Transporters are real

[rjh01]

It is discovered that transporters are real as per Star Trek. What are the practical applications and implications, beyond moving people and cargo from one point to another?

My answer
1. Anything you do not want in the body can be removed.
- Spots.
- Fat. Lose weight fast.
- Going to the toilet.
- Cancer treatment.
- Infection treatment.
2. No need for cars. Just use transporters. So no need for roads.

Idea from https://internationalskeptics.com/f...ith-st-is-getting-harder.374354/post-14519552

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Perfect dictatorship - complete control of movement of people, perfect tracking due to unique pattern, perfect ability to detain/kill dissidents, or reprogram their brains to be more Regime aligned.
Complete Superpower Dominance of the country/power that controls the technology.

 

[arthwollipot]

Does the transporter destroy the original person and rebuild a copy with all of the original's memories, or is continuity of consciousness preserved through the transportation process?

 

[rjh01]

Does the transporter destroy the original person and rebuild a copy with all of the original's memories, or is continuity of consciousness preserved through the transportation process?

That is not important. Watch Star Trek to find the answers to such questions.

 

[rjh01]

Perfect dictatorship - complete control of movement of people, perfect tracking due to unique pattern, perfect ability to detain/kill dissidents, or reprogram their brains to be more Regime aligned.
Complete Superpower Dominance of the country/power that controls the technology.

That assumes a monopoly on transporters.

 

[Puppycow]

It is discovered that transporters are real as per Star Trek. What are the practical applications and implications, beyond moving people and cargo from one point to another?

My answer
1. Anything you do not want in the body can be removed.
- Spots.
- Fat. Lose weight fast.
- Going to the toilet.
- Cancer treatment.
- Infection treatment.
2. No need for cars. Just use transporters. So no need for roads.

Idea from https://internationalskeptics.com/f...ith-st-is-getting-harder.374354/post-14519552

Is that how medicine works in Star Trek? I would add kidney stones to the list

Having a baby would also be easier

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Does it consume the equivalent of the output power of a small star to move a 4kg cat 10m? And is the cat likely to arrive at -87 Celsius, or 450 Celsius?

It feels worth asking the basic questions.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

That assumes a monopoly on transporters.

not really - it would be sufficient if it is very inconvenient to avoid the Power-Controlled transporters.
As soon as you are in a Transporter Buffer that is not 100% under your control, everything about you is in the power of someone else.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I would assume that the Megacorporations who run the Transporter Network will just send a copy of you to work in the Dilithium Mines.

 

[Puppycow]

Does it consume the equivalent of the output power of a small star to move a 4kg cat 10m? And is the cat likely to arrive at -87 Celsius, or 450 Celsius?

It feels worth asking the basic questions.

Since it doesn't need that much power in Star Trek and since the cat remains at the same temperature, I assume that the answer to both of those questions is no. However, we are now discussing Science Fiction, not Science.

 

[Georg]

Does the transporter destroy the original person and rebuild a copy with all of the original's memories, or is continuity of consciousness preserved through the transportation process?

It does not matter, since there is no stream of consciousness

 

[zooterkin]

Since it doesn't need that much power in Star Trek and since the cat remains at the same temperature, I assume that the answer to both of those questions is no. However, we are now discussing Science Fiction, not Science.

Now? At what point in this thread were we discussing Science?

 

[Puppycow]

Now? At what point in this thread were we discussing Science?

At no point as far as I can see. But I was playing along. Perhaps it would fit better in a different subforum, no offense to the OP

 

[Darat]

I would assume that the Megacorporations who run the Transporter Network will just send a copy of you to work in the Dilithium Mines.

Read a short story about that idea a couple of decades ago. The protagonist steps into the transmitting booth and steps out of the receiving booth and goes on their way. The back of the transmitting booth opens and the "original" is unceremonily cuffed and is transported to some mine or other industry. Why waste an unneeded copy?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

as long as you never transport people (or live WMDs), it might not be too bad.
In fact, the best use would be to upload hospitals worth of medical supplies and all surplus food, to be used by whoever has need for it.

 

[catsmate]

Does the transporter destroy the original person and rebuild a copy with all of the original's memories, or is continuity of consciousness preserved through the transportation process?

Personally I prefer a wormhole style mechanism.

That is not important. Watch Star Trek to find the answers to such questions.

