Let's just hope that the transporters don't use Windows XX (XX = 9x, NT, or CE) as their operating system!

I prefer fast transportation, but not that fast. I'd love to have my own shuttle.

As to weather or not the "real you" makes is though a transporter, that depends on waht you believe the "real you" is. Personnally I take the Budhist view that there really is no "real me" to begin with, the concept of "me" is just a concept of convenience. If you destroy and then re-assemble all my parts, that could just as easily be called "me" as "I" am.

Well, isn't it kind of like switching Atoms? we do that every second of our life, when we eat, drink etc. We don't 'feel'diffrent. It will just switch us in one strike instead ofin many small ones

If you want some good reading about the ethics of transportation, pick up Richard hanley's book "Is Data Human: The Metaphysics of Star Trek." Some fascinating reading about all of trek, I might add.

Funny, Phil. I think you're the second person I've talked to that introduced the notion of mixing body parts with another sex in transport. Although the other person admited he didn't think it would be too bad. ~

Now, I don't know how the body works, but there are several things about a person that makes him (or her) him or herself. Sure our bodies are constantly replacing deing cells and whatnot but it's OUR cells ding the replacing. This transporter dispenses with your cells and uses COMPLETELY DIFFERENT cells to create a "new" person exactly like you.

BTW - My discription of this transporter was a little wrong. Scientists transported a photon. Next they'll try an electron, and in 5-10 years they hope to transport a bacteria or virus cell.

I'm still transporter-phobic.

I still think it's kinde like the body replacing the cells and rebuilding it. Think of it like blood donationtion.

BTW, if u can transport, couldn't you 'copy 'as well?

Oh no. Not a cloning discussion too. The metaphysics are killing me. Hypothetical ethical logic gives me a headache. ;-)

No, with the technology currently available, you can't copy. They didn't destroy the original photon by choice, it just happened, which I took as a sign that if this does come to pass, the whole problem of destroying the original will be solved!

Again... why is the original destroyed?

I read a great short story on the subject called
"Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly, which appeared in Asimov's about a year ago.
I don't think I'd ever use a transporter. If all my molecules were converted energy, I'd just be dead. I don't think that it would really matter if those converted molecules were used to reconstruct "me" or if they just used any available energy like the replicator. There would be a duplicate of me created, but the original me would be dead. I wouldn't mind being scanned and duplicated as long as the original "me" could not be destroyed.

Forget the ethics, what about the possibility of a human-sized transporter at all? In his book The Physics of Star Trek (which I happen to have right here), author and physicist Lawrence M. Krauss hypothesizes that to transport a person, we'd need to: heat up matter to a million times the temp at the heart of the sun, use more energy in a single shot than all of humanity currently uses, build telescopes larger than the size of the Earth (to resolve individual subatomic particles), improve computers by a factor of 1000 billion billion, and avoid the laws of quantum mechanics. This of course assumes that we're actually transporting the person and not destroying and rebuilding them. No wonder Barclay was afraid of beaming!

The book (and the sequel, Beyond Star Trek, which, among other things, investigates the existence of the Force) also has fascinating discussions about warp drive, inertial dampeners, and the possible existence of extraterrestrials.

The machine needs to destroy each atom of your body to gain information about it to send to the other trasporter. It uses that information to "re buld" you using "outside atoms." This explains the size issue, you're only sending information on the subject. That could be done along a typical telephone wire.

After thinking about it.. Star Trek's transporters would preserve "you." Since it uses your atoms. Granted you would be "dead" for a brief time, but once your mollecules are back together correctly you could be brought back. People "die" everyday, and are brought back to life.

So I think... I'd probably do it. The person that would end the cycle will think he was me, would do everything that I would do, would get the same responses from society that I would have gotten, so what's the diffrence?

This is really a hard one, depending on how you think of "yourself". I doubt that the "you" could be transported. If you make a copy of yourself, you do not feel what the other feels, so, if they are created, and youa re destroyed, does, say, like a higher power, know to tranfer the "you" to the other body?
I took a course on this subject in my first year at college, and it was quite interesting, but there were no final answers. The only way to know is to try it I guess.

I still wouldn't transport, unless I was feeling suicidal. I also, along with Matthew,
refer everybody to The Physics of Star Trek. BTW, that is where I first *got* Einstein's
theory of relativity. It really is like a lightbulb coming on!

Larry Niven's short story on Transporters can be found in his book "All the Myriad Ways." (Incidentally, the title story is a great study of alternate timelines.)

Very highly recomended re: this discussion.

James Blish also wrote a story about transporting related to the soul in one of his collections of Star Trek stories. I found it in the public library but don't remember the title at the moment. (Read it 3 or 4 years ago!)

