Beaming scientists teleport a laser

Scientists have teleported a laser beam from one spot to another - but they warn: don't sell the car yet.

Physicists said today that they had disembodied a laser beam in one location and rebuilt it about one metre away in a split second.

Dr Ping Koy Lam, leader of the team at the Australian National University, said the achievement resembled what happens in Star Trek, but that instantly "beaming" humans from one spot to another remains utterly remote.

"In theory there is nothing stopping us from doing it but the complexity of the problem is so huge that no one is thinking seriously about it at the moment," he said.

However Dr Lam said science was not too far from being able to teleport solid matter from one location to another.

"It will probably be done by someone in the next three to five years: that is the teleportation of a single atom," said Dr Lam.

But humans pose a near-impossible task as we are made up of billions upon billions of atoms, he said.

The teleporting, achieved using a process known as quantum entanglement, opens up enormous possibilities for superfast and super-secure communications systems, such as quantum computers, over the next decade.

Physicists believe quantum computers could outperform conventional computers, with enormous memory and the ability to solve problems millions of times faster.