teleportation machine 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
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How Star Trek's Transporter Effect Actually Worked

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One of the first memories I have of adult television is watching the cast of the original "Star Trek" beaming down to a planet in the transporter. I don't know which episode it was, but I do remember asking my dad how they did that, and could we go to Disneyland that way. In the days of CGI characters and the ability to film entire movies and TV shows in front of a green screen, it's hard to remember what even a small effect like the "Star Trek" transporter conjured up in our brains. (I still think of it while driving through LA traffic.)

What I didn't know as a kid, and frankly, up until now was how the show created the effect. According to an article on Inverse , The Anderson Company (run in the 1960s by Darrel Anderson and Howard A. Anderson) created it in a very simple way, with "aluminum powder and old-school compositing."

"Here's how it worked: First the person or persons being transported were filmed standing in position. Then they stepped out of frame while the camera captured an empty set. What was then needed was a "mask" of the figures being beamed — essentially an outline of them. A further element required was the glittering or beam effect (this is where the aluminum powder came in). It was photographed separately by dropping the powder from above and lighting it with an intensive light against a black background."

Beaming Ourselves Up

It might seem primitive these days, but someone had to come up with it. Maybe you've even used something like this in your own home movies. A number of years ago (via Vice ), PBS Digital Studio's Joey Shanks showed fans how to create this effect by themselves for their own films. I highly recommend watching the video. It's really cool! It also explains how the effects changed over the years. For instance, they took out the freeze frame effect once the feature films were being made, and they added light beam effects to add drama later on.

Shanks told Vice: 

"From my research it started with them using aluminum silver shavings, and just dropping it in front of the camera, backlighting it with a really sharp spotlight and shooting it at 120 frames-per-second and then compositing it into the scene. Then I learned that they started messing around with Alka Seltzer, with glitter, a lot of different forms of liquids and particles in tanks. Just to show the audience this technique it's super simple — even getting a lava lamp that has little glitter particles, you can pretty much create the exact same look they did originally."

Could We Ever Have a Real Transporter?

The effect is super cool, but we can't do that yet, obviously. Will we ever be able to? "Star Trek" has certainly influenced technology with things like flip phones and touch screens.  StarTrek.com had an article  in 2014 about a discovery that might bring us closer to a real life transporter — in theory. In an experiment at Delft University in the Netherlands, scientists were able to transport a few matter particles three meters. It's not exactly sending a red shirt down to a planet as cannon fodder, but it's pretty cool. The article goes into detail about how it all works (and I'm no scientist, fascinated as I am by it all), but in basic terms, you have to know all the tiny details about something is built and calculate how to move it over a distance, from the atoms out. The atoms have to be rebuilt in exactly the same way somewhere else. Here is a little info from the article to help give you an idea of what we're talking about:

"'If you believe we are nothing more than a collection of atoms strung together in a particular way, then in principle it should be possible to teleport ourselves from on place to another,' says Professor Ronald Hanson, who led the experiment at Delft. Such a day remains far in the future for sure, but Hanson's statement does suggest one further snag that could complicate travel by Transporter — are we just a collection of atoms?"

I spoke to Rod Roddenberry, son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, President of Roddenberry Entertainment and executive producer of "Star Trek: Discovery" and "Star Trek: Picard" about his thoughts on the transporter technology. He said:

"I don't fully recall my first memory of the Transporter technology on screen, but I remember thinking that it was certainly amazing. Transporters represented our control of the atom, similar to the replicators, which allowed us to rearrange atoms in any order thereby creating anything whether it be sustenance, books for education, or rare minerals and metals. This technology would change our perceptions of value and we would no longer see value in material items. Having this ability to create literally anything would over time realign our thinking to find value in more immaterial concepts such as thoughts and ideas. My hope is we will see a future where we recognize and revere what is truly most unique in our world which are the thoughts and ideas of our fellow human beings."

