"The US govt. was actually experimenting with teleportation and time travel back in the 50s and 60s. They got a whole destroyer class ship to disappear but when it came back it was all phucked up. Some of the crew didn\'t come back and others were actually fused with the ship itself." - Gohan
Actually, they weren\'t experimenting with Teleportation at all, but rather stealth technology. After the advent of Radar durring WWII, America knew that they had to find something to cloak their planes and battleships from enemy detetion. The story goes, that American and immigrant German scientists created a device that could bend light and sound around the "cloaked" object rendering it invisible to both the eye and to Radar. However this theory, in practice, had wildly unpredictable results... as Gohan already pointed out. It was called the Philidelphia Experiment and it\'s a technomyth.
Technomyths are the modern day equivilent to Hercules, Dragons, and Leprichauns. The reasoning goes, since we\'ve lost all the old myths to scienence.. we use science to create new myths. Aliens in Area 51, BigFoot, Philidelphia Experiment, a carberator that can get 100 miles to the gallon.. they all fall under the real of Technomyths.
Also, Vivi.. like Aaron and everyone else said.. "StarTrek" teleportation is a long ways off. The computers of the 80\'s were so slow and underpowered, that there\'s no way even the supercomputers of the day could manage to even scratch the surface of the power needed to manage teleportation. However, Tricorders ARE a reality. I saw them on the Discovery channel. They\'re very primitive right now, and can only detect the basic proximity and matter properties of objects in a room adjecent to one yer using the device in. I.E., you could tell that there was a large metal object about the size of a coffee table sitting infront of another object made out of several different materals. (couch).. but it was nowhere near as accurate or powerful enough to be of any use right now. A couple of years of research and upgrades as well as the incorperation of new discoveries however.... well we\'ll see.