Will we be able to 'teleport' matter?

Some of the world's strangest mysteries were up for discussion on the inaugural day of an international conference in Kolkata today. And the debate was in the hands of the world's top theoretical physicists gathering for the first time in India. Among those attending are legendary cosmologist Sir Roger Penrose, 2003 Nobel prize winner Anthony Legget, French experimental physicist Alain Aspect and famous cryptologist Giles Brassard.

Can matter be ''teleported'' — that is, shifted across space instantaneously as in some sci-fi flick? Can information pass from one person to another instantaneously without any physical communication? Can there be unbreakable codes for communication? These were some of the ideas and arguments that scientists discussed at the conference organized by the S N Bose Institute to commemorate 75 years of quantum entanglement.