teletransporter star trek

Teleportation

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Teleportation was a term for traveling from one location to another almost instantaneously. Numerous advanced cultures had this capability through the use of transporter technology. A device facilitating teleportation might be known as a teleporter.

To Henry Starling of 20th century Earth , teleportation was synonymous with transporter technology, and he labeled USS Voyager 's transporter a teleporter. ( VOY : " Future's End ")

Emory Erickson , father of the transporter, similarly dreamed about sub-quantum teleportation , which was to be accomplished using a transporter and was referred to by T'Pol as "sub-quantum transporting" instead. ( ENT : " Daedalus ")

The Q were capable of teleportation. In 2369 , Q asked fellow Q Amanda Rogers whether she had tried teleportation, among other Q-powers, on purpose. ( TNG : " True Q ")

On rare occasions, the phrase "teleporter incoming" might be used when someone beamed aboard a ship using a Starfleet transporter. ( DIS : " An Obol for Charon ")

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Teleportation at Wikipedia
1 Daniels (Crewman)
3 Jamaharon

Teleporters & You: The Teletransporter Paradox and Personal Identity

teleporters and the philosophy of personal identity

The question of whether or not one should step into a teleporter has plagued science fiction fans for decades. Although teleporters are not real, the perceived consequences of stepping in one provide insight into our intuitions about what matters most when it comes to personal identity. We’re going to talk about one of my favorite thought experiments, the teleporter thought experiment, and discuss exactly how it helps us make sense of personal identity.

The teleporter thought experiment

For those unfamiliar with scifi tropes, teleportation is the act of transferring objects and people from one location to another. The most common type of teleportation portrayed in science fiction, and the form most relevant to our thought experiment, involves a device like Star Trek’s transporter. The way these devices are assumed to work is by atomically deconstructing any objects placed on their entry point and reassembling them at the destination . Star Trek itself has been somewhat vague if transporters simply transfer information – details about the atomic structure of the transporter object – and uses this to recreate the object with new atoms, or if the original atoms are physically moved across space. For the purposes of this thought experiment we’ll assume the former. It should be noted that both scenarios appear to be scientific impossibilities, although the former does resemble quantum teleportation (a real phenomenon), albeit at an absurdly larger scale.

Using a machine he dubs the teletransporter, philosopher Derek Parfit asks us to consider this type of teleportation in his work Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons. Longtime readers of this blog might remember Parfit’s name mentioned in several entries from 2018’s Halloween themed thought experiment list . That’s because he’s an ethicist who specializes in issues of personal identity. If you’ll recall his fission or split-mind thought experiment, some of the same intuitions are present in this particular thought experiment too. You should definitely check out that post if you find this one interesting!

Anyway, in this thought experiment, Parfit asks us to imagine the following :

Suppose that you enter a cubicle in which, when you press a button, a scanner records the states of all the cells in your brain and body, destroying both while doing so. This information is then transmitted at the speed of light to some other planet, where a replicator produces a perfect organic copy of you. Since the brain of your Replica is exactly like yours, it will seem to remember living your life up to the moment when you pressed the button, its character will be just like yours, and it will be in every other way psychologically continuous with you.

The question that inevitably follows from the thought experiment is what exactly about you that makes you… well you survives the teleportation process?

This might seem like an absurd question, but the answer is a matter of life or death given that our initial intuition might be that the teleporter kills us while preserving our likeness in a clone. Additionally, as fantastical as the premise of the thought experiment, it allows us to explore the answer to questions we may find ourselves asking throughout our lives. These are questions like what is it about you that survives a coma or your death, are you the same person after a traumatic personality-altering brain injury , and in what way are you the same person you were at age 10?

Central to all of these questions about the conditions under which you “remain” you is the notion of continuity. That is to say, when we ask such questions about personal identity, what we seem to be getting at are aspects or properties that can consistently distinguish us across time to form a line or a continuum from our past to our present. Some of the most common answers to the teletransporter paradox and other questions of personal identity involve identifying specific types of continuity linking an individual’s identity to who they were both before and after they stepped into the teleporter.

Defining personal identity through different types of continuities

The property or properties we decide to use to establish a connection between our past and present selves can best be thought of as a sort of metaphysical “glue” that allows us, at least under ordinary circumstances, to talk and conceive of ourselves as a single person persisting across time. You were once the 10 year old in your memories because this glue is doing its work in the background allowing you and others to make sense of yourself as a single person as you age.

What exactly is the nature of this glue? Well, that’s somewhat of a debate in metaphysics, but you’ll find that many objects and properties familiar to you have been proposed at one time or another as candidates for establishing a continuity of personal identity.

The soul theory of personal identity (continuity through the soul)

It should be no surprise that one of the oldest proposals for the survival of identity was the soul. There are a variety of ways a theory of the soul can be conceived, some of which might not even make the soul essential for personal identity and continuity. However, theories of the soul like Plato’s, suppose that there is an immaterial essence that resides within an individual during their life but survives their death.

The body theory of personal identity (bodily continuity)

The body theory of personal identity is fairly self-explanatory. This theory posits that it’s the persistence of the body over time that matter in determining continuity of identity. Though while the theory is simple, we can conceive of the concept of a body in many different ways. For example, does every part of the body matter equally? Should someone break an arm or lose a hand, does that matter in the same way as losing something like someone’s brain to trauma or disease?

Psychological and personality-based approaches to personal identity (psychological continuity)

These approaches to continuity take facts about an individual’s psychology, like memories, beliefs, and desires to be the basis of consistency over time. Of course it’s true that such things change gradually, but what most theories are concerned with what is considered to be psychological overlap rather than the persistence of the exact same memories, beliefs, and so on. Just as the body theorist understands that, for example, every 28 days our skin doesn’t literally consist of the same cells and atoms, psychological theories can account for gradual change of psychological states over time.

Stepping into the teleporter

Going back to Parfit’s thought experiment, your intuitions about which of these theories of identity might be correct will inform whether you believe you survive the teleporter. From what we can tell, bodily continuity is almost certainly violated through the teleporter’s disassembly process, however psychological continuity is preserved. If you’re sympathetic to a theory of souls that assumes the soul is central the personal identity, it’s impossible to tell what the teleporter does. The reassembly process could be akin to a resurrection, or disassembly could be akin to death with the teleporter spitting out a zombie-like shell that’s similar to you only in atomic constitution at the other end.

For Parfit however, the purpose of his thought experiment wasn’t to establish the importance of identity. As a reductionist Parift states that:

…personal identity through time is constituted by (“reduced to”) relations between mental and physical states and events in the absences of anything like a necessarily determinate and indivisible soul.

What this means is that, according to Parfit, there is no fact of the matter for survival over and above a type of psychological continuity that persists as a result of an appropriate cause. This notion is referred to as Relation R. Under normal circumstances Relation R is maintained by the persistence of your brain (and thus your psychology and personality) in your skull over time.

Parfit, through his fission and teletransporter thought experiments, illustrates a much broader notion of psychological continuity than what I briefly mentioned above. Key to this conception of psychological continuity is a causal relationship between past and future selves. This might seem somewhat abstract, but if you’re familiar with something like Buddhism, you might have an inkling of what Parfit is getting at. For Buddhists change is a constant of our universe, thus it’s somewhat illusory to look for some consistent thing that we can use to establish a notion of identity or self in the traditional sense. Likewise, for Parfit, questions about identity are missing the point, because there’s nothing for us to consider aside from psychological continuity that persists as a result of appropriate causes.

In Parfit’s teletransporter, it is the case that the individual entering the teleporter is not only psychologically connected to the individual exiting the machine, but causally connected to them as well, given that they are the cause for the machine recording and transmitting the information needed to reconstruct their body. In Parfit’s view, our intuitions that this type of causal relationship has vastly different consequences than those that occur under normal circumstances are mistaken. To get a better understanding of Relation R, consider the cause of fission presented in the blog’s thought experiment post.

What do you think? Would you step into a teleporter. Feel free to share your thoughts before or on Facebook or Twitter @Philosimplicity.

Star Trek's Use of Transporters, Explained

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Why star trek has transporters in the first place, how transporters work in star trek stories, is there any real scientific basis for star trek's transporters, is a star trek character the same person after being transported.

There are many iconic things about Star Trek , from the communicators that inspired flip cell phones to the unmistakable silhouette of the USS Enterprise . However, one of the most iconic elements of Gene Roddenberry's universe are the transporters that "beam" characters from one place to another. This technology is one of the earliest and most high-concept ideas in those early shows. Yet, it was born -- like so much in television production -- out of a need to save money. So, how does the fantastical transporter system work? If someone who wasn't a fan of Star Trek was asked to quote a line of dialogue from the show, they most likely would say, "Beam me up, Scotty."

The chief engineer of the original USS Enterprise was also the one often tasked with overseeing this complicated and sometimes dangerous process. Yet, the phrase never appears in Star Trek: The Original Series . In fact, the closest fans ever got to hearing it was in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . While saying goodbye to Gillian, their 20th Century marine biologist ally, Kirk says, "Scotty, beam me up." Throughout every future iteration of the franchise, the transporter is a crucial part of the technological armaments used in the stories. While no single science-fiction concept is wholly original, the transporter is one element that's rarely copied by other storytelling universes. Doctor Who uses them, but it's often only the aliens or antagonists who have access to them, and for good reason. While it saved money for production, conceptually it complicates the series' drama.

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Looking back at Star Trek: The Original Series , modern-day viewers can be forgiven for saying it looks "cheap." Yet, during its day, the show was one of the most expensive on television, which is why The Original Series was canceled despite strong fan support. In fact, while still in development, Gene Roddenberry almost blew the budget simply researching starships. From that experience Roddenberry said, "I would blow the whole budget…just in landing the [ship] on a planet," in The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. "[T]he transporter idea was conceived, so we could get our people down to the planet fast…and get our story going by page two."

The technology also allowed the characters to only bring the props they could carry like phasers, communicators and tricorders. Anything else they needed could simply be transported to them. Len Wein, a writer on the early Star Trek comics , chided earlier writers for showing the characters with backpacks, because anything they needed was a simple beam-down away. Still, the transporter posed a problem for the production crew. It was one of many visual effects techniques that had to be invented for the series. Sure, the use of composite shots -- which allow figures to appear or disappear -- existed as long as motion picture cameras. But in Star Trek , everything had to be bigger.

In The Fifty-Year Mission , visual effects legend Howard A. Anderson talked about how they achieved the effect. They "used aluminum dust falling through a beam of high-intensity light" photographed separately. Using matte shots, they would shoot the characters, followed by a cut-out of the character with the glitter effect, and then make the effect disappear leaving an empty transporter pad. It was one of the show's simpler shots, but that, along with the sound, became a beloved hallmark of the series. Despite modern advancements, the transporter effect still has elements of the original.

