Take the 2-minute tour ×
Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.

I am just curious. If I am teleported is the original me dead and the teleporter just makes another copy of me there[at destination]?

share|improve this question
    
This is related to a deleted question (10K-ers can click here) –  Wikis Mar 20 '12 at 8:38
1  
@Wikis why was it deleted? –  Sachin Shekhar Mar 20 '12 at 11:35
    
@SachinShekhar: it was deleted as a list question, see this link. –  Wikis Mar 20 '12 at 11:39
1  
Answers on Do the Star Trek Transporters use Energy or Matter? may also help here. –  Xantec Mar 20 '12 at 13:56
    
For interest and further reading The Minds I (Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C Dennett) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I is a fascinating read and talks about the transporter in the introduction (I seem to recall). –  Jaydee Aug 16 '13 at 12:36
add comment

9 Answers 9

up vote 20 down vote accepted

Sorry TangoOversway, but... Physically: yes, the original is lost. "Death" is overkill, though.

Based solely on onscreen evidence, it's more accurate to say that the original is recycled.

First: Matter is not directly transmitted as energy and reconstructed as-is. Most likely it's simply used as an energy-saving mechanism during 99.999+% of transports. Evidence:

  • TNG 1x07, Lonely Among Us. Data uses a copy of Picard's pattern stored in the pattern buffer, and combines it with Picard's energy signature to create a new (living) body. Picard only has vague memories of the experience.
  • TNG 2x07, Unnatural Selection. Doctor Pulaski is reverted to a younger body through manipulation of the transporter. Her mind remains unchanged.
  • TNG 6x07, Rascals. A transporter accident turns 4 of the crew into children, which causes them to both lose a lot of mass, and further shows that the transporter is actually improvising based on their DNA, not doing a molecule-for-molecule transport of their mass.
  • TNG 6x24, Second Chances. Where we meet Thomas Riker. This episode is a double whammy to a lot of the theory: The copy of Riker shows that new life can be created, and it also shows that the energy from the second transporter beam created new mass. It wasn't converted from somewhere else.
  • TNG 7x23, Emergence. Further evidence that the transporter system can create life. In this episode, it's shown to be so exceedingly complicated and lengthy a process that no one has figured out how to do it at will.


Second: Mentioned in TangoOversway's answer:

This still leaves the question open: Is the consciousness or the self-aware entity in the reconstructed body the same as before, or was the original consciousness destroyed and a new one created. That has been answered on-screen in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode Realm of Fear.

In this episode, Lt. Barclay, who is afraid of using the transporter, while being transported from the Enterprise to another ship, sees other beings while in transport. We see the entire transport process from Barclay's point of view. He does not lose consciousness and is aware, during the act of transport, and is able to rescue a crewmember of the other ship who was caught in the pattern buffer for an unbelievably long time (it was justified with technobabble, of course).

Actually, what we saw was Barclay's point of view. And his consciousness was likely paused for a moment while he was in the pattern buffer in the middle of transport - very similar to Hoshi Sato in ENT 2x10, Vanishing Point. She experienced no apparent break in consciousness, despite being stuck in the transporter buffer for about 8.3 seconds - her transport up flowed smoothly into the "dream" (during which point she was actually completely suspended for about 6 seconds), there was the "dream", then that flowed smoothly into reallife during the final seconds while she was getting "unstuck".


Third: DS9 4x10, Our Man Bashir, shows that it's possible to store both neural patterns and transporter patterns for extended periods of time, given enough memory. But this is in the computer's memory - not in a pattern buffer. Seen in this episode:

  • Creating life from a template (patterns stored in the holosuite).
  • Restoring neural patterns from the rest of the computer systems, essentially copying the mind back into the new body, which seems similar to synaptic pattern displacement. 1
  • Creating new mass from energy, when their bodies were finally restored at the end of the episode (at least, assuming the energy from the pattern buffer wasn't reabsorbed).


1This is why I think "death" is too strong a term. Almost all of these instances show that the same mind is recreated without fault (so even if it is a completely new copy, it's hard to say that the nebulous concept of a "mind" (rather than "brain") died, but was rather in stasis). Plus, transferring the mind through transferring neural patterns doesn't seem too far removed from the Vulcan way of transferring their Katra to another so that their "spirit" may live on.

share|improve this answer
    
And yet, as I've pointed out before, at least one of those was addressed in the tech guide (Lonely Among Us) and you're basing everything else on supposition. –  Tango Sep 5 '12 at 3:37
    
@TangoOversway The excerpts from the technical guide I've seen posted so far not only provide no explanation for the other 4 TNG episodes and the DS9 episode referenced here, but if it was taken as gospel then those episodes couldn't have happened. Is there an explanation buried in there that you've yet to post/shall I post a question about it? –  Izkata Sep 5 '12 at 12:08
    