It is some what important and the Trekverse never answers the question.
For example where did the mass/energy for Riker II come from?

 

[catsmate]

Read a short story about that idea a couple of decades ago. The protagonist steps into the transmitting booth and steps out of the receiving booth and goes on their way. The back of the transmitting booth opens and the "original" is unceremonily cuffed and is transported to some mine or other industry. Why waste an unneeded copy?

Very Schlock Mercenary.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If they got cheap enough to run, you could replace elevators with simple cupboards on each floor. No need for heavy moving parts and no waiting for the elevator to arrive on your floor. Bit of management to prevent multiple arrival clashes I suppose. No need for the "floors" of the building all to be built on top of each other either. They could be miles apart.

"In the event of fire, do not use lifts. Just walk outside. ...You have your passport, right?"

 

[Dave Rogers]

I'm interested in the potential for theft, when there is no longer any such thing as a safe or a strongroom. Ownership of physical objects could become quite impractical. I don't think I've seen this angle explored in science fiction, whereas things like the unimportance of physical location, the obsolescence of transportation and the application to medical treatment are all Larry Niven staples.

Dave

 

[zooterkin]

I'm interested in the potential for theft, when there is no longer any such thing as a safe or a strongroom. Ownership of physical objects could become quite impractical. I don't think I've seen this angle explored in science fiction, whereas things like the unimportance of physical location, the obsolescence of transportation and the application to medical treatment are all Larry Niven staples.

Dave

Depending on the details of transporter technology, how can you tell if you have the original or a copy of something?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Depending on the details of transporter technology, how can you tell if you have the original or a copy of something?

Good point. Mass could become the only basis for value any object has.

Dave

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Assassination appears to be an obvious application.

Either by dismantling the victim or just depositing them in space, or a few feet underground.

 

[Myriad]

Like any technology in any SF show Star Trek is inconsistent on transporters, but judging from how transporters are (and aren't!) used in TOS as a whole we can say the following about the device. Note that inadvertent and irreproducible malfunctions don't count.

It can't create duplicates.
It can't store people for more than the few seconds it takes to materialize them.
It can't create post-mortem replacements.
It doesn't store and dispense useful stuff. (Replicators using similar technology in later series can, but the replicators in TOS are more like 3D printers, and will dispense tribbles if tribbles get into their feedstock.)
It doesn't filter out pathogens, weapons, tribbles, or other contraband.
It doesn't fix injuries. (Medical devices likely using similar technology do, to a limited extent.)
It doesn't swap body parts or blend DNA if a fly is caught in the beam with a person.
It's never used as an antipersonnel weapon (e.g. transporting someone's organs away), even for unshielded targets
It never ever misjudges the elevation of the floor or ground at the destination.
No one in the setting is at all concerned that it might be killing them and replacing them each time they use it.

Overall, its characteristics are more consistent with opening up a warp portal that the passenger steps through, even though it's depicted and explicitly described as material disassembly and reassembly instead.

Larry Niven wrote a number of stories about practical civilian teleportation technology (operating, at first, much like phone booths, with no molecular disassembly involved) and some of its effects, such as obsolescence of roads and bridges, law enforcement issues (almost no such thing as an alibi any more), and flash mobs (the origin of the phrase) appearing at events of interest. Most of the stories focused on the flash mobs, partly because the other changes aren't all that interesting, because we already use cars as if they were personal teleporters, just slower ones with distance limitations. (As Arthur Clarke one put it in an interview, we already live in a science fiction nightmare world.)

Experience of MMO game worlds (which didn't exist when the stories were written) suggests that small and medium size public spaces would become mostly obsolete, because all but the most popular gathering place(s) would gradually be abandoned. That's assuming there are minimal or no distance constraints or tradeoffs (as with present day telephoning, compared with e.g. the "long distance charges" of past decades). It's the balance between gathering size (and hence, range of options available there) and distance that made shopping malls popular in the U.S. for a while, and a shift in that balance is dooming them now.

The implications for daily life in space habitats would be a little more interesting. Depending on how costly and reliable the technology is, connecting corridors, access hatches, and even ordinary doors would be relegated to limited maintenance and emergency use. Our incredulity that people would use a complex machine to get to the other side of a wall would match the incredulity of a medieval villager told that we would use a complex machine to go buy food.