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In most cases, the transporters still work the way they were intended to, namely by getting characters into the action quickly. However, they are also a source of drama. In Captain's Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , also by Gross and Altman, Roddenberry lamented about a cut scene from the (second) pilot where Dr. McCoy gives voice to his concern about using it. The line told fans "one of these days we may see a story about a transporter malfunction." When this eventually happened in The Original Series , for "regular viewers, it comes out of the blue," he said. A transporter malfunction is also how the show introduced Star Trek's infamous "Mirror Universe."

Of course, if the characters could simply be whisked out of dangerous situations with a transporter, it hurts the drama. In The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years , second-wave writer and producer Hans Beimler said they "had to break down the transporter…so that [the characters] could be in trouble." This is why there are so many "ionic storms" or stories set in deep caves. The character of Dr. Pulaski on Star Trek: The Next Generation shared Dr. McCoy's contempt for transporters, too. Yet, it wasn't always a hindrance to the storytelling.

In The Next Generation Season 6, a transporter malfunction created a double of Riker who spent years on a planet waiting for rescue. In Star Trek: Voyager , another malfunction -- in concert with an alien flower -- bonded two characters together into a new being in the episode "Tuvix." As recently as 2023, the transporters were used in Star Trek: Picard as a key element of the Borg's plan to stealthily invade Starfleet by assimilating the officers under the age of 25. This technology is about much more today than getting characters to a planet quickly and cheaply.

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It's surprising how scientifically accurate a show like Star Trek can be, even without its science consultants. In an early The Original Series episode, Captain Kirk makes reference to what sounds like a black hole, a year before the term appeared in scientific literature, according to science consultant and astrophysicist Erin MacDonald on NPR's Science Friday . Regretfully, she said the transporter is not one of those things. Beyond the massive task of disassembling and reassembling seven billion-billion-billion particles, there are the laws of physics to contend with, namely the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The scientific concept states there is an incalculable measure of uncertainty in measuring and locating a particle at any given time. Star Trek sometimes takes liberties with real physics. MacDonald noted the depiction of gravity waves in Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery was depicted inaccurately because it was more visually appealing. It is a television series, after all. Still, Star Trek tries to account for these things. In certain episodes when transporter "technobabble" is required, there's an element called a "Heisenberg Compensator." This accounts for the uncertainty, but asked how it works, all MacDonald can say is "very well, thank you."

There are more recent elements that are equally scientifically preposterous, especially the "pattern buffer." This is a memory storage device that holds a transporter "pattern." In The Next Generation , Scotty is found alive decades after his disappearance inside one. Strange New Worlds used the concept, too. Dr. M'Benga used it to store wounded Starfleet officers in the Klingon war and, later, his own daughter who had a degenerative disease. It makes for great fiction, but it's not real science. In fact, there is a massive debate about whether the transporter kills each person who goes through it.

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In Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4 , the inventor of the transporter, Dr. Emory Erickson visits the ship for an experiment that's a secret plan to save his son, lost in a transporter accident. During the episode, he dismisses out-of-hand the idea that the transporter "kills" the people who use it. However, it's not so easy to dismiss. The transporter breaks down the physical structure of a person to the smallest particle and then rebuilds them in a different location. There is an argument to be made that they are not the "same" person who went into the machine. Instead, they are a new being who possesses the same matter and memories, or in Will and Thomas Riker's cases, two people with the same matter and memories.

With this philosophical question, there is no clear answer. Dr. Erickson is convinced the idea is nonsense, but Star Trek: Picard proved it's not so beyond the pale. The Starfleet officers had their DNA rewritten with biological Borg elements they didn't have before. Dr. Crusher notes the "bio-filters" should've caught it. These filters are supposed to be able to remove contaminants and pathogens an away team might pick up on an alien planet.

While the transporter is reassembling a person's particles, it can and does change them when required. This is a fan-debate for which there is no clear answer, nor should there be. For Star Trek's purposes, however, the people who are transported aren't killed in the process. The one exception is the people in Star Trek: The Motion Picture whose molecules were scrambled by beaming aboard the refitted USS Enterprise . Despite Roddeberry's desire for his universe to hew closely to real-world science, Star Trek 's transporters are its most magical technology.

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

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transporter (Star Trek)

transporter pad of the starship Enterprise Trek transporter

The transporter is a device, first seen aboard the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek original series, which made the concept of teleportation familiar to a wide audience. "Beam me up, Scotty" became one of the small screen's most oft-repeated lines (though trivia hunters will find that "Beam me up, Mr. Scott" is the closest the show actually came to that immortal line).

In the twenty-third century world of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, shuttlecraft are used only in special circumstances when beaming someone's molecules around might prove a health hazard. But, ironically, the reason that Trek mastermind Gene Roddenberry chose to equip his starships with "transporters" had less to do with high-tech future possibilities than with low-tech Beatles-era reality. It wasn't feasible, in terms of budget or sixties-level special effects, to show convincingly a spacecraft landing on a different planet every week. Much easier to have a crewmembers shimmer out in one scene, then twinkle back an instant later someplace else. With realistic computer graphics still a couple of decades away, the effect called for plenty of ingenuity and homespun improvisation. The sparkling dematerialization and rematerialization sequences were created by dropping tiny bits of aluminum foil and aluminum perchlorate powder against a black sheet of cardboard, and photographing them illuminated from the side by a bright light. When the characters were filmed walking into the transporter, they stepped on to the pads, Kirk gave the order to energize – and the actors stepped off. In the studio lab, after the film was developed, the actors were superimposed fading out and the fluttering aluminum fading in, or vice versa. By 1994, when production started on the fourth TV incarnation of the franchise, Star Trek Voyager , computer graphics was well into its stride and a new transporter effect was devised in which little spheres of light expand to cover the person, a shower of fading glitter providing a node to the past.

The universe of Star Trek may be only make-believe. The staff at Paramount may have no more idea how to beam a person around than Leonard Nimoy has of performing a mind meld. But the Trek transporter has brought the notion of teleportation into millions of homes worldwide, and given as a common set of images and expectations. Over the course of hundreds of episodes, the transporter's technical specs have been fleshed out and its dramatic possibilities explored in more detail than almost any other device in the history of science fiction.

How Star Trek's transporters (supposedly) work

According to the official bible of Trekana, The Star Trek Encyclopedia , the transporter "briefly converts an object or person into energy, beams that energy to another location, then reassembles the subject into its original form." A little short on detail perhaps for those interested in cobbling together a version of their own to avoid the daily rush hour, but no matter: when facts are hard to come by, there's always technobabble to fill the void.

A key part of the Trek-style transporter is the so-called annular confinement beam (ACB), a cylindrical force field that channels and keeps track of the transportee from source to destination. Basically, this stops your bits and pieces from drifting off into interstellar space while you're being dispatched to the surface of some strange new world. It seems that the ACB first locks onto and then disassembles the subject into an energy- or plasma-like state, known as phased matter . This is a key step in the whole process, so it's unfortunate that the show's creators can't be a little more specific (and win a Nobel prize while they're at it). But what's clear is that some "stuff," be it matter or energy or some hybrid of these, it sent from one place to another, along with instructions needed to reconstitute the subject upon arrival. George O. Smith would have been delighted that his Special Delivery system, or something very much like it, eventually found its way into Hollywood's most celebrated starship.

Imagine, then, that you've stepped onto the transporter pad, issued the fateful command "energize," and had your atoms turned into phased matter. Now you're all set to go. Your matter stream is fed into a pattern buffer (a hyperlarge computer memory that briefly stores your entire atomic blueprint), piped to one of the beam emitters on the hull of the starship, and then relayed to a point on the ground where, all being well, the ACB will put you back together again. There's even a component of the transporter, called the Heisenberg compensator , designed to sidestep one of the most basic laws of quantum physics – Heisenberg's uncertainty principle . This frustrating little rule insists that you can never know exactly where something is and exactly how it's moving at the same time. Unnoticeable in the everyday world, it comes into effect with a vengeance at the subatomic level and, at first sight, seems to pose one of the biggest obstacles to practical teleportation. How can an exact copy of you be made somewhere else if it's impossible to establish the state of every particles in your body at the outset? No problem, according to Mike Okuda, the scenic art supervisor for the Star Trek spinoffs Deep Space Nine , Voyager , and Enterprise . His answer to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the Heisenberg compensator. (Once asked how it worked, Okuda replied, "Very well, thank you!")

Anyone wondering whether he or she would have the guts to step up to the transporter plate along with the other crewmembers and be boldly sent needs to bear two thoughts in mind. First, teleportation could probably never work along the lines just described (hint: a "Heisenberg compensator" is physically impossible). second, even in the Star Trek universe, transporters can go wrong. Well, of course they can go wrong – that's part of the fun.

Transporter malfunction!

One (or two) of William Shatner's better performances as Kirk came in Star Trek 's first-season episode, "The Enemy Within," written by the top-drawer science fiction author Richard Matheson, who also penned some of the more memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone (including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in which Shatner sees a gremlin on the wing of a plane. Having beamed up from a mission on the planet Alpha 177, Kirk feels faint and is helped from the transporter room by Mr. Scott. A moment later a duplicate Kirk appears on the pad. Apparently the magnetic effects of an ore on the planet's surface interfered with the transporter and caused it to split the captain into two selves: one good but incapable of making decisions, the other evil and strong-willed. In this interesting twist on the Jekyll and Hyde theme, it becomes clear that the two halves can't survive apart and that the violent, animal-like component is just as essential in making Kirk an effective leader as his benign side.

Transporter fission turns to fusion in the Voyager episode "Tuvix," when crewmates Tuvok, the Vulcan security officer, and Neelix, the spotty Talaxian, longtime antagonists, are merged during a teleportation into one person. The resulting Tuvix harbors the memories of both progenitors but has a single consciousness. Initially confused and ambivalent, Tuvix eventually carves out a clear identity and personality of his own, and when a means is discovered to undo the mix-up caused by the transporter accident, he objects, not unreasonably, on the grounds that it will kill him. Captain Janeway is faced with the moral dilemma of either ending the brief existence of a distinct, unique individual who has become well-liked among the crew, or denying the rights of Tuvok and Neelix to resume their separate lives. Ensemble casting and contractual arrangements being what they are, Tuvix is consigned to oblivion.

In Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Second Chances," an identical copy of commander Wil Riker is created. Years ago, while a then-lieutenant Riker was beaming up from a planet's surface through severe atmospheric interference, the transporter chief locked on to Riker's signal with a second tracking beam. When this second beam turned out not to be needed, it was abandoned – but not lost. Unbeknownst to everyone on the ship, the ionic disturbance in the atmosphere caused the second beam to be reflected back to the planet and result in the creation of a second Riker. Fast forward eight years and the two Rikers meet. Confusion reigns, Riker-2 gets together with Riker-1's old girlfriend before matters are resolved, and Riker-2 departs to pursue his separate existence.

All good fun, of course – and useful grist for the philosophical mill. But in 1993, as Star Trek began its third incarnation, Deep Space Nine , something happened in the real universe to make beaming up seem just a little less fantastic: plans were published for building the first practical teleporter.

