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In Star Trek, does being transported cause your ears to pop?



I can't recall seeing any reference to this in any of the Star Trek series, but it seems inconceivable that the air pressure on board the Enterprise would always be the same as where the crew was transporting to or from.


Because this transition is effectively even faster than that of a landing airplane, their ears must pop every time, right?



Answer



Although it's totally hand-waved in the show and films as being one of the things that the transporter just does (along with removing momentum) this issue has been addressed in at least one of the TNG novels.


In Indistinguishable from Magic, Captain Geordi LaForge is trialing a new faster transporter system. Apparently one of its key failings is that it works too quickly to allow the normal process of air pressure equalisation:



Captain’s Log, Stardate 60214.1. Since Tyler Hunt’s memorial service and the completion of the Challenger’s repairs, we have been on an extended detachment to test a new transporter upgrade that’s intended to provide near-instantaneous transport. No visible materialization phase, just pop, and you’re there. I’m sorry that that doesn’t really sound technical enough, but it’s the most accurate description of that I’ve heard so far. The ideal is that the full dematerialization and dematerialization phases should, together, take no more point zero two of a second. So far, the technology works, but the pressure differential caused by so quick a departure or arrival has — according to the results from testing with human-analog test objects — burst eardrums and caused other pressure-related problems. As a result, the program has gone back to the drawing board at the Daystrom Institute, and Challenger, I hope, will be free to resume a duty that, I don’t mind admitting, I find more appealing.



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