"The Heisenberg uncertainly principle means that transporters like the ones in Star Trek are physically impossible, at least in terms of the physics that we understand. But that didn't stop Roddenberry and friends. They just assumed that human beings would figure out some way to "compensate" for the physical laws." From what I've read, that's somewhat of a generous and optimistic view. My understanding was that the transporter was created purely as a money-saving feature, as they didn't have the budget to create planetary landing effects on a weekly basis. The Heisenberg compensator circuits were a convenient piece of techno-babble in an attempt to hand-wave the underlying physics problem of transporters away...