What is pattern degradation?
The pattern is probably highly complex. Pattern degradation occurs because the Annular Confinement Beams aren’t perfect, even with the help of the Heisenberg Compensators. The matter stream comes out of alignment with the computer’s pattern predictions for where things should be. Obviously, this is a bad thing. According to the TNG Tech Manual, a subject can be suspended in transport for up to 420 seconds before the degradation is too severe to attempt to reform the transportee. They push close to this limit in “Realm of Fear”. In “Relics” [TNG], we see that by keeping the transport controller locked in a diagnostic loop, pattern degradation is kept to a minimum – even with an old-style transporter, only 0.003% of the pattern was lost after 75 years in stasis. In “Realm of Fear” [TNG], the most extraordinary development is the reconstruction of the lost crew, and their appearance as the giant slugs while in transport. I suspect that the phased-matter “bugs” which reside in the plasma e
