So, what do you think? Have you always believed transporters kill you and make a copy? Let me know down below!

The "brain and brain! What is brain?!" clip was perfectly placed.

Gene was adamant that transporters be analog, not digital. "Energize" really does mean bumping your atoms up to an energy level that can be sent through subspace and rematerialized back into the same atoms as was started from. Gene believed in a soul for sure. So, no copy-n-paste in Trek, but The Outer Limits has a great treatment of the moral questions about it.

McCoy was right then. I'll stick with him and fly a shuttle.

One thing to keep in mind: early on in the creation of Star Trek they were going to have the Enterprise itself land on what ever planet the ship was visiting or have the characters take a shuttle craft down. For different reasons (ie cost and practicality in filming) those were abandoned and the idea of the transporter was born.

I always wished Gene would have referred to early pioneer Andre Delambre’s work 150 years earlier. Work shelved and forgotten because of the accident with a fly.

Most people get this wrong. The startrek transporter doesn't kill you. You're only shifts your entire matter into an energy phased state. Kudos on getting it right.

“What we got back didn’t live long… thankfully.” ST-TMP

Ah, yes. The "transporters don't kill you, don't clone you, and don't just dismantle and reassemble you" video that I did not know I needed in my life. Thank you for making this! Surf Wisely.

Let's nott forget that accident with the transporter in Star Trek TMP. Especially how it's described in the novelization. Like something out of a horror movie!

the banter with your transporter double was pretty good. bring him back some time

Great video! I very much enjoyed it, and the whole *activates transporter, two of you materialize, and then synchronized "CRAP!!" was hilarious 😂

Last time I used a transporter I went to pieces. 🖖

As an avid scifi fan, I always thought the idea of a transporter was incorrect. Rather than the way it was portrayed, it should have been a portal opening and closing with the subject entering and leaving, rather than being 'processed' and transmitted to another site. Rather than being subjected to being processed into a higher energy state, transmitted, then the energy being lowered back to normal, it makes more sense to have a wormhole type of portal like Stargate, but without needing a transmitting and receiving gate at each end.

Haha what a great channel, love this guy. I hope the transporter clone comes back!

Looks like the transporter split Tyler into a good Tyler and a bad Tyler. 😄 Good thing you didn't send your dog through.

Theoretically, if we have a soul and the soul becomes detached from the body when we die, wouldn't that mean that it's tied to the current electrochemical state of our brain? Therefore, I don't think it would kill us. It would still be the same entity, not a copy because it doesn't destroy that chemical or energy state. It's simply transforms it and keeps it the way it is and then reassembles everything on the other side. It might be pretty wonky to go through as a being, but I don't think it would actually kill the entity if we have a soul I mean and then if we don't even better because I don't think it would kill us.

I suppose the real question is if there is a continuity in experiance that lacks any measurable interruption and.... thanks to the episode with barclay, we actually see what being inside the matter stream is like and you are aware through it all.

I’ve always thought that after your first transport you’re not the original you anymore - that the original you had been destroyed. My head hurts!

I'm so glad that you talked about this... this is a subject that many people have talked about, but has never been talked about how amazing and fun the technology is or how it could be used in weird ways like having others walk in and walk out a different person... First, to answer your question, I do not think it kills you, but even if it does, it would be akin to a medical procedures that temporarily weakens you to allow for success of a procedure to take place... beyond that, the process is taking your cells and rearranging them, so no, you have not been killed in the process nor did you ever die... this is not Schrödinger's cat. You were never dead. You never died as a result of the process... second, and this is the fun part, matter transporters essentially make immortality. Better than immortality, you can reenter a younger body (or a body that is not yours) than your mind because whatever allows for the matter transportation process to be successful, could be saved. It's essentially a save spot in a video game. if you go in as a 25 year old, you come out a 25 year old. There's nothing to suggest that data cannot be stored and revisited later. Thus, you could save that 25 year old version of your body, enter a matter transporter in your house as a 65 year old and then come out as that 25 year old. When you come out this time, you will have the accumulated knowledge of 65 year old. You would have gone into the transporter come out the 25 year old version with the thoughts and songs in your head, the biochemistry of a 25 year old, the movies and girls and songs in your mind will be at the forefront of your emotions but you'd still be 65... same holds true if you go back to the version of you as an 8 year old... Christmas and birthdays etc would be the forefront of your emotional person but moments after you'd be a 65 year old with the biochemistry and body of an 8 year old susceptible to the problems of an 8 year old body... think 12 years old. think 16... to me, this is the interesting aspect that never gets talked about and should have had an episode showing this technology being used as a means of de facto immortality if not just an interesting form of entertainment or maybe therapy as you might be able to mentally heal in a different biochemical age than the one you currently have where you need therapy and that therapy may not be making meaningful progress.

