Let’s face facts, folks: there is no science behind Star Trek.
It’s Science Fantasy(1), not Science Fiction. Looking for the science behind it is like looking for the science behind Lord of the Rings.
There isn’t any, but there doesn’t need to be any. It’s internally consistent (Star Trek sort of, LOR completely and wonderfully) and that’s all any fantasy requires.
Please, stop trying to explain the science that isn’t there! That’s just more fantasy.
That’s all, really, but if you require an example, keep reading.
The transporter: cool. wonderful and a very poor piece of work. It was crafted originally to satisfy the extremely limited budget they had to work with in the first season of the first series. They couldn’t afford to build a prop space shuttle (a set, plus models of various sizes – that happened in the 2nd season), so they came up with the transporter, using some effects that had been pioneered in other TV shows. Expensive, but affordable.
So, here’s a matter transmitter. Apparently you are broken up into particles, converted to energy (maybe?) and “beamed” some where. Make up your mind, is it a laser / microwave beam or is it a MASER? (MASER: similar to LASER, except it’s a matter stream instead of “Light.”)
Most of Star Trek’s episodes that talk about the transporter at all speak of it as a matter transmitter, a MASER based gadget, we might presume. But then we have trans-warp beaming, we can beam through walls and space craft hulls, even through rock and quite a distance underground, which suggests some thing definitively not a matter stream — even though that very term (“matter stream”) appears in the dialog frequently. A MASER beam certainly can’t go faster than light or even a good percentage of light speed, (so even beaming a long distance should involve light speed limitations, as well as the beam fading out, blurring at the edges, like a flashlight beam does) or are they wrapping the “beam” up in a warp field? No such thing has ever been mentioned or suggested, so we have to assume not.
If it’s a matter beam then what happens when sending it down through an atmosphere, where clouds and moisture and wind can send bits and pieces of your roaming far and wide. Interference, that is to say.
If it’s an energy beam, then we have other extremely serious problems, the total amount of energy in that beam being something on the order that could destroy an entire solar system, just for starters. (The period at the end of a printed sentence would be enough energy, if converted to such, to destroy New York City and then some.)
Then at the receiving end, since you can be “reassembled” any where, even out in the wilderness, what controls the sequence of reassembly, since there’s no device there? If you were beamed there as energy, how are you getting converted back to matter? If it was a MASER beam, then what is controlling the sequencing of what goes where?
All of which blows the internal consistency thing. Internal consistency means show it (rather than describe it), show it behaving the same way each time, and — most importantly — don’t worry about explaining it, since you’ve already shown it in your story world, and the moment you explain you will probably blow it anyway.(2) As Star Trek has done over and over again. (Heisenberg Compensator… give me a break. You deal with these things by never trying to explain them. Just show them, and smile secretively whenever anyone asks for details.(3))
There are very many works in science fiction that deal with transporters in a far more likely way. The “transfer booths” and “stepping disks” in the works of Larry Niven, for instance, are vastly more likely.
I could continue on here (even just with the transporter, let alone gravity plating, warp drive, firing phasers or lasers while in warp, navigational fields, force fields, nannites, structural plating, replicators, having the bridge in the most exposed location possible for a non-warship that ends up in battle so unbelievably often, and so on, and on) but there’s probably no need.
What I mean is not to denigrate Star Trek — I enjoy it as much as any one else — but let’s stop pretending it’s Science Fiction instead of Science Fantasy(1) and quit trying to explain things in terms of today’s technology and/or physics when it’s in no way applicable or possible. Just relax and tell me a story.
That’s all.
(1) Science Fiction: works of fiction dependent on science, technology and / or repercussions stemming from known scientific and engineering concepts available today.
Science Fantasy: involving principles, gadgets or experiences that can not be derived from anything actually currently known or even suspected about the Universe.
Even further distinctions apply when you start trying to categorize hard sci-fi from soft sci-fi. Gad-zooks.
There’s very little actual science fiction on TV or in the movies. Arrival, Interstellar, Ad Astra come very close to true sci-fi. Star Wars, Star Trek, Black Panther, all Marvel / DC movies are science fantasy. Edge of Tomorrow and the Terminator series are some where in between. Warehouse 13 is correctly filed as pure fantasy, not even Science Fantasy (very entertaining program, regardless of where it’s filed).
So what: they’re all good, each in their own ways. Let’s just be clear here.
(2) Stephen King in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre, has a principal he calls “don’t show the monster behind the door.” That is, leave the monster — or the explanation — behind the closed door. The moment you try to explain you’ll invariably ruin the experience. This is easily demonstrated by the two versions of the movie The Haunting, both from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 short story of the same name, but the first movie (1963) respected this rule (was even the primary example of this rule) while the second movie (1999) just had to explain and show, and so it was not nearly as satisfying a “horror experience” as was the original. Ironic, that.
It was the closed doors from the 1963 movie that were so horrific, that we the audience never saw what was behind those doors, pushing on them to make them do that… scary, it was! Truly. That’s what Mr King was referring to, and as the 2nd movie totally violated this principle (really, never even bothered with doors at all) that’s what makes it so ironic. The very icon of the principal was ruthlessly violated in its own remake. A real shame.
(3) Besides, if any one’s actually that interested in how the Star Trek transporter or whatever works, you should suggest that they read some science fiction and channel that interest into even more exciting stuff.