A team of Chinese researchers has reported the first successful ‘quantum teleportation’ to space. Using the Micius satellite, launched in August 2016 specifically to perform such cutting-edge quantum experiments, the scientists used pairs of entangled particles to recreate exactly the properties of a photon on Earth in a photon in orbit.
Ji-Gang Ren, of the University of Science and Technology of China, and colleagues write that they have accomplished “the first quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low Earth orbit satellite—through an up-link channel – with a distance up to 1,400 km”.
Though this feat is called quantum teleportation, no actual teleportation of objects occurs. It’s a way of transmitting information about a particle; while it sounds exotic, it is routinely used in laboratories on Earth.
Entanglement is a property of particles created at the same time which exist in a shared state, such that actions affecting one particle also affect the other. This holds even when the particles are separated by a great distance.
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