There were different reasons for each of them. For instance, in Unnatural Selection they used a filter, which focused on her DNA, but not on other molecules. In other words they augmented the technology. The writers (and I know Ron Moore was careful about this) added a line or two of technobabble when necessary to "excuse" any "wibbly-wobbly" stuff they came up with. –  Tango Sep 5 '12 at 14:27
    
Despite that this is an awesome answer...I think we only can answer this question if science figures out what defines "mind" (in a biological sense) and why we are who we are and how we are aware of ourselves. –  Bobby Apr 13 '13 at 17:28
add comment

In Star Trek, transporters convert a person or object into an energy pattern (a process called dematerialization), then "beam" it to a target, where it is reconverted into matter (rematerialization) (source Wikipedia).

Therefore, the original is not destroyed, only converted into energy (E=MC^2), transported (or stored in safe - TNG:Relics) and restructured on the other side. This is far different from creating a copy and then "killing" the original.

To better understand this difference, a transporter should not be able to create a second copy of someone, as the energy pattern on the "transport banks" were already retransformed into matter. As a proof, a flaw in the transmission may cause transporter accidents (as in the first movie). If the "copy" approach was true, the transporter mechanism should be able to verify if the teleportation succeeded before destroying the original (and retry in the case of a failure), which would literally prevent transporter accidents. QED

It's true that some episodes seem to infringe this rule (e.g. Thomas Riker), but personally I think this is only for the dramatical effect and should not be considered outside the in-universe canons.

share|improve this answer
2  
Please link to your sources. –  Xantec Mar 20 '12 at 13:53
2  
In physics matter, energy or information cannot be lost, only converted (E = mc^2). So following your reasoning nothing can ever be destroyed in RL. –  Thorsal Mar 21 '12 at 13:15
add comment

This is from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, Fourth Season Edition. This is one of the Writers' Guides. In other words, it tells the writers what they can and cannot do on screen. (And yes, this is a bit long, but I'm including source material and explaining my reasoning.)

(This information is also from past answers, so for more related details, see this answer and this one as well.)

On page 28, under The Transporter - Once and for All:

... The stream of molecules read by the pads is sent to the Pattern Buffer, a large cylindrical tank surrounded by superconducting electromagnetic coils. It is here that the object to be transported is stored momentarily before actual beaming away from the ship (or even within the ship). It is the Pattern Buffer and its associated subsystems that have been improved the most in the last half-century. While the actual molecules of an object are held in a spinning magnetic suspension (eight minutes before degradation), the construction sequence of the object can be read, recorded in computer memory (in some cases), and reproduced. There are limits to the complexity of the object, however, and this is where the potential "miracle" machine still eludes.

The Transporter cannot produce working duplicate copies of living tissue or organ systems.

The reason for this is that routine transport involves handling the incredibly vast amount of information required to "disassemble" and "reassemble" a human being or other life form. To transport something, the system must scan, process, and transmit this pattern information. This is analogous to a television, which serves as a conduit to the vast amount of visual information in a normal television transmission.

And then, from the same section, on page 29:

From the Pattern Buffer, the molecular stream and the coded instructions pass through a number of subsystems before reaching the emitter. These include the Subspace, Doppler, and Heisenberg Compensators. Each works to insure that the matter stream is being transmitted or received is in the correct phase, frequency, and so on. (sic)

So the object or living being is disassembled, molecule by molecule, converted to a stream that is temporarily stored in the pattern buffer, then reassembled at the destination. The stream contains both matter and data used for reassembly.

The body is not destroyed and a new one is not built. In spite of all the talk about the transporter being a matter/energy scrambler, it is not. The pattern buffer stores not only information, but every molecule of a person's body, as well as their clothing and whatever they are carrying.

The body is taken apart at the original location and reconstructed at a new one.

While this doesn't answer the question completely, what it does tell us is that this isn't a case of "destroy and clone."

This still leaves the question open: Is the consciousness or the self-aware entity in the reconstructed body the same as before, or was the original consciousness destroyed and a new one created. That has been answered on-screen in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode Realm of Fear.

In this episode, Lt. Barclay, who is afraid of using the transporter, while being transported from the Enterprise to another ship, sees other beings while in transport. We see the entire transport process from Barclay's point of view. He does not lose consciousness and is aware, during the act of transport, and is able to rescue a crewmember of the other ship who was caught in the pattern buffer for an unbelievably long time (it was justified with technobabble, of course).

So we see that the body is not destroyed, but just taken apart and reassembled, and we also see, from that one episode, that a person is aware of what is going on during the transport and is even able to think and is fully self-aware during the transport process. While their molecules are in the pattern buffer and the full state of every particle of their body is stored, they are still thinking and still self-aware during the transport.

