72 "So what is a Heisenberg Compensator?" (Transporters - Star Trek)
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This article is from the Star Trek Tech FAQ, by Joshua Bell inexorabletash@hotmail.com with numerous contributions by others.
72 "So what is a Heisenberg Compensator?" (Transporters - Star Trek)
As Mike Okuda said when asked by Time (28 Nov 1994), "How do the
Heisenberg compensators work ?" "They work just fine, thank you."
[Benjamin Chee]
In physics, the Heisenberg Principle states that you cannot know both
the position of a subatomic particle and its momentum to a precise
degree. The more you know about one, the less you know can about the
other.
This comes into play when you consider that to know where everything
is coming from and going to, you pretty much have to know near-exactly
where everything is. By the 24th century, evidently, that's no longer
a problem. The Heisenberg Compensators are probably used to keep
everything in the matter stream exactly where it should be.
Note that this doesn't mean that the Heisenberg Compensators tell you
the vital statistics of the particle; they could very well just
compensate for not knowing them and keep the system working just fine,
thank you.
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