Transporters in the real world

Today, far from being a science fiction dream, teleportation happens routinely in laboratories all around the world. It isn't as dramatic as its Star Trek counterpart – yet. No one has had his or her atoms pulled apart in Seattle and been reconstituted moments later in Seville. The researchers doing this sort of thing aren't mad scientists intent on beaming the molecules of unfortunate animals around the lab and hoping for the best. Instead, real teleporteers belong to a group of computer specialists and physicists who share a common interest. all are involved, in one form or another, with tackling the same questions: How can information be handled at the smallest level of nature? How can messages and data be sent using individual subatomic particles?

Teleportation in the real world means quantum teleportation . Working at the quantum level, it turns out, is the only way to make an exactly perfect copy of the original. So, to understand how teleportation works means taking a trip into the weird world of quantum mechanics . It means looking at how light and matter behave at an ultra-small scale, where extraordinary things are commonplace, and common sense goes out the window.

Actual teleportation, as it's done at present, doesn't involve a flow of matter or energy. It doesn't work by streaming atoms, or any other kind of physical "stuff," from one place to another like the Enterprise's transporter. The basis of true teleportation is transferring information without sending it through ordinary space. It's a transfer achieved with the help of the strangest, most mysterious phenomenon in all of science: entanglement . A bizarre shifting of physical characteristics between nature's tiniest particles, no far apart they are, entanglement lies at the heart of teleportation as well as two other major new fields of research: quantum cryptography and quantum computation.

For now, the most we can teleport is light beams, subatomic particles, and quantum properties of atoms, rather than solid objects. But scientists are talking about teleporting molecules sometime within the next decade. Beyond that there's the prospect of doing the same with larger inanimate things. And beyond that ...

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Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About Transporters

It's one of the few pieces of tech from Star Trek that has yet to be invented. Or, is it?

The transporter is probably the most fantastical element of Star Trek's vast inventory. Created back at the time of the pilot, The Cage, this miracle device allowed crews to vanish and reappear instantaneously in another place, allowing huge distances to be traversed quickly, and huge budgets to be slashed.

The device dissolves matter down to the sub-atomic level, stores it, transfers it, and rematerializes it at the desired destination. Conspiracy theorists would argue that industries like aviation and motoring are holding back any development of the tech, as it would kill them both overnight.

But that's none of our business.

How has the transporter affected Star Trek, and other properties, through the years? Trek is far from the only property to utilize beaming, even if it was the instigator. Shows like Stargate have run with the tech as well, honouring the franchises that came before, while putting their own spin on it. How does it work? Who can we thank for the transporter itself? And before we even get into any of that - let's address one of the most famous misquotes in all of popular fiction.

10. They Were Invented To Save Money And Time

The earliest pitches for Star Trek had to deal with the challenge of getting the crew down to the planets each week. Support shuttles were suggested, as was landing the Enterprise itself, though both would have proven prohibitively expensive in the beginning. So, the producers were backed against a wall and came up with the idea of the matter transporter.

This became part of the pitch, and part of the reason that Star Trek was given the green light - twice. It helped sell The Cage first of all. Now, rather than committing to large-scale models for a pilot that may or may not take off (spoiler: it didn't), this fantastic new technology could be used instead. When The Cage failed to make any traction, the show was given a new pilot - Where No Man Has Gone Before - though it was actually The Man Trap that helped Star Trek survive.

The depiction of the transporter in this episode excited the network so much that they bumped it up for broadcast, meaning that it was shown to audiences - before the first episode.

Writer. Reader. Host. I'm Seán, I live in Ireland and I'm the poster child for dangerous obsessions with Star Trek. Check me out on Twitter @seanferrick

Star Trek’s Transporter Technology, Explained

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Star Trek: Who Is Agent Daniels?

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Ever since its creation in the late 1960s, Star Trek has been a pinnacle of positive science fiction, envisioning a non-dystopian future where technology has become so advanced that problems that irk mankind today are no longer an issue . World hunger is solved by the unlimited source of food created by a replicator , complex medical diagnostics can take place in a matter of seconds using a tricorder. However, nothing has become such a cornerstone of the many iterations into the franchise as the iconic transporter.

Teleportation has long been a dream of mankind, replacing arduous long-haul flights with a simple matter transportation device. With this gizmo, journeys that would typically take hours can take only seconds. The transporters are used throughout the many iterations into the franchise, from the revolutionary Original Series to the newest addition to the universe, Strange New Worlds . So fundamental are these transporters as a narrative beat that they appear in almost every episode, bar the occasional few. What's more, they often play a key role in solving whatever problem the intrepid adventures of Starfleet face.

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While there have been a few gizmos and gadgets from the show that have wiggled their way into non-fictional technological creations , unfortunately the transporter is not one of them. Real-world scientists have poured considerable research into it, with successful experiments having already been carried out on a molecular scale, but sadly we are nowhere close to the transporter technology portrayed in the show.

The biggest problem with achieving teleportation is largely down to how advanced and complex most organisms and objects are. Star Trek transporter tech works by breaking down matter such as living organisms, cargo, even gas or liquid-based matter into an energy pattern, in a process that the show calls “dematerialization.” Once each atom is broken down into this pattern, it is “beamed” across to another transporter pad, where it is converted back into matter. This is aptly named “rematerialization.” Interestingly, the famous quote “Beam me up, Scotty”, in reference to the Original Series transporter operator and chord of engineering Montgomery Scott, is actually a misquote, never uttered in the Original Series . The closest occasion was the one time Kirk said “Scotty, beam me up,” years later in the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Within the Star Trek universe, there are some limitations to the miraculous technology, such as distance restriction and often an inability to penetrate through shields. There are of course exceptions to these rules, but they are often connected specifically to a particular episodes plot. Writers, as is often the case in long-running TV shows such as this, often break or bend the rules on transporter specifics, so it’s often hard to canonically understand their limitations. In the Original Series it’s noted that it is only possible to transport from one transporter bay to another. However, this rule has been broken multiple times, showing crew members transported from any random location to another, all without the bay. This raises the question as to why they have the designated transporter room to begin with, other than to make grand entrances and create memorable transitions.

While the process sounds simple enough on paper, like sending an email over, the process is riddled with complex problems and potential dangers. It’s no wonder that transporter operators are so highly trained within Starfleet, as the idea of breaking down matter and then reconstructing it in exactly the same way is a daunting task. It is comparable to smashing a vase into tiny pieces, then trying to glue it all back together. Of course, with the wonders of Star Trek technology, this process is vastly automated, but there are still a myriad of problems that can occur.

There have been various episodes devoted to these issues, potentially most notably the Voyager episode “Tuvix”. Tuvok and Neelix, two crew members under the controversial Capt. Janeway, are on an away mission. Upon beaming back to the ship their energy pattern was disrupted, causing it to merge into one pattern and thus rematerialize into one living organism: Tuvix. There kinds of issues are scarily common, and thus there are various characters whom audiences meet across the franchise that are hesitant or even refuse to use transporters.

Transporters are potentially one of the most fascinating technological advancements present within the show, and are often the envy of even modern day audiences. Technology has come ridiculously far since The Original Series first graced televisions, with touch screens, smartphones, and virtual reality all appearing in the real world, and making the old shows feel dated. Transporters, however, along with warp engines and replicators, make even the oldest episodes feel futuristic, setting a standard that has remained relevant more than 50 years later.

MORE: Star Trek: Deep Space 9's Most Heart Wrenching Moment

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Movies & TV

The Untold Truth About Star Trek Transporters

According to Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), "transporting really is the safest way to travel" in the "Star Trek" universe. Having your atoms disassembled by a computer, beamed to another location, and then reassembled certainly does sound like an efficient (albeit terrifying) mode of transportation and practically everyone in the 24th century gets around with transporters.

La Forge even claims there have only been two or three transporter accidents in the past 10 years — but if that's true, then the 24th century must have a very different definition of the word "accidents." From age regression to accidental cloning, the U.S.S. Enterprise alone has had multiple bizarre transporter malfunctions in just its first seven years of service.

The problems get even weirder when you look at all the transporter accidents in the original " Star Trek ," " Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ," " Star Trek: Voyager ," and other "Trek" TV shows and movies. While some of these effects can actually be beneficial, you may want to read this article on the untold truths behind "Star Trek" transporters before calling out that old refrain: "Beam me up, Scotty." Because after your journey, there's a good chance you won't like how you get put back together.

Transporters Exist Because of Low FX Budgets

According to "The Making of Star Trek," franchise mastermind Gene Roddenberry originally wanted to shoot scenes of the Enterprise landing on alien planets, but this proved too expensive. Even building models of shuttlecrafts was too time consuming, and the crew needed an alternative when filming began.

To get around the problem, the special effects team created a teleportation effect for the crew to explain how they arrived on a planet's surface in the "Star Trek" pilot episode "The Cage." The transporter became very popular and influenced many episodes, causing all the later TV shows and movies to use it even as their FX budgets increased substantially. Thus, a special effect created for budgetary reasons ended up having a major real-world effect on pop culture.

Transporters Run on Glitter and Alka Seltzer

Ask a Trekkie how transporters work, and you might receive a technical explanation of the physics involved in disassembling and reassembling a person.

Well, guess what? In reality, transporters can run on anything from glitter to Alka Seltzer. According to " Inside Star Trek: The Real Story ," the special effects team created the first transporter effect by turning a slow-motion camera upside down, filming grains of aluminum powder dropping in front of a black background, and using the footage to create the "shimmer" effect between shots of the actors and the clean background. In later episodes, they created different transporter effects by filming dissolving Alka Seltzer tablets and later glitter swizzled in a jar full of water.

More recent "Trek" movies and TV shows use computer effects. Today, practically anyone can create their own Star Trek transporter effect with basic video editing software and some computer-generated effects. Even so, it's telling that one of the most iconic special effects in science fiction history was accomplished using materials anyone could buy at their local drug store.

People Suffer From Transporter Phobia

By the 24th century, millions of people travel by transporter every year. Even so, there are plenty of people who hate this mode of travel and do everything they can to avoid stepping onto a transporter pad.

In "The Next Generation" Season 6 episode "Realm of Fear," Lieutenant Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz) confesses he suffers from "transporter phobia" and suffers a panic attack when asked to beam down to a planet while plasma field disturbances adversely affect the transporter. As it turns out, his fears are justified, and he sees worm-like creatures in the transporter's matter stream that turn out to be human beings trapped in mid-transport.

People with transporter phobia may be ridiculed in the 24th century, but Barclay's actually in good company. Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) famously hated transporters and insisted on using shuttlecrafts whenever possible.

During the "Star Trek: Enterprise” television series, the original Enterprise crew also preferred using shuttles and only allowed themselves to be beamed up during emergencies. Considering all the horrible transporter malfunctions that would occur over the next two hundred years, this was very smart behavior.

Transporters May Technically Kill You Every Time You Beam Down

Transporter accidents have killed people in many gruesome ways. In " Star Trek: The Motion Picture ” (1979), memorably, some new officers experience a transporter malfunction and re-materialize as a semi-living mass of flesh that mercifully doesn't live for very long.

