Beam Me Up, Scotty: Scientists Theorize Star Trek-Like Teleportation
Scientists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Gdansk, and the University College London say they have developed a new protocol for more efficient and complex teleportation.
Teleportation, a term that describes the instant transport of across space and distance, or, more narrowly, the transport of quantum information at the speed of light, has been known in theory at least since 1993 and is known today to exist as a feature in our universe. It can even be replicated as Chinese researchers claimed to have teleported photons over a distance of 88 miles last year, but our technology is limited to teleporting information to single atoms and anything more complex is still science fiction.
However, new project work, albeit completely theoretical in nature, describes a generalized form of teleportation in quantum physics, which foresees gateways of teleportation that support more than just one atom. The basic understanding of teleportation considers an entangled pair of quantum particles that always retain synchronized information, no matter how great the physical distance between them.
"Previous teleportation protocols, have fallen into one of two camps, those that could only send scrambled information requiring correction by the receiver, or more recently, port-based teleportation that doesn't require a correction, but needed an impractical amount of entanglement – each object sent would destroy the entangled state," the researchers said. In their theory, however, the entangled state can be recycled in a way so that the gateway between particles supports the teleportation of multiple objects. Their protocol suggests that quantum particles can be teleported simultaneously, but the entangled state degrades proportionally to the amount of quantum particles sent.
Sergii Strelchuk from the University of Cambridge said that "entanglement can be thought of as the fuel, which powers teleportation." Their new protocol is considered to be "more fuel efficient" and "able to use entanglement thriftily while eliminating the need for error correction".
Space travel in an instant is still a dream far away. But it surely is fascinating to learn about research that may enable teleportation in the future.

ya thats what Sheldon said
So they say. Hopefully they come out with the technology to transfer consciousness before they ever start human trials!
Exactly. You are destroyed and (hopefully) reproduced at your destination . . . not certain how much I like the idea.
I'm with Bones on this one--"hav[ing] my atoms scattered back and forth through space."
Thats what i was thinking 1 day turn into 15 minute shipping
Mmm, that would make so many people in the transporation business lose their jobs.
you could start a new Funeral Business.
Yeah you would be destroyed and then a perfect imposter would replace you at the other end. The imposter would be so perfect that even your friends and family wouldn't realise something was wrong. Actually they would be so perfect that even the imposter themselves would not realise that they are just an imposter. Just like moving a computer file doesn't actually move it but just copies and deletes the original. Nobody would realise that something was horribly wrong all along until one day mistakenly the original person is not deleted and then we end up with 2 of you both swearing to be the real original person.
This applies to mind uploading as well. So if you want to be near immortal you're going to have to count on Dr. Aubrey de Grey.
Think of this way, if your original body had cancer and other unwelcome conditions, your new body by going through the teleportaion machine, atom by atom deleting the unwanted stuff by a quantum computer, is rebuilt with a cancer/disease and maybe even mentally unstable free body. Then again, you might become a super hero with infrared vision with deadly mucus spiting abilities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_IWosrJVMU
As long as they are your exact atoms being transfered I don't see a problem with it. If it however simply breaks you down and then makes a copy elsewhere that would be truly killing you and just making a clone. In-fact the transporters on Star Trek are of the latter as in NG there was a episode where two Riker's were formed by transportation, obviously impossible if it was truly transporting someone and only possible by rebuilding. So every time you watch them teleport in Star Trek you are watching them die.