Heisenberg compensator
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In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Heisenberg compensators are part of the transporter system.
A Star Trek matter transporter is presumed to operate by reading the precise quantum state of every particle making up the person to be transported, breaking down that person from their component matter into energy, "beaming" that energy to the desired location, and recombining this energy back into their component matter according to the information gleaned when the precise quantum state was read. However, in quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states (in general terms) that one cannot know the quantum state of a subatomic particle to arbitrary precision. Therefore, matter transportation in this way was believed to be impossible, and this was formalized as the no teleportation theorem.
Thus, the creators of Star Trek created a plot device, the so-called Heisenberg compensators. It is unclear how exactly the Heisenberg compensators work. It is, of course, possible that they do not actually tell you the precise statistics of each particle; they could just compensate for not being able to know them.
When asked "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" by Time magazine on 28th November 1994, Michael Okuda, technical advisor on Star Trek, famously responded, "They work just fine, thank you."[1]
In a twist of irony, in 1993 it was shown that quantum teleportation, the transferring of the exact quantum state from one object to another, is in fact possible, at the cost of destroying the quantum state of the original object. This, in fact, arguably replicates the behavior of transporters and replicators on the show, where you can get perfect transport or imperfect replication, but not both. This means that if you want to get perfect transport and perfect replication you're fine, whereas if you want to perfectly transport something -- whatever precisely that might mean -- but deliberately introduce errors you'll be stopped. Science is, indeed, magical.
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[edit] References
- ^ "Reconfigure the Modulators!", Time Magazine, November 28, 1994.
