The Heisenberg Compensation

The Uncertainty Principle, also known as Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle, is a fundamental concept in Quantum Mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known.

The Heisenberg Compensator was a component of the transporter system. The compensator worked around the problems caused by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, allowing the transporter sensors to compensate for their inability to determine both the position and momentum of the target particles to the same degree of accuracy. This ensured the matter stream remained coherent during transport, and no data was lost.

A scan of the Heisenberg compensators, to ensure they were performing within the specified parameters, could be performed by raising the transporter pad. (TNG: "Realm Of Fear")

While trying to devise a way to transport holographic matter off the holodeck without it disintegrating instantly, the idea was put forth that decoupling the Heisenberg compensators might let the matter reform normally, although the suggestion was used as a stalling tactic against Professor James Moriarty, and the idea had never actually been tried before. (TNG: "Ship In A Bottle")

In 2371, Chief Miles O'Brien ordered a crewman to check the Heisenberg compensators of the USS Defiant. (DS9: "Past Tense, Part I")

Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" suggested that on a subatomic level, it is possible to know the motion or the position of a particle, but not both. Some believe this fundamental characteristic of matter would make it impossible for a transporter to work as shown on Star Trek. The Heisenberg compensator was invented to circumvent this principle and to explain how the transporter can work. (Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 1, p. 333))

When asked by Time magazine in 1994, "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" Michael Okuda replied, "It works very well, thank you.

 After Göttingen, I moved on to Leiden, in Holland, where I first met Isidor Rabi.

Excuse me.

A yank. Lecturing on the new physics.

This I have to hear.

I’m an American myself.

How surprising.

Let me know if you need any help with the English.

Wait, what’s he saying?

No, thank you.

It’s a long way to Zurich.

If you get any skinnier, we’re gonna lose you between the seat cushions.

I’m Rabi.

Oppenheimer.

I caught your lecture on molecules.

Caught some of it.

We’re a couple of New York Jews, how do you know Dutch?

Well, I thought I’d better learn it when I got here this semester.

You learned enough Dutch in six weeks to give a lecture on quantum mechanics?

I like to challenge myself.

Quantum physics wasn’t challenging enough.

Shvitzer.

Shvitzer?

Show-off.

Dutch in six weeks, but you never learned Yiddish.

They don’t speak it so much my side of the park.

Screw you.

You homesick?

Oh, you know it.

Ever get the feeling our kind isn’t entirely welcome here?

Physicists?

That’s funny.

Not in the department.

They’re all Jewish, too.

Eat.

There’s this German you have to seek out.

Heisenberg.

Right.

One might be led to the presumption that behind the quantum world there still hides a real world in which causality holds, but such speculations seem to us, to say it explicitly, fruitless.

Thank you. Have a great day.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Dr. Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer, yes!

I liked your paper on molecules.

Probably because you inspired it.

If I inspire anything else, let me know. We could publish together.

I have to get back to America.

Why?

There’s no one there taking quantum mechanics seriously.

That’s exactly why.

He’s pining for the canyons of Manhattan.

Canyons of New Mexico.

You’re from New Mexico?

No, New York.

But my brother and I have a ranch outside Santa Fe.

That’s the America I miss right now.

Then it’s best you get home, cowboys.

That’s him.

No, me and horses?

I don’t think so.

Nice to meet you.

Did you ever encounter Heisenberg again?

Not in person, no, but… you might say our paths crossed.