters definitely handle momentum - otherwise everyone beaming down to Starfleet Academy from orbit would find themselves arriving in the Transporter Room at Mach 20.
and there's also that time they beamed a probe going at warp 9 into the enterprise
Another video i clicked on which i expected to be old and just saw the date is 2021
Good job!
As informatician of 16 years of experience and 20 years or above, probably above hehe, Fan of Star Trek, I must say, your level of understanding of that transportation technology is astoundingly shown very easy to understand. You must have noticed, that in the Manual there is a set of safety protocols in place and alot of programming supported by A.I. and quantum computing, I think in TNG era. The Manual of Okuda is HUGE and with bit of my help, you could even build transporter some day. Anyway, even for me is alot of fun and mystery.
Kylie Desire
The manuals are really fantastic fiction.
Please, please Rick, call the next video: transporters gone wild.
Happy new year, and I can’t believe you managed to get through this whole video without mentioning Heisenberg compensators. I also can’t believe that Apple dictation managed to correctly spell Heisenberg compensators.
Somebody with better skills than I needs to create a schematic of the Heisenberg Compensator.... And you know damn well who needs to be in that pic!
Quantum death machines as they have been called elsewhere.
Or silent holocaust machines.
In STD they have all this and more built into a small metal... I can't find a word. How were they called?
Ah, yes, the MICRO HOLOCAUSTERS 9000
When you think about transporters, physics gets unhappy
A lot of things get very unhappy like me. What to be
It's basically magic.
"A wizard did it." - Lucy Lawless in The Simpsons
Things that often break on Starfleet vessels: Holodecks, transporters, consoles, warp cores, rock containment spaces within walls and ceilings.
P.S. with how often Starfleet vessels explode from any damage I refer to them as "Space Pintos". I might be showing my age a bit with that too.
In FTL it is no problem beaming through shields, unless you are encountering Zoltan spacecraft.
Zoltan shield bypass solve problem.
I appreciate your work and wanted to wish you a Happy New Year!
I think it is really cool that we can get so many facts from a science fiction show! That why I love Star Trek! Also happy new year! 🎆
Matter Stream can be stored for 420 seconds... then you gotta exhale, bro.
I'm definitely looking forwards to the follow-up video. But since when is the ACB meant to freeze a transport subject? I know in Ent and TOS it did, Discovery doesn't but that's a newer ship, and in TNG that super soldier (Roga Danar or something?) screwed up a transport by sorta karate chopping his way out of the ACB.
Terrific video!
And thank you for effectively articulating why I DON'T think "Transporters kill you"! (i.e. The "you die in one location & a copy of you is created in a different location" argument.)
!) Physical Matter YOU at Location A gets converted to Energy YOU.
2) Energy YOU gets transmitted via particle beam to Location B.
3) Energy YOU get reconstituted back into Matter YOU at Location B.
It is ALWAYS still "You". (at least that has always been MY feeling on the subject)
If I remember correctly, knowing a shield's frequency does allow transporters to bypass them.
And yet there have been numerous times of “we’d use the transporter but we can’t drop our shields.
@@the_kraken6549 Yeeep, besides if the Shield Frequency is known, you can just shoot through them. Like in Voyager and Star Trek Generations.
Thanks for using the Nebula class ship in the video...one of my favorite ships and first Eagle Moss model I bought
Congratulations on 100k!
[SPOILERS]
I feel like this is a direct response to the EC beaming onto the bridge of Disco with their shields up still.
I think it's also important to discuss the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, and how Star Trek use the Heisenberg compensator to overcome this problem
Hi Rick and happy new year to you!
Great vid and very thoughtful.
I wondered about the dodgy stuff Voyager would do keeping people in suspension in eps like Counterpoint but perhaps you'll touch on it next week. Looking forward to it.
(Hope the DR Who special was a treat - I'm in Oz so today we finally have it).
Barclay was shown to be conscious during transport, when he was attacked by 'parasites'. It even showed his POV. Being conscious during transport is something alluded to by others in-universe as well.
I remember someone mentioning that the transporter worked by shifting space around, comparible to a wormhole or warp, and that the deconstruction/reconstruction is to move you through that distortion. So that it really IS you who emerges on the other side.
