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    Transporters as a power source?

    One thing that's always struck me as odd about Star Trek and Stargate is why, if matter can be converted into energy and back again through transporters and (at least in Star Trek) power from the ships can make objects from scratch, why don't they beam up inanimate material and feed its energy straight into the ships' systems?
    The energy needed to transport matter must be far less than the energy the matter contains because otherwise the power output of the ships' generators must be HUGE to accommodate the transporters

    #2
    I'll let someone with better knowledge get this one.

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      #3
      Wow, I have no idea what that means.

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        #4
        He means transporter technology disassembles matter on a molecular level, turning it into energy then reforms it back into matter. What he is saying is that why can't matter be turned into energy and leave it at that, using such energy as a power source. Can't really give an explanation why this is not the case.


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          #5
          Because then we wouldn't have had those outta gas episodes on Voyager.

          We do know that in ST that the replicator converts energy to matter and back again. Like when they order food eat some of it an then stick the rest back into the replicator.

          Replicated matter must be the same as normal matter because if it wasn't then people, because they eat a lot of replicated stuff, would be made of replicated matter.

          The ships are in part powered by fusion reactors which run on deuterium so when you replicate something say 10kg of reverse racheting router spanners you would use up 10kg of fuel plus a little more becasue you cant be 100% effecient.

          So it would be logical to assume that they could use any matter they come across like dirt and feed it into the replicator to replenish there fuel supply. 10kg of dirt world convert to say 9kg of fuel with 1kg lost due to conversion.

          But then as I said they would never run out of gas and we would have those oh so suspenceful stories.

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            #6
            I need some help with this one, but:

            In Star Trek, they rely on antimatter-matter anilation for energy. Now, isn't that the same as this, converting matter/antimatter into pure energy.

            If it is, you can say that they're already doing it, but on a much larger scale.

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              #7
              Well E=mc^2 so for every 1kg of matter you transport you got the speed of light squared of energy.... I think

              However the energy required to do this (i.e. to run the transporters) could still be relatively high. And maybe transporter energy isn't reliable enough or summin.

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                #8
                matter/anti-matter reaction doesn't really create pure energy, its more of an explosion, and they channel the force from that explosion into propulsion. Think of it like your on a trampoline, and your friend jumps up high and lands right beside you, propelling you upwards...a bad example, but it shows the channeling of energy and force....this is the same on the reaction, except the force is far more greater than u can imagine.

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                  #9
                  the transporters use a direct energy to matter conversion and vise-versa so E=MC^2 means that C^2=34701131432.065609 mi/sec. That times any mass means one heck of a lot of energy. A kilogram of mass completely converts into 89,875,517,873,681,764 joules
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                    #10
                    The machine itself takes energy to perform the transportation, probably more energy than they would gain.
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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Prior_of_the_Ori
                      He means transporter technology disassembles matter on a molecular level, turning it into energy then reforms it back into matter. What he is saying is that why can't matter be turned into energy and leave it at that, using such energy as a power source. Can't really give an explanation why this is not the case.
                      Thanks for translating, Prior of the Ori! A problem I've always had is that I always sound either overcomplicated or patronising, never finding the right balance (but I guess that's what happens when you get loads of TNG exposure as a young kid!).

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by dmayor09
                        matter/anti-matter reaction doesn't really create pure energy, its more of an explosion, and they channel the force from that explosion into propulsion. Think of it like your on a trampoline, and your friend jumps up high and lands right beside you, propelling you upwards...a bad example, but it shows the channeling of energy and force....this is the same on the reaction, except the force is far more greater than u can imagine.
                        It does create pure energy, its an annihilation reaction, matter and antimatter meet and poof, energy. Its only an explosion if you can't control it I thought Star Trek ships used superheated electrical plasma from the antimatter reaction to power the ship, but I might be wrong, I'm not that familiar with Star Trek technology.
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                          #13
                          It would be to easy for us then if we could do that. TPTB might not have thought about it also.

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                            #14
                            Have to agree with Lord Dannos, matter/anti-matter is a nearly 100% pure matter to energy conversion. A single gram of anti-matter would provide a trememndous amount of energy (I heard something on the order of launching the space shuttle into orbit 60 times). So 10 kg of the stuff would be incomprehensible. The stuff is real too, just extremely rare and hard to make, requiring a lot more energy to be put in that what can be taken out.

                            In ST, the anti-matter fuel provides them with tremendous amounts of power. The ammount of energy required to take matter and convert it into energy is a lot more than the energy you get from the matter. In other words, it's not an efficient system to just "beam" debris and junk and use it as energy. The only reason they return dishes, trays, utensils, etc... to the replicator is because they have no where else to go. What are you going to so, just leave them lying around, or heaven forbid, CLEAN them?!?! Who in their right mind would clean them when you could jsut waste enormous amounts of energy converting destroying them?

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                              #15
                              Just a clarification for the uninformed.

                              Matter/Antimatter is indeed a 100% conversion at the inidividual particle level, electrons and positrons and all that, in a forced conversion of billions of particles, 100% is not guaranted. This is were antimatter induced nuclear fission/fusion takes place. Basically when enough annihilations take place neutrons are produced along with ions and plasma, this in turn creates the perfect conditions for both fission and fusion to take place.

                              This is why the US is trying to develop a hypernuclear bomb induced using antimatter, less radiation more bang.

                              Also the any antimatter/matter reactor would only offer a maximum of 50% of the total energy converted. Why is this? Because unforunately 50% of the reaction is pure neutrons which is completely useless in todays world. Technically speaking that are not tappable as a potential power source. The rest of the conversion is however.

                              So a 1kg matter vs 1kg antimatter = 500grams of equivalent energy converted.

                              Also it is worth baring in mind that the amount of energy used to both create and store antimatter is the same as the usable amount of energy produced by the conversion. So basically you are just producing a 0% efficient power system. Of course this will most likely change with time, but at the moment these are our best figures. I can say this for sure though, having a antimatter reactor in the future mine not be much better than a perfected fusion system.

                              J

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