I'm not a Trekkie, but I am a Crichton fan. So if you're either a Star Trek fan or have read Timeline or even Sphere (forget the movie versions mate!) I'm sure you at least have some idea what teleportation is all about.
Star Trek and Crichton books are considered fiction (albeit inspired by real science) and even dictionaries like Dictionary.com explains ze term "teleportation" as
"A hypothetical method of transportation in which matter or information is dematerialized, usually instantaneously, at one point and recreated at another."
Teleportation... fiction, hypothetical... get it?
But today in New Straits Times (in print) and BBC (online), some scientists declared that they've actually done it! Moreover, says Professor Rainer Blatt, of the University of Innsbruck, "We've done it for the first time with massive particles, with atoms*. We are able to teleport in a deliberate way - that is, at the push of a button."
I'm waiting till the day Scotty will really get to beam something bigger, maybe a bad cancerous cell out of someone's brain into those formalin tubes, then the famous Rapat Setia mosquitos off the grass on my parents' lawn into President Bush's Oval Office, then Faizal Hussein from Gombak into my bedroom eh! living room in Cheras (I'll pay any price!) then...
So on. So you know how a person like me would use such technology. What would you like to have teleported?
* According to the BBC report, Professor Blatt's team performed the teleportation on calcium ions.
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