When you get down to it though, "Star Trek" transporters may very well murder every single person who uses one. According to multiple official explanations, including the one found in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual," transporters scan a person's body, convert said body into a matter stream, store those particles in a pattern buffer, send them to their destination via an energy beam, and then put those particles back together in the original configuration.

Many fans argue that this basically means a transporter kills you and only reassembles a copy of your body and mind. This idea is given credence by the fact that transporters don't have to use your original atoms to reassemble you, but can use any available atoms, leaving your original atoms floating somewhere in space.

This is similar to the " Ship of Theseus " thought experiment (famously referenced in "Wandavision" ), which questions whether a person or object is still themselves once all the original components are replaced. The Star Trek graphic novel "Forgiveness" does claim that transporters manage to send your soul via the energy stream, which would indicate that transporters don't really kill you. That being said ... they kind of do.

Transporters Make Death Irrelevant

Transporters may or may not kill you, but having a computer advanced enough to scan and store a complete pattern of your body, mind, and memories actually makes death irrelevant. In the episode "Lonely Among Us" from Season 1 of "Next Generation," for instance, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) merges with an alien entity and beams off the ship, apparently destroying himself.

However, the Enterprise crew later realize that they can get Picard back by reversing the transport and reconstituting Picard as he was before the alien possessed him. This Picard is the same person in every respect, although he lacks the memories of when he and the alien entity were one, indicating he's an earlier version of Picard built from new atoms.

Oddly, this means a transporter can bring back anyone who dies from a mission just by saving their physical and mental patterns in the pattern buffer and reconstituting them after the original dies. The new version would lack the memories of that mission (including the memory of dying), but this would be a small price to pay for getting a chance to bring people back from the dead on demand. The only downside might be accidentally duplicating someone who isn't dead yet — which actually happened to one hapless crewman on "Next Generation."

Transporters Are Cloning Machines

Season 1 of the original "Star Trek" produced one of the show's weirder episodes with "The Enemy Within," where a transporter accident splits Captain Kirk (William Shatner) into a "good" but weak-willed Kirk and an "evil" Kirk prone to overacting (or at least, more overacting than Shatner normally did). As it turned out, both sides of Kirk needed to merge back together to form a whole personality, and Spock and Scotty were able to re-integrate them.

At least Kirk managed to pull himself together. A generation later, Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) wasn't so lucky when, on the "Next Generation" Season 6 episode "Second Chances," he learned he was unknowingly split into two exact duplicates thanks to a transporter accident while he was a lieutenant. While one Will Riker continued his career in Starfleet and rose to the rank of Commander, the other Riker (also Frakes) was marooned on an alien planet for eight years until the Enterprise rescued him.

From that point, things got even weirder. Lieutenant Riker decided to go by his middle name "Thomas" and start a new life. He joined a group of Maquis dissidents, then used his genetic pattern to pose as Will Riker and steal the U.S.S. Defiant in the "Deep Space Nine" Season 3 episode "Defiant." Later, he got caught and sentenced to life imprisonment in a Cardassian labor camp. Meanwhile, Commander William Riker continued to advance in his career and eventually became captain of the U.S.S. Titan. Wow, talk about an identity crisis.

Transporters Are Gene Splicers

David Cronenberg's classic 1986 remake of "The Fly" showed how an early transporter (or "telepod") could accidentally splice someone's genetic code with an insect if it happened to be inside. By the 24th century, transporter gene splicing accidents have become somewhat prettier, but no less ethically disturbing.

In the "Voyager" Season 2 episode "Tuvix," Lieutenant Commander Tuvok (Tim Russ), Neelix (Ethan Phillips), and an alien plant get merged together in a transporter accident thanks to the plant's enzymes. The resulting hybrid being (played by actor Tom Wright) possessed their memories and called himself "Tuvix." Over time, Tuvix formed relationships with the crew and came to see himself as a unique being (and looked at Tuvok and Neelix as his parents), resisting attempts to reverse the fusing process. However, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) forced him to go through the process anyway, effectively destroying him .

While the moral dilemma of forcing Tuvix to revert back to two beings made for some good drama, it almost seemed unnecessary. Since the transporters can effectively clone people, as they did with William Thomas Riker, why couldn't Voyager have simply made a copy of Tuvix and then separated one of them back into Tuvok and Neelix? Tuvix would have probably been more amenable to that idea.

Transporters Are A Fountain of Youth

Transporters might be able to reassemble you in exactly the same physical condition you were in at the moment of beam out ... but what if you don't want to be put back together as an out-of-shape middle-aged man or a dying woman?

No problem! As multiple "Star Trek” episodes have shown, the transporter can make you any age you want. In the "Next Generation” Season 6 episode "Rascals," a transporter accident removed key sequences in the crew's DNA, causing them to rematerialize as 12-year-olds, albeit with adult minds and memories. Doctor Crusher (Gates McFadden) later restored the missing sequences and returned the kids to adults, but she indicated that the regressed crewmembers could have simply grown up the normal way instead.

Okay, but say you don't want to restart your life as a preteen and go through puberty a second time? That still wouldn't be an issue. In the Season 2 episode "Unnatural Selection," Doctor Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) was stricken with a disease that accelerated her aging. To save her, the Enterprise used the transporter to re-code her DNA back to normal with a previous bio-pattern that put her back to her regular age.

Of course, since you could store bio-patterns of yourself every time you use the transporter, you could restore yourself to any age or physical condition — including how you looked during your twenties after spending months working out at the gym. Who needs a day spa when you've got a transporter?

Transporters Redefine How Childbirth Works

Starfleet doctors are some of the best medical professionals in the business. Not only can these specialists perform delicate surgery on multiple alien species, they're trained to use their advanced medical equipment to improvise in dangerous situations, leading to some ... well, innovative solutions.

In the "Deep Space Nine" Season 4 episode "Body Parts," Doctor Bashir (Alexander Siddig) was on a shuttle with Major Kira (Nana Visitor) and Chief O'Brien's pregnant wife Keiko (Rosalind Chao). When an accident endangered the lives of Keiko and her unborn son, Bashir decided to use the transporter to transfer the fetus into Kira's womb. Kira ended up carrying the infant to term, resulting in some weird moments for the O'Brien family.

This bizarre incident was motivated by Nana Visitor's real-life pregnancy , which the writers decided to work into the show after Visitor feared her character might need to be written out. Oddly enough, while "Star Trek" science consultant André Bormanis didn't think such an operation would be scientifically possible, he later admitted that fifteen years after the episode aired, the idea of a fetal transplant was being studied and could become a reality .

Transporters Can Turn You Into A Living Ghost

Why was Geordi La Forge so confident that transporters were safe? Probably because he suffered a transporter accident that should have killed him in the Season 5 "Next Generation" episode "The Next Phase," only to learn he wasn't really dead. The story had La Forge and Ensign Ro (Michelle Forbes) waking up on the Enterprise after a transporter malfunction, only to learn nobody could see or hear them and that they could walk through solid matter.

Ro believed the two of them died while being beamed up, but La Forge was skeptical, and learned a Romulan molecular phase inverter transformed them into "out of phase" versions of themselves. Luckily, he was able to get a message to Data, and the Enterprise reverted them to their solid states.

Ensign Boimler (Jack Quaid) suffered a more embarrassing version of this ghost-transformation in the Season 1 "Star Trek: Lower Decks" episode "Much Ado About Boimler." While helping an engineer test the transporter, Boimler was turned into a transparent, glowing version of himself that gave off a "transporter" sound.

When his crew found him too distracting, they shipped him to "The Farm," a medical spa where all incurable "Star Trek" victims go. The Farm turned out to be a great place, but when Boimler reverted to normal, he was shipped back. Considering the Farm is basically a day spa with attractive nurses, maybe being a transporter accident victim wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Transporters Can Replace Cryogenic Freezing

There's been a lot of cinematic speculation about how cryogenics freeze a person into stasis, possibly allowing them to be revived years or even centuries later. In the movies, everyone from Austin Powers to Captain America to Doctor Evil have attempted it, with varying success.

Well, guess what? In the "Trek” universe, you don't have to bother with messy cold storage. Just store your pattern in the transporter buffer of your ship and wait for someone to re-materialize you.

That's what Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) did for himself and his crewmate when their ship crashed on a Dyson sphere in the "Next Generation” Season 6 episode "Relics." While his friend's pattern degraded too much for him to be revived (guess Scotty wasn't that much of a miracle worker), Scotty was taken out of storage 75 years later by the crew of the Enterprise-D.

Oddly enough, in the rebooted Kelvin timeline, an alternate Scotty lost Admiral Archer's beagle Porthos in a transwarp beaming experiment. However, in the IDW comic book "Star Trek" #12, Scotty brought Porthos back, showing that animals can also be kept in stasis for extended periods of time. Undoubtedly, this technology will someday revolutionize how our kennels operate.

Transporters Are Time Machines

"Trek" time travel is usually a dramatic event. In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," Kirk and his crew went back to the 20th century by getting a stolen Klingon Bird-of-Prey to perform a "slingshot" maneuver around the sun, creating a time warp. The effort nearly destroyed the ship, but it got the job done.

Of course, if you don't have the movie budget — er, starship — to perform such a feat, just use the transporter. In the "Deep Space Nine" Season 3 two-part storyline "Past Tense," a transporter accident involving temporal altering chroniton particles sent Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks), Doctor Bashir, and Lieutenant Commander Dax (Terry Farrell) to the 21st century where they accidentally interfered with a key historical event, threatening to erase their future.

Meanwhile, Chief O'Brien (Colm Meany) and Major Kira managed to use a limited supply of chronitons to travel through time and locate their missing crew members. They ended up briefly visiting 1930, and even swung by 1967 to get flowers from some hippies, before finally hitting the right date.

Such tech would be greatly refined by the 29th century, when the Federation included fleets of "timeships" in Starfleet that possessed temporal displacement drives and temporal rifts to travel through time, allowing them to essentially beam people to any point in history.

Transporters Can Take You to Alternate Realities

As if ending up in the wrong place isn't bad enough, some transporter accidents can place you in an entirely different universe — and not a very fun one at that.

In the classic Season 2 "Star Trek” episode, "Mirror, Mirror," Kirk and several other crew members re-materialized in a " Mirror Universe " where the benevolent Federation was the planet-conquering "Terran Empire." Kirk and his crew needed to pretend to be their evil counterparts, since any traitors to the empire would be placed in "agony booths" of torture that made folks wish they were dead.

Meanwhile, the Mirror Universe versions of Kirk and his crew appeared in the "Prime" Star Trek universe and were thrown into the Enterprise's brig. Fortunately, the two crews managed to switch places, with the "Prime" Kirk making the "Mirror" Spock consider reforming the Terran Empire.

While this appeared to be a random transporter accident, by the 24th century, Mirror Universe engineers managed to upgrade their transporters to allow people to crossover to the "Prime" universe at will. This led to multiple episodes in "Deep Space Nine" where mainstream characters visited the alternate reality and even formed friendships with some of their Mirror Universe counterparts.

