Quantum Teleportation Is Real–But Won’t Send Humans One Place to Another

(PopularScience) Quantum teleportation is essentially a super-secure data transfer. In 2017, physicists beamed photons from Tibet to a satellite passing more than 300 miles overhead. The the process probably won’t ever send human bodies from one place to another.
Transfers could become common in the next decade, but this process won’t translate well into human transport: One person contains around 1028 atoms. Copying all of that data would require breaking down the body to the atomic level, which would almost certainly prove fatal. And then you’d have to perfectly reconstruct it from scratch out of particles waiting at the far end of the journey.
Perhaps it’s best to leave teleportation—and all of its philosophical implications—to ­science-fiction stories, and focus on finding less deadly modes of futuristic travel.