Teleportation is the movement of objects or elementary particles from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, without traveling through space.
With present techniques, "exact" quantum teleportation is possible only with photons and atoms. Rincon, Paul. "blank">Teleportation breakthrough made." _BBC News. June 16, 2004. Retrieved on October 4, 2006. "Inexact" teleportation (where quantum states are not preserved), is possible by encoding information about an object, transmitting the information to another place, such as by radio or an electric signal, and creating a copy of the original object in the new location. Teleportation has also been proposed to explain various anomalous phenomena, and the concept has been widely used in science fiction.
Similar is apport, an earlier word used to describe what today might be called teleportation; and bilocation, when something or someone described as being a magician is said to be able to occupy two places simultaneously. The word "teletransportation" (which simply expands Charles Fort's abbreviated term) was first employed by Derek Parfit as part of a thought exercise on identity.
