There's a Star Trek story about the transporter that always bothered me, and it's not about pattern buffers or Heisenberg compensators. It's about whether it's still you that steps off the pad at the other end.
Take the case of Thomas Riker. In The Next Generation episode "Second Chances," a transporter malfunction splits Commander Riker into two identical people. One makes it safely back to the Enterprise, the other ends up stranded on a planet for years. Both think they're the real one. Both have the same memories, personality, and even the same crush on Counselor Troi. So who's the original? Which one has the right to exist?
Then there's The Outer Limits episode "Think Like a Dinosaur." It takes the same premise and removes the Starfleet ethics committee. Humans travel by long-range teleportation, but once the copy arrives safely, the original must be destroyed. Something goes wrong, and one traveler survives both ends of the trip. The technicians tell her she has to "balance the equation" by stepping into the disintegrator. In other words, die. Because if there are two of her, reality doesn't balance.
As for me, I'm with Dr. McCoy. I wouldn't get into that "infernal machine" in the first place. The idea that it scans me atom by atom, turns me into energy, and reassembles me somewhere else sounds like a very polite way to say "we'll vaporize you and make a copy." I don't care if it comes out looking and talking exactly like me - that's not me. That's a new person who just happens to start where I left off. Bones had the right idea: if the universe wants me somewhere else, it can send a shuttle. Preferably with seat belts.
Even poor Barclay had transporter psychosis. He was terrified of the thing. And honestly, he might have had a point. Frankly, I think most of us would start twitching if O'Brien said, "I think I've got the pattern sorted this time." In the early Enterprise era, Captain Archer and his crew didn't even trust the transporters for human use. They were fine moving cargo, but people? No thanks.
Now, if you're a person of faith, here's the real question: would your soul make the trip? Does it ride along in the energy beam, or does the original you die while a new version of you steps off the platform? It's an unsettling thought. If a soul exists, would it stay with the original body, or could it transfer to the copy?
And for those who don't believe in a soul, what then? If you see yourself purely as a physical being - a collection of atoms and chemical reactions - would that pattern survive such a transformation? If you were disassembled on an atomic or even quantum level and reassembled somewhere else, would it still be you? Or just a perfect imitation that thinks it's you?
This conundrum reminds me a little of the Rush song "The Body Electric," where a machine starts asking what it means to be alive. Maybe that's the same question here. If you can copy yourself perfectly, atom by atom, does that spark of you still count as life - or just a program running in a new shell? And could we one day transport our consciousness into a "golem" like Picard did? That's a whole different Captain's Log though...
I'm curious to read what you think. Would you take the trip, or are you with McCoy and me - shuttle only, please?
P.S. I also remember another science fiction story along the same lines, and it's driving me nuts that I can't find it. I spent about half an hour searching Google, and I even asked ChatGPT, but no luck. It was basically the same idea, except it involved a whole crew of miners working on an asteroid or moon. They traveled from Earth using long-range teleportation, and when their shift ended, the replacement crew arrived and told them, "Hey, your copies already made it back to Earth." So they were ordered to step into the transporter to be disassembled. Of course, that meant killing themselves, since their duplicates were already home. Naturally, chaos followed, because who in their right mind would volunteer to walk into a machine knowing that's the end? If anyone remembers what movie or show this was, please post it in the comments. I'd really appreciate it because it's driving me crazy. I thought I was a pretty good Googler, but this one's stumped me.
A search and rescue team is sent to the isolated mining station Infini to save a single survivor.
The station uses a "slipstream" portal for instantaneous travel, but the process disintegrates the original person while creating a perfect copy at the destination.
When a new relief crew arrives at the station, they find that a previous crew already teleported in, creating a catastrophic ethical dilemma. The original, newly arrived crew must now destroy their own duplicated selves who are already on the station.
As the story unfolds, it explores the philosophical and ethical horror of this form of teleportation, where the "original" is destroyed and a clone-like copy is sent to work on a distant, dangerous planet.
Our perception of reality is based on the notion that everything is made up of ever-smaller parts: cells, atoms, sub-atomic particles, etc.. The first question would be, on the technological side, do we have the sufficient resolution to accurately reproduce the original? I'm thinking of the early digital cameras and their grainy photos. On the physical side, do we discover that there is a finite sub-particle level that, once copied, we would create an exact duplicate? Otherwise, we would suffer compounding degradation with each copy, like copying copies of a photo on a Xerox. In processing, do we have the reliability to ensure that there is zero chance of corruption? Otherwise, each transport would be a life-risking event. What is the moral philosophy regarding keeping backups?
As a practical matter, why could we not just send the duplicates into harm's way to do the dangerous work. This is kind of the concept of using UAV's instead of piloted aircraft? Then afterward, what do you do with the copies that survive?
Then comes your question, does our soul, or essence, reside within that physical make-up or is it bound to the physical while existing on some different plane of existence? Is there a "foreign key" for the soul within our physical make-up? Without that, could we end up with a soulless beings and unbound souls. If we did, does a soulless being have any value? What are the ramifications of unbinding a soul from the physical world? What are the ramifications of a soul being bound to two physical beings?
Without these answers, are we justified to try it and see what happens? Is this like Eve's fruit?
In SG-1, does the stargate avoid these quandries by bending space-time to allow someone to just make a zero-distance trip?
