the frig blig

40 years after Star Trek’s first season, many of what were presented as futuristic technologies have become commonplace: faster-than-light space travel, photon torpedos, and communicators. Well OK, just communicators. But the technology I want to discuss here is — “Beam me up, Scotty” — the transporter.

Transporter technology is designed to move (transport) a physical object from one location to another, seemingly instantaneously, without use of a vehicle. On the show the device required an operator to pull a lever, and during the period between the lever’s move from the top to bottom position the objects (usually starship personnel) would flicker out of existence at the source location and flicker into existence at the target location (set using GPS coordinates).

The problem here is that it’s impossible for matter to exist in more than one location at the same time (isn’t it?). It seems that if transporter technology were to actually work it would have to be a quantum phenomena, just as electrons move in discreet quanta in nuclear physics. So there would be no flickering at both locations; the object(s) would simply blink out of existence at the source and blink into existence at the target.

Besides, what would happen if an object or person got stuck halfway between the source and destination — suppose for instance the operator was distracted and the lever got stuck in the middle? Messy.

Portraying the transporter as quantum technology would have robbed the series of a special effect, so perhaps a production consideration overrode the technical requirements. That’s entertainment I suppose.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 3:26 am and is filed under kulture, geeky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.