WASHINGTON: A group of Chinese
scientists has successfully achieved teleportation up to 16km, using quantum
entanglement of photons.
The feat could lead to faster and smaller
quantum-based computers and unbreakable, encrypted communication across the
world.
"This is the longest reported distance over which photonic
teleportation has been achieved to date, more than 20 times longer than the
previous implementation," Cheng-Zhi Peng, one of the co-authors of the study and
a scientist at University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua
University in Beijing, said.
In science fiction, teleportation
usually describes the transfer of matter from one point to another, more or less
instantaneously — a spooky aspect of quantum
mechanics.
According to the theory, bits of light and matter can
become entangled with one another and anything that happens to one particle will
happen to the other, regardless of the distance or intervening matter. What the
Chinese scientists managed to do was transmit change of state information from
photon to photon over a distance of 16km. Such a distance is far enough to start
thinking about a next-generation satellite communications network based on
quantum teleportation, said Peng.
A teleported phone call, although
no faster than a regular one, would be impenetrable and eavesdropping on a
teleported telephone call would be impossible. The research could also
dramatically speed up computing power.
Practical ground-to-satellite
teleportation could be in place in as little as two years, the researchers
said.
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