Last calendar month , Chinese investigator showed   thatquantum communicationbetween Earth and place is potential , and now they have used the tech to post a photon to infinite using quantum teleportation .

The experiment was conducted between Micius ( the Taiwanese quantum orbiter ) and a ground post . The researchers were able to transfer the strange quantum state from one photon here on Earth to another one in blank .

However ,   this quantum teleportation to   space is