Australian researchers have teleported a laser beam of light from one place to another in a split second.

The experiment is a long way from "beaming up" people the way Scotty did on Star Trek, but the scientists say it's an important step toward achieving quantum computing – shrinking computer components to the scale of a few atoms.

The researchers say the technology also has the potential to make encrypted information more secure and to increase the speed and quality of information transferred by fibre optics.

Teleportation could increase the speed of fibre optic communication

In the experiment, physicists at the Australian National University disassembled a laser light in one part of their laboratory and then reconstructed it a metre way.

Scientists around the world have been experimenting with teleporting since physicists at the California Institute of Technology and two European groups successfully transported a photon (a particle of energy) in 1998. The Australian-led team is the first to do it reliably.

Teleporting an object involves gathering detailed information about its subatomic particles and transmitting this information to recreate the object perfectly. The original is dissolved in the process.

Head researcher Dr. Ping Koy Lam said in a few years, they may be able to teleport a single atom. But teleporting something as complicated as a human will be difficult because we're made of billions of atoms.

The research by scientists from Australia, Germany, France, Denmark, China and New Zealand will be presented at an international conference on quantum electronics in Moscow next week.