'A Murdering Clone-Maker'

I also spoke to planetary physicist Dr. Kevin Grazier, science consultant on a number of television series and feature films, and co-author of the " Hollyweird Science " series of popular science books who explained:

Even if you could store the titanic amounts of energy needed to transport a person, perform the necessary data management and storage, and overcome quantum effects like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, I still think that if it was possible to place a carbon atom here, a calcium atom there — all in precise relative positions — that the all those atoms would bond in exactly the same way as they were in the original source material. So, I think that if you stepped on one transporter pad, what would appear on the other pad is a huge puddle of organic sludge with the identical bulk chemical composition as the now-deceased Captain Busch. [Author's note: That's me and yikes!] The transporter is great narrative tool to keep writers from having to spend time landing their starship or dispatching a shuttle to a planet week to week, but I'm with Doctor McCoy in believing that the transporter is, at best, a murdering clone-maker.

By the way, Dr. Grazier does expand on the energy and data storage calculations in Chapter 7 of the first "Hollyweird Science" book. 

So, would you want to have one of these? Do you think we'll ever get there? Let us know @slashfilm !

• Encyclopedias

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).

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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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.

Star Trek’s Transporter Technology, Explained

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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.

RELATED: How Star Trek: The Next Generation Explored Blindness & Accessibility With Geordi LaForge

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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Is teleportation possible?

Could human teleportation, as seen in Star Trek, ever be achieved?

Marcus Chown

We're all aware of the concept of human teleportation, whereby a human being can be instantly transported to a far away location via the linking of separate teleportation machines.

It's a classic Hollywood trope, seen throughout various science fiction and space movies and perhaps most notably depicted in Star Trek .

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And it certainly stimulates the imagination. Picture a world in which a journey from the UK to Sydney Opera House lasted the blink of an eye.

Or imagine a time in which human geologists could quickly nip over to Mars to collect a rock sample and return to their lab to study it in a matter of minutes.

Human teleportation is an amazing prospect, but will teleportation, as seen in Star Trek , ever be a real possibility?

It’s always risky to say “no, never”. But it is has to be said that teleportation is extremely unlikely.

A Star Trek -style transporter must do three things: firstly, pin down the position and type of every atom in a person’s body; then, transmit that information – presumably at the speed of light – to a remote location; and, finally, use the information to assemble atoms into a perfect copy of the person.

Until relatively recently, it looked as if the task would fall at the first hurdle because, according to quantum theory, it is impossible to know everything about an atom with 100% certainty.

However, physicists have discovered a trick called ‘quantum teleportation’, which ingeniously allows them to create a perfect copy of a quantum particle at a remote location.

In fact, they can now achieve the feat at multiple locations. This is called ‘quantum telecloning’,

However, the Achilles’ heel of the Star Trek transporter is neither pinning down the position of every atom in a person’s body, nor assembling an exact copy (although both would be very difficult).

It is transmitting the volume of information needed to describe a person that presents the major hurdle.

Billions of times more information is needed to transmit the make-up of a human being than is needed for the reconstruction of a TV image.

The obvious way to send it is as a series of binary ‘bits’. If the information is to be sent quickly, the pulses must be short.

But ultra-short pulses require ultra-high-energy light.

As Arthur C Clarke has pointed out, beaming up Captain Kirk would take more energy than there is in a galaxy of stars!

So, sadly, Star Trek -style teleporters aren’t likely to appear any time soon.

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Is beaming down in star trek a death sentence, ahead of discovery , we look to trek's past to suss out specifics of how transporters work..

Xaq Rzetelny - Sep 23, 2017 1:00 pm UTC

In the 2009 movie Star Trek , Captain Kirk and Sulu plummeted down toward the planet Vulcan without a parachute. “Beam us up, beam us up!” Kirk shouted in desperation. Then at the last second, after a tense scene of Chekov running top speed to the transporter room, their lives were saved moments before they hit the doomed planet’s rocky surface.

These issues have received a lot of attention lately given Trek ’s 50 th Anniversary last year and the series' impending return to TV. Not to mention, in the real world scientists have found recent success in quantum teleporting a particle’s information farther than before (which isn’t the same thing, but still). So while it seems like Trek 's   transporter conundrum has never had a satisfying resolution, we thought we’d take a renewed crack at it.