People Have Faked Their Deaths via Transporter Accidents

Want to know how common transporter accidents really are? As it turns out, one Romulan spy felt this sort of death was so prevalent in Starfleet that she staged her own transporter death.

In the "Next Generation" Season 4 episode " Data's Day ," a Vulcan ambassador (Sierra Pecheur) apparently died in a transporter accident even though the equipment appeared to be functioning perfectly. Data (Brent Spiner) investigated, discovering bits of organic matter that arrived in transport were replicated, leading him to deduce that the "Vulcan" ambassador was actually a Romulan spy who used the Enterprise to rendezvous with her people and had the replicated material of her "dead body" beamed onto their ship to fake her cover identity's death.

While the spy's deception was discovered, not every Starfleet crew has people like Data or Doctor Crusher who can investigate so thoroughly. Given this, maybe transporter accidents really aren't so common. Perhaps, most of them are perpetrated by people who just want to start a new life.

"Beam me up, Scotty!"

It's one of the most famous lines in the "Star Trek" franchise and refers to the futuristic matter transportation device or "transporter" on every ship in the galaxy. The transporter dematerializes entire humans (and other objects) and sends their constituent particles to another destination where they are perfectly reassembled. The best thing to come to personal point-to-point transportation since the elevator, this technology seemed to have been adopted by every civilization in the show, from the inhabitants of Vulcan to the Klingons and Borg. It solved a multitude of plot problems and made the shows and movies iconically cool.

Is "Beaming" Possible?

Will it ever be possible to develop such technology? The idea of transporting solid matter by turning it into a form of energy and sending it great distances sounds like magic. Yet, there are scientifically valid reasons why it could, perhaps, one day happen.

Recent technology has made it possible to transport—or "beam" if you will—small pools of particles or photons from one location to another. This quantum mechanics phenomenon is known as "quantum transport." The process does have future applications in many electronics such as advanced communication technologies and super-fast quantum computers. Applying the same technique to something as large and complex as a living human being is a very different matter. Without some major technological advances, the process of turning a living person into "information" has risks that make the Federation-style transporters impossible for the foreseeable future.

Dematerializing

So, what's the idea behind beaming? In the "Star Trek" universe, an operator dematerializes the "thing" to be transported, sends it along, and then the thing gets rematerialized at the other end. Although this process can currently work with the particles or photons described above, taking apart a human being and dissolving them into individual subatomic particles is not remotely possible now. Given our current understanding of biology and physics, a living creature could never survive such a process.

There are also some philosophical considerations to think about when transporting living beings. Even if the body could be dematerialized, how does the system handle the person's consciousness and personality? Would those "decouple" from the body? These issues are never discussed in "Star Trek," although there have been science fiction stories exploring the challenges of the first transporters.

Some science fiction writers imagine that the transportee is actually killed during this step, and then reanimated when the body's atoms are reassembled elsewhere. But, this seems like a process that no one would willingly undergo.

Re-materializing

Let's postulate for a moment that it would be possible to dematerialize—or "energize" as they say on screen—a human being. An even greater problem arises: getting the person back together at the desired location. There are actually several problems here. First, this technology, as used in the shows and movies, seems to have no difficulty in beaming the particles through all kinds of thick, dense materials on their way from the starship to distant locations. This is highly unlikely to be possible in reality. Neutrinos can pass through rocks and planets, but not other particles.

Even less feasible, however, is the possibility of arranging the particles in just the right order so as to preserve the person's identity (and not kill them). There is nothing in our understanding of physics or biology that suggests we can control matter in such a way. Moreover, a person's identity and consciousness is likely not something that can be dissolved and remade.

Will We Ever Have Transporter Technology?

Given all the challenges, and based on our current understanding of physics and biology, it does not seem likely that such technology will ever come to fruition. However, famed physicist and science writer Michio Kaku wrote in 2008 that he anticipated scientists developing a safe version of such technology in the next hundred years.

We may very well discover unimagined breakthroughs in physics that would allow this type of technology. However, for the moment, the only transporters we're going to see will be on TV and movie screens.

Edited and expanded by Carolyn Collins Petersen

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Den of Geek

Is the Science Behind Star Trek’s Transporter Plausible?

Star Trek's Transporter is a sci-fi staple... but does it hold up both scientifically and narratively? A new video podcast from Roddenberry Entertainment puts it to the test.

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Editor’s note: Does It Fly? releases new episodes Fridays through Den of Geek , YouTube , Apple Podcasts , and DoesItFlyPod.com .

After pioneering the future of science fiction on television for decades, Roddenberry Entertainment digs into the real-world science behind pop culture’s most iconic conceits, vehicles, and gadgets with the original video podcast series Does It Fly? . Hosted by noted astrophysicist and science educator Hakeem Oluseyi and television host, actor, and pop culture enthusiast Tamara Krinsky, the show examines devices from the most beloved sci-fi movies and shows, explaining the theoretical science behind them and if they’d actually function properly outside of the comforts of fiction.

To commemorate First Contact Day, the pivotal date where humanity first met intelligent life from another world, as depicted in the classic 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact , the inaugural episode of the podcast focuses on if Star Trek ’s transporter could theoretically work. Speaking from their complementary professional backgrounds, areas of expertise, and Star Trek fandom, Oluseyi brings in the solid scientific theory and Krinsky frames it all with her encyclopedic knowledge of the geekiest pop culture franchises.

The transporter has been a staple for Star Trek ever since The Original Series debuted in 1966. The device is capable of teleporting solid objects and living organisms from one point to another, in most cases, safely and in a matter of seconds. Though the backstory behind the transporter has been revealed in Star Trek: Enterprise , along with its evolving technical limitations of the technology across the different generations of Starfleet explored in the various series and movies, the actual science behind it comes into question on the podcast.

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Oluseyi packs the discussion with plenty of actual science in how the transporter works but keeps the information accessible for those who might not be as familiar with the math and science involved in calculating its viability. Oluseyi lays out the various technical challenges transporter technology would face, including the potential data storage requirements and how to maintain fidelity in converting living organic matter into energy and back to its normal state. Krinsky draws from her own extensive knowledge of Star Trek , citing specific key instances where further context about the operational capabilities of the transporter are revealed and behind-the-scenes history from the production.

As the two debunk some of the fictional science to make these devices work, Oluseyi and Krinsky make it very clear that the application of real-world science does not diminish their love and appreciation for Star Trek and the other shows and movies they examine on the podcast. And even though Oluseyi has his own skepticism about the viability of creating a functioning transporter, he excitedly declares he would try out the transporter himself – after at least a few other people try it first.

Every episode of Does It Fly? revolves around the title question: Does the pop culture device in question “fly,” in terms of becoming scientifically feasible in the foreseeable future? Krinsky and Oluseyi each lay out the case why they think a given piece of tech, like transporter, should be considered fly-worthy like a parting defense. And though Krinsky and Oluseyi don’t always agree on if something is fly-worthy, the conversation stays brisk, engaging, and fun, with plenty of scientific and pop culture information provided to viewers in every episode.

Does It Fly? marks the latest podcast series produced by Roddenberry Entertainment, the production company founded by the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and currently run by his son, CEO Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, and COO Trevor Roth. In addition to executive producing the numerous new Star Trek series streaming on Paramount+, the two have curated and produced a growing number of original podcast series , each speaking to a different facet of science fiction fandom, often but not exclusively linked to the Star Trek mythos and Roddenberry family legacy.

Roth swung by Den of Geek Studio at SXSW 2024 , speaking about the current state of Star Trek , including the recently launched final season of Star Trek: Discovery . Among the topics Roth also spoke about was Roddenberry Entertainment’s podcast network and how they reflect a thriving frontier for the company as it continues to guide Star Trek to new heights and audiences nearly 60 years since the franchise made its inaugural launch.

“One thing we love about podcasting is we get right to the audience,” Roth tells Den of Geek . “When you look at expanding into that area, for us it’s wonderful and liberating. It’s something we can control so fully. It allows us to hopefully rise to the cream of the crop in regard to the way we do it, which I think has to do with us being very thoughtful about [the topics] and recognizing what we’re trying to achieve and giving that to the audience.”

Does It Fly? releases new episodes Fridays through Den of Geek, YouTube , or on doesitflypod.com , You can listen to the show on Spotify , Apple , and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

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Fuzzy Notes

What is the Teletransportation Problem or the Duplicates Paradox?

January 23, 2024 April 4, 2024

Star Trek has some freaky storylines. The American sci-fi television series in the 1960s, created by Gene Roddenberry, follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew members.

If you have watched even one of the seasons, you are sure to have come across a certain Teletransportation.

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Star Trek and Teletransportation

As its name would suggest, a transporter is a fictional teleportation machine which converts a person/object into an energy pattern (dematerialisation) and then sends it to a target location where it will be reconverted into matter (rematerialisation), meaning the person/object.

In simple words, a transporter would send tens of thousands of people into a parallel universe or back in time in seconds—a trope of movies and TV series that has surfaced in the last few years.

The Teletransportation Thought Experiment

However, this teletransportation machine has attracted several philosophical questions over the years. In what has also come to be known as a duplicates paradox, a philosophical thought experiment around identity challenges some of the intuitions about the nature of self and consciousness.

The problem was first systematically proposed by Derek Parfit, in his seminal work Reasons and Persons (1987) , where he considers a hypothetical teletransporter, puts you to sleep, records your activity and molecular composition, breaks you down into atoms, and beams into another planet at the speed of light.

On that other planet, another machine re-creates you – puts you in as a person you were earlier. Each atom is in its perfect place, each molecule in its safe spot, and you are created as a person on this other planet.

Now the question that arises is are you the same person as you were back on your planet, or are you someone else? Is the replica at the destination truly you, retaining your consciousness, memories and personal identity?

Metaphysically, how does an individual/object persist through change? What really makes for an individual? When do we really say that a person has gone out of existence if all the dead were to be reborn elsewhere and are to arrive here once again after an unspecific time?

An elaborate explanation of this Teletransportation experiment is found here:

For Stelios, the teletransporter is the only way to travel. Previously it took months to get from the Earth to Mars, confined to a cramped spacecraft with a far from perfect safety record. Stelios’s Teletransport Express changed all that.

Now the trip takes just minutes, and so far it has been 100% safe. However, now he is facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled customer who is claiming the company actually killed him.

His argument is simple: the teletransporter works by scanning your brain and body cell by cell, destroying them, beaming the information to Mars and reconstructing you there.

Although the person on Mars looks, feels and thinks just like a person who has been sent to sleep and zapped across space, the claimant argues that what actually happens is that you are murdered and replaced by a clone.

To Stelios, this sounds absurd. After all, he has taken the teletransporter trip dozens of times, and he doesn’t feel dead. Indeed, how can the claimant seriously believe that he has been killed by the process when he is clearly able to take the case to court?

Still, as Stelios entered the teletransporter booth once again and prepared to press the button that would begin to dismantle him, he did, for a second, wonder whether he was about to commit suicide. . .

