Aphelion

The terrorist blew himself up for nothing, too. He could have just opened the port, chucked the bomb in, said, "Have a Nice Day!" and shut the machine off. And the bomb could have been anything.

Oh, and --

Long before the sound waves hit them, everyone in the room was dead.

LONG before . . . ? Quit pullin' my leg!

It stands to reason that the replication would require some raw materials: atoms, elementary particals, and/or energy. There are plenty of atoms in the air, but you could conceivably assemble a living creature from water and soot. Most organic molecules are composed entirely of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. What we consider comlex life is really just the movement of ions and the assembly/breakdown of molecules.

If you can suspend your disbelief about somone actually getting past the uncertainty principle, then it isn't a much more of a stretch to accept that a human could be assembled with the ions along the proper gradients to allow spontaneous nerve activity.

That much is easy for me to understand. Also, I think nitrogen is fairly important to have handy for the replicator, but that can come out of the air.

The problem I see is, because both processes have a physical component, they would both have some associated time element, a limit to how fast the process can be done. I really have a problem believing in it being instantaneous.

What if it takes ninety seconds for the machine to take you apart and put you back together?

Will it hurt? Is it ouchy-squirmy-for-a-minute hurt, or is it an ICU hurt? Who knows? Maybe our nerves wouldn't even respond to being disassembled -- but if they did, then the first guy to try this thing is in for a rude surprise.

Matter transport via the means of disassembly and reassembly of each atom in the object is one of the most ridiculous mechanical devices ever conceived. I'm pretty sure it was a Roddenberry thing.

Bill, you haven't seen the old Flash Gordon movies? They used teleporters, and the special effect was -- still is -- one of the best I've seen.

The idea has been around a long time.

Actually, I don't remember what it looked like. Wasn't it a fade-in/fade-out effect using lights and a glass reflector?

I don't know how it was done, I just knew it looked better than ST's.

Here's where I found mine . . . I watched a couple disks full and got tired of 'em, though.

http://www.netflix.com/Search?oq=&v1=fl ... ch_submit=

davjonz wrote:Preplicants? That's an awesome idea!

-- david j.

Yeah, but all those Lacoste shirts and Dockers and blazers would be a pain to maintain (dry-clean only, of course). And Abercrombie and Fitch and J. Crew can only manufacture so much in their offshore slave labor camps!