Tyler, thought you would mention Hoshi's experience when she was forced to use the transporter. She was afraid that she would appear as just a copy of herself after using it. It seems that her concerns about this may have been correct, as she did not return as her regular self. So your question if we would just be a copy of ourselves may be something worth looking into! Loved uour video. Thanks.

I'm really impressed how much real science (even if much of it is still ongoing) you were able to attach to the made-up physics of the Transporter. 👍 And thanks for including the "how could you tell the difference?" clause on the "kill and copy" question. After all, if I was replaced in my sleep with a clone who had all my memories up to the point where I closed my eyes, how would that person be measurably different from the other me? Perhaps, as with baldness not being an issue in the 24th Century, people in Trek's time just don't see a difference and therefore don't consider "kill and copy" to be an issue.

A great video on a topic very much in need of clarification. Well done! I just finished a semester course on physics that touched lightly on the development of quantum theory, and it seems like you deployed those arguments very well to resolve the problem, at least theoretically. I don't know about the "would it really matter" question though... It seems the first part of the arguments would resolve any concern with that. When people say that consciousness is a "product" of the electro-chemical activity of the brain, it doesn't seem like they're saying very much. It's just a statement of "we don't know what this is, but we associate it with x activity, so lets say they're meaningfully the same," essentially, it just happens. Certainly we can't empirically separate them, but that's not the same as saying that our limited understanding of one is a full explanation of the other. We have no idea how the most direct and apparent component of human existence actually works; this is the hard problem of consciousness, why would all the electro-chemical activity "feel" like anything? I'm inclined to say that it would matter then, in the case that we have already rejected for the most part, where transporters are just copying and transporting your "information". In that scenario, it would definitely matter to "you", that is, you in the present moment(constructed within your conscious brain though you may be) as your meaningful conscious life would end and a new and entirely separate one would begin. It would be merely cloning through killing as the conventional argument goes. A murderous utilitarian convenience. If we ask again whether this "matters" because there is no surety about the nature of consciousness and neither we, nor the "dead" person, would be aware of the difference, are we just suggesting that maybe killing people is chill because they're not alive anymore to suffer the consequences? edit: include "s" on "argument" in first paragraph

Best episode yet! I hope the two of you get along, and don't go highlander on us.

Another fantastic video, but I still can't wrap my head around how, if the transporter is moving particles and not copying them, whete is the information for duplicateslike Thomas Riker and Evil Kirk (and William Boimler) coming from!?

Great subject and the references you added. Well I'm going to read up on them I think it's a very interesting subject. Thanks for all the info and your preparation in never dry. The bit at the end of this video...the transporter accident was good, lol.

Nice that you mentioned the age of spiritual machines. great book.

Dude your channel is awesome. Just found it like a week ago. The editing is great!

I was glad to see you include clips of TNG's 'Realm of Fear', as that was the episode that established that you remain conscious and aware, as well as being capable of action while in the process of a transport.

You do a fantastic job answering many questions about ST technology I have had over the years. Keep up the great work!

Fantastic info and hilarious interaction between the Tylers!

Hay, awesome vid! Is there any chance of doing a vid of the various ancient species/races of the Delta Quadrant? Or Species 116? ;)

Good stuff man! You obviously know your science and I love the Deep Cuts from TOS and TNG. Keep up the good work!

Another great video Tyler and a hilarious ending! Love it!

I really enjoyed this video, Tyler. However, it got me thinking when you said that transporter technology relies on "subspace domains." This concept of "subspace" comes into play quite a bit in Star Trek. Perhaps you could dedicate an entire video to subspace?

Many years ago I played a game (can't remember its name) where the writers got around having to explain how teleportation worked by having cloning pods as save points, and later introducing teleport pods that looked and worked the same way except they also killed and vaporized the original. So they just cranked the moral issues to eleven and played it for laughs since your character was getting killed quite a lot during normal play anyway.

Loved it Tyler, thank you very much!

Great video dude! Loved it!

And here I thought that you would somehow work... the Mycellial Network (MYCELLIAL NETWORK!) into the video

liked just for the transporter bit, love how informing your videos are, great work.

Just discovered your channel. Great production values, and a lot of thought provoking conjectures. Subscribed. Looking at merch.

I'd be absolutely terrified to have my molecules disassemble then reassembled. I watched "The Fly"

You're a surprisingly good actor, dude. Those last few minutes were awesome.

AWESOME ending. Love it. Probably adds credibility to the theory that was supposed in The Enemy Within where Kirk is duplicated and the "opposite" is the bad guy. LOVE how you did that.

On Heisenberg Compensators: Well, I consider EVERY part of my body a 'primary system', so maybe Bones was right after all ^_^ On your Transporter Clone: Good side is that, if you both work the same job, you can get more days off work! Down side, now you have one paycheck feeding two people ^_^

I love your videos. Just make sure your transporter clone doesn't try to kill you and take over. 😂

It'd be interesting to see a scientist who rigged a transporter to restore his body to a younger pattern, while retaining his current mental state - sort of a refinement on how they restored Dr. Polaski to a younger state...

To be fair if I could clone myself I’d totally do it too much and then we’d probably start a gang war with each other over something we don’t really disagree on

It breaks you apart and puts you back together.

Great video love your work my friend

This is so good. Bravo

Thanks for the video man

There were several instances of transporter accidents and malfunctions that caused horrible deaths for people materialized. Also have be 100% accuracy. Since possibly you might find yourself beamed into wall or between decks on starship. I agreed with McCoy. I don't want my atoms scattered across Universe.

I really enjoy your shows, please keep it up.

Ironically the transporter was invented because the original shuttle craft was late in production.

Excellent video! Loved the end. Live long and make more great videos.

Lol that ending.

Now that I covered quantum teleportation, the next point about Star Trek transporters is they don't use quantum tunneling, they use subspace. Sub-space was originally postulated by Heim in the 1940's. Heim theory is a quantization of space-time in Planck unit areas across 4 dimensions and extra hidden dimensions. This gave Heim a differential equation. And even before he successfully solved the equation he was able to recognize it had different eigenvalue solution he called subspace. There is little reason to believe Heim was correct, but this is the science Star Trek is based on. Star Trek transporter use subspace. In the Star Trek universe, people are not able to live in subspace, because the laws of physics are slighly different. But you can quantum teleport through subspace. Now subspace has scale factor. A meter stick in normal space, spans across 2 meters of subspace-2. Across 3 meters of subspace-3, etc. So if you teleport through a high enough level of subspace, your transport room is right next to the planet surface. So now think 3-D printing. We normally need to print everything on the printer bed. But you could imagine you could angle the printer jets slightly to print just beyond the edge of the printer bed. If the transporter pad is the printer bed, then in a high enough subspace, materializing something on the planet surface is no more difficult than printing something just off the edge of your printer bed. So in a nut shell, that is how Star Trek transporters are able to transport something at a distant location. As I said we have no reason to believe this theory is correct. But given it also has not been falsified, it still makes for good science-fiction.

I really liked this. I love star trek. I also love tech and science talk. More about star trek, pleaseee. Maybe the star trek engines and warp capacity.

Great video (as always). I guess I need to double my Patreon donation now…😳 Still miss the ”don’t forget to be awesome!” 😀

Awesome! Loved the ending! 🤣😂

Thank you so very much for the video. This has been a theory (Transporters Do Kill You!) since a few years after the first run series went off the air. My take was (for fun) that the transporters transferred the physical material, memories included, but didn't transport the soul. (Again - theory for fun, don't really know that there is 'a soul', or not.) Which lead to a bunch of fun fan-story ideas.

I love the way you mingled solid science facts with Star Trek lore. PS: be careful with red shirts, you know people wearing them often have problems 😀

I try not to think about it. Among the numerous inconsistencies of this tech, the next generation episode, where Riker gets copied... Well, that just opens so many doors!

I know it was more of a "study" of the nature of Man, then it was scientific, but in "The Enemy Within", if Kirk were split into two full beings by the transporter, wouldn't both be half the mass of the whole? And, of course, it would've killed him?

My headcanon is the transporter actually turns you into a temporary energy being, one dependent on technology to survive, but that would allow you to wave away all the weird transporter accidents that occur from time to time.

Great video! However I am curious about one thing: exactly what size of data consitutes an "assload"?

The episode the realm of fear shows that you are totally alive in the matter stream.

This could be a boon for “red shirts!” Just keep a copy of the “red shirt” in the pattern buffer and, when they inevitably get killed, dematerialize the “saved” copy - just like a video game. Problem solved!

Last year in July for 2 weeks only, KZfaq showed a video by Andrew Biasiago (Pegasus Project) that our Government had accomplished Teleportation back in the 80's. Very interesting Video and he named names of whom were involved and its uses today by our Government.

Nice ending!

We do actually have the technology to transport objects. I think it was developed by MiT in the late 80s. Though I could be wrong about that. Simple objects can be almost transported, right now. We have only tried to transport food, however. But, there are two problems. One being that we do not have the resources to reverse the assembly process. This means that each object that we transport gets turned inside out, molecule by molecule. Furthermore, we do not yet know how to fix the molecular cohesion issue. That is, the molecules do not stick together.

The ending, nice.

Love how you went Westworld Season 3 at the end. lol

Okay, let's say teleportation breaks your body down into subatomic particles - disintegrates you, if you will - scans all the information of your physical being, and then rebuilds you somewhere else. And as far as you can tell coming out on the other side, you are still you. You can't tell any difference, so in practice it's you moving from one point in space to another. Now let's do that in a different order: The machine scans you, then builds another you using that information, and _then_ you get disintegrated. This is, for all practical purposes, the exact same process. And yet, I feel like most people would feel a lot less eager to be teleported if the process is viewed that way. In fact, we can go a step further and say that the scanner and the matter disintegrator are two different machines and, indeed, that the latter is just a Klingon with a disruptor who vaporizes you. That's more wasteful in terms of energy usage, perhaps, but still _technically_ the same thing.

just wanted to make a quick observation here. u said matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but I think it's energy that can neither be created nor destroyed.

The only answer for that is "Very Well" according to an old paperback I got in the 70s called "The Making of Star Trek".

Just a tie-in, there was an episode of the newer Outer Limits series that dealt with teleportation. The teleporters worked by cloning the person on the receiving end, and destroying them on the originating end. And everyone just accepts this, and treats the copy like the original. The episode features an instance where the original was not destroyed and the engineer is ordered to destroy a clone he had gotten to know, in order to “balance the equation”.

Thanks for mentioning that matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, that's some basic science most people leave out.

your videos are always so informative and fun. I hope your clone isn't always this grumpy lol

That was always McCoy's theory/ fear.