 

[junkshop]

... - Cancer treatment...

Transport the tumor out, and the the patient dies of internal bleeding.

 

[Little 10 Toes]

Read a short story about that idea a couple of decades ago. The protagonist steps into the transmitting booth and steps out of the receiving booth and goes on their way. The back of the transmitting booth opens and the "original" is unceremonily cuffed and is transported to some mine or other industry. Why waste an unneeded copy?

The short story that I read wad from the operator’s point of view. Here’s the short paragraph version on the story.

There was a transportation accident, very infrequent but frequent enough to have a procedure, where someone was getting transported. Receiving end sent a message to the origination point that the passenger arrived, but the passenger never left the pad. The passenger was then beaten up by the operator and shoved out the airlock.

Think Like a Dinosaur - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Here’s the story I was thinking.

Edit: looks like the board made the link for me automatically.

 

[EHocking]

Inevitably it will just get used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy.

The only objectors to this misuse will be from the types of people that are not invited to those sorts of parties.

 

[EHocking]

Dupe. Or is post #26 the dupe? So confusing

 

[theprestige]

I'm interested in the potential for theft, when there is no longer any such thing as a safe or a strongroom. Ownership of physical objects could become quite impractical. I don't think I've seen this angle explored in science fiction, whereas things like the unimportance of physical location, the obsolescence of transportation and the application to medical treatment are all Larry Niven staples.

Dave

ST transporters are canonically blockable.

 

[novaphile]

Hmm...

Mentioned before, but there are two possible kinds of transporters in science fiction.

1. Distorters. These devices force two separate 'places' to be congruent in space time. You walk from one space to another without having to travel between them, because space/time has been distorted to make those places adjacent. This 'transporters' don't kill you.

2. Everything else. You are disassembled, stored, transmitted, and reassembled somewhere else. You die, and duplicates happen. (No confirmation of receipt at the other end, so you're re-created at the beginning.)

I'm pretty sure that Larry Niven had both kinds.

The puppeteers had 'stepping discs' which were distorter technology. This is because they were unwilling to die using regular transporters.

Humans used transporters, which used the disassemble/reassemble method.

There was one pair of transporters found that cleaned out all the detritus of long life, resulting in, effectively, a perpetual youth machine.

In that, one of the booths had a cloud of settling dust, that was supposed to be everything that wasn't required in the, now, healthier person.

Somehow the products of aging are transported without affecting the user in the booth, here is the scene:

The lights were still on in the vault. Indicator lights glowed on the console. With luck the booths would work too. He stepped into one and looked for the dial.

No dial, just a button set in a slender post. No choice about where he was going. Corbell wondered if the Norn would be waiting at the other end. He made himself push the button anyway.

Nothing happened.

He cursed luridly, pushed out of the booth and tried the other. The second booth didn’t even have a door, and there was fine dust floating in it. What the hell?

(Larry Niven - A World out of time)

It takes Corbell a while to understand that he is now younger. (His white hair grows out, IIRC)

No explanation of how the booth could remove stuff from the body without doing damage.

If I'd written the scene, I'd have him appear in the second booth, and see the dust falling in the first booth. (Both booths are in the same room).
(That would have indicated that stuff was discarded during the disassemble stage.)

 

[rjh01]

Thanks to those that took the subject seriously and gave it some thought.

 

[Puppycow]

Imagine if there were even just some tiny changes at the molecular level.

A few weeks after using a transporter you notice tumors starting to grow all over your body. Tiny errors in reproduction seeded cancerous cells throughout your body.

I can't remember exactly where I came across it, but I think I saw somewhere that the amount of information needed to precisely reproduce the exact arrangement of atoms, molecules and the like in your body would be such an enormous amount that it would be practically impossible to beam a signal that conveys all of that information from one place to another in any reasonable time frame. This is why it would be impossible even in principle in the real universe.

 

[rjh01]

Imagine if there were even just some tiny changes at the molecular level.

A few weeks after using a transporter you notice tumors starting to grow all over your body. Tiny errors in reproduction seeded cancerous cells throughout your body.

I can't remember exactly where I came across it, but I think I saw somewhere that the amount of information needed to precisely reproduce the exact arrangement of atoms, molecules and the like in your body would be such an enormous amount that it would be practically impossible to beam a signal that conveys all of that information from one place to another in any reasonable time frame. This is why it would be impossible even in principle in the real universe.

