Why a Star Trek replicator will never be possible

[TheDataMiner]

Here's why:

You can't get more mass out of energy then the mass you used to get the energy.

What do I mean? Well, imagine someone created a power plant that could convert mass directly into energy at 100% efficency; and also created a replicator that used that energy to create matter at 100% efficency; you would only be able to synthesize as much mass as went into the power plant to create the energy for the replicator, thus rendering the replicator pointless.

What do you guys think of this?

[zekes]

Technically, the replicator does not power itself. The Dylithium crystals do. It simply turns the vast amounts of Crystal energy into energy useful to the crew, i.e. food, clothes, etc. Since Dylithium cystals have the power to go warp speed, making lunch is no big dent in it's power level.

[SuperWeegee4000]

Technically, the replicator does not power itself. The Dylithium crystals do. It simply turns the vast amounts of Crystal energy into energy useful to the crew, i.e. food, clothes, etc. Since Dylithium cystals have the power to go warp speed, making lunch is no big dent in it's power level.

This. I imagine also that the replicators are limited in their scope; you can create a polo shirt, but not eighty golf clubs at once.

[TheDataMiner]

But the dilithium crystals cannot have more energy than their mass, so at 100% efficency 1 pound of dilithium could only produce 1 pound of replicated stuff

[zekes]

This. I imagine also that the replicators are limited in their scope; you can create a polo shirt, but not eighty golf clubs at once.

probably, I mean they would be like a super-duper 3-d printer.

But the dilithium crystals cannot have more energy than their mass, so at 100% efficency 1 pound of dilithium could only produce 1 pound of replicated stuff

What if they are super dense? or made of super light molecules that are tightly packed...

EDIT <facepalm> duh, remember the ship has an antimatter core?

[Anton P. Nym]

The real problem with the replicator is the real problem with the transporter as described (and fig-leafed by {TECH} in the script): Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. There's no way that the system could reliably assemble the matter from photons in the appropriate patterns.

There's also the problem with the waste heat. A 100mL cup of tea (Earl Grey, hot) would require:

e = mc^2 = 0.1kg x (300 000 000m/s)^2 = 9 000 000 000 000 000 J

Even at 99.99% efficiency, that leaves 90 billion Joules of waste heat. It only takes about 45 000 J to boil the water for the tea.

-- Steve

[lajoswinkler]

Are you guys serious? Dilithium crystals do not power the ships in Star Trek. They're used as substrates on which matter and antimatter react because, under some conditions, they aren't harmed by stuff like light antimatter elements (or particles, whatever). They're porous to it.

You need to play less KSP and watch more ST because this is embarrassing.

[ZetaX]

You could get a working replicator to actually just "beam" already existing matter into the correct positions. This still uses some kind of teleportation, but as you would not need to create an exact copy but just a good approximation, the unvertainty principly will not be a problem.

[TheDataMiner]

Are you guys serious? Dilithium crystals do not power the ships in Star Trek. They're used as substrates on which matter and antimatter react because, under some conditions, they aren't harmed by stuff like light antimatter elements (or particles, whatever). They're porous to it.

You need to play less KSP and watch more ST because this is embarrassing.

The same principle applies, where's the plasma coming from? The mass used to make the plasma is the maximum amount of mass that can be replicated.

[magnemoe]

You could get a working replicator to actually just "beam" already existing matter into the correct positions. This still uses some kind of teleportation, but as you would not need to create an exact copy but just a good approximation, the unvertainty principly will not be a problem.

well if you want to teleport something living, you would want it pretty accurate. You will also want to assemble it pretty fast as most living things are highly unstable if you only have half of them.

Non living stuff can handle magnitudes more errors even if nanotech. Still the assembly of anything under pressure has challenges.

So yes, improbable but not high fantasy like the start trek teleporters. You still have waste heat issues but this would be from chemical energy, not energy to matter.

[lajoswinkler]

The same principle applies, where's the plasma coming from? The mass used to make the plasma is the maximum amount of mass that can be replicated.

All I'm saying is that dilithium crystals aren't a power source.

Star Trek ships use synthesized antimatter and hydrogen collected by their Bussard collectors. That's the basic principle. Add lots of technological gibberish and you get a story.

[7rex]

I just assumed they had "blocks" of super dense material that they would use to feed the replicator's the required matter.

It could also be any matter really so all the waste they produce could be turned back into food.