If you were transported, then the original you would not be dead. You would experience the entire process and the same "you" that stepped onto a transport pad would be the one that walked away on another ship or on a planet.

share|improve this answer
    
Surely this asks the audience to suspend our disbelief a step too far. So we accept in a general sense that such a future exists, complete with mind-boggling technologies that enact the potentially impossible. We accept we can interchange energy and matter (e.g. replicators). But somehow teleportation makes no use of this, instead opting for a complex process that siphons a sort of buffered human soup between two locations, and oh the subject somehow remains conscious? Why not just scan-transport-assemble (a la photocopier) and accept cloning can happen? It keeps the science much more elegant. –  geotheory Aug 11 '13 at 23:31
    
First, the replicators don't use matter and energy interchange - they work close to the same way. Second, I am not a writer who worked on Trek or responsible for producing it or creating the tech guides, so I'm not going to take responsibility for deciding if that was too much or not. It's the rules of the universe that have been given by Word Of God, whether we like them or not. –  Tango Aug 12 '13 at 5:07
add comment

In a sense you are, but then again (in the Star Trek Universe) there's really no such thing as you, your atoms and subatomic particles can be exchanged and duplicated arbitrarily. In 2361, this happened to Riker:

he was completely duplicated and there existed two identical copies of him henceforth. However, it is important to note that this didn't happen because the original was not "destroyed" but because the original was beamed to two distinct locations (see the Memory Alpha article for further information).

So ultimately this is a question of language. The person at the original location doesn't die, they simply cease to exist.

share|improve this answer
2  
I don't understand this answer, particularly your last sentence. It seems like you are saying that, in Star Trek, there is no such thing as life. –  Wikis Mar 20 '12 at 11:24
1  
@Wikis: Not bound to the matter it consists of. –  bitmask Mar 20 '12 at 11:34
    
Is the a general principle you've deduced from watching many episodes or is it explicitly mentioned somewhere? –  Wikis Mar 20 '12 at 11:42
    
@Wikis: I don't recall an explicit quote, no. But it's the logical conclusion from how I understand the Star Trek transporters. –  bitmask Mar 20 '12 at 11:46
1  
@Wikis A copy would not have been possible if it was as simple as Angelo Steffenel described in his answer –  Izkata Mar 20 '12 at 11:52
show 4 more comments

I've had this question in the back of my head for years, and just decided to google it. Seems to me most people answering here are guilty of some wishful thinking, as if they do not wish the star trek universe to be spoiled by inconvenient truths. However, to me the transporter is purely this: total annihilation of the human body (equaling death), transfer to energy, and re-assembly of the body (including all firing neurons). The fact that the (new) body is reassembled from the energy that has been created by destroying the former body, is purely incidental. Don't let the the fact that the new body is being built from the energy of the old fool you, this means nothing for any 'continuation' arguments. Any source of energy could be used. To the outside observer no death or such has occured. Nor does the universe 'care'. As a person, though, I would refuse to use the transporter because the cleanness of the whole operation doesn't hide for me the ugly truth that after the transformation into energy, death has occured, and death is final. I just couldn't or wouldn't take the risk. The question almost seems unanswerable though, for I keep arguing against my own reasoning, yet every time the whole reasoning loops, and I end up with death again.

share|improve this answer
    
If you are alive again, how is the death final? –  James Jenkins Apr 12 '13 at 23:21
    
You're not actually converted into energy, see Tango's answer. The molecules of your body are disassembled and those same molecules are reassembled elsewhere. –  Kevin Apr 13 '13 at 18:51
2  
@James: You are not alive again. Someone who is identical to you in all ways is created at the other end. So, to the rest of the world, sure, you never died. But to the person who actually steps into the transporter, it's like being murdered and having someone else take your spot. Your inner experience/consciousness terminates the second you are disassembled. That another person who feels and thinks just like you is materialized means very little to the consciousness that was just snuffed out. –  Lèse majesté Aug 1 '13 at 23:50
1  
E.g. Will Riker and Tom Riker are both equally Riker. Tom changed his name simply because he was the one who was forgotten, but he has equal claim to the "Will Riker" identity as the Will who materialized on the Potemkin. Now, you obviously can't step onto a transporter and then suddenly find yourself occupying 2 different bodies. So either the sense of being the original Will Riker is purely an illusion (by having all his memories), or the consciousness of the original only went into one of them. –  Lèse majesté Aug 2 '13 at 0:04
    
Since the only difference between the two is that one confinement beam ended up on the Potemkin, and the other was deflected back to the planet surface, there's no reason to believe that the original Riker consciousness would have ended up in one or the other. The only logical conclusion is that the original felt himself being dematerialized, and then he was no more. A split second later, 2 new consciousnesses were born with all of Riker's memories, neither realizing that they were actually 2 new people who hadn't existed just a moment ago. –  Lèse majesté Aug 2 '13 at 0:07
add comment

Any machine that reassembles a human could do that multiple times at different locations creating multiple copies. The base building blocks are not part of your identity. It would be inefficient to send them. Would each copy share the same linear awareness of being? No. If you are transported, you end and your copies continue with no awareness of being a copy. It really doesn't matter how the transportation occurs(energy vs molecules). To be fair, it is science fiction. However, there should be some logic involved.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Think Like a Dinosaur solves the problem with balancing the equation much the same way as is done in The Prestige.

