Is a transporter physically possible?

Question

In Star Trek, a transporter dissolve you into molecules, transmits and reassembles you at your destination. I've been reading a lot of forums and a popular belief is that the transporter actually kills the original and transmitted person is actually a perfect clone.

But if we take to account Einstein's E-mc2, we are made of matter and matter is actually another form of energy, and the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, but can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.

So theoretically, a transporter should be able to convert us into another form of energy, transmit us as energy through a data stream and convert us back to normal.

Answer 1

Yeah. Not Really. Thing is, converting someone to energy, and then turning that energy into matter at the end DOES kill them. If it worked like that then there would be no reason why you had to use that particular energy to recreate that particular person. You could use the energy created by converting any given mass of 180 pounds or so to crank out another copy, including that of other people, or just not convert them back and end up with an explosion on the other end that would be about 1000 nukes worth.



But they do not in fact convert matter to energy in transporters. If they did, then they wouldn't need to bother with anti-matter to power their ships. Instead they move all the particles that make up the transportee from one place to another without severing their bonds, through some kind of wonky misapplication of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Answer 2

No hypothetically none of that can happen. Due to the uncertainty of particles we can neither locate nor reassemble them with precision and accuracy. So any attempt would result in certain death.



That teleportation you've read about is a well known attempt to describe how teleportation of a sort might be done invoking entangled quanta. And in fact, the bottom line is that it isn't teleportation, as you pointed out, it's a form of cloning where a copy of the original you is made while your original self is destroyed.



But it's pretty much the consensus that even that doesn't work because of the uncertainty of quanta. If you cannot precisely and accurately map their location how can you possibly create a perfect clone that would survive?



You can't according to a great "Scientific American" article of two years ago. Unfortunately I don't have the precise cite, but a little research of Scientific American issues from 2014 and you should find it.

Answer 3

"Is a transporter physically possible?"



Maybe. It depends on how you do it. In the quantum realm there is no space. So if you swapped so many pounds of mass at the destination, with you-plus-instruments, then would that qualify?



"In Star Trek ..."



This was just a plot device, so they did not have to show / allow-for shuttle flights to and from the surface. Same for "Heisenberg compensators" to take care of uncertainty, "impulse drive" based on a failed physics experiment, and so on.



"... can only be transferred or changed from one form to another."



But are we "energy" (potentially conserved, but still subject to entropy), or just "pattern" (definitely subject to entropy)?



"So theoretically, a transporter should be able to convert us into another form of energy, transmit us as energy through a data stream and convert us back to normal."



No way. Plenty of cancer in what would arrive, if you even lived.