How to Teleport to Someone in Real Life: Is It Possible?

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Find out how human teleportation could work & what's holding us back

Co-authored by Elaine Heredia, BA

Last Updated: March 4, 2026 Fact Checked

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What's Currently Possible

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Human Teleportation Theories

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Challenges

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Looking to the Future

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Wouldn't it be wonderful if you never had to commute to work or school again? What if you could just talk into your phone and say, "Beam me up, Scotty!" like Captain Kirk on Star Trek, and immediately go to another location? That's the power of teleportation—if the technology to do it actually existed. Or does it? Keep reading to learn the science behind real-life teleportation, how human teleportation would work, and the physics challenges scientists face.

How do you teleport in real life?

Humans can't teleport. However, scientists can teleport information from one photon to another, regardless of where the photons are. They can do this with entanglement, which is when certain particles stay connected no matter where they are in the universe. If one photon receives data, the other one will, too.

Section 1 of 4:

The Science Behind Real-Life Teleportation

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Scientists can currently teleport information using photon entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum physics concept that's been proven to work in real life. Basically, it says that two or more particles (like photons, which are particles of light) with the same origin, and which were once connected, will always be connected to each other, no matter how far apart in the universe they are. This means that if something happens to one particle, the other particle will experience the effects, as well.^{[1]
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- By that logic, if you feed information to one photon, its entangled photon will receive the same information, no matter where it is, and with nothing physical connecting them. That's literally teleportation—and researchers have proved that it works!^{[2]
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The technology to teleport like the characters in Star Trek doesn't exist (yet!). To move a human from one location to another in the span of a few seconds, that human's matter would have to be broken down into particles. Those particles would then have to be sent to the other location and rematerialized, or remade, into the person. The concept is theoretical at best, and it's unclear if it will ever become a reality.

Section 2 of 4:

How Human Teleportation Would Work

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Dematerialization is essentially the breakdown of a person or thing's matter (i.e., the stuff they're made out of) into their individual atoms.^{[3]
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This would allow the information about the human being teleported to pass through the entangled particles at the starting point to the entangled particles at the destination.^{[4]
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Then, you'd change the entangled particles at the destination. By changing the state of the entangled particles at the destination, you would "recreate" the human in the other location.^{[5]
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- The rematerialized human would essentially be a new version of the original person. That's because they've literally been remade according to the blueprints the entangled particles received.
- This is basically how the transporter in Star Trek works. Captain Kirk can be on any planet, contact Scotty aboard The Enterprise, and say, "Beam me up." Then Scotty can turn on the teleporter, and Kirk will be dematerialized, teleported from the planet, and rematerialized on the ship in seconds.

Section 3 of 4:

Physics Challenges to Human Teleportation

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Unlike the advanced humans in the science fiction world of Star Trek, we don't currently possess the technology to dematerialize a human (or anything physical) and then rematerialize them somewhere else. The only way to dematerialize a person is to blow them up with a nuclear bomb, which would kill them. There would be nothing left to teleport.
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It's also not possible to remake a human once they're dematerialized. The other big problem with teleporting humans is how to remake the human once the entangled particles at the destination receive the information about them. That's another type of technology we simply don't have yet. In fact, probably won't ever have it. That's because it would completely break the laws of physics, specifically the law that energy can only be transferred from one form to another, not destroyed or created.^{[6]
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- "It's me, hi, I'm the same mass of particles, it's me." If dematerialization for teleportation were possible, it would pose a philosophical problem. Are you the same person after you teleport, or just a copy? Is the original version of you—meaning, the real you from birth—destroyed after dematerializing, even if you have the same thoughts, feelings, and appearance after you're rematerialized?
  - For many people, not knowing if you're still the real you after being dematerialized and then rematerialized is a scary thought!

Section 4 of 4:

Could human teleportation be possible in the future?

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Physicists are leaving no stone unturned in their quest to find a way to teleport. While dematerializing may not be in our immediate future, there are other avenues worth exploring. One of them is quantum wormholes in spacetime that could, hypothetically, connect two different geographical locations.^{[7]
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Research source} And who knows what new, revolutionary discoveries will happen in the next 5, 10, or 50 years!