Don't mind me just crossposting this to !chevron7@lemmy.world
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
349 points (98.3% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
6033 readers
421 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'll steal Janeways coffee and dump it into the Boston harbour. 😁
This is how your entire existence ends up erased from the timeline
It's also how you get a foot broken off in your ass.
Are you wanting to start WW3?
We have known since the early 2000s that Australia will be safe. We have kangaroos.
Plus, it says so in the documentary On the Beach.
Fire ze missles!!
But I’m le tired.
The bunnies say hello.
Indeed.
I love the idea of the Doctor being the guide to other sci-fi/fantasy universes
I can totally see 12 saying something like this. And since there's already a ST/DW crossover (Assimilation²) featuring the TNG crew and 11, 12 would definitely know about the Star Trek replicators.
Trigger Warning: Nerdy Pedantry.
ST "replicators" would be more properly called "fabricators". Replicators make more of themselves- they replicate. (see StarGate replicators for an example. or any of the NanoGoo scenarios.)
Fabricators on the other hand might be able to make more of themselves, but they're cheifly designed to make other shit- that is to fabricate.
In universe, I'm just going explain it away as, "This is what happens when you let politicians name shit."
As a side note, regardless of what ever you want to call it; why the fuck would you as a ship's designer have access to this technology and not literally integrate it into every aspect of you ship? Especially if you can go the other way- recycle matter back into energy.
grey- and black-water handling would literally be eliminated at the source. other trash, too. Armor plating damaged because Ryker boned the wrong chick again? replication units in the hull replace it automatically. Worf blows his load and you're now out of torpedos? Yeah. who cares, just salvage their hulk and make more.
Wesely crashes yet another shuttle because he's a kid? oh well. it's a good thing Earth has a lot of rivers.
☝️🤓The trek replicators do replicate things though.
Everything they can produce stems from an original object that was molecularly scanned and programmed into the replicator. They cant just make whatever out of nowhere, and they introduce miniscule errors and imperfections each time. Like making a photocopy.
Now these errors are for the most part irrelevant in most applications, because food for example is still very edible and nutritious even if it is not absolutely 100% as good as the original, same goes for most spare ship parts and such.
But still, trek replicators definitely replicate things, just not necessarily themselves.
All that is true for fabricated things using current technology.
Everything they can produce stems from an original object that was molecularly scanned and programmed into the replicator. They cant just make whatever out of nowhere, and they introduce miniscule errors and imperfections each time. Like making a photocopy.
At the risk of being long winded, there's absolutely no reason that, given a technology which literally spins most forms of matter into existence from pure energy, that you would need, or even want, to start with a scan of some physical object. If you wanted to replicate some sort of piece of artwork, sure. but even then, you're not just "making a copy" of something. Consdier the martini. if you didn't add to that, then there's a solid chance that the martini is going everywhere because you're replicating the liquids at the same time as the glass.
you would either have to add some kind of containment field to keep the liquid in place while the glass is also built up, or more simply, just replicate the glassware first (or at least the surface holding the booze).
Even then, chances are, the martini is set up to be parametric. what if they only wanted one olive? or three? what if they wanted a different kind of gin? or shaken, not stirred. Maybe they didn't want mixed over ice at all, but chilled to a very cold temperature? what if they wanted it room temperature? or slightly warmed? (okay, that's gross.)
but getting back to the 'no need to scan anything'. if you know what's in the materials making it- lets say you want a steel i-beam, of a certain size- then you could simply define the material, procedural generate an iron alloy with x% carbon and whatever other materials to produce the perfect steel.
And here's the neat thing: that steel i-beam would have fewer flaws any "traditionally" made i-beam ever would, because it's synthetic. any of the flaws would be on the molecular or probably atomic level, with a perfect diffusion of the alloyed materials, and crystal structure and everything else. You could, presumably, even, use impurities intentionally so as to create weak points so that the I-beam fails in a known and predictable manner.
You can see the design flow for creating stuff using a replicator in Voyager, that episode with Naomi and Flotter, where harry is designing a stuffie at neelix's behest. That's how it's done. Harry didn't start with a stuffy he scanned in. It was literally like vibe coding, but with design files. (this is probably why he never got promoted. he was a Vibe, uh, engineer.)
Now these errors are for the most part irrelevant in most applications, because food for example is still very edible and nutritious even if it is not absolutely 100% as good as the original, same goes for most spare ship parts and such.
