Star Trek technology is achievable

Pro insists that the function of Star Trek transporters and their practical application could be duplicated even if they don't work the same way. The function is to transport objects from one location to another, and the application is to transport people from the inside of one space ship to the inside of another (among other things). They disentigrating people in one location and "beam" them to another where they are reassembled.It must be the same person on the other end, and not a replica since nobody on Star Trek expected to cease to exist while another took their place. Kirk said, "Beam me up," not, "Kill me and create a duplicate to replace me."If we cannot achieve a technology that is able to perform the above functions and applications, then Star Trek transporters are unachievable.I. Disentegration and assembly problemPro introduced a new argument, so let's deal with that one first. He cites an article in which Lawrence Krauss says it is theoretically possible to manipulate the Higgs field to detmaterialize matter into energy. But to be theoretically possible is not to be achievable, and Krauss says why this method is prohibitive. It's because it requires heating the body to "a billion, billlion, billion degrees." Krauss further mentions the obstacle of putting them back together, which my opponent has yet to deal with.We can calculate how much energy would be required to heat a 72 kg person to a billion, billion, billion degrees (i.e. 1e+27 degrees). Assuming he means farenheit, 1e+27 F = 5.5e+26 C. 1 calorie is the amount of energy necessary to heat 1 gram of water by 1 C.[1] A 72 kg person has about 43 kg of water (assuming 60% water).[2] To raise the temperature of 43 kg of water to 1e+26 C would require 43e+26 cal, which is equivalent to 4.6e+12 megatons of TNT. See the problem? Remember, Czar Bomba released only 100 megatons of TNT.Pro says transporters need not move people through walls since science officers were tasked with looking for cracks and fissures. If small particles of matter must pass through cracks and fissures, then he's got to explain some machanism to cause all of your particles to travel down hallways, around corners, and through cracks from the inside of the transporter room to the outside of a space ship while keeping them all together and distinct from everything else. It doesn't seem possible.When I said, "Nor will it do to break them down at the molecular level since cells cannot pass through walls," Pro pointing out that cells are not molecules. He's right. I made a typo, which should've been obvious from the context. I meant to say "cellular level." His objection is irrelevent to the point of the paragraph.I said that molecules cannot pass through barriers like we see on Star Trek. Pro rightly pointed out that molecules can pass through barriers depending on the molecule and the barrier type, but that is irrelevant since we are talking about "barriers like we see on Star Trek," including the walls and enclosures of the space ships.In response to my claim that atoms cannot travel through the air tight walls of a space ship, Pro cited an article on quantum tunneling, claiming that "The objective atom is able to push through the surface by displacing the electrons in its path." But if you read the article, there's nothing about atoms passing through solid walls. Rather, it discusses "electrons escaping from atoms without having the necessary energy to do so." So this article does not support Pro's contention.Pro ignored my argument about the energy that would be released if all the matter in a human body was convereted to energy.II. Recording problemIn response to the recording problem, Pro made two arguments: (1) that technology will continue to advance, and (2) that IBM estimates they will have a quantum computer within ten years (which is unlikely [3]).There are physical limitations to what matter and energy can do, so technological advancement, by itself, is no reason to think computers powerful enough to process all the information necessary for transporters are achievable. Even with quantum computers, the storage capacity and proessing power necessary would be prohibitive. A computer must record each atom's atomic number, what isotope it is, its exact location, and what chemical bonds it shares with atoms around it. The individual qubits of information would far exceed 7 x 10^27. Theoretical possibility is not the same as human achievability.Collecting this information is a problem for two reason. First, most of our material is inside our bodies, and we've got to record with precision all the information before it's disentegrated. We can't use probes, so we've got to do it either by bouncing something off of us or by recording some information emmitted from them. Then, there's got to be some kind of detector that can collect the information and send it to the processor.Second, we are limited by how fast we can collect and process this information. The body is in a constant state of change (e.g. chemical reactions, firing neurons, etc.), so we must record all this information in a very short amount of time. Otherwise, we'll create a deformed corpose on the other end. It has to be done almost instantaneously to get an accurate picture. To use an analogy, a sharp photograph must be taken with a fast shutter speed. If you photograph a moving object with a slow shutter, you'll get a blurred image.Moreover, you need a certain number of pixels to get a sharp image. Think of the "pixels" required in a detector capable of recording all of the information about all of your atoms in an infintensimally small interval of time. It is highly doubtful that we will ever have that kind of technology.III. The problem of identityAlthough the problem of identity is the strongest argument against transporters, Pro made little effort to rebut it. He agreed that Star Trek transporters work by reassembling the same materal the original person was made out of, but then said it need not be the same material.That presents an additional problem that I didn't mention before. If the new person is not even made up of the same parts as the original person, then it's even more obvious that it can't be the same person. Pro as much as admits this when he says the food replicator works just like the transporter.He says that personhood consists of brain states and that as long as you rematerialize the brain exactly as it was before, it will result in the same memories, personality, etc. Personhood will be preserved.I haven't brought the soul or religion into this discussion. I am assuming materialism just as he is. And I agree that if you reassemble the brain exactly as it was before, all the mental phenomena will go along with it. But that is not sufficient to preserve personal identity. After all, you could create multiple brains using the exact same blueprint, and they would each emerge with the same memories, personality, etc. But they wouldn't for that reason be the same person. If a transporter malfunctioned by assembling a person remotely but forgetting to disassemble them locally, then the person will remain on the platform, and some twin will be located elsewhere. The person will not have traveled anywhere. The remote person wouldn't be the original person just because the transporter disentegrated the local person, so either way, the transporter didn't function as transporters in Star Trek.Star Trek transporters are unachievable primarily because they violate the laws of logic, namely, the law of identity. They are not merely unlikely; they are impossible.ConclusionPro claims that "The [German] study showed that solid matter could be dematerialized on one end, and rebuilt on the other end using equal matter," but that is false as I showed. Even if true, it would suffer from the identity problem.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://www.livestrong.com...[3] youtube watch?v=YgFVzOksm4o