Teleportation Is Possible—Just Not in the Way You Might Think

Teleportation has long been fodder for science fiction books and movies. The idea that we might one day be able to transport ourselves across long distances instantly is tantalizing, after all. Who wouldn’t want to teleport themselves to the beach after a day’s work?

On April 3, 2026, a top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency named Greg Phillips sparked fresh discussions about teleportation when he claimed that he had teleported to a Waffle House, according to The New York Times. Staff and regulars at the establishment said they did not recognize his photo, but Phillips claimed he had teleported twice while living in Georgia and said that once, he had ended up at the classic 24/7 breakfast restaurant. He also mentioned that he was taking heavy medication for cancer treatment at the time.

Phillips also clarified that the word “teleportation” is not his preferred term for what happened. “The word ‘teleportation’ was not mine,” Phillips wrote on the platform Truth Social. “It was used by someone else in the conversation reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are ‘translated’ or ‘transported’—not new ideas for people of faith.”

Is Teleportation Possible? What the Science Says

The short answer and reigning scientific consensus is that it is not currently possible for human beings to teleport. 

However, teleportation itself is scientifically possible, just on a very minuscule scale, thanks to the discovery of quantum teleportation. This technique has allowed physicists to transfer the quantum state of one particle to another in a different location. It has also made it possible to produce multiple imperfect copies of particles, a feat known as “quantum telecloning.” 

Quantum teleportation relies on a principle called quantum entanglement, which—in extremely simple terms—refers to two subatomic particles that are intrinsically linked, so much so that they share an existence. This essentially means that observing one particle immediately reveals information about the other, even if they are separated by vast distances or billions of light-years. Albert Einstein called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance.” Quantum teleportation involves using this link as a cosmic bridge that allows the physical state of one entangled particle to be transferred onto another.

Scientists first proposed the idea of quantum teleportation in 1993. In 1997, teleportation between photons was achieved for the first time by physicists in Innsbruck, Austria, and in 2002, scientists at the Australian National University teleported the quantum state of a laser beam.

Four years later, researchers at Denmark’s Niels Bohr Institute managed to deliver information inside a laser beam to a group of atoms over a foot away using quantum teleportation. In 2012, scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China teleported a particle over 60 feet away, and in 2017, satellites in China teleported information across hundreds of miles between a satellite in space to Earth.

In 2020, scientists found that it may be possible to teleport electrons, and in 2025, scientists successfully transmitted information from one proton to another using remote light sources created by quantum dots. These recent breakthroughs have significant implications for quantum computing and communication, and pave the way for completely secure and private modes of transmitting information.

Is It Possible to Teleport a Human?

Reproducing a single particle is a far cry from reproducing an entire human being, however. First off, teleporting or cloning an entire person made up of billions and billions of atoms would require incomprehensible amounts of energy and control.

There are other concerns regarding teleporting living beings that raise big questions about what it means to be alive. For example, if all the particles in your body were copied and reproduced elsewhere, that might technically mean that your body would be destroyed and a replica would be left walking around in its place.

This raises a whole host of ethical and metaphysical questions, including whether teleporting a human would actually, technically, involve death and subsequent resurrection. 

Also, if teleportation were possible, it follows that it might also be possible to somehow engineer or alter the copy of the human—perhaps with certain cognitive or physical enhancements, which presents a whole other conundrum in and of itself.

Additionally, if even a particle was teleported to the wrong place, you could die or be irreversibly damaged. Perhaps buying a flight to the beach—or driving to a Waffle House—is starting not to sound so bad after all.

Teleportation in Religion and Media

Despite the very real existential questions posed by teleportation, humans have always been fascinated by the concept of instantaneous travel, and variations on this idea appear across religious history.

Many ancient Indian texts like the Vedas and the Yoga Sutras contain accounts of spontaneous disappearances and transportations, which are said to be siddhis, or feats achieved after great amounts of spiritual study. The concept also appears in Jewish and Islamic texts, and the Bible does, in fact, contain a number of examples of what could be called teleportation. Of course, teleportation is a fixture in beloved modern epics like Star Trek, even though the phrase “beam me up, Scotty” was never actually said in an episode of the show. 

It’s true that the world is a miraculous and mysterious place. But sometimes, there are simply more logical explanations for seemingly unexplainable events, particularly those that culminate at beloved, if unpretentious and sometimes chaotic, breakfast food chains.

In an interview at the Waffle House where Phillips said he ended up, a land surveyor named Austin Spears reflected on how sometimes, there are more mundane explanations behind seemingly inexplicable phenomena.

“I can say I’ve been drunk and ended up in a Waffle House,” he told The New York Times. “Don’t know how I got there. But I was there.”

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