Establishing a lock

Trek has always depicted characters who are hesitant to use the transporter, from Dr. McCoy to the entire crew of  Enterprise . "You’re always on the side of, 'those guys are just silly, you gotta trust the future!'" said Jordan Hoffman, a film critic and host of  Engage: The Official Star Trek Podcast . "We trust the warp engines and all the other high tech of Star Trek, so why wouldn’t [we] trust the transporter?"

Hoffman points out the first work to express real doubt about the continuity of personhood was the novel Spock Must Die  by James Blish, which "played coy" about whether it's really you on the other end of the transporter. To address the questions this raised, a good place to start is by looking at what the transporter actually does.

According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual , when a person steps onto the transporter pad, the computer uses “molecular imaging scanners” to scan his or her body, before the person is converted into a “subatomically debonded matter stream.” In other words, a crew member is taken apart piece by piece, breaking apart the bonds between individual atoms. Then, particles are streamed into a “pattern buffer," where they remain briefly before being sent to their destination.

This sounds an awful lot like death . In fact, it’s even more death-y than conventional death where, after the body’s processes have stopped, the body slowly decomposes. The effect is the same—the pieces of you come apart—the transporter’s just a lot more efficient at it.

Further Reading

Once the matter stream arrives at its destination, the person is somehow “rematerialized” or put back together. While the transporter tends to use the person’s atoms to reconstruct a human, it really doesn’t have to. The machine could use totally different atoms, and the effect would be exactly the same.

In fact, in the Deep Space Nine episode “ Our Man Bashir," Captain Sisko and a few other officers are nearly lost during a transporter accident. They beam out from their sabotaged runabout at the last second, but the transporter malfunctions and their patterns must be sent into the station’s computer somehow to save them. Their physical bodies are saved as holographic characters in Dr. Bashir’s holosuite program. Later in the episode, they’re reconstituted using the patterns stored in the holodeck—almost certainly with entirely new atoms.

That sounds an awful lot like a copy—or like a new person. If the transporter is just scanning your data and creating an identical copy somewhere else, then by any reasonable definition, the original person is dead. By analogy, consider a car model. Many cars are produced by the same manufacturer, all from the same design. There’s no way to tell these cars apart, but they’re not the same car.

Measure of a man (or other lifeform)

This particular technicality opens a philosophical can of “ gagh , ” which is beyond the scope of this article to fully address and may even be partially subjective (and thus fundamentally unresolvable). For one thing, our bodies grow and change over the course of our lives. Cells multiply, die, and are replaced. Even the brain is no exception.

“There is plenty of change in the brain during development, though birth of new neurons seem to be pretty much restricted to being produced in the dentate gyrus after birth,” Patricia Churchland, neuro-philosopher with the University of California, San Diego, told Ars.  “But there is pruning back (especially in early adolescence), as well as massive sprouting of the neurons you are born with.”

This makes a person a bit like a paintbrush whose head and whose handle will both be replaced at different times. Is it still the same brush? While the brain is a bit more complex than that, there certainly is quite a bit of overhauling going on across a person’s life. According to Churchland, “The brain grows about [five times] from birth to adolescence. It makes about a million synapses per second in the first two years after birth," she said. "In early development, a child can lose a whole hemisphere without being changed into a new person. Later in development, lesions can have a greater effect on personality, mobility and cognition, depending on the location of the lesion.”

But at least in everyday language, we still consider ourselves to be the same person from birth to death. And whether or not that’s a valid standard by which to consider oneself the same person, for our purposes, we’ll use this standard of everyday language. So, the question we’re really asking is, “Is a transported person still the same person, to the extent that we’re the same people throughout our lives?” This gives us a clearer criterion on which to assess the question of the transporter.

There’s another, more famous version of the paintbrush example: a thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus . Theseus wants to keep his ship in tip-top shape, so whenever a board rots, he replaces it with a new one and keeps doing so until none of the original planks remain. Is it still the same ship? By our standards, it clearly is. The pieces have been replaced, but there was a continuity in the ship’s structure between them.