Now that we're mentioning authors' short stories on transporters, Stephen King actually wrote one (I forget the name right now, but I believe it was in Skeleton Crew. Apparently, in this story, transporting lots of people is no problem, but if you're not put under sedation before transportation, you experience a million years of nothingness before rematerializing.

If your soul isn't transported along with everything else then the new you may be identical in every other way but the 'real' you is still dead as it would have no soul.

assuming that we have souls

Okay, everybody, take two aspirin, breath deeply, say " I will leave it up to God" (or
Fate, or whatever Entity you may believe in) and head to bed.

K.N.D.: Is this another conspiracy between the drug companies and the religious community? ; - )

James Blish's story about transporters was actually a novel published shortly after TOS was canceled. I think it was called Spock Must Die!. It was also included in one of the Star Trek Readers, although I can't remember which one. (The Readers were collections of the TOS episode novelizations done by Mr. Blish.)

Yeah, I remember that. I read it ages ago too. Re conspiracy: you got...hbfdgd (head
slams against keyboard) Uh, what? What? Oh, okay... Joel, ignore what I said. Aspirin
is a derivative of Venatian soil. We ain't walked on the moon/Elvis ain't dead/you
ain't gone crazy/it's all in your head.
;-)

Well the rumors of my death are highly exagerated

That's my story/And I'm sticking to it. You can use it too, though.

dauglas Adams talked about transporting in 'The Restaurant at the edge of the Universe". It goes something like...

Beatelguse girls will do what ever you want/
Real fast and then real slow/
But if you have to take me apart to get me there/
Then I don't wanna go!

One of the more interesting treatments I saw of transporters was in an old TOS-related book in which someone whose name escapes me wrote a short story in which there was an accident with the transporter at the same time they were filming a transporter scene on the set of Star Trek the TV show, and suddenly Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley and (I think) Nichols all end up on board the real Enterprise, and try to pass as Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura. It's a hoot!

And this pastor is staying out of the whole souls vs. transporters debate!

Well I'm one to brave this so here it goes...

Assuming we have souls (in case you don't) I always thought of it as being "part" of the physical body. Meaning that at any one given instant you could not readily identify one portion as the soul and the rest as the physical. So I figure that they are attached, completely and utterly attached. And all this means that if they took your molecules apart, and then moved them, and reassembled them, that your soul would be carried in those molecules.

Now, of course, all this is irrelevant if they destroy those molecules (atoms or what-not) and create new ones at the other end, like they did with the photons.

And since the title of this board asks... I think I would transport.

well, i might transport, but my faith would have to be really strong that day. :-)

Why is transporting almost never done between DS9 and Bajor? Everyone seems to take shuttles. I would think the station's transporters should have enough range to beam personnel to Bajor and back.

The station was moved to the Deniries Belt in the Pilot (Emmisary) and is well outside transporter range. Which isn't very big, only 40,000 km (24,860 miles) or 1/10 the distance from the Earth to its Moon.

If souls exist, God (or someother similar being)must exist. I do not think the He would allow a device that removes peoples souls to exist. I think that the Heisenburg Uncertanty Principle basicaly would prevent transporters from existing.

to kyle.powderly.....I read that story too. I think the title was "Visit to a universe revisited" And it was just with Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley, not with Nichols. I thought it was extremely funny. I like Nimoy breaking up in the turbo lift scene. I think they should do this for Deep space nine or Voyager. Anyone agree?

Charles - 1. Does the existence of soul prove the existence of God? 2. Does the existence of God really say that he won' permit soul disposal?

I think it was "Visit to a Strange Planet Revisited". The reason it was "revisited" is that there was a previous piece of fanfic that did the opposite... Kirk, Spock & McCoy beamed into Paramount.

Thomas Disch wrote a SF novel called Echo Round His Bones that dealt with tranporter problems. This transporter had a side-affect that created an "echo" of the person that was invisible to everyone else and could walk through solid objects (like in the TNG episode "The Next Phase"). Most of the novel dealt with the main character trying to survive in this state, like finding food and water. He ran into a group of white soldiers that had survived by killing black soldiers and eating them.

Eeewww...sounds real PC to me!
re the soul implying God exists: Well, I don't think the forces of evolution would
consider a soul neccesary equipment

Re Cabe: I do believe there's something in the transporters called a "Heisenberg Compensater" that lets us both know the velocity and location of the energy particles. No explanation as to how it works. Like the "inertial dampeners" that keep people from being plastered to the back of the bridge like Dark Helmet in "Spaceballs". If the laws of physics make trouble, the creators just write straight through them. Jules Verne would be livid. ;-)

I'm staying out of the souls debate. This is the sort of discussion that I'm very very glad concerns things which are still hypothetical. No cloning discussions, please. ;-)

I would think there would be regulations regarding use of transporters.

