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The nutrients from replicated food would probably be used up by the body fairly quickly, but what about materials that aren't directly consumed? Is it possible that after a period of time they would return to whatever they were before being replicated?

Gallifreyan
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Nu'Daq
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  • @Thaddeus - I don't think it's a duplicate although I suspect the answers will be largely the same. This one is asking about the fate of replicated material. – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 19:38
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    It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct duplicate, does it? If the previous posting answers the question, I can't see why we need another question asking the same thing. The answers here are the same as the answer in the previous posting, so much so, I remembered it and searched for it. – Thaddeus Howze Oct 11 '14 at 21:12

2 Answers2

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The short answer is no. Once something has been replicated, it has the same atomic structure (and is essentially identical) to non-replicated matter of the same type.

There are some caveats:

  • Some elements are very complex and cannot be directly replicated (notably latinum but also certain high-energy elements and particles)

  • Some materials are replicated with microscopic voids to make them less dense.

  • Living biological materials cannot be easily relicated due to a lack of memory space.

  • It's possible to detect that a material has been replicated. There may be some kind of energy(?) residue left by the process.

But no, over time the replicated materials will degrade in the same way as their non-replicated counterparts.

Valorum
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There weren't anything "before being replicated". They were "energy".

There has never been any indication that replicated items are anything but 100% solid matter (i.e. stable). Otherwise you probably wouldn't be replicating spare parts for your ships!

Besides, there is no magical property of any stable material that makes it break down; that's what stable means. If they were radioactive elements then that would have been the case when you replicated them (if the replicator even allowed you to do that).

Lightness Races in Orbit
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  • Actually, the ship maintains a stock of "feed" material for the replicators. The ship takes that material, converts it into transporter energy, then reconstitutes it into whatever you've ordered. – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 17:32
  • @Richard: I don't think so... Can you provide any evidence for this claim? – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 11 '14 at 17:40
  • From the TNG Technical manual : http://i.stack.imgur.com/sN62l.png – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 17:43
  • @Richard: How canon is that? There's no reference to it in any other material and it would seem to contradict the TV shows, too. Also, it only covers organic replication. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 11 '14 at 17:53
  • The TNG manual is considered top level canon unless it directly contradicts the show. To the best of my knowledge, the replicator section is uncontradicted. – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 17:56
  • The memory alpha page phrases it nicely; "A replicator was a device that used transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form."; http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Replicator – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 18:01
  • @Richard Tango's question here indicates the technical manual says it works both ways. And it's "Fourth Season Edition"; I think the pure-energy version was onscreen very early on – Izkata Oct 11 '14 at 18:29
  • @Izkata - You're looking at the difference between the unpublished TNG Writer's Manual (non-canon) and the TNG Technical Manual (semi-canon). – Valorum Oct 11 '14 at 18:32
  • @Richard I dunno... I guess I can't arbitrarily contradict those rules, but they don't gel with me. There's been no on-screen indication of a biomatter store for the replicators, and general hints that they simply construct matter out of the ship's energy reserves, but ultimately nothing to fully contradict the Manual's claim, which is frustrating. The closest I can find is the Kazon's use of a Federation replicator, but I can't outright demonstrate that they didn't fill a storage bay with organic material for its use. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 11 '14 at 23:49
  • The need of mater insertion is key to the plot of the typhoon pact books series as a certain culture has difficulty connecting it's freshers ie toilets and showers to replicators to conserve energy needs –  Oct 14 '14 at 02:59