If, however, we destroy the ship but mail its blueprints somewhere else and then build a new, identical ship, it’s not the same ship. It’s a separate ship built from the same blueprints. It doesn’t even matter whether you use the same planks or not. So where does the transporter fit in, again?

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Star Trek: Instantaneous Matter Transport

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"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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Do Star Trek Teleporters Actually Kill You? Here’s the Science

By: Author Brad Burnie

Posted on Published: October 15, 2020  - Last updated: August 26, 2022

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If you’ve watched the TV show Star Trek: Enterprise , then you’ve heard the concerns the crew had about the teleporters (known as transporters) in the show. These concerns were that the transporters weren’t safe for humans to use because they dematerialize your atoms. That sounds like it would essentially kill you, right?

Creators of Star Trek haven’t confirmed transporters kill you. However, based solely on the science, transporters do kill you. These teleportation devices take scans of the molecules in your body, store them in the pattern buffer, convert them into energy, and then beam them to the desired location.

Let’s take a look at the science behind these teleporters and how they are meant to work.

The Science of Teleportation – Star Trek Style

The transporter /teleportation devices in the Star Trek universe have been a hot topic of debate since they were introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series . There are many characters of the franchise who have a fear of using the machine. This fear may actually be warranted.

Throughout the franchise, viewers have been given snippets on how the futuristic technology works. There have been books written by the show’s art departments and creators. However, these nuggets of information aren’t always the most realistic.

The science of the teleporter is no different. In fact, the very nature of what the device does isn’t possible if you consider everything it does and real-life physics. According to the official Star Trek website, the transporter will convert a person into energy , send that energy to your desired location, and then reassemble that person back into matter.

The transporters do this by ripping apart your atoms and molecules. Now, real-life physics and biology would suggest that to be an impossible thing to do without killing the person in the process. So, based on that, these transporters in Star Trek do, in fact, kill you. 

However, many fans believe that since the human’s consciousness is retained after the body is reassembled that you aren’t actually dying. This poses a morality question on whether or not we should use the transporters in the first place. 

Let’s take a look at the actual process below to see how humanity can be okay with this potential murder device.

The Transporter Scans Your Body

The overall aspect of the first part of the transporter process is pretty simple. The machine takes a scan of your body, right down to the atom level. This is looking at your entire molecular makeup. Every molecule and atom in your body (inside and out) gets accounted for and copied.

It isn’t hard to wrap your brain around this part of the process, especially these days. In the real world, there are several different devices that do exactly what the transporter does in this stage, just not with biological material. These real world devices are things like X-Ray and MRI machines. 

The Teleporter Converts Your Atoms Into Energy

This is where things get a little tricky and potentially dangerous. Once the scan has been made, your body is broken down into energy. This is known as a matter stream . 

What this means is that your body is ripped apart atom by atom until it’s simply a stream of disconnected energy and matter. The dematerialization isn’t supposed to hurt the person being transported. It also happens at the same time as the next step, which is storing a copy in the pattern buffer.

This is the part of the process that many fans believe kills the original person being transported. If you are taken apart at the atomic level, how can you still be alive in any sense of the world? Based on what is known from real world science and biology and physics, there’s no chance you’d survive this step .

To make the science simple, the amount of energy needed to complete the entire process of being transported is equal to that of a bolt of lightning . While it could be possible to survive getting struck by lightning, it isn’t a very likely thing to happen.

There are fans who feel that since your mind is preserved with little to no delay in consciousness, that you aren’t being killed at all. The problem is that your original body is being destroyed. So, in a way, it would appear as though you are being killed. 

It Saves a Copy in the Pattern Buffer

Once the transporter has converted you into the energy stream, it makes a detailed copy of everything about you and stores it in the pattern buffer . This has been used in many situations throughout the franchise to fix transporter accidents.

There have been accounts where the pattern buffer was used to store people for several years. One instance of this happened in 2295 when Captain Scott’s ship was in distress . The pattern buffer was able to keep Captain Scott safe for 74 years before the crew of the Enterprise-D found him and rematerialized him. 

This is not an ideal situation. Technically, the pattern buffer is only capable of keeping this matter stream stored for seven minutes. After that, the stream degrades, and it isn’t guaranteed to return people to their pre-transporter conditions.