Plus, has anyone bothered to actually calculate the amount of energy involved in converting the mass of an average human body into energy and back again? You could simplify it by rending it in the equivalent megatons.

Yes, the original dies even as Trinneer observes in Enterprise, "We're all copies."

share|improve this answer
    
Trinner or Trip? If Trip said it, then this would be a canonical answer to the question. Also is "Think Like a Dinosaur" a Star Trek episode or are you referring to the Outer Limits? –  Lèse majesté Aug 2 '13 at 5:30
    
Think Like a Dinosaur is not Star Trek. It's a short story, and the premise is that teleportation does make a copy of the person at the new location. The aliens (dinosaurs) who share this technology with humans hold as a philosophical belief that the copy left behind must be killed, to satisfy the demands of the cosmic equations. –  swbarnes2 Dec 16 '13 at 18:17
add comment

Here's another way of thinking about the transporter, death, and consciousness.

My understanding is that the transporter scans and then transports a person atom by atom to a new location, by physically moving your atoms to the new location in a matter stream through subspace (i.e., the matter stream doesn't physically plow through walls or solid rock in our own space).

If I were to remove one atom from your body and move it to a different location, you wouldn't know the difference. Likewise, if I take another atom, and a third and a fourth, you'd still scarcely notice. That's how the transporter works. Your body isn't converted to energy, destroyed and then remade. You don't die and you aren't cloned. Rather you're moved piece by piece ... transported.

What's more, as far as the atoms in your body are concerned, whether still on the transporter pad, en route in the matter stream in subspace, or at the destination, they are still effectively adjacent to each other, in the original configuration, via subspace. I think it's assumed that the domain of subspace used in transportation can simultaneously "touch" every location in our own space, as if the entire domain is filled with wormholes. Therefore it's never the case that half of your body's atoms are completely isolated from the other half in two different locations, which I imagine would be harmful.

Of course you would eventually become aware that you're being moved to a new location, however your consciousness would not be interrupted. Instead, your consciousness would gradually shift so that you're briefly aware of being in two places at once while transporting.

share|improve this answer
    
Interesting conjecture but than how would you explain the duplicated Riker in 'Second Chances' ? –  Stan Nov 16 '13 at 15:12
    
That's still a mystery. There was an "unusual distortion field" that permitted a second version of Riker to be created from subspace. However if we allow this one unusual case to dictate transporter theory, then cloning via the transporter is possible & we've opened up a can of worms (why not make copies of Data, Picard, etc.). –  RobertF Nov 17 '13 at 15:41
    
I don't believe you can dismiss it. Conjecture also doesn't explain the 'young' crew members in TNG-Rascals episode. Their bodies obviously didn't have the mass that the older versions did, so what happened to all that extra mass during transport ? And conversely, when they sent through at the end of the episode (to 're-age them), where did the additional needed mass come from ? –  Stan Nov 17 '13 at 17:22
    
Rascals and episodes with evil twins and crew members caught in the matter stream were not the best Trek - I'm going to cast all schlocky episodes out of the canon. :) –  RobertF Nov 18 '13 at 3:52
add comment

Just to add another point, it's pretty clear that Star Trek believes in souls, energy-based souls. Hence all the plots about souls moving back and forth, and this is discussed in terms of transferring energy. So the transporter doesn't kill you, because it keeps your energy-based soul intact throughout. This is why it makes sense that you can't make copies of people; the technology, when functioning as intended, doesn't make souls.

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/13437/in-star-trek-does-the-original-die-in-teleportation
scifi.stackexchange.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-23
146785
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:BGT5RQPWV4LXMLSIPNJNZHYKSB6N23TS
<urn:uuid:2a8cdc7e-aa3d-49f5-83d4-f7fc64a70a8d>
2014-07-23T09:18:14Z
198.252.206.16
sha1:PR47DQC7MVCJP7PCBYTGJE7245YWMJDX
<urn:uuid:53e10416-6d6d-4ea6-8c78-be65b5150dd1>
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/13437/in-star-trek-does-the-original-die-in-teleportation
response
<urn:uuid:56c9268b-426c-4798-b75f-e1c936c3e968>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-23
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for July 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf