r/StrangeNewWorlds • u/rEYAVjQD • Jul 27 '25
Theory Every time you beam up, you DIE.
Think about it; your entire being at the atomic level splits apart so you are by definition not existent at that point and then those randomized atoms are supposed to make the same puzzle again.
But what's the difference between that and getting other atoms; you were already dead; they just made the same puzzle again.
The only "concession" I'll make is that in a sense ..we DIE every single moment in our reality, because of quantum indeterminancy.
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u/Chemical-Actuary683 Jul 27 '25
In Wrath of Khan, Kirk is talking through the beam up process as they transport, so consciousness continues.
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u/Starch-Wreck Jul 28 '25 edited Jul 28 '25
This has been an ongoing point of discussion for 60 years. It’s not a new theory.
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u/rEYAVjQD Jul 28 '25
What an amazing contribution. "Someone has said the same before in the history of humanity". Get a block and be gone.
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u/gray_chameleon Jul 27 '25
This is why I've long stuck to the headcanon that Trek's transport technology dosen't really take you apart and put you back together again, it's more to do with folding space in a clever way. Think the Sikarian's long range displacement tech, but on a smaller scale.
Taking a squillion-atom orgamism apart and putting it back together again just the way it was seemed ridiculous and unecessary somehow, even though it's Trek and there's all the other cool things they can do. Just...find another way lol.
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u/mikeymo1741 Jul 28 '25
It's kind of a ship of Theseus argument.
The question is, is who you are the electrical impulses in your brain, or the physical atoms in your body?
Because we lose cells all the time. It is true that some of the cells in our nervous system remain with us, our entire lives, but are those who we are?
Now if the electrical impulses in your brain that make up your memories and your personality are what has to be persistent, then it's pretty simple for the transporter to keep those intact I would think.
Another way to look at it is if I take the electrical impulses in your mind and transfer them into a cloned body, are you still you or are you just a copy of you with all the exact memories and feelings?
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u/rEYAVjQD Jul 28 '25
is who you are the electrical impulses in your brain, or the physical atoms in your body?
The atoms make the contraption which uses the electricity, so it's the same thing.
You just die initially; there's no other explanation about it; the atoms took apart.
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u/thirdlost Jul 27 '25
Already done
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u/rEYAVjQD Jul 28 '25
You don't say. That's something many of us though years before that 9 year old video. It's a reiteration.
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Jul 27 '25
Atoms get converted to energy, "beamed" to a destination, then converted back to the original atoms.
E=mc^2
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u/rEYAVjQD Jul 28 '25
Same difference. The atoms were took apart in order to be saved in that case. Death has occurred initially.
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u/Krommerxbox Aug 02 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
This is why I don't think a transporter will ever actually work on living things, not even mice.
It also never became a common thing in other non Star Trek sci-fi shows.
Warp speed/Hyperspace became common, but a transporter did not become common.
Also, I could be wrong but wasn't the Transporter in the original series a cost cutting measure? "Hey, if they just appear down on the planet we don't have to do any kind of "shuttle"/ship landing stuff." Then I think later series/movies just kept it to stick to the original show.
Ah, yes:
https://www.slashfilm.com/1659574/star-trek-transporters-purpose-sci-fi-set-budget-limitations/
In "The Making of Star Trek," Roddenberry claims that the transporter saved the show's writers a lot of time, allowing them to get right to the action much quicker:
"If someone had said, 'We will give you the budget to land the ship,' our stories would have started slow, much too slow. The fact we didn't have the budget forced us into conceiving the transporter device — 'beam' them down to the planet — which allowed us to be well into the story by script page two."
Meanwhile, in episodes where they did ride a shuttle down instead it was usually because the shuttle was a story device; there was a reason why the transporter could not be used, and usually the people who took the shuttle got marooned or something.
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u/svchostexe32 Aug 12 '25
So I wonder since your cells are constantly dying and being replaced once that process reaches 100% have "you" died and there is not a new "you"? I dont know the answer but it seems like the same things to me.
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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '25
[deleted]