Captain Scott was able to preserve himself and another member of his crew within the transporter. Unfortunately, the other person stored in the pattern buffer wasn’t lucky enough to rematerialize after they were rescued from the transporter.

In the end, the copy of you is needed in order to bring you back together at your destination. Transporters actually have two pattern buffers in their systems to work as a backup in case one of them goes down. 

The Transporter Beams the Data Stream to the Desired Location

After you’ve been converted into energy and safely stored into the pattern buffer, the transporter uses an emitter array to send your matter stream to the desired location.

This energy beam is similar to the ones used on starships for tractor beams and phase beams. These beams are alike because it’s pure energy that makes them possible, and it comes from the emitter array. However, when transporters send the matter stream, the stream doesn’t appear to beam down as the tractor beam does.

One of the biggest scientific issues here is the fact that Star Trek seems to be able to beam you into almost any location. They do place some limitations on the where, but for the most part, those limits involve extremely dense materials (mountains, rocks) and sometimes if there is a force field blocking the signal. Based on real science, that just isn’t possible.

Finally, the Transporter Reassembles the Atoms of the Data Stream

Once the matter stream has been beamed to the location, your atoms and molecules are reassembled. It’s here that many fans believe the person who is beamed down is, in fact, just a copy of the original person. 

The problem involved here is that in order for this to work, there would need to be a second device on the receiving end . Without a device at the destination, there’s no scientific way for your atoms and molecules to be reassembled in the correct way. 

Star Trek doesn’t utilize this two-point system at all, not even in the early prequel series like Star Trek: Enterprise. Now, that sounds like a death sentence right there.

What Does All This Mean in the End?

The key to making science fiction work for its viewers is to make it as believable as possible. This means there has to be some possibility that it could be real. There are actual formulas that measure the amount of energy needed to convert a human being into a matter stream. Or how much radiation would be needed to beam and reassemble a human.

The results of these formulas aren’t possible in our time. The amount of energy to convert you into a matter stream is unobtainable. As an example, the amount of energy needed would be equal to roughly 130 thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb from 1945. 

Furthermore, the level of radiation needed to beam the matter stream anywhere isn’t even known to us. Gamma radiation is the highest level of radiation known to man, and even that is too weak to send the amount of energy a matter stream would contain.

Think about those levels of energy and radiation. Then think about exposing the human body to enough of both. No wonder some of the characters are nervous about using it!

Take a look at the five-minute video below for a quick recap of how transporters work and the trouble they can cause:

Are You Merely a Copy After Being Transported?

It isn’t just the fans who believe it’s just a copy at the end of the transporter. There are characters on the show who have voiced these concerns as well.

Doctor McCoy is well known within the franchise for voicing his fears of using the transporter device. If your body is being ripped apart at the atomic level and put back together somewhere else, are you actually just a copy?

While there are characters who fear the transporter, there are others who try their best to reassure them of their safety. Spock has been referenced as saying a few times that “a difference which makes no difference is no difference.” This is a quote from William James .

If our full consciousness is retained and put into the copy, wouldn’t we essentially still be ourselves? Once the original you is destroyed, wouldn’t the copy become the original you? Since there can only be one of you, it would stand to reason that the copy is, in fact, the new original.

Transporter Speeds and Distances

One of the biggest things to consider when characters wanted to use the transporter within the show was that it shouldn’t be used at warp speed . This is because there are serious distortions that can occur when atoms try to reassembly at different speeds.

Transporting at warp speed could be possible, and was accomplished in-universe. The best way to accomplish this was to ensure both destinations were traveling at the exact same speed. 

The range is important to keep in mind as well. This range will be different between species. By the time of Picard, humans have a range of 40 thousand kilometers. Other species have longer or shorter distances, depending on their own limitations.

The further away your desired destination is, the more degraded the matter stream within the pattern buffer can remain intact. You risk your atoms being put together incorrectly.

Transporter Malfunctions and Accidents

There have been many transporter malfunctions and accidents across the franchise. These accidents typically occur when there is a problem with defective equipment. 