[TheShadow1138]

I don't believe this has been mentioned thus far in this discussion, and I believe it should be. It is possible for the amount of energy obtained from say two annihilating particles (i.e. an electron and position) to be greater than the total mass of the system. The total mass would be equal to 2 times the mass of an electron, and if the particles annihilated one another at rest then the total energy obtained would be equal to 2m_e*c^2. However, I imagine most annihilations occur with the particles possessing some velocity, and thus some kinetic energy. This means that in the annihilation the total energy obtained must be, from the law of conservation of energy, equal to the sum of the rest mass energies and the kinetic energies that the particles possess.

[andrewas]

The same principle applies, where's the plasma coming from? The mass used to make the plasma is the maximum amount of mass that can be replicated.

Um. Replicators do not create mass, they just transport and arrange stored mass into the desired form. So they don't have particularly huge power requirements, though they're obviously still power hungry since rationing replicator use and using a real cook was an important part of Voyager's survival strategy for the first few years.

Now what is impossible were the DS9 replicating mines. The Dominion should have been able to wear that field down, but somehow the mines are able to replace expended mines using their on-board replicators. Supposedly they use 'zero-point extractors' to generate matter from nothing, which is a particularly weak bit of technobabble even by star trek standards.

[Superfluous J]

So if you convert a pound of dirt into energy, and then convert that energy into a 16 ounce juicy steak... that to you is useless?

[DaveofDefeat]

Set phasers to science!

[TheDataMiner]

So if you convert a pound of dirt into energy, and then convert that energy into a 16 ounce juicy steak... that to you is useless?

Converting dirt into food is a good idea, but only so much mass can be used, once all the stored mass is used up, waste won't provide enough energy to sustain the replicator and then they'll have to use parts of the ship to make more food.

[ZetaX]

The mass is not lost, you could use all that human waste to create more stuff. The only energy definitely lost (assuming a 100% efficiency) is the chemical one used by the human body, which is so neglegably small that this will essentially never become a problem.

[TheDataMiner]

Accually we use up more energy then you'd think. Think of all the energy required to heat our bodies to 99 degrees and all the energy we use in all our muscles every day to keep us breathing, our heart beating, ect...

[Tw1]

Even at 99.99% efficiency, that leaves 90 billion Joules of waste heat. It only takes about 45 000 J to boil the water for the tea.

Couldn't this energy be recaptured with some more science magic?

[Awaras]

I always thought that using total matter to energy conversion (and back again from energy to matter) was a horrible way to make a cup of tea.

I mean, ST can't go two episodes without some kind of transporter malfunction and yet each crew quarters have a device that casually moves around gigajoules of energy...

As for the mass problem, the ST universe ships regularly use (artificial?) transuranic elements like trilithium, tricobalt, tri-this, tri-that, so maybe they just keep a few thousand kilos of the stuff to use as replicator 'fuel'.

Of course, they use a technomagic device to turn regular matter into antimatter at practically zero energy cost, which breaks more Newton's laws than all the other things combined, and essentialy makes every star trek ship a perpetuum mobile, so the point is moot.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Awaras

[Nuke]

its more about organizing otherwise useless matter into something you have an immediate need for with a complete disregard for efficiency. you still need a warp core to power the damn thing.

[Superfluous J]

I always thought that using total matter to energy conversion (and back again from energy to matter) was a horrible way to make a cup of tea.

That bugs me, and also it bugs me that everybody has glass dishes and vases and picture frames and whatnot, when every single time the ship gets shot the entire thing shakes so violently that the crew has to hold on to their chairs. I'd love, just once, to see Neelix in the mess hall during one of these firefights.

[Camacha]

But the dilithium crystals cannot have more energy than their mass, so at 100% efficency 1 pound of dilithium could only produce 1 pound of replicated stuff

So? The same goes for a lot more clunky and less efficiënt fabrication devices like 3D-printers. The point is not to have some magical creation of matter, the point is to produce exactly what you need when you need it from a universal source - or even non-universal. That is exactly why NASA is looking into taking 3D-printers to space. You would have to take a lot less parts along with you to - for instance - Mars, because you can make anything you need instead of having to take one from everything (and hope no two of anything will break).

With a bit of luck you might even be able to convert your waste back into that universal source, creating an endless supply of goods that just take a bit of energy to shape. If you have access to the extravagant luxery of converting mass into pure energy, you could use anything you meet on your voyages as fuel. Just scoop some stuff up along the way and there you go.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Camacha

[Camacha]

Couldn't this energy be recaptured with some more science magic?

Good point, it's not like that energy disappears. It merely gets transported out of and away from the body. Of course any ship will suffer from the same thing.