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Comment on Please advise on this conversation we had over on c/Piracy. Transporters and replicators, basic operating principles?

ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

The Technical Manual explanation is not that replicators create matter out of pure energy - they are a type of transporter that dematerializes raw material and rematerializes it to match a molecular pattern. They are “matter-energy converters” only in the sense that the stream of particles during the materialization process could be called an energy stream.

These replicator system headends are located on Deck 12 in the Saucer Module [of the *Enterprise-*D] and on Deck 34 in the Engineering Section. These systems operate by using a phase-transition coil chamber in which a measured quantity of raw material is dematerialized in a manner similar to that of a standard transporter.

Instead of using a molecular imaging scanner to determine the patterns of the raw stock, however, a quantum geometry transformational matrix field is used to modify the matter stream to conform to a digitally stored molecular pattern matrix. The matter stream is then routed through a network of waveguide conduits that direct the signal to a replicator terminal at which the desired article is materialized within another phase transition chamber.

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data1701d@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Was about to cite TNG Tech Manual as well - although that also said that holodeck characters’ bodies were replicated meat puppets, which I think they didn’t stick with.

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- ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It thankfully stops short of “meat”:
  
  Such animated characters are composed of solid matter arranged by transporter-based replicators and manipulated by highly articulated computer-driven tractor beams. The results are exceptionally realistic “puppets,” which exhibit behaviors almost exactly like those of living beings, depending on software limits.
  
  Objects created on the Holodeck that are pure holographic images cannot be removed from the Holodeck, even if they appear to possess physical reality because of the focused forcebeam imagery. Objects created by replicator matter conversion do have physical reality and can indeed be removed from the Holodeck, even though they will no longer be under computer control.
  
  Obviously, there is an inconsistency here, as we saw that later holographic characters could not be removed from the holodeck, and therefore must not have been replicated.
  
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  - xilliah@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    AFAIK they’re made from forcefields and photons, not matter and tractor beams. Or are tractor beams forcefields?
    
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    ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Tractor beams and force fields are actually both supposed to be applications of graviton technology, so…kinda?
    
    But no, I don’t think that bit of the Technical Manual is very consistent with how we saw the holodecks actually being used.
    
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