Teletransportation Problem and Personal Identity

Now, the central question of this whole puzzle is about personal identity.

For instance, personal identity is an intermix of two aspects: the mind and the body. As a result of teletransportation disassembling the original body and recreating the same elsewhere, the seemingly interconnected aspect of the mind and the body are discontinued—even ending the physical and psychological continuity.

As a whole, a personal identity constitutes both physical and psychological criteria.

Parfit’s Explanation of Teletransportation Problem

Derek Parfit, for one, uses something called “Relation R”: a psychological connectedness that may persist even if there is a disruption in the physical continuity.

If the replica in another destination could retain sufficient psychological continuity with the original, it is still a continuation of the same person.

If personal identity is what matters, I should regard my prospect here as being nearly as bad as ordinary death. But if what matters is Relation R, with any cause, I should regard this way of dying as being about as good as ordinary survival. (Parfit 1987, p. 256)

He cites that it is morally wrong for one person to harm or interfere with another, and society has to intervene when that happens.

Now, if this is accepted, then an addition could also be true, which is, that it is incumbent upon society to also intervene and protect an individual’s “Future Self”. Laws against the abuse of drugs and tobacco could be placed as a societal protection against an individual’s “Future Self”.

This feels absurd to an extent. Nonetheless, it is logical as an explanation. Now, when you retain both physical and psychological continuity; you effectively are the exact same person.

However, it is also true that there is another version of ‘you’—with all your thoughts, beliefs and desires—on Mars that is not really you of Earth.

Concluding Section

The Teletransportation Problem poses some ethical dilemmas. Does what gets known as disassembly and reassembly violate the very sanctity of life and personal autonomy?

What rights and considerations should the original and the replica enjoy? At the same time, the thought of being transported to another world, creating another replica of you, is itself anxious.

The fear of discontinuity is as lethal as death—as you never know if you will be recreated. The fear of losing identity, memories, and experiences all the more can cause existential anxiety.

However, for now, this will remain only as a hypothetical thought experiment, pushing you to confront the nature of self and its ethical dilemmas.

Here are some of the essays and links to read more:

Adam Adler discusses the three dimensions of the teletransportation problem : technical, philosophical and legal.
Owen Morawitz provides a detailed discussion of various alternative explanations to the teletransportation problem.
Read this discussion on split brains, teletransportation, and personal identity .
Check out my 15 philosophical thought experiments for more such puzzling ideas.

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Transporter technology

Transporter

View history

An away team materializes on the planet Tigan . ( History Lesson )

The transporter is a device that allows an object to move instantaneously from one point to another by breaking down the subjects molecules into energy and transporting that energy to another point, where it is reassembled into matter. The novel Spock Must Die! states that the Transporter analyzes the energy state of each particle in the body and then produces a Dirac jump to an equivalent state somewhere else. The act of transportation is often referred to as transporting or beaming .

1.1 21st century
1.2 22nd century
1.3 23rd century
1.4 23rd century (alternate reality)
1.5 24th century
2.1 Transporter components
3.1 Transporter techniques
4.1 Frequency transporter
4.2 Subspace pulse transporter
4.3 Transwarp transporter
5 Types of transporters
6 Related articles
7 External link

History and specifics [ ]

21st century [ ].

On Earth , the first developments towards matter transportation were being made by Colin Blakeney . By 2052 , Blakeney had constructed a prototype transporter and was ready to conduct the first experiments in transporting. Instead of using an inanimate object, Blakeney decided to use himself as a test subject and stepped into the transporter. Blakeney dematerialized safely, but the transporter's pattern buffer had been sabotaged and Blakeney did not rematerialize. Following Blakeney's supposed death, his prototype was likely destroyed and his research ignored. ( TNG comic : " Forgiveness ")

22nd century [ ]

During the early years of the development of the transporter, many debates were made on Earth against the technology which consisted of health reasons as well as metaphysical arguments, such as whether the person who was transported was the very same person or a transporter duplicate with the original having died in the process. ( ENT episode : " Daedalus ")

The Hester Project successfully reintegrated a single-celled protozoan at the Deneva Research Station on Deneva . Project director Janet Hester requested an expansion of their research to include more complex organisms, in hopes of eventually transporting humans, but the Federation Council denied her request and shut down the project. ( TOS reference : Spaceflight Chronology , TOS comic : " Experiment in Vengeance! ")

In the 2120s , a Human named Emory Erickson began to experiment with developing a transporter, and the first fully-operable transporters were operable by 2139 . ( ENT episode : " Daedalus ")

One of the earliest known types of transporters was the Murane VIII , which was not safe for the transport of living beings. ( TOS video game : Judgment Rites )

In 2151, the Enterprise (NX-01) was one of the first Earth Starfleet ships to be equipped with a transporter approved for transporting living beings. The crew initially distrusted the device, but over time they its use became more common. ( ENT episode : " Broken Bow ")

In the mid- 2150s , the Vulcan Skon was recruited by the Cochrane Institute of Alpha Centauri to participate in the testing of a prototype transporter. ( DS9 - The Lives of Dax short story : " Dead Man's Hand ")

In 2162 it was discovered that frequent usage of transporters in use by the Federation were detrimental to living beings. While infrequent use was perfectly safe, using the transporters introduced single bit errors that over time could cause physiological damage. Admiral Jonathan Archer , for example, suffered neurological damage to such an extent that it became impossible for him to continue front line service. Captain Malcolm Reed was another individual that suffered damage from continual transporter use - his reproductive organs were damaged to the point that he was unable to have children. In the wake of these and other injuries being discovered the Federation decided that the transporter should not be used for living beings except in an emergency until transporters could be made safe. ( ENT - Rise of the Federation novel : A Choice of Futures )

By 2186 , the first practical transporter device was invented by Grahd of Tellar . ( Last Unicorn RPG module : All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook )

Further experiments were made in 2195 in an attempt to increase the safety factor of the transporter significantly. Doctor Janet Hester was in charge of a team of scientists on Deneva who were trying to improve the use of the technology on biological beings. However, her experiments in teleportation were considered dangerous and in 2199 , she along with the rest of Deneva Research Team 4 were lost when they were en-route from Deneva to Starbase 14 . Despite her presumed death, Janet Hester had relocated to a secret laboratory on Mycena where she continued her experiments for the next fifty years . She became the only survivor of her research expedition when a severe teleportation accident occurred which turned her test subjects into disembodied intelligence's that sought revenge against Hester. ( TOS comic : " Experiment in Vengeance! ")

23rd century [ ]

In 2209 , the first recorded case of transporter psychosis was diagnosed on Delinia II . ( TNG episode : " Realm of Fear ") By 2211 , Grahd's improved emitter arrays allowed shipboard transporters the same margin for error as ground based transporters. ( Last Unicorn RPG module : All Our Yesterdays: The Time Travel Sourcebook ) This generation of transporters were known to be only 99.9992% accurate when transporting living subjects. At some point prior to 2238 , Vulcan scientists led by Sunok were responsible for refining the technology even further. The introduction of Vulcan uncertainty physics increased the accuracy of the transporter to the point that it was virtually impossible for the device to malfunction except due to operator error. ( TOS novel : Crisis on Vulcan )

In 2269 , inhabitants of Gideon copied a Constitution -class starship 's transporter technology . Their transporter was designed specifically to give them access to James T. Kirk , who materialized with no memory of receiving a bruise caused by their attempt to extract Vegan choriomeningitis from him. This attempt was intended to introduce the disease as a contagion among the Gideonite people. ( TOS episode & Star Trek 6 novelization : The Mark of Gideon )

In the same year, Stlur and T'Vann of the Vulcan Science Academy had pioneered a new field of transporter based surgery that made them a possible nomination for the Nobel Prize . ( TOS novel : Memory Prime )

Transporter technology was a vital component in the 2280s when it was used to cure the Romulan Star Empire from a deadly pathogen that infected their starships. Doctor Leonard McCoy used it as a treatment by having the transporter purge the pathogen from the infected bodies. ( TOS comic : " The Apocalypse Scenario! ")

Later sources noted that the transporters of this era were fundamentally more powerful than the transporters that were in use almost a century later, but also less sophisticated, unaware of how certain spatial anomalies may affect the systems and essentially relying on raw power to overcome any such issues (TNG novel: Dark Mirror ).

23rd century (alternate reality) [ ]

During this time, the Klingons , after studying the Romulan mining ship Narada , were able to enhance their transporters aboard their new ships to beam through shields on Starfleet vessels. ( TOS - The Khitomer Conflict comic : " Part 2 ").

Starfleet 's black-ops division, Section 31 , were then able to have their agent, "John Harrison" create a personal transporter that could traverse great distances. They tested when Admiral Alexander Marcus authorized Harrison's mission to destroy Praxis , which was a success.( TOS - Khan comic : " Issue 4 ").

24th century [ ]

Intrepid class transporter

In the year 2373 , Dr. Hisharo Noguri on the Nydaris colony was conducting research in creating planetary scale transporter devices with the capacity to transport entire populations from worlds from one planet to another. It was believed that such a technique would be incredibly useful in case of an attack by the Borg Collective . Unfortunately, Dr Noguri was killed by the assassins of the Bodai Shin order. ( TNG - The Killing Shadows comic : [ citation needed ] ) By 2381 , Starfleet Medical was experimenting in the usage of a new form of drug delivery system that involved non-invasive means such as those employed by transporter technology. ( TOS novel : Captain's Blood )

By the year 1,012,260 the transporter had been replaced by a more advanced system known as the Blinkporter . ( ST - Strange New Worlds VI short story : " Our Million-Year Mission ")

Overview [ ]

Transporter components [ ].

Annular confinement beam
Heisenberg compensator
Molecular imaging scanner
Pattern buffer
Phase transition coil
Primary energizing coils
Site-to-site transport interlock
Targeting scanner
Transporter pad

Applications of the transporter [ ]

One notable development during the continued use of the transporter were various techniques as well as new concepts that were introduced that were not part of the original purpose of the technology.

The transporter was also used by archaeological expeditions during digs as they were used to beam away as much rock as feasibly possible. This allowed a team to excavate locations at a fast rate without any damage to dig site itself as the matter was documented on a subatomic level even while it was removed. The data from the pattern buffer was routinely downloaded into the computer systems for later analysis. The resolution was too low for a precise re-materialization but it was sufficient for gross analysis of rock composition and structure. Typically, the ships AI was sophisticated enough to identify artifacts and ecofacts after which it was capable of alerting the expedition members of the findings and beam away only the matrix upon request. The items were left embedded in such a state that were handily unearthed. ( TNG - The Lost Era novel : The Buried Age )

Another example of this was accomplished by Captain Montgomery Scott who, when marooned along with a colleague on a Dyson sphere , used the transporter to store their pattern in the buffer until someone could rescue them. ( TNG episode : " Relics ") This would be duplicated by his granddaughter, Katarina Scott , onboard the USS Dallas after life support was rendered inactive and the crew used the technique to survive until a rescue team arrived to recover them. ( TNG video game : Elite Force II ) This procedure was very dangerous as the patterns could degrade and the person would be lost.

