From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!CSvax:Pucc-H:Physics:crl
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Title: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf)
Article-I.D.: pur-phy.670
Posted: Mon Feb  7 16:06:17 1983
Received: Fri Feb 11 03:10:31 1983

#R:hou5f:-19700:pur-phy:11900003:000:1202
pur-phy!crl    Feb  7 14:28:00 1983

About the transporter, I once read an "explanation" of it.  However,
I'm very unsure of my source--it might have been "The Making of Star
Trek" (good reference), or James Blish's novelzations (bad references--
it often seemed like he was using the "physics" of the wrong universe).

What I remember was this--the transporter does NOT convert the person
to energy, transmit this energy, and then reconvert at the destination.
Rather, it destroys the matter at the source, but remembers the pattern.
It then reconstructs this pattern at the destination out of matter
and energy at the destination.  This would make the "Enemy Within"
episode more "plausible" (?).  There is a subtle difference here--
the person reconstructed at the destination is NOT the original.
He/she is neither made up of the original molecules, or even the
energy that was the original molecules.  This would also further
explain the Doctor's aversion to the transporter.  (Hmm, the more
I think about it, the better the liklihood that I got a lot of this
from Blish--Oh well, take it or leave it).

Does anyone out there agree, or at least remember other references
to this?

Charles LaBrec
pur-ee!Physics:crl
purdue!Physics:crl