From: jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca (Joshua Bell)
Subject: Re:  Transporters & replicators
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 93 21:21:12 GMT
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

In article <mark.0z1r@legend.akron.oh.us> mark@legend.akron.oh.us (Mark E Daniel) writes:
>I guess my question is this, which is probably an FAQ.
>How much of a person does the transporter save?  What's
>to stop a deeply greiving transporter chief who has
>lost a loved one to go back and pull the transporter
>pattern and bring the dead loved one back to life?

While there is no absolute canonical answer, we can piece one
together from various clues, that fits nearly everything seen
on-screen.

The computers do not store enough data to recreate a person from
scratch. Otherwise, they would replace lost crew members, make a
fleetful of Datas, etc. There are some gizmos known as pattern
buffers, and a matter stream, as well as the confinement beam.
While its commonly said on the show that they use matter-energy
conversion, a little math with show you that they could power the
ship with a large rock if they kept it in an energy state. We
also have references to phased matter, which appears to be matter
suspended in a beam-out process.

I hypothesize that phased matter is the matter suspended in the
annular confinement beam, which is used to take the transportee
apart, and put them back together, as well as keep them
topologically whole during the process. In other words, from
their point of view, they remain whole and the world 'beams out'.
This is why they remain concious during transport. Scotty was in
an old-style transport beam and/or the diagnostic loop froze the
beam so he was in stasis, so he wasn't concious 75 years.

The pattern buffer is a whirling matrix of phased matter in the
ACB, while the subject is beamed out and beamed in. In order to
keep track of where every part of the subject is, the computer
constructs a pattern to keep track of what bits of the stream end
up where. An analogy would be the [left->right->left&down]->top
pattern a television electron gun follows to paint a picture on
the phosphors of the screen. The television (we're assuming an
old analog no-frills model) doesn't know and can't possibly
store the information needed to construct a one-hour program, but
it has a pattern, and uses a modulated electron stream to do it.

The pattern is probably highly complex. Pattern degredation
occurs because the annular confinement beams aren't perfect. The
matter stream comes out of alignment with the computer's pattern
predictions for where things should be. Obviously, this is a bad
thing. By keeping the matter stream and pattern static, locked in
a diagnostic loop, there is no signal loss.

A hint as to how these patterns are defined is the Biofilter. It
looks for elements of the pattern which aren't found in normal
beings/equipment, or those of known viruses and bacteria. It can
simply erase those parts of the pattern, and those parts of the
matter stream won't beam back in.

Now, ST:TNG has 'broken' the rules of transporters a number of
times. Lets look at the most glaring examples, and try and unify
them with this theory:

"Unnatural Selection" - Pulaski is restored from an aged state by
the use of the biofilter. If Pulaski's altered DNA could be
tagged as unwanted, the pattern could be tweaked to restore the
DNA (its pretty much all the same molecules anyway, just shuffle
some base-pairs around). As for her recovering instantly... well,
its a TV show. 

"Lonely Among Us" - Picard is recovered from being beamed away as
pure energy. They actually state most of the answer in the
episode: the computer is able to reconstruct Picard by using the
pattern it had stored, working with the phased matter stream that
Picard's energy state itself formed.

"Rascals" - Picard, Keiko, Guinan and Ro are turned into children
in a freak transporter accident, and later restored. I won't even
try. First off, the biology used in this episode is pure BS.
Secondly, if a quick fix like this can alter the aging process,
then by tuning it, no-one will ever grow old and die again.

"Relics" - I hinted at this before. Scotty's pattern and the
phased matter stream are locked in a diagnostic cycle, so from
his point of view he's in stasis. An alternate theory is that it
was an old-style transport beam. If you watch the original TV
series, there are 2 stages (though they sometimes skip the first)
in a beamout. First, a sparkly pattern appears over the chest of
the subject, and spreads to cover them. They are sometimes seen
to move during this process. Then they start to have these yellow
blob things appear as they fade out. They don't move during this.
We can speculate that there's a stasis field employed for some
reason (technological limitations, safety, etc) during the actual
transport stage with old technology. In TNG people remain active
throughout the entire process, while in TFS, we've seen
comversations occur while in tranport.

"Realm of Fear" - This is a transporter-tech's dream episode. We
get technobable from the tech manual, phased matter everywhere,
and nifty bugs which live in plasma and exist as phased matter
themselves. Somehow these bugs act like a natural ACB, allowing
those trapped in the beam to maintain their patterns naturally.
The computer is able to use the biofilter to rebuild the patterns
and restore the individuals.

All my own speculation, but I'm happy with it. :)

Joshua
|         A shimmering net undulating like an infinite borealis.             |
|                                                  - Chapterhouse: Dune      |
|                                                                            |
| jsbell@acs.ucalgary.ca  Academic Computing Services, University of Calgary |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.tech