The answer to that question can be found in this thread.

1. Distorters. These devices force two separate 'places' to be congruent in space time. You walk from one space to another without having to travel between them, because space/time has been distorted to make those places adjacent. This 'transporters' don't kill you.

If that is the way it is done, it is just moving a short distance, but you end up a long distance from where you started. No risk of cancer or duplications. Very simple. And it would not break any laws.

 

[Puppycow]

The answer to that question can be found in this thread.

I didn't even ask a question.

 

[erwinl]

One should hope that the energy requirements of these transporters are such that only some countries have access to it.
Then they will turn into the new 'Nucleair Weapons', with some kind of non proliferation mechanism.
If no non-proliferation, then expect these transporters to be used to take out any and all governments/persons, that the powers that e in the possessing countries are feeling angry about.
Even then. Just imagine a Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin with this power at his hands.

If the power requirements are such that every Tom, Dick and Harry, or to be more precise every ISIS, IRA, Bader Meinhoff, Khmer Rouge, Maga Nutcase, Hamas, Houthis or whatever you can imagine, has access to it. Then there will be complete and utter chaos, as bombings and killings will occur all over the world and no way to get back at the perpetrators.

 

[theprestige]

One should hope that the energy requirements of these transporters are such that only some countries have access to it.
Then they will turn into the new 'Nucleair Weapons', with some kind of non proliferation mechanism.
If no non-proliferation, then expect these transporters to be used to take out any and all governments/persons, that the powers that e in the possessing countries are feeling angry about.
Even then. Just imagine a Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin with this power at his hands.

If the power requirements are such that every Tom, Dick and Harry, or to be more precise every ISIS, IRA, Bader Meinhoff, Khmer Rouge, Maga Nutcase, Hamas, Houthis or whatever you can imagine, has access to it. Then there will be complete and utter chaos, as bombings and killings will occur all over the world and no way to get back at the perpetrators.

Star Trek transporters are canonically blockable.

 

[erwinl]

Star Trek transporters are canonically blockable.

That is true. But the OP didn’t state the existence of shields, just that of the transporters.

But even with shields present. Can we expect every place on earth to have sufficient shielding, such that transports have no more teeth and can only be used as it is done in StarTrek?

In that case the OP should be changed into ‘what if we would live in the Star Trek setting?’


Edit:
It all depends on who the first one is that can use the transporter technology.
If it is the wrong one, then we enter something like what MorningLightMountain did in the Commonwealth Saga from Peter Hamilton.
A single all out attack on all it's enemies, by teleporting nuclear weapons directly in al their lairs.
Now it does not need to be nuclear, but even with 'simple' explosives, the results will be very quick and very final.

 

[theprestige]

That is true. But the OP didn’t state the existence of shields, just that of the transporters.

But even with shields present. Can we expect every place on earth to have sufficient shielding, such that transports have no more teeth and can only be used as it is done in StarTrek?

In that case the OP should be changed into ‘what if we would live in the Star Trek setting?’


Edit:
It all depends on who the first one is that can use the transporter technology.
If it is the wrong one, then we enter something like what MorningLightMountain did in the Commonwealth Saga from Peter Hamilton.
A single all out attack on all it's enemies, by teleporting nuclear weapons directly in al their lairs.
Now it does not need to be nuclear, but even with 'simple' explosives, the results will be very quick and very final.

There's more than one way to look at it, of course.

The way I choose to look at it, it makes no sense to imagine the transporter without imagining a certain amount of the accompanying and enabling technology.

And it's not just shields; planetary geology and electromagnetic fields have blocked transporters in the show. So I assume that if transporters existed, people would take the necessary and canonically-effective steps to safeguard the most important targets.

As to your question about access: The way that transporters are presented in the show, it seems like they need three things to be truly effective. The first is an unobtainium-mediated power source strong enough to warp spacetime. The second is a supercomputer. The third is a powerful sensor array. The Enterprise has all three. And it makes sense when you think about it. Such transportation effects must require immense amounts of energy. They must require a lot of computation, to keep all the details straight. And they must require powerful sensors, to properly identify the subjects, over thousands of miles, through atmospheric distortion, geological formations, etc.

