Beam me up: Just how close are we to teleportation?
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Admit it -- at one point or another we've all dreamed of being able to teleport. How much easier and less stressful life would be if, at the flick of a switch, we could whisk ourselves direct from home to work without the intervening two hours crushed onto public transport, face wedged into the armpit of a man with a sweat gland problem.
Now teleportation, long a staple of the world of science fiction -- what episode of Star Trek would be complete without Captain Kirk et al "beaming" off the Enterprise onto the surface of some distant planet? -- is being talked of as a serious scientific possibility.
More than just talked of, indeed: over the last couple of years physicists working independently in Austria, Australia and Denmark have all achieved a rudimentary form of teleportation, albeit at the quantum level of atoms and photons rather than the macro level of objects and actual people.
"Exact teleportation was thought to be impossible," Charles H. Bennett of IBM Research, part of the team that first discovered "quantum teleportation," told CNN.
"Now, however, it is known to be possible."
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