Dang, wish I could remember where I heard that, cuz it is certainly something more convoluted than I would be able to think of.
I forget which show it was exactly, maybe Enterprise, but I remember one character describe that they could feel standing at two places at the same time. Which would mean the transporting process happens so fast that there is little time for the subjects brain to full register what is fully happening.
@@MandalorV7 that also indicates a continued consciousness between sites, making it less of a murdermachine than the brundle-teleporter which explicitly does deconstruct you...
The research you do for these videos is incredible and deserves high praise. The transporter is confirmed to just be a cloning/murder machine!! I've always agreed with barclay and bones on their transporter phobia.
They should've just gone with Hitchhiker's "Law of Indeterminacy."
When Rick said you can lock on to the calcium in bones and now I have the nightmarish image of someone having their bones beamed out. Just the bones.
Man I love that epsisode, with the skeletal lock in voyager
4:50 yes, I was indeed thinking that😆
I guess you can also beam through shields if you know the shield frequency.
Very nice episode. In recent years I've said if I become transported Star Trek style I'll have a mini funeral for my past self.
I'm reminded of the time someone asked Michael Okuda how the Heisenburg Compensator works.
"It works very well, thank you," he replied.
Imagine taking a shower and someone transport you in to the middle of a city!
Hello and thank you for this video! It was very explanatory and enjoyable to watch. Have a good start to 2021 and a long and prosperous life!
the fact that the transporter channels your actual matter to the destination, and not just a blueprint for assembling matter, pushes the "does it kill you" debate into overlapping with the 'ship of theseus" debate.
Your explanation though " brief" is very, very good as non devices go. It's pretty much as I assumed they worked. It seems that a computer would have to work on the quantum level to function as it does. Also an organism tends to want to stay in the form it was in. In situ. I look forward to pt2
"Beaming to moving targets is harder".
So... literally everything in space?
Well, since the equivalence principle says everyone can be right if they consider themselves to be stationary, not everything, as it still includes anything with displacement 0 on their own inertial frame (such as the ship, or a ship that's following in the same warp factor)
@@DrVictorVasconcelos I am about 30 billion braincells short of being able to understand this
I assume they mean under acceleration or with an unpredictable trajectory.
Congratz on 100K subs chief! Love your videos
hey Rick, Congrats on 100k 😊 Really love your videos and your sense of humour 😁
Another excellent installment!
The way I have theorized how transporters work is by way of quantum conversion of the matter itself into energy that is out of phase with time/space. Meaning that your being isn't really "taken apart" but rather the matter that makes you up is taken out of phase of time/space at that point the atomic structure becomes like an imprint to that place in time/space. The beam creates a quantum area the same pattern as where the being currently is making the two areas the same place at the same time. The phased matter then merely get's directed to the new place in time/space and de-phases from it's quantum energy form and comes back into phase in the new area of space/time. This way you are technically still intact just in a different quantum phase. In simpler terms, it's like the door system in monsters inc except on the quantum level. Just a thought.
Until that episode that deals with Barclay's transporter fears, there really was a genuine reason for doubt about transporters killing you and then assembling another you. BTW, weren't transporters also somehow sub-space based? It's been ages since i consulted the lore, and much of what i was once fluent it, is now forgotten!
Ever since they introduced transporter tags, I always thought it would be great if they just gave officers tag guns to beam enemies right to the brig
Or just have the transporters "forget" to reassemble them. Seems like a pretty powerful weapon.
@@BoopSnoot that's some Section 31 thinking there... I like it. "Transport accidents" when capturing enemies...
I remember ST:Enterprise had a moment of crew contemplating the existential implications of tech that was new to them. A small mention even of some civilians believing that whoever arrives via a transporter is just a copy that lacks a soul. So yeah, transporters create undead. Prove me wrong. 😄
Actually that's not how it works in science. you postulated a result, and thus it's your responsiblity to prove it TRUE first.
Otherwise we can go into 'I can say whatever I want to be true cuz you need to prove it to be false' realm of nutty-folk :p
1. Take a picture of platform
2. Take a picture of you standing on a platform
3. Throw some glitter onto platforms
4. Walk next door to second set
5. Throw some glitter
6. Take a picture of set
7. Take picture of you on set
Transporters are awesome.
😆
You gave me some ideas for my own scifibstuff by reminding me to the limitations of tge technology amd its harsh realworld problems... Thank you so much and a happy new year everyone.
That's it, I'm buying a Danube class runabout. No more scrambling my molecules.
Make sure it’s the “Rio Grande;” she lasted all 7 seasons.
The perfect size for a bachelor(ette) to fly around space on their own, like a future version of getting a houseboat, or an RV.
Since you can see the ship, that means visible light frequencies are getting through the shields
hence set your phasers to visible light, and transporters to visible light, and you could shoot or beam through any shields
[CGP Grey has entered the chat...]
Most of the time when they beam through shields there's some explanation about "normally we can't do it but we're exploiting the fact that we know the shielding's refresh rate and slip through the split second it's weakest where we need to punch through" or "we know the exact energy frequency of the shield and if we match the matter stream's carrier frequency it's like the shields aren't there." And then there was at least one time the explanation was "the beam is going through subspace, so it essentially tunnels around the space where the shield is".
What a great video. Thank you for this
The Outer Limits episode Think Like a Dinosaur has a very interesting explanation on transporting, called 'Balancing the Equation'. In effect, you are scanned, put into stasis while the digital scan of you is transported and when your scan is received and made into matter the original suspended being is destroyed.
Yeah, that was a fantastic episode.
At the shows edit:
A sound guy queues the transport sound and records it over the top of a still shot of Riker and is recorded over the top of the stock film...
Then graphics guy does a fade between the sill shot of Riker and a shot of the empty transport pad - and this is edited into the still shot of Riker, when some sparkles are added on a computer using a CAD package.... 👍👍
"But, the animal is inside out..."
And it exploded
There is actually a canonical way to beam through shields. It has to do with how different shield vectors don't drain each other at the points where they overlap. It is also this mechanic that allows weapons to pass through when frequency matched to the shields of the target enemy. When you want to beam through shields, you match the frequency of the transporter beam to that of the other ship's shields.
IIRC, O'Brien was somehow (in the best NextGen technobabble tradition) able to slip the transporter beam through the refresh rate of the deflectors on the ship of his old captain, who'd gone rogue against the Cardassians. As you said, the deflectors work against transporter beams until the plot says they don't!
I always figured that transporters worked on two levels. One is matter disassembly/reassembly and the other is a warped space approach. The first is like Legos with taking things apart; the second is like sliding a box from one space to another where the item is not disassembled. When considered this way the limitations and capabilities can both be reconciled - depends on what your story needs.
I think the confinement beam just holds the subject within the beam area, doesn't allow you to exit but otherwise, movement is still possible. We never see someone exit a confinement beam once established. In one episode Picard was held as they tried to beam him off a planet while another ship captain he was with was attacked and Picard was unable to go to the other captains aid until the transport process was aborted and he was released.
Should've covered the Heisenberg Compensator. Which is the key part of the transporter which "compensates for" the otherwise intractable problem of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Id "accidently" transport everybody naked, if I was the transporter dude.
Transporting through shields was a common thing in the early days of the tech. However, when some event happened (I dont remember exactly what), shields were altered to prevent this from happening. The same thing can be seen in Stargate Atlantis when the Tauri use the Asgard beaming tech to beam nukes aboard a Wraith hiveship. Eventually this was prevented. There are some other parts of the transporter that you didnt mention, such as the Heisenberg compensator. Oh, then there is the ludicrous transwarp beaming that allows anyone to beam from one place, to anywhere else in the universe. But that is in the Kelvin timeline.
Hope you touch on the Heisenberg compensator :)
Shields are obviously not solid objects, so it is possible to punch transporter beam through the holes in the shield, but that requires knowledge of the location of the holes in the shield emitters. There is several shield emitters and the signals don't overlap to avoid cancelling each other. This is obvious from various episodes including the ST:D episode few days ago when Osyraa transports her crew onboard Discovery during battle...
