8 Times Science Did The Impossible

7. Teleportation

Think about it, teleportation would do a lot more than cut out your daily commute.

If we could develop a reliable, large-scale way of teleporting both people and objects (the second part is crucial if you want to arrive clothed at the other end), then we cut out the need for fuel guzzling transport, slashing emissions. We would no longer have to spend masses of time and money shipping goods around the world and just what would become of roads and parking lots?

Okay, that's still a long way off, but scientists are beginning to make some noise about teleporting both information and (gulp) objects.

Quantum teleportation harnesses a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, in which entangle particles are seemingly able to communicate with one another instantaneously over any given distance, and it gives us a way of securely teleporting information immediately between two points. It all sounds a bit abstract, but the concept is now well established.

Quantum teleportation is a slippery customer, however, and probably isn't exactly how most people would picture teleports. The good news is that some more researchers are working on a concept dubbed classical teleportation, which doesn't rely on any quantum effects and is "closer in spirit to the original fictional concept".