The transporter in Star Trek is one of the most fascinating theoretical technologies on board the starship Enterprise. The concept was created by the late-Gene Roddenberry. He needed his characters to get from the ship to the planet within a short period of time. Originally, Roddenberry set out to have his characters on a shuttlecraft, but was unable to afford the necessary budget to do so, hence, the transpoter was born. From a creative point-of-view, it served as an excellent plot device, however, scientifically it will never work. To find out why let's examine how the transporter operates. The transporter works by disassembling crew members at the atomic level and converting them into energy. Once the energy arrives at the appointed destination, the process is reversed.
While we're on the subject of matter and energy, I read an article on the net regarding the conversion of energy into matter. Einstein has stated in his equations that matter and energy are interconvertible. Anyway, an experiment conducted at Stanford University was accomplished at S.L.A.C. (short for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center).
Here are some links to SLAC's statements released to various publications concerning the experiment:
http://www.slac.stan...44/nytimes.html
http://www.slac.stan...44/nytimes.html
http://www.slac.stan...cience1202.html
We can already teleport photons, but what gets teleported is the photon's properties, not the actual photons themselves. Personally, I don't think that there will ever be a conventional use for converting energy into matter because of the amount of energy contained in one human being. Think about it: if one human can produce thousands of hiroshimas bombs, then you would need thousands of atom bombs worth of energy to create a turkey sandwich. That just doesn't seem practical to me. If that amount of energy were to be released when turning a man into energy, well let's just say there wouldn't be much left of anything for a few thousand miles!
Such conversions of particles to energy are called annihilations, that is, they are like explosions: the explosive material is completely destroyed and no memory of its original form remains. Furthermore, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that in any conversion of matter, some energy is inevitably lost. However, you could compensate by disintegrating some rocks and adding in that energy too.
In my view, when your body is converted into energy, you're destroyed, hence, you die. End of story. What comes out of the teleporter is an exact copy, with all your memories etc, and no knowledge that it isn't you, but it isn't. No one would ever notice the problem, so it only affects you when it happens. Unless, if you believe in souls, there are "conservation of souls" problems to deal with - does the same soul follow the body around? While in an energy state, there is no consciousness, no heart to beat, hence the person who first underwent this form of teleportation has cease to exist and replaced with a replica. Even renowned science fiction writer Larry Niven expressed his views on the transporter:
I don't believe in bending space to order, and I wouldn't ride in a machine that annihilates me here, then beams away data that allows me to be exactly recreated somewhere else.
What does everybody else thinks?
Whitestar