Riker found ,after 1 transport, that his TOOL was 2" shorter and Picard was pleasantly surprised to find an extra 2" added to his TOOL after a emergency transport.Data said "it was a happy accident,,,for the captain,,,and Troy".
The ACB, as I understand it, is meant to prevent contamination in the beaming spot. It’s a weak force field pushing everything out of the way.
Here's an interesting thought. If shields are supposed to prevent all forms of energy from getting past it, then how can communications work with the shields up?
Plot device?
Visible light gets through it just fine too.
Do I hear the Normandy in the ambient sounds? Hmm, might be my craving for other dimensions =) Gr8 video
I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite comment for this video.
And in Star Trek: Discovery, transporters just work by magic. Just magic.
Great video again, Rick! Happy New Year!
Transporter room to transporter room beaming makes a lot more sense than say, transporter room to random area or random area to random area beaming.
This approach is both safer and has longer range, so it is preferred whenever possible. All you need to do is "Hand over" or receive the pattern, other side does the rest.
It does not protect you from subterfuge by the other side however (See "Data's Day").
@@christopherg2347 It's the transporter that scans, broadcasts you, and disassembles /rebuilds you.
Beaming into areas of different pressures could be painful as well. The entire away team could develop the bends quite suddenly upon rematerialization.
The no-deletion theorem suggests that the person who reappears on the other end of the beam is still you. It also suggests that if you were to upload yourself to a computer and die before the digital version is activated, it would be you, not a copy.
I’m not a quantum physicist. Just a guy who has read Bobiverse
New Year, New Certifiably Ingame.
Ad conservation of energy momentum: if fully implemented that would have hilarious side effects! Just consider the different orbital velocities of a person standing on either the poles or the equator of a planet, not to mention the ship in orbit. Without some arresting it would be very obvious that the transport kills you - not necessarily in the metaphysical way, but by smearing you as a hypervelocity impactor across the bulkhead! Also genesis somehow extracted enough energy to allow the nebula to collapse into something solid. That would involve setting e&m of every involved molecule or atom.
Inspired by the 1958 movie, "The Fly", there was a bit of a teleportation craze in the early 1960's, leading to Star Trek's fabulous transporter. Unlike other teleportation devices, the transporter in Star Trek is unique in the ability to materialize at the target location without the need of a "receiver" mechanism . Before Star Trek all teleporters were from transmitter pods to receiver pods - the device that sends you requires a receiving device to catch you. Plus saying "transporter" sounds waay cooler than "teleporter" 😎
Teleporter implies high tech device that breaks down molecular structure and reassembly in another location. Transporter is..... a bus
I remember seeing one of the original star trek episodes where someone beamed in from outside of the system.
I was given to understand that the annular confinement beam was needed to maintain the organization of the matter pattern. I think that the TNG tech manual says that they dispose of trash, by beaming it into space, without the ACB. The result is that the trash materializes as disassociated atoms.
We all know that transporters were invented by the R&D department at Federation Express...when it absolutely, positively needs to get there on time!
It make a digital copy of you, disintegrates you, then creates a physical copy at a different location.
Using Transporters as a weapon has not been explored enough as well as the countermeasures to that kind of thing. Such as pressing highly reactive compounds against Shields. Also a sublight warp field say around a probe, could be used to transport objects inside that warp field and then disengage the warp bubble causing a projectile to be moving half the speed of light at a Target
You can transport things inside of a warp-field of a craft. Thereby using it as a catapult to send projectiles at a Target
I remember in the TNG S5 Darmok episode they tried to beam Picard up through heavy interference or some blocking system an alien species used. They couldn’t get a complete lock so for a moment he was half on the ship and half on the planet, then they canceled the beam. I was like “Why did they even try?!”
O'Brien was able to beam through shields of the Phoenix (episode The Wounded). I believe it was in between the refresh cycle.
And he also beamed through the original Enterprise's shield cycle
Yes. It was a specific cycle of the sensor, wich required a opening in the shields. O'brien knew it and thus knew the shield frequency for that very short window.
you definitely deserve more subscribers
Warping through shiflfd can be explained through related ships of the same faction knowing their shield frequency.
If you know the shield frequency of a vessel, then you cam shoot through it too.