Google’s secretive Google X laboratory is where some of the company’s brightest minds go to work so-called “moonshot” projects such as Google Glass and self-driving cars. A new Businessweek profile on Google X makes it clear that there are limits to what the lab will put resources into researching, however. For example, Businessweek reveals that Google engineers gave serious thought to starting a research project on teleportation but ultimately decided to nix it “in part because any unique item that you would want to teleport… would have to be completely destroyed before it could be reconstituted on the other end.” But just because Google has for now given up on studying teleportation that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other bizarre projects in the works. Among other things, Businessweek says that Google is pondering research on levitation and “inflatable robots” and wind-powered aerial drones.

Prior to joining BGR as News Editor, Brad Reed spent five years covering the wireless industry for Network World. His first smartphone was a BlackBerry but he has since become a loyal Android user.