Chinese researchers teleported a photon from Earth to a satellite in orbit more than 500 kilometers above. While this isn’t quite in the realm of “beam me up, Scotty,” and we are not teleporting humans just yet, the scientific breakthrough is a significant step forward in developing quantum technology.
The team working on the Micius satellite, launched in 2016, managed to create a satellite-to-ground quantum network, which it utilized in the feat. The satellite is a very sensitive photon receiver, useful for testing such quantum techniques as entanglement, cryptography and teleportation.
How was the teleportation accomplished? Other quantum labs have managed to accomplish it in lab settings but the current teleportation of the photon established the longest distance over which entanglement has been ever measured. As MIT Technology Review explains, the somewhat amazing thing about entanglement is that when two quantum objects like photons are formed at the same place and time, they become linked, described by the same wave function and sharing a connection even when separated by giant distances. A measurement of one immediately influences the state of the other quantum object.
Quantum teleportation in this case means not physically moving the object but changing the information content in such a way that allows you to move…
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