The USS Voyager 's Hazard team made use of portable transporter buffers to serve as a storage mechanism to allow them to keep equipment which could be materialized and dematerialized when needed. ( VOY video game : Elite Force )

There were medical applications in the use of transporters that were able to be applied for new surgery techniques. ( TOS novel : Memory Prime )

Starfleet Medical had been experimenting with a new method of non-invasive drug delivery system that involved the use of transporters by the late 24th century. ( TOS novel : Captain's Blood )

Transporter techniques [ ]

Heglenian shift
Near-warp transport
Phoenix Process
Skeletal lock
Transwarp beaming
Transporter Code 14

Variations [ ]

Frequency transporter [ ].

The Old Culture made use of a highly advanced form of frequency based transporter based on the planet Faramond which allowed them to transport their civilization from one part of the galaxy to another. Also touched was the subject as to why only cargo and personnel masses can be adequately beamed. Young James Kirk was taught the universal matter /energy constant is displaced. This imbalance increases exponentially, as many transporters are used throughout Starfleet and other organizations. When too much matter at once (such as equivalent to a full-sized shuttlecraft ) is beamed, the energy needed approaches infinity , with dangerous side effects. ( TOS novel : Best Destiny )

Subspace pulse transporter [ ]

The Grigari were noted to have developed this form of transporter in another alternate future timeline during the War of the Prophets . This advanced form of transporter was capable of piercing shield technology before Starfleet discovered a means of fluctuating the shield deflector grid to prevent the pulse transporter from breaching the field. ( DS9 novel : The War of the Prophets )

Transwarp transporter [ ]

Developed by the Borg Collective which used a transporter beam to use Transwarp as a medium making it virtually unlimited in its potential. A target was capable of being swept up by the transporter beam and deposited from the Delta Quadrant and into the galactic core. The Borg used this as a means of capturing Borg drones as well as technology and dumping them into a reclamation world in the centre of the galaxy where the parts were scavenged. In 2371 , James T. Kirk was swept away by an emergency transporter from the Central Node on the Borg homeworld and deposited on the reclamation world in the core. ( TOS novel : Avenger )

Types of transporters [ ]

Combat transporter
Cargo transporter
Folded-space transporter
Long distance transporter
Multidimensional transporter
Portal transporter
Spatial trajector
Sub-quantum transporter
Subspace transporter
Temporal transporter
Translocator
Trans-shield anode
Vanity transporter

External link [ ]

Transporter article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
1 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
2 Odyssey class
3 William T. Riker

Will We Ever Really Have 'Star Trek' Transporters?

And how will they work?

Never say never, though from today's scientific vantage point, it's hard to see how we'll bridge the gap from the dreaded depredations of Boarding Group 4 to the breezy convenience of "Beam us up." But, hey, let's dream for a minute.

There have, in fact, been successful experiments in something called quantum teleportation, in which the information contained in one atom is transferred to another, effectively replicating the first atom in another place. "That would be fine in a Star Trek sense," says Steve Rolston, codirector of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, "except when I do it with Star Trek, I have to do it with however many atoms are in you." Which, Rolston adds, amounts to "more information than we would ever have any possibility of keeping track of."

Even if that hurdle were overcome, human teleportation would be quite a bit messier than the shaft of swirling jelly beans seen on TV. You'd need some kind of medium on the arriving end—a blob of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.—just waiting to become your winsome smile, gruesome toenails, and everything in between. And what would be left on the other end? Another blob. Gross.

Fear not, however. Professional futurist Michael Rogers argues teleporters will soon be unnecessary, thanks to the developing field of "telepresence," in which far-flung robotic avatars connected to our senses will enable us to "be" anywhere we like without ever leaving home. At last, a truly practical use for all those AA batteries.

This story appears in the December 2015 / January 2016 issue of Popular Mechanics.

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Star Trek transporter legality law technical philosophical arguments, including body and mental death scenarios

The Transporter Conundrum: Do People Die When They’re Teleported?

One of the coolest technologies depicted on Star Trek is the transporter, which can be used to send a person tens of thousands of miles in just a few seconds. But as any good Star Trek fan knows, transporters are far from perfect. Over the years, we have seen that transporter malfunctions come in many shapes and sizes — literally. In one episode, a transporter error transforms several crewmembers into children . More broadly, transporter malfunctions have split crewmen into multiple people, combined multiple people into one person, separated crewmen’s minds from their bodies, transported people to wonky mirror dimensions, and, in the most mundane scenario of all, sent crewmen to the wrong destination. These regular malfunctions raise a bevy of legal questions about transporters, liability, and personhood.

To explore some of those questions, we can divide our inquiry into two categories: transporters working as intended and transporter malfunctions. This week, I’ll consider the first category and will determine whether someone dies when they are transported and whether a person who facilitates a transport is a murderer. Next time, I’ll consider some of the legal questions associated with transporter malfunctions.

Whether people die when they are transported is one of the most interesting questions relating to transporters. There are three dimensions to this question: technical, philosophical, and legal.

The technical dimension relates to how transporters actually work. Since the underlying technology is fictitious, I am not concerned with how the technology is actually implemented as much as I am with what purportedly happens to the transported matter. There are three possibilities. The first possibility — which we can call the “Portal Theory” — is that the transported matter is sent, as a whole, from point A to point B, without any interruption or meaningful decomposition or recomposition. In this model, transporting is just like walking through a portal .

The second possibility — which we can call the “Jigsaw Theory” — is that transported matter is broken down to the atomic level, sent through the transporter, and reassembled on the other side. This is like the Portal Theory, except that instead of an entire person going through the portal, it’s the constituent, unassembled matter that is sent. In this model, there is a brief interruption in personal continuity, as matter must be decomposed, then recomposed.

The third possibility — which we can call the “Xerox and Shred Theory” — is that the transported matter isn’t transported at all, but is instead scanned, copied, and destroyed. The transporter then sends the data pattern from point A to point B, where it is reassembled from whatever matter might be on hand at the destination. In this model, there is a permanent interruption in the matter, since the transporter is actually sending data and, in fact, destroys the underlying matter.

Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to determine which of these three theories is actually in play, since each one finds support in some episodes but is refuted in others.

Philosophical

The philosophical dimension is somewhat amorphous and turns on one’s conception of personhood. Once again, there are three theories.

The first theory — which we can call the “Body Theory” — posits that personhood is defined through physical parameters. A proponent of the Body Theory would say that a person dies when their body no longer functions. Thus, a proponent of this theory would say that a person died under the Xerox and Shred Theory, since the original body is destroyed. Likewise, a proponent would say that a person temporarily dies under the Jigsaw Theory while the transport process is underway and that a person would not die under the Portal Theory, since the body remains intact. Generally speaking, the Body Theory is not particularly popular or prominent. Most people have a conception of life that includes some component of the mind or sense of self.

The second theory — which we can call the “Mind Theory” — posits that personhood is defined through mental processes. A proponent of the Mind Theory would say that a person dies once their mind is no longer functioning. Thus, a proponent of this theory would say that a person temporarily dies under the Jigsaw Theory (since no thought processes take place when the mind is decomposed), but that a person would not die under the Portal or Xerox and Shred theories, since the subject’s mind is still functional under both of those theories. The Mind Theory is more prevalent than the Body Theory — most people can imagine having a sense of self even if their mental processes were separated from their body. This theory is explored in some detail in Amazon’s new series, Upload .

The third theory — which we can call the “Hybrid Theory” — combines the first two theories. It posits that personhood is defined by the combination of one’s body and one’s mind. A proponent of this theory would say that a person dies if their mind or body ceases to function. Thus, this theory would hold that a transported person temporarily dies under the Jigsaw Theory, dies under the Xerox and Shred Theory, and lives under the Portal Theory.

There is a fourth theory worth mentioning — a theory of consciousness. A proponent of this theory would say that personhood is defined by one’s consciousness. This theory does not shed much light on transporters, since there is no way to know whether the person who appears at point B shares the same consciousness as the person who disappeared at point A. Obviously, the person at point B thinks of themselves as the same person from point A, but subjective belief is not sufficient.

To see why, consider what happens when a transporter malfunctions and creates a perfect copy of the transportee at point B. Both people would think of themselves as the same person, but only one — the original — would be correct. Because there is no way to actually evaluate personhood under this theory, it is useless for anything other than thought experiments. Even if transporters were real, there would be no way to know whether the output consciousness is the same as the input consciousness.

Finally, it is worth noting that the various theories are not mutually exclusive. In particular, the body and mind theories often overlap, since, in most instances, the mind’s operations are carried out by the brain. Likewise, one can mix and match the theories as appropriate. For example, one could adopt a Hybrid Theory that places more weight on the mind than on the body, saying that personhood requires a body but is not defined by any particular body. Thus, a person would die if their brain were put into a computer but would be alive if their mind were transferred into a different body. While there are countless possibilities, what matters most is that each one is (or should be) driven by a conception of what it means to be a person and what distinguishes people from one another.

These and other theories are discussed in considerable detail in Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Legal perspectives of personhood are rooted in the philosophical theories described above. Unfortunately, the law has not had to grapple with any of the complex questions implicated by transporter technology. Nevertheless, legal rules provide some insight into how the law views personhood. For one thing, the law has explicitly rejected the Body Theory — a person whose body is alive but whose mind is dead is legally dead .

The law is less transparent when it comes to the Mind Theory. On one hand, we can consider people with “ locked-in syndrome .” Locked in syndrome is the opposite of brain death — a person with locked-in syndrome has a mind that is fully functional, but a body that is completely paralyzed. Those people have rights, and it would be illegal to kill someone with locked-in syndrome. This suggests that the law subscribes to the Mind Theory — or, at the very least, a Hybrid Theory that places considerable weight on the Mind.

On the other hand, several state laws regarding abortion and fetal homicide turn on the physical, rather than mental, development of the fetus. This suggests that the law subscribes to a Body Theory, or, at the very least, a Hybrid Theory that places considerable weight on the Body.

Admittedly, these analogies are imperfect, since we have not yet encountered a scenario in which the mind and body have been completely separable. For instance, a person with locked-in syndrome still has a body, and a fetus that lacks physical viability will also lack the ability to develop mental capacity. Nevertheless, the analogies suggest that the law is most consistent with a version of the Hybrid Theory that is weighted more heavily towards the mind than the body.

Based on the analysis above, this means that the law would have no issue with transporters (working as intended) under the Portal Theory or under the Jigsaw Theory, since transporters under those theories would not meaningfully interfere with physical or mental processes. For similar reasons, there is a strong argument to be made that the law would have no issue with the Xerox and Shred Theory. Even though the underlying matter is destroyed, the mind and its constituent mental processes remain intact.