In the story / movie ' the Fly ' a fly got into the transporter and .... Buzz.... buzzzzz...!

this is the shit i live for

Taking out all the philosophical and ontological questions Star Trek teleportation brings, at the very least the people teleported behave with a continuity of consciousness: Memories, ongoing thoughts and feelings seem to run continuously with only a bit of a lapse as the subject suddenly perceives their new environment; perception is the only thing that shows a discontinuity.

It's Neo! "Your reality is made of electrical signals in your brain" -Morpheus

Love the channel. I may name a ship U.S.S. Orange River!

Id love to see an episode where the possibility of transporter death is discussed but then at the end the character is facing certain death and has to accept that the only way for them to continue to “exist” is to accept the risk and transport from the surface of the planet/ ship that’s about to explode- thus raising the question of what is more important, the continuance of a persons life through a possible clone, or the right to accept death as an individual.

Top audio book by Lawrence M. Krauss, "The Physics of Star Trek"

Cool video

One idea for teleportation would be to vibrate an object or a human body very fast but also very minutely. I think the Flash can pass through a wall by doing something like that. In this vibrated state, maybe an object or person can be sent somewhere (teleported) because of their “phantom” state which also allows them to pass through a wall. This way, maybe nothing weird happens to you. It’s the very same you before and after you teleported.

seems like theres been ambient matter used considering the splitting of persons in two and the youthful Rascals episode. Transporter technology could be used to make cadets immortal but it's too expensive to keep more than the elite and the essential in buffer.

I'm already dead inside they're welcome to try

See, I don't think transporter kills you. At one point in its development before TNG, maybe. But during the time that Data exists? His brain is not able to be replicated, or cloned, so I think by the time Data exists they had figured out how to perfect an actual "transporter" that moved matter rather then targeted cloning of sorts that may have existed as late as the original series, but not long after.

The one thing the video doesn't address is how 'fast' whatever device that scans translates and stores the 'pattern' info would have to be to both 'break down' and then 'reassemble' the pattern of the object/person being transported. Given the amount of particles and information involved - to do both phases is a few seconds (for up to 6+ objects or more) would require a processer speed and overall computing capacity that somehow would need to involve time travel of some sort as there's no way you can get that level/speed of processing power even in a couple of centuries of technical advancement (IMO). 😳😉

The good old teleportation of Theseus question 🤔

The way quantum teleportation evades the main paradoxes of Sci Fi transporters is truly beautiful. This is because (1) no knowledge of the state to be teleported is required or even allowed (since such knowledge would collapse the state), so a state of consciousness could be transported without even understanding consciousness, and (2) duplication or "cloning" of quantum states is not possible, and teleportation necessarily destroys the original. Note also that part of the teleportation occurs instantly, but the state that is teleported gets completely scrambled, and the regular light speed communication transmits a series of measurement outcomes to descramble it. Light speed is not a significant constraint for short range teleporter use in trek anyway. The uncertainty principle is not the major constraint here, you are thinking classically about measuring the state of a system and re-constructing it, while quantum teleportation is more "automatic." Though admittedly Kirk and Co couldn't teleport to the surface of a new planet without first sending down a beacon of matter that's entangled with the ship. One last thing is that the scrambling of quantum teleportation is due to random measurement outcomes at the point of transmission, but there is a sequence of outcomes (akin to getting heads a trillion times in a row) that transmits the state instantly across an arbitrary distance with no scrambling at all.

I kinda figured that if it's called and transporter and not a teleporter, that means that the particles themselves are being moved rather than being destroyed to make way for a copy.

Aside from arguing with yourself about who is the copy, why do we often find that the original and clones are unhappy with each other. Instead, they should all think the same and figure out how they could take turns going to work or school while the others relax.

Two things… 1) Biblically, life is the breath of God, a spiritual quantity that I don’t think can be teleported the way Star Trek does. 2) The best way to teleport an object or person (megastructures like a destroyer) that was actually done in the Philadelphia Experiment, does not require dematerializing/rematerializing stuff. This also works on people that the Montauk Project refined. Check out both books.

the fact we remain conscience is all I really needed to know.