• Combining two crew members – In the TV show Star Trek: Voyager , two crew members were combined into one being as a result of a transporter malfunction. 
• Creating duplicates – In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , another William Riker was created and stranded on another planet with no one having any clue he existed. 
• Objects embedded inside people – Star Trek: Enterprise shows how dangerous the transporter can be when the crew beams up a crew member in distress. He makes it back onto the ship with leaves embedded in his skin.
• Age reversal – Also in The Next Generation, members of the crew, Riker, and Picard included, were reversed in age to that of 12-year-old kids .
• Death – There are several instances when the transporter devices of the franchise have killed crew members.

Check out the video below for a clip of a transporter accident from Star Trek: The Motion Picture :

Characters With Fears of Being Transported

There are many characters who have some level of fear when it comes to transporter devices. Most famously being Doctor McCoy and Lt. Barclay, or the entire crew from the TV adaptation, Star Trek: Enterprise. 

These characters may have had some good reasoning for being so afraid of the transporter. In addition to the fact that your body is being ripped apart atom by atom, there are also serious side effects that could occur—one of these being Transporter Psychosis. 

Check out the video below of a scene from Star Trek: The Next Generation (season six, episode two), when Lt. Barclay asks the computer to explain the condition to him:

Real World Teleporting

While we’re still light-years away from being able to teleport a biological object, there are instances when humans have succeeded in producing a kind of teleportation. These aren’t at all the way we see it done on Star Trek, but they’re as close to it as you can actually get with the technology we have today.

Fax Machines

One of the first types of teleportation devices could be considered the fax machine . This device took a scan of your letter or notice and sent the information to another machine. It replicated the original in another location.

Now, this goes back to the question many ask about the transporters. Is it just a copy then? Well, yes. But if you were to destroy the original, wouldn’t the copy then become the original? Couldn’t we say the same for a human being transported?

3D Printers

3D printers are capable of being a version of teleportation. In fact, in 2015, some German researchers were able to create a device that uses a scanner and a 3D printer to “teleport” objects to new locations.

This simply involves the computer scanning the object and sending the information to its new desired location, much like a fax machine. After that, the 3D printer will create the object. This type of device is more readily available to people these days. It’s as close as we can get to teleporting objects.

Quantum Teleportation 

There is an instance of real world teleportation that exists today called Quantum Teleportation . However, it isn’t quite the way we know it from Star Trek. In fact, this method of teleportation wasn’t discovered until the 1990s. There are plenty of formulas that explain what this process is and what it means for the transporters of Star Trek.

Basically, this method shows that the state of atoms can be transported to another location. However, there is a catch. There’s a rule with this kind of science, and that is there is no cloning allowed. In order for every last atom in your body to be transported, the original would have to be completely destroyed . Then and only then can this quantum teleportation succeed in creating the copy at the desired location.

Check out the video below for more details about teleportation in relation to Star Trek’s transporters:

The following video gives a more in-depth approach to the workings of quantum teleportation and quantum entanglement: 

There you have it. The Star Trek franchise would have us believe the people who use these teleporters are completely fine. Perhaps they are, in a way. However, science seems to suggest otherwise. Based on real world physics and science, the Star Trek teleporters do actually kill you.

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Brad Burnie is the founder of Starships.com. He loves all video game genres. In his spare time, he loves reading, watching movies, and gaming

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June 19, 2020

Is teleportation possible? Yes, in the quantum world

by Lindsey Valich, University of Rochester

"Beam me up" is one of the most famous catchphrases from the Star Trek series. It is the command issued when a character wishes to teleport from a remote location back to the Starship Enterprise.

While human teleportation exists only in science fiction , teleportation is possible in the subatomic world of quantum mechanics—albeit not in the way typically depicted on TV. In the quantum world , teleportation involves the transportation of information, rather than the transportation of matter.

Last year scientists confirmed that information could be passed between photons on computer chips even when the photons were not physically linked.

Now, according to new research from the University of Rochester and Purdue University, teleportation may also be possible between electrons.