For example, the Enterprise is in orbit around Vulcan. Capt. Picard wishes to beam down. Wouldn't he need some form of authorization beforehand from the Vulcan government to beam down?

Wouldn't a planet have regularly designated beam down coordinates?

When beaming down to a planet, would the person being transported have to go through customs first?

Also, would the person beaming down need a passport or visa?

here's a short, cute song that Douglas Adams wrote about teleporting that seems
apropriate:
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.

There's a longer one, too, but if you're that anxious to read it, go buy the trilogy...it's
great!

X

About the needing to know EXACTLY where each partical is. Is it really that relevant? All it should really need to know is what chemicals are where. You probably really just need accuracy to the molecular level. (the computer can look up what a normal molecule is made up of and make those atoms.) As for the soal, wherever you are, there you are. Personally, I think a transporter is really a pair of devices: Desintegrator-Replicator.

The transporter works on the quantum level. Don't forget that many sigmals in the human body are transmitted by photons and therefore molecular resolution isn't enough. And replicators are far from perfect, for example they can't produce good caviar...

Andy, you WOULD need to keep track of all those atoms. Matter, by definition, cannot be created or destroyed. If you set a wooden table on fire, the matter inside the table will be converted from wood to ash, but it will not have been destroyed. Along the same line, the replicators do not create matter. The ship has a storehouse of raw nutrients which the replicator teleports and rearranges into various foods. This is explained in the NextGen Technical Manual.

Andrew, you don't need to store matter. You need store energy. E=mc²

I didn't say that you'd need to store matter; just that the particles would have to be catalogued and tracked even while in the form of energy. You cannot simply discard the information and cause a person to magically appear on the transporter pad. Even if you assembled a person from raw proteins sitting somewhere on the ship, the person would not be the same person that was dematerialized elsewhere, even if this person had consciousness. I believe that a replicated person would have no consciousness and would simply be a vegetable, but you can't really argue that point, since there's no way to try it. It really comes down to whether or not you believe there's more to a person's sentience than chemical processes.

Teleportation Rap
Most everyone seems to be discussing the negatives of teleportation. What about the many positive uses? They include:
1. Time machine (Relics)
2. Cloning (Second Chances)
3. Fountain of Youth (Unnatural Selection)
4. Body part harvesting (as did the Viidians)
5. Send torpedo into enemy ship (Dark Frontier)
6. Transwarp Drive
7. Emergency escape
8. Site-to-site transport for those who have a phobia regarding the turbo-lift. Why don't we see people using site-to-site instead of the lift all the time? Do they always have to tell the computer 'site-to-site'? Speaking of which, I believe the first site-to-site was in STIV when the gang was beamed from a hospital elevator to outside the Klingon Bird-Of-Prey. Am I correct?

I'm sure that there are more unethical uses that are against regulations, but I'ld like to see a race of aliens that don't care about such ethics.

Christopher Q, you forgot

9. Emergency Stasis (Relics).
10. Ensure unarmed enemy for diplomatic talks (Day of the Dove)

My biggest bone of contention with the transporters is its consistent violation of the conservation of matter and energy. When Riker was beamed back but "Tom" Riker wasn't they would each weigh a half Riker (or good and evil Kirk each weigh a half-Kirk or Tuvix would weigh as much as Tuvok and Neelix combined). Don't scales exist in the future?

Since this is about the opening statement, you could never get me in a transporter. When you take me apart atom by atom I'm dead. I don't care if you resurrect me later -- I try to avoid being dead.

As for the soul, don't Vulcans have a "Katra" that we have seen? (It can be the sum total of the spin rate of their neutrinos but that would give "Search for Spock" new meaning for me.)

We don't know beans about "souls" this side of eternity, so souls are a non-issue. As far as God allowing us to displace souls, every single day He allows us to do things that He doesn't approve of - and whenever someone says, "You shouldn't do that", the individual is accused of promoting hatred. Yes, transporter technology would enable someone to duplicate things, that's how the "replicators" of Next Gen and later Trek shows work. Using an early transporter, there'd be no guarantee you wouldn't wind up wearing a nose for a kneecap - or worse. And what if "The Fly" was in the transporter chamber at the same time you were?

Did anyone see the pregame show for the Lions vs. Patriots game on CBS? (Thanksgiving 2002) It had a StarTrek: Nemis tie in. I post it here because at the end of the segment Troy Brown says "beam me up, Tom" (or something) and "transports". Ty Law asks, "Isn't ther another way I can there?"