Professor Michio Kaku of City University, New York, maintains the technology to teleport a living person to another part of the Earth or even space could be available within decades - or at least by the next century.
Prof Kaku, known as Mr Parallel Universe for his futuristic claims, which also include the possibility of real time travel and invisibility, has studied various sci-fi technologies deemed impossible and concluded some will eventually happen.
He said: "A lot of things you see on Star Trek will in fact be possible - like the teleporter.
"You know the expression beam me up Scotty, we used to laugh at it. We physicists used to laugh when someone talked about teleportation and invisabilty, something like that, but we don't laugh anymore we realised we were wrong on this one.
"Quantum teleportation already exists. In fact, we took a film crew and went to the University of Maryland and actually filmed an atom being teleported. It zapped across the room from one chamber to another.
"So at an atomic level we do it already. It's called quantum entanglement."
This is a process that allows connections (like an umbilical chord) to be formed between atoms and their information transmitted between others further away.
He said: "I think within a decade we will teleport the first molecule."
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