This conclusion is further bolstered by the fact that, at its core, the law is rooted in pragmatism. It is designed to encourage good or desirable behavior and to discourage negative or undesirable behavior. Generally speaking, actions are illegal if they hurt other people (like murder), encourage activities or mindsets that are likely to hurt other people, (Scientists can experiment on animals, but animal cruelty is illegal.) or impose objective and readily apparent harm on the person taking the action. (This is why many drugs are illegal.)

Taken at face value, transporters do not meet any of those criteria. Regardless of which theory of personhood one subscribes to, there is no basis to say that transporters hurt anyone other than the transportee, the only activity potentially encouraged by transporters is more transporter use, and there is no readily apparent harm on the person transporting. (The person at point B is indistinguishable from the person at point A, and the transportee does not appear to suffer any pain or negative consequences.)

At most, one could argue that it should be illegal to transport someone without their consent. But that’s true even now — transportation without consent is the definition of kidnapping, and it is illegal regardless of if it’s by foot, car, shuttlecraft, or transporter beam.

In sum, transporters — when used as intended — do not satisfy any of the criteria that would support a conclusion that they should be illegal. While certain philosophies may maintain that transporting amounts to murder (depending on how the transporter actually works), they lack the pragmatic hook needed to turn the philosophical musing into practical law.

Come back next time for Part II, when I consider some of the legal questions associated with transporter malfunctions. There will be clones, there will be children, there will be mirror universes!

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55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

A scene from “The Man Trap,” the premiere episode of Star Trek

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher, left, with the creator and cast members of Star Trek at the September 1976 rollout of space shuttle Enterprise

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

Star Trek cast member Nichelle Nichols, left, in the shuttle simulator with astronaut Alan L. Bean at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Nichols, center, aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy aircraft

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

Actor James Doohan visits NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California in 1967 with NASA pilot Bruce A. Peterson, in front of the M2-F2 lifting body aircraft

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

Takei and Robonaut both give the Vulcan greeting

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Star Trek cast member Leonard Nimoy gives the Vulcan greeting in front of space shuttle Enterprise after its arrival in New York in 2012

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Star Trek cast member William Shatner, left, receives the Distinguished Public Service Medal from NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert N. Jacobs in 2014

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Patch for the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), including the Klingon writing just below the letters “WORF.”

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

Picture of the Gemini VI launch in the background in the 1967 Star Trek episode “Court Martial.”

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover, host of the 2016 documentary “NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space.”

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In a tribute to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry on the 100th anniversary of his birth, his son Rod, upper left, hosts a virtual panel discussion about diversity and inspiration

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

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COMMENTS

Transporter (Star Trek)
Star Trek. ) A transporter is a fictional teleportation machine used in the Star Trek universe. Transporters allow for teleportation by converting a person or object into an energy pattern (a process called "dematerialization"), then sending ("beaming") it to a target location or else returning it to the transporter, where it is reconverted ...
Transporter
The transporter was a type of teleportation machine, or simply teleporter. It was a subspace device capable of almost instantaneously transporting an object from one location to another, by using matter-energy conversion to transform matter into energy, then beam it to or from a chamber, where it was reconverted back or materialize into its original pattern. (TOS: "The Squire of Gothos", "The ...
Teleportation
Teleportation was a term for traveling from one location to another almost instantaneously. Numerous advanced cultures had this capability through the use of transporter technology. A device facilitating teleportation might be known as a teleporter. To Henry Starling of 20th century Earth, teleportation was synonymous with transporter technology, and he labeled USS Voyager's transporter a ...
Teletransportation paradox
The teletransporter on Earth is modified to not destroy the person who enters it, but instead it can simply make infinite replicas, all of whom would claim to remember entering the teletransporter on Earth in the first place. ... Transporter (Star Trek) Vertiginous question; References External links. The Identity of Theseus: Ship and Man ...
Teleporters & You: The Teletransporter Paradox and Personal Identity
Read about the teletransporter paradox thought experiment and how it affects the way we understand the philosophy of personal identity. ... Star Trek itself has been somewhat vague if transporters simply transfer information - details about the atomic structure of the transporter object - and uses this to recreate the object with new atoms ...
Star Trek's Use of Transporters, Explained
In Star Trek: Enterprise Season 4, the inventor of the transporter, Dr. Emory Erickson visits the ship for an experiment that's a secret plan to save his son, lost in a transporter accident. During the episode, he dismisses out-of-hand the idea that the transporter "kills" the people who use it.
star trek
A replicator can create any inanimate matter, as long as the desired molecular structure is on file, but it cannot create antimatter, dilithium, latinum, or a living organism of any kind; in the case of living organisms, non-canon works such as the Star Trek: the Next Generation Technical Manual state that, though the replicators use a form of ...
transporter (Star Trek)
The transporter is a device, first seen aboard the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek original series, which made the concept of teleportation familiar to a wide audience. "Beam me up, Scotty" became one of the small screen's most oft-repeated lines (though trivia hunters will find that "Beam me up, Mr. Scott" is the closest the show actually came to that immortal line).
Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About Transporters
10. They Were Invented To Save Money And Time. CBS. The earliest pitches for Star Trek had to deal with the challenge of getting the crew down to the planets each week. Support shuttles were ...
Star Trek's Transporter Technology, Explained
Star Trek transporter tech works by breaking down matter such as living organisms, cargo, even gas or liquid-based matter into an energy pattern, in a process that the show calls ...
The Untold Truth About Star Trek Transporters
Transporter accidents have killed people in many gruesome ways. In " Star Trek: The Motion Picture " (1979), memorably, some new officers experience a transporter malfunction and re-materialize ...
In Star Trek, does the original die in teleportation?
Philosphically speaking, under the theory of continuity of consciousness, it sounds like your answer suggests that the transporter does kill people and creates an identical copy. That's nice for the copy, but the original is still dead. - Adamant. Mar 30, 2022 at 15:22.
Will Star Trek-Style Matter Transporters Ever Exist?
A Star Trek-style transporter that teleported humans and matter from ship to planets and other locations. Image from a Star Trek exhibit, taken by Konrad Summers, CC-BY-SA-2.. "Beam me up, Scotty!" It's one of the most famous lines in the "Star Trek" franchise and refers to the futuristic matter transportation device or "transporter" on every ...
Is the Science Behind Star Trek's Transporter Plausible?
The transporter has been a staple for Star Trek ever since The Original Series debuted in 1966. The device is capable of teleporting solid objects and living organisms from one point to another ...
What is the Teletransportation Problem or the Duplicates Paradox
Star Trek has some freaky storylines. The American sci-fi television series in the 1960s, created by Gene Roddenberry, follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise and its crew members. ... Still, as Stelios entered the teletransporter booth once again and prepared to press the button that would begin to dismantle him, he did, for a ...
Transporter
A friendly reminder regarding spoilers!At present the expanded Trek universe is in a period of major upheaval with the continuations of Discovery and Prodigy, the advent of new eras in gaming with the Star Trek Adventures RPG, Star Trek: Infinite and Star Trek Online, as well as other post-57th Anniversary publications such as the ongoing IDW Star Trek comic and spin-off Star Trek: Defiant.
Will We Ever Really Have 'Star Trek' Transporters?
Gross. Fear not, however. Professional futurist Michael Rogers argues teleporters will soon be unnecessary, thanks to the developing field of "telepresence," in which far-flung robotic avatars ...
The Transporter Conundrum: Do People Die When They're Teleported?
legally dead. locked-in syndrome. turn. Star Trek. teleportation. transporter. Learn more. The Star Trek transporter (and others) raise technical, philosophical, and legal questions of if people ...
How should we understand the teletransportation thought experiment?
Note that this experiment depends on monism (e.g. physicalism) unless the teletransporter can copy "non-substance" as well. ... I think it was all sparked off by the Star Trek transporter room. He was always of the opinion that if he could be "digitised" and re-created, the new entity would still be "him", but I always disagreed. ...
How teleportation could work: Star Trek transporter
Is teleportation possible? In the Star Trek transporter, the atoms in your body get converted to their subatomic particles - protons, neutrons, and electrons...
Teletransportador (Star Trek)
Teletransportador (Star Trek) El teletransporte es una tecnología de ficción del universo de ficción de Star Trek incluida en muchas naves espaciales de la Galaxia, que permitía llevar materia (fuera orgánica o no) a grandes distancias, sin usar medios de transporte físico. El teletransportador fue introducido en la serie de Gene ...
[Star Trek] Does the transporter actually kill and copy you ...
But Star Trek transporters don't work like that. Reply reply More replies. Top 1% Rank by size . More posts you may like Related Science forward back. r/AskScienceFiction. r/AskScienceFiction **It's like Ask Science, but all questions and answers are written with answers gleaned from the universe itself.** Use in-universe knowledge, rules, and ...
transport or suicide? : r/philosophy
But of course in the teletransporter case the experience would also feel unitary ... Star Trek style teletransporters that can copy and paste consciousness necessarily move humans into posthuman territory. A person with the ability to fragment and reassemble their consciousness might consider a normal biological human to be as inferior as we ...
55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with ...
The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show's cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only ...

Teleportation

External link [ ]

Teleporters & You: The Teletransporter Paradox and Personal Identity

The teleporter thought experiment

Defining personal identity through different types of continuities

The soul theory of personal identity (continuity through the soul)

The body theory of personal identity (bodily continuity)

Psychological and personality-based approaches to personal identity (psychological continuity)

Stepping into the teleporter

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Star Trek's Use of Transporters, Explained

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How Star Trek's transporters (supposedly) work

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Encyclopedia index

Star Trek: 10 Things You Need To Know About Transporters

10. They Were Invented To Save Money And Time

Star Trek’s Transporter Technology, Explained

Star Trek: Who Is Agent Daniels?

The Untold Truth About Star Trek Transporters

Transporters Exist Because of Low FX Budgets

Transporters Run on Glitter and Alka Seltzer

People Suffer From Transporter Phobia

Transporters May Technically Kill You Every Time You Beam Down

Transporters Make Death Irrelevant

Transporters Are Cloning Machines

Transporters Are Gene Splicers

Transporters Are A Fountain of Youth

Transporters Redefine How Childbirth Works

Transporters Can Turn You Into A Living Ghost

Transporters Can Replace Cryogenic Freezing

Transporters Are Time Machines

Transporters Can Take You to Alternate Realities

People Have Faked Their Deaths via Transporter Accidents

Star Trek: Instantaneous Matter Transport

Is "Beaming" Possible?

Dematerializing

Re-materializing

Will We Ever Have Transporter Technology?

Is the Science Behind Star Trek’s Transporter Plausible?

What is the Teletransportation Problem or the Duplicates Paradox?

Star Trek and Teletransportation

The Teletransportation Thought Experiment

An elaborate explanation of this Teletransportation experiment is found here:

Teletransportation Problem and Personal Identity

Parfit’s Explanation of Teletransportation Problem

Concluding Section

Here are some of the essays and links to read more:

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Transporter

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24th century [ ]

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Transwarp transporter [ ]

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Will We Ever Really Have 'Star Trek' Transporters?

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The Transporter Conundrum: Do People Die When They’re Teleported?

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