Star Trek's replicators also modify the food, which may matter more than small-scale errors. They specifically create a copy of the food that is deliberately nutritionally tailored for your specific dietary needs, and to remove poisonous substances within it.
Those errors tend to be more of a problem for big complex molecules like DNA, or sophisticated things like computer chips.
That's a good point. It's not replicating unless you're telling it to make a copy of something that already exists (you wouldn't replicate a car...). Great, now I have another commonly used Star Trek word to be annoyed about! Although it is on-brand for humans to have named replicators incorrectly. We operate more on vibes than anything else and do stuff like that a lot. My biggest pet peeve, and not only Star Trek is guilty of this, is using "sentience" to mean "sapience." All animals are sentient - they can sense the word around them. It's in the name!
It's not replicating unless you're telling it to make a copy of something that already exists
It is though. The replicator stores static patterns in a similar way to the transporter - they're basically the same technology. To create a new replicator pattern (e.g. a cup of tea) the original cup of tea is dematerialized and the pattern saved for future reproduction. This also explains why some people complain about eating "the same replicated meal" over and over - it's literally true, the replicator replicates the exact same cut of chicken cooked the exact same way with the exact same spice blend every time, because it's reproducing a copy from a file. Even if it's a perfect chicken dinner, it's the same one you've had hundreds of times before.
This also explains why every replicator in the universe can't just reproduce anything at any time. Different models have different sets of patterns available. A restaurant-grade model (like Quark's) might be distributed with a menu of meals prepared by chefs with good reputation and have more space dedicated for storing food patterns, whereas the Starfleet model has a menu prepared by a committee of Starfleet nutritionists (decent, healthy, but not gourmet) and also uses some pattern storage for utility items like uniforms and tricorders &etc (it's general-purpose, not specialized for food, so its food reproduction is comparatively lower quality than Quark's).
Presumably the patterns are not easily interchangeable/distributable - different file formats, different scanner resolution, maybe different output options (canonically some materials are more difficult to replicate than others, so might require a specialized replicator). Quark's replicator, being Ferengi, is probably proprietary and requires purchasing new patterns only from the original manufacturer to increase the variety.
Presumably the patterns are not easily interchangeable/distributable - different file formats, different scanner resolution, maybe different output options (canonically some materials are more difficult to replicate than others, so might require a specialized replicator). Quark’s replicator, being Ferengi, is probably proprietary and requires purchasing new patterns only from the original manufacturer to increase the variety.
They are, it just takes time to update, since it gets sent over whenever the computer gets updated. That's why Tom Paris was annoyed that the Voyager's replicator didn't have his preferred tomato soup ready. It was scheduled to be loaded onto the computers on Tuesday.
You can write the pattern yourself, but it is easy to get them wrong (Janeway managed to have it consistently produce charcoal).
They are, it just takes time to update, since it gets sent over whenever the computer gets updated.That’s why Tom Paris was annoyed that the Voyager’s replicator didn’t have his preferred tomato soup ready. It was scheduled to be loaded onto the computers on Tuesday.
Patterns might be portable on storage devices, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're cross-platform, especially cross-species/technology, or maybe it would require a technical specialist to convert the pattern between systems.
I can absolutely see this being a thing in Star Trek life. You find specific versions/recipes that you like and save them to a personal data storage device, and then when you transfer to a new command you put in a request with the local IT department to have your recipes loaded into the replicator system, which takes some time because they have to review them for safety (no malicious insiders uploading weapons labeled as "grandma's chicken soup") and maybe convert the pattern to work on the local replicators. There's a support ticket queue for that, submit your files and take a number, we'll get to you when we can.
You can write the pattern yourself, but it is easy to get them wrong (Janeway managed to have it consistently produce charcoal).
Absolutely, or probably try to arrange a new meal pattern using information on previously scanned & stored items. But yeah, it would require some specific knowledge and skill to get right. In the present, you can download lots of 3D-printable objects from the Internet, or if you know how to model you can design your own - the second is a lot more complicated. Most people would probably just use existing replicator patterns.
Patterns might be portable on storage devices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cross-platform, especially cross-species/technology, or maybe it would require a technical specialist to convert the pattern between systems.
At least on this front, Star Trek doesn't tend to have that much of an issue crossing between platforms. The only time problems seem to rear their head is when another completely different computing paradigm comes into play (like using biochemical computers instead of electrical).
Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be anything technically preventing you from hooking up your Federation computers to a Cardassian mining station and have everything work more or less okay.
Oh, disagree, O'Brien complains about trying to get Federation and Cardassian technology to work together all the time. They don't necessarily show specific scenes of what that means technically, but there are definitely interface problems.
Tom was annoyed because he didn't want to sort through 37 varieties of tomato soup. He didn't care- he just wanted food.
At some point, though, it seems a little unreasonable, when there's enough ambiguity that the computer has 37 separate presets for tomato soup.
It'd be like going to a coffee shop and adamantly demanding "coffee", and then being annoyed that the barista can't magically intuit what it is that you exactly want.
I mean, you go in and ask for coffee, the barista is going to assume you mean drip. They might ask if you want a light or dark roast. They're not going to ask you to pick from 37 different beans, then ask whether you want it a light roast, dark roast or decaff, then ask how you want it brewed (steam pressed, drip, pour over. cold brewed. french. perc. cowboy. Turkish. Greek.) then ask how hot you want it (warm. hot, HOT HOT, cold. Frozen.); how strong do you want it, do you want cream (Soy, oat, half/half, full cream, milk. Goat milk. Almond. butter.) how much cream. Sweetener (Sugar, honey, raw sugar. corn syrup.... i think you see my point?)
A good barista knows when not to ask, as much as when and what to ask.
though it's almost blasphemous they didn't conjure up a grilled cheese to go with it.
Transporters and replicators might be the same kind of hardware, but they're vastly different forms of implementation.
I'd like you to walk thorugh a couple scenarios in terms of work/design flow.
lets start with "they start with scans of materials"
lets say, the materials are all scanned down, and they just tile them to fill in what ever part you're trying to fabricate. lets say they're 1 cm^3^ cubes of materials. sure, the computer could tile those cubes digitally, and then cut them back into the shape you needed. But, how do you handle the gaps between the blocks? you could fill them with procedurally generated molecules/atoms, right?
Now lets go to what an engineer would really do.
You'd start with computer models of the materials in question. Probably, a single atoms. You'd design the shape and size of your part. Lets say a tube composed of A36 stainless steel with a 10cm inner diameter and a wall thickness of 2 cm.
You'd model it (or the computer would. Vibe modeling. yayy for AI that actually does what you tell it.)
You'd then define the material as a36 stainless, which, in the modern world has a certain definition. but you don't need to be so fuzzy on it. You can specific exact percentages or parts per-whatevers or however you want to. The computer would know it's mostly iron with .26% carbon and some other stuff.
The computer would then call up the models for iron, carbon, and the other stuff, and then generate a diffused alloy structure of all that together, using an optimized distribution for whatever application you tell it you need it for.
you wouldn't need to scan materials. You can just model the atoms and procedurally generate the bonds, and then tell the replicator how to print the damn thing. You wouldn't even need massive amounts of data storage to print something, because you could procedurally generate small portions at a time and feed it directly to the replicator as it goes.
There would be no need to scan anything, because we know what an iron atom is and can model it.
You might want to scan that super duper 5-michelin star chef's food, but that defeats the point of that. And frankly, you don't want to eat a steak that's always the exact same. you'd want to procedurally generate the steaks, too. and everything else. because humans don't like to eat the same shit all the time, we like variation.
So, I've been thinking about this and finally realized I need to RTFM:
lets say, the materials are all scanned down, and they just tile them to fill in what ever part you’re trying to fabricate. lets say they’re 1 cm3 cubes of materials. sure, the computer could tile those cubes digitally, and then cut them back into the shape you needed. But, how do you handle the gaps between the blocks? you could fill them with procedurally generated molecules/atoms, right?
So, kind of. Page 91 says "The chief limitation of all transporter-based replicators is the resolution at which the molecular matrix patterns are stored" and "extensive data compression and averaging techniques are used" which results in "single-bit inaccuracies".
I think the implication is that objects are reproduced in essentially arbitrary blobs/fields which are of uniform molecular patterns (e.g. the flesh of an apple being distinct from the skin, the stem, or the seeds) but not in blocks/voxels.
you wouldn’t need to scan materials. You can just model the atoms and procedurally generate the bonds, and then tell the replicator how to print the damn thing.
