Today's 3D printing/scanning = Star Trek transporter in the future?

[jeffmorris]

I think that today's 3D printing/scanning will make Star Trek transporter and replicator possible in the future. I know that some 3D printers can print food that people can eat.

[awerby]

"Tea, Earl Grey, hot" - not. Food printers are just machines for squeezing edible paste out of tubes into various configurations. 3D scanners will record the topology of things, but to capture the things themselves so they can be reconstructed elsewhere would take scientific breakthroughs that would be as much of an advance over our current printers as they are an advance over hand-axes. So yes, if the idea of making tools led to 3D printing, then sure, the idea of 3D printing can lead to on-command molecular fabrication. Just don't hold your breath...

[Talon 3D]

One big thing to remember to is that the Star Trek transporter is a literal suicide machine. It creates a pattern from the scan, destroys it and then sends the matter to the new location and is built.
I don't think 3D printing is going to be able to do even that much less transfer consciousness which somehow in Star Trek happens.

[curious aardvark]

well until physicists actually come up with a unified field theory that works - nobody in their right mind would trust their lives to modern physics.

bear in mind that it's based on two theories - neither of which work properly.

But 3d 'faxing' could very well become a reality.