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From my memories of reading the Trek Technical Manual: 1. The transporter blows you apart at the atomic level. 2. It then encodes all your atomic information
by Jaruzel 7y ago
From my memories of reading the Trek Technical Manual:
1. The transporter blows you apart at the atomic level.
2. It then encodes all your atomic information into the transporter buffer. The buffer is a massive storage array (even for trek tech) but only has a limited lifespan (see: Relics, TNG).
3. The data in the buffer is then streamed over an 'energy beam' carrier to the destination location.
4. At the destination the atomic information is rebuilt into a new 'you'. Right down to what your synapses were doing at the time of step #1.
...
In the way that a jigsaw is still the same jigsaw no matter how many times you take it apart and rebuild it, the theory is that it's not a clone of you, as the original never exists at the same time the 'clone' does.
The above steps totally ignore the implausibility of being able to rebuild the subject at the other end, without any infrastructure. Transporter-pad to transporter-pad transfers make logical sense, but transporter-pad to anywhere-on-a-planet... not so much.