Matt - great thoughts as always. You're right that this question digs all the way down into the building blocks of reality. The current understanding in physics is that matter is made up of smaller and smaller components. We start with molecules, which are made of atoms. Atoms are made of subatomic particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks, which are held together by gluons through the strong nuclear force. Electrons, as far as we know, are fundamental and not made up of anything smaller.
Below that level, one possible theory is string theory, which says that everything is made up of tiny vibrating strings of energy. Each particle - quark, electron, photon, and so on - would just be a different vibration pattern of the same underlying string. Those energy packets are called quanta, which is where the term quantum physics comes from. That's also why people say that all matter is ultimately energy. Einstein's E=mc^2 ties it all together - matter and energy are just different forms of the same thing.
So if we could theoretically disassemble matter into its constituent energy and then reassemble it somewhere else, you're right to ask whether that energy is just a copy or the same stuff. The problem is that quantum mechanics throws a wrench into that idea. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle says we can't measure all properties of a particle exactly at once, which means we can't perfectly record and reproduce someone's atomic pattern. The "pattern buffer" in Star Trek is basically technobabble that assumes perfect quantum information storage, something that real physics says we can't do... until we can in the 23rd Century. LOL.
And your "copies of copies" thought is valid too - we see that problem in biology. In cloning, small errors accumulate after each generation, leading to defects or sterility. That's exactly what happened in the TNG episode "Up The Long Ladder," where a colony of clones suffers from genetic degradation after too many replications.
As for Stargate, I think you nailed it there too. Even though the special effects make it look like people are flying through space, the in-universe explanation is that the gate creates a stable wormhole, a tunnel through folded space. You're not being disassembled and reassembled at all - you're stepping through a shortcut in spacetime, an Einstein-Rosen bridge. That's far more plausible theoretically than Star Trek-style matter transmission, though it would still require a ridiculous amount of energy. But hey, they had ZPMs, so that checks out.
Let's definitely tag Alex in here - he's the Stargate expert. I bet he's got plenty to add about wormhole mechanics.
Isn't it in the episode with the Tollan where Omac explains how you bend a stick?
Kevin Yip
@Reply 6 months ago
If we had access to higher dimensions, we might not need to "copy" ourselves just to access another place, but simply access it -- as simply as walking across the room.
Higher dimensions allow access to all the lower dimensions, but not the reverse. 3-dimensional beings like us can see what is on 2-dimensional objects (pictures, photos, etc.). But if there were 2D creatures living in a photo or picture, they could not see us. They could not "look out of the picture" and see us because they wouldn't have access to the extra dimension (3rd) required to see outside of their 2 dimensions. But 3D creatures like us can see them plainly.
We could even see their innards, because their skin would just be 2-dimensional lines enclosing their bodies, as pictured below (all the cartoons you've ever seen have got this wrong). If we performed surgeries on them, we would not even need to cut them open, because all their organs would be clearly visible and accessible to us!
If 2D creatures suddenly had access to 3D, they could pop out their 2D picture, fly around, and land right inside someone else's innards, without crossing through what used to be an uncrossable barrier, their 2D skin.
Conversely, we the 3D creatures need to figure out how to access higher dimensions in order to reach what used to be unreachable locations.
Kevin - You're absolutely right. That reminds me of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott (1884). And yes, I had to look that up. LOL. It tells the story of a 2D being called A Square who meets a 3D Sphere that tries to explain the existence of higher dimensions. The Square can't comprehend it at first, just like we can't really picture a fourth or fifth dimension.
Carl Sagan actually used Flatland in Cosmos to illustrate this exact idea - how a higher-dimensional being could easily see and move through lower-dimensional space while the lower one has no concept of what's above or beyond. The same concept shows up in Contact and Interstellar too. It's a perfect analogy for what you're describing.
Michael Olgren
@Reply 6 months ago
This sounds a lot like the ship of Theseus problem.
I have to land on copies, no matter how they are created/constructed, are not the same as the original. To say otherwise falls into an absolutist argument that eliminates the possibility of something being unique.
Sam Domino
@Reply 6 months ago
I've read some Sci-Fi that gets around this issue by saying that transporters mysteriously don't work for "organic" matter. Maybe its the authors' way of getting around the debate so readers can enjoy the story. But I've always enjoyed topics that make you think about it and the ramifications.
ESP is in the "same boat" as teleporters. Do these "powers" reside in and are powered by an individual? Or does the individual act as the controller and the "powers" come from outside themselves.
And don't get me started on Star Wars Midichlorians or Star Trek Spores! LOL!!!
Michael Olgren
@Reply 6 months ago
Midichlorians = worst plot device ever
I knew Star Wars was going downhill after that.
Yeah, I agree. The Force should have just been left as it was. Magical. Unexplainable. You either have it or you don't.
Back in my D&D days whenever I was DMing and I explained something magical was happening, I'd always get "that" player who would be like "that's not possible."
ITS MAGIC. DEAL WITH IT.
Sometimes a storyteller (or DM) just had to do some THING as a plot device. It doesn't need to be explained in detail. Just enjoy it, accept the maguffin and move on.
Sometimes that's one thing I DON'T like about Star Trek. They try to explain everything, and sometimes the physics is bad. I'm talking to you 2009 Star Trek movie. That's not how black holes work AT ALL. Hire a science consultant.
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