In a paper published in Nature Communications and one to appear in Physical Review X , the researchers, including John Nichol, an assistant professor of physics at Rochester, and Andrew Jordan, a professor of physics at Rochester, explore new ways of creating quantum-mechanical interactions between distant electrons. The research is an important step in improving quantum computing, which, in turn, has the potential to revolutionize technology, medicine, and science by providing faster and more efficient processors and sensors.

'Spooky action at a distance'

Quantum teleportation is a demonstration of what Albert Einstein famously called "spooky action at a distance"—also known as quantum entanglement . In entanglement—one of the basic of concepts of quantum physics—the properties of one particle affect the properties of another, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. Quantum teleportation involves two distant, entangled particles in which the state of a third particle instantly "teleports" its state to the two entangled particles.

Quantum teleportation is an important means for transmitting information in quantum computing. While a typical computer consists of billions of transistors, called bits, quantum computers encode information in quantum bits, or qubits. A bit has a single binary value, which can be either "0" or "1," but qubits can be both "0" and "1" at the same time. The ability for individual qubits to simultaneously occupy multiple states underlies the great potential power of quantum computers.

Scientists have recently demonstrated quantum teleportation by using electromagnetic photons to create remotely entangled pairs of qubits.

Qubits made from individual electrons, however, are also promising for transmitting information in semiconductors.

"Individual electrons are promising qubits because they interact very easily with each other, and individual electron qubits in semiconductors are also scalable," Nichol says. "Reliably creating long-distance interactions between electrons is essential for quantum computing."

Creating entangled pairs of electron qubits that span long distances, which is required for teleportation, has proved challenging, though: while photons naturally propagate over long distances, electrons usually are confined to one place.

Entangled pairs of electrons

In order to demonstrate quantum teleportation using electrons, the researchers harnessed a recently developed technique based on the principles of Heisenberg exchange coupling. An individual electron is like a bar magnet with a north pole and a south pole that can point either up or down. The direction of the pole—whether the north pole is pointing up or down, for instance—is known as the electron's magnetic moment or quantum spin state. If certain kinds of particles have the same magnetic moment, they cannot be in the same place at the same time. That is, two electrons in the same quantum state cannot sit on top of each other. If they did, their states would swap back and forth in time.

The researchers used the technique to distribute entangled pairs of electrons and teleport their spin states.

"We provide evidence for 'entanglement swapping,' in which we create entanglement between two electrons even though the particles never interact, and 'quantum gate teleportation,' a potentially useful technique for quantum computing using teleportation," Nichol says. "Our work shows that this can be done even without photons."

The results pave the way for future research on quantum teleportation involving spin states of all matter, not just photons, and provide more evidence for the surprisingly useful capabilities of individual electrons in qubit semiconductors.

Journal information: Nature Communications , Physical Review X

Provided by University of Rochester

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Teleporters & You: The Teletransporter Paradox and 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.

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Teleportation Milestone Achieved

Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the "Star Trek" feat of teleportation. No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter — about a yard.

This is a significant milestone in a field known as quantum information processing , said Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, who led the effort.

Teleportation is one of nature's most mysterious forms of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons (a unit, or quantum, of electromagnetic radiation, such as light ) over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third.

None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.

Now the JQI team, along with colleagues at the University of Michigan, has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a meter. That capability is necessary for workable quantum information systems because they will require memory storage at both the sending and receiving ends of the transmission.

In the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Science , the scientists report that, by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90 percent of the time — and that figure can be improved.

"Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale 'quantum repeater' that can network quantum memories over vast distances," Monroe said. "Moreover, our methods can be used in conjunction with quantum bit operations to create a key component needed for quantum computation."

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A quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as encryption-related calculations and searches of giant databases, considerably faster than conventional machines. The effort to devise a working model is a matter of intense interest worldwide.

Teleportation and entanglement

Physicist Richard Feynman is quoted as having said that "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understands quantum mechanics." Or sometimes he is cited thusly: "I think I can safely say that nobody understand quantum mechanics."

Nonetheless, here is how the University of Maryland describes Monroe's work.

Teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement which only occurs on the atomic and subatomic scale. Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. Although those properties are inherently unknowable until a measurement is made, measuring either one of the objects instantly determines the characteristics of the other, no matter how far apart they are.

The JQI team set out to entangle the quantum states of two individual ytterbium ions so that information embodied in the condition of one could be teleported to the other. Each ion was isolated in a separate high-vacuum trap, suspended in an invisible cage of electromagnetic fields and surrounded by metal electrodes.

The researchers identified two readily discernible ground (lowest energy) states of the ions that would serve as the alternative "bit" values of an atomic quantum bit, or qubit. Conventional electronic bits (short for binary digits), such as those in a personal computer, are always in one of two states: off or on, 0 or 1, high or low voltage, etc. Quantum bits, however, can be in some combination, called a "superposition," of both states at the same time, like a coin that is simultaneously heads and tails — until a measurement is made. It is this phenomenon that gives quantum computation its extraordinary power.

Laser pulse initiates process

At the start of the experimental process, each ion (designated A and B) is initialized in a given ground state.

Then ion A is irradiated with a specially tailored microwave burst from one of its cage electrodes, placing the ion in some desired superposition of the two qubit states — in effect "writing" into "memory" the information to be teleported.

Immediately thereafter, both ions are excited by a picosecond (one trillionth of a second) laser pulse. The pulse duration is so short that each ion emits only a single photon as it sheds the energy gained by the laser and falls back to one or the other of the two qubit ground states.

Depending on which one it falls into, the ion emits one of two kinds of photons of slightly different wavelengths (designated red and blue) that correspond to the two atomic qubit states. It is the relationship between those photons that will eventually provide the telltale signal that entanglement has occurred.

Beamsplitter encounter

Each emitted photon is captured by a lens, routed to a separate strand of fiber-optic cable, and carried to a 50-50 beamsplitter where it is equally probable for the photon to pass straight through the splitter or to be reflected. On either side of the beamsplitter are detectors that can record the arrival of a single photon.

Before it reaches the beamsplitter, each photon is in an unknowable superposition of states. After encountering the beamsplitter, however, each takes on specific characteristics.

As a result, for each pair of photons, four color combinations are possible — blue-blue, red-red, blue-red and red-blue — as well as one of two polarizations: horizontal or vertical. In nearly all of those variations, the photons either cancel each other out or both end up in the same detector. But there is one — and only one — combination in which both detectors will record a photon at exactly the same time.

In that case, however, it is physically impossible to tell which ion produced which photon because it cannot be known whether the photon arriving at a detector passed through the beamsplitter or was reflected by it.

Thanks to the peculiar laws of quantum mechanics, that inherent uncertainty projects the ions into an entangled state. That is, each ion is in a superposition of the two possible qubit states. The simultaneous detection of photons at the detectors does not occur often, so the laser stimulus and photon emission process has to be repeated many thousands of times per second. But when a photon appears in each detector, it is an unambiguous signature of entanglement between the ions.

When an entangled condition is identified, the scientists immediately take a measurement of ion A. The act of measurement forces it out of superposition and into a definite condition: one of the two qubit states.

But because ion A's state is irreversibly tied to ion B's, the measurement also forces B into the complementary state. Depending on which state ion A is found in, the researchers now know precisely what kind of microwave pulse to apply to ion B in order to recover the exact information that had been written to ion A by the original microwave burst. Doing so results in the accurate teleportation of the information.

Teleportation vs. other communications

What distinguishes this outcome as teleportation, rather than any other form of communication, is that no information pertaining to the original memory actually passes between ion A and ion B. Instead, the information disappears when ion A is measured and reappears when the microwave pulse is applied to ion B.

"One particularly attractive aspect of our method is that it combines the unique advantages of both photons and atoms," says Monroe. "Photons are ideal for transferring information fast over long distances, whereas atoms offer a valuable medium for long-lived quantum memory … Also, the teleportation of quantum information in this way could form the basis of a new type of quantum internet that could outperform any conventional type of classical network for certain tasks."

The work was supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity program under U.S. Army Research Office contract, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics at the Information Frontier Program, and the NSF Physics Frontier Center at the Joint Quantum Institute.

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