So I think we are probably looking at a scenario where only the most powerful and advanced governments would have such transporters at their disposal. They'd be beyond robbing banks, or kidnapping for ransom. They might, however, stoop to stealing enemy arsenals, or beaming a bomb into the war room. Warfare would probably change; terrorism and crime, not so much.

 

[ahhell]

Like any technology in any SF show Star Trek is inconsistent on transporters, but judging from how transporters are (and aren't!) used in TOS as a whole we can say the following about the device. Note that inadvertent and irreproducible malfunctions don't count.

It can't create duplicates.
It can't store people for more than the few seconds it takes to materialize them.
It can't create post-mortem replacements.
It doesn't store and dispense useful stuff. (Replicators using similar technology in later series can, but the replicators in TOS are more like 3D printers, and will dispense tribbles if tribbles get into their feedstock.)
It doesn't filter out pathogens, weapons, tribbles, or other contraband.
It doesn't fix injuries. (Medical devices likely using similar technology do, to a limited extent.)
It doesn't swap body parts or blend DNA if a fly is caught in the beam with a person.
It's never used as an antipersonnel weapon (e.g. transporting someone's organs away), even for unshielded targets
It never ever misjudges the elevation of the floor or ground at the destination.
No one in the setting is at all concerned that it might be killing them and replacing them each time they use it.

Overall, its characteristics are more consistent with opening up a warp portal that the passenger steps through, even though it's depicted and explicitly described as material disassembly and reassembly instead.

Larry Niven wrote a number of stories about practical civilian teleportation technology (operating, at first, much like phone booths, with no molecular disassembly involved) and some of its effects, such as obsolescence of roads and bridges, law enforcement issues (almost no such thing as an alibi any more), and flash mobs (the origin of the phrase) appearing at events of interest. Most of the stories focused on the flash mobs, partly because the other changes aren't all that interesting, because we already use cars as if they were personal teleporters, just slower ones with distance limitations. (As Arthur Clarke one put it in an interview, we already live in a science fiction nightmare world.)

Experience of MMO game worlds (which didn't exist when the stories were written) suggests that small and medium size public spaces would become mostly obsolete, because all but the most popular gathering place(s) would gradually be abandoned. That's assuming there are minimal or no distance constraints or tradeoffs (as with present day telephoning, compared with e.g. the "long distance charges" of past decades). It's the balance between gathering size (and hence, range of options available there) and distance that made shopping malls popular in the U.S. for a while, and a shift in that balance is dooming them now.

The implications for daily life in space habitats would be a little more interesting. Depending on how costly and reliable the technology is, connecting corridors, access hatches, and even ordinary doors would be relegated to limited maintenance and emergency use. Our incredulity that people would use a complex machine to get to the other side of a wall would match the incredulity of a medieval villager told that we would use a complex machine to go buy food.

I don't think you've seen all of star trek.

They have duplicated Riker
They stored Scotty for decades.
In the much-maligned Enterprise, folks were initially concerned about being killed by transporters.

A few of your ideas, I doubt. I think small local gathering places; bars, coffee shops, small musical venues, parks, and such would all remain a common thing. Folks will still value their local spot for socializing to some degree. As I type that though, maybe you are right. I mean, even now folks are semi abandoning the local for the internet.

Doors becoming obsolete, I suspect most folks would prefer walk to the next room. Are people going to teleport from one side of the bedroom to the other when they get dressed in the morning? If not, then why should they decide to teleport from one room to the next. Stairs and elevators on the other hand...

 

[Planigale]

I'm interested in the potential for theft, when there is no longer any such thing as a safe or a strongroom. Ownership of physical objects could become quite impractical. I don't think I've seen this angle explored in science fiction, whereas things like the unimportance of physical location, the obsolescence of transportation and the application to medical treatment are all Larry Niven staples.

Dave

I think this does figure in 'The Magicians'. Since you can't transport in to take over a ship with deflectors up, presumably you can make transporter proof areas. Does occur in Charles Stross Merchant Prince series. Although this involves moving from the same location in a parallel universe.

Unpleasant consequences might include theft of organs.

There is also a Robert Heinlein novel (Glory Road?) where the Kitchen in someone's apartment was on another planet from the bedroom and living room.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

Once transporters are invented (any day now), someone has to transport a transporter that's transporting something. Just to hijinks reality.