The problem is that specifying the exact molecular structure of something complex like, say, a soufflé, would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to do manually, and probably it still wouldn't taste or feel right when you ate it - imagine trying to reproduce a Monet by specifying manually in lines of code where each drop of each color of paint was placed on the canvas, without being able to see the finished product until you hit "print" - it would take you years, maybe decades to get it right. Getting the texture and flavor of a grilled chicken breast right would be insanely difficult to do by specifying each atom in the whole structure from scratch. Scanning a real one would be a much easier path to acceptable reproduction, hence: "a quantum geometry transformational matrix field is used to modify the matter stream to conform to a digitally stored molecular pattern matrix." (Treknobabble but the point being that a thing is scanned and the pattern stored digitally for later reproduction)
we know what an iron atom is and can model it.
So yes, especially for industrial applications such as your example of a uniform steel bar, but for things with complex chemistry and physical structure it's too difficult to specify from a "first-principles" perspective and get something that you actually want to eat.
Maybe a higher-grade, specialized food replicator could generate food items procedurally as you suggest, or maybe it would just have a group of stored patterns for the same item that it would randomly select from (probably easier) so that the output isn't always the same, but probably the standard Starfleet model doesn't do this as it would be more of a luxury feature.
I mean. yeah. That's "just" a very technobabbly way of saying they're taking matter and turning it into energy and back into a different sort of matter.
Basically, mc^2^ --> e --> = mc^2^.
For consideration, a 6 oz steak would have something like 15.3 million gigajoules of energy getting spat out inside of a few seconds. I'm not sure how that stacks up to the ridiculous numbers of the warp core, but in more realistic numbers, it's probably the single largest source of power on the ship.
Now, it would seem you're correct that they're not using some sort of procedural generation and using analog voxel maps. It is important to recognize that the TMs are secondary sources that may or may not even be canon. I'm willing to just say that ST's engineers are amazingly, brilliantly stupid, though. (See: seatbelts. See: surge protection.)
There is no technical reason they couldn't procedural generate their materials using some sort of materials libraries describing the materials and how they're to be generated. LAAMPS and GROMACS were out in '95 and '91 and do exactly that. LAAMPS is a more general system for modeling atoms (and sub-atomic stuffs,) and GROMACS is specifically about protein modeling.
You could even, presumably, generate new and interesting molecules just by coding to generate new and interesting atomic properties. (like maybe Neutronium? that'd be exciting.)
For comparison, think of a Sierpiński triangle. you can generate the fractal pattern using c with just a few lines of code. The jpeg image of that would be a much, much larger file. Especially, for example, if you went down to atomic scales across say, a 18"x12"x12" build volume. There's a reason modern gaming is now using procedural generation for all of their worlds now. Especially in games where every new map is different. (mine craft, for example.)
and then remember that every variation you could think of would suddenly get prohibitive. each one of those 37 varieties of tomato soup would have such a size. imagine the ice cream library. imagine literally everything. And then imagine every time they have to figure something. Like. Uhm. Worf's second spine. (it's all just chemistry.) or like in DS9's Tosk episode when O'Brien had to replicate the Arva Node (?) for Tosk's ship. That's not something you can just scan down and spit out a new functional thing- it's broken afterall. And if Tosk had a spare, he'd not need the station's services.
Or like, to accommodate "Steak with extra asparagus" or "double butter on the mashed potatoes". all of that could just be a variable in the program script producing the pattern.
I mean, Like I said. in-universe, I just assume it was named by politicians (or bad admirals, if you prefer.)
And yeah. Another one that bugs me? Neutronium.
Outside of a neutron star’s gravity, it becomes, uhm. How shall we put this? One of the most explosive things we can conceive of IRL.
Probably a good thing Wesley didn’t try to play with a block.
politicians
I think the official name of those on the show is "badmirals". Yes, that's because they let the badmirals name everything, but they are absolutely a different thing, not politicians, don't look, keep moving.
Marketing department named those, I'm sure.
The captain or the spy?
Replicators are my favourite sci-fi entity.
They just win in all scenarios not reinforced with plot armour.
Can they survive Exterminatus?
They have experience fighting divine beings, they will eat it for breakfast.
What did you call me?
Black mirror? No.
Probably can count on one hand any tech or other thing from Black Mirror that's a good thing overall.
That title makes me question if Bakula was in Stargate or something
He wasn't, that's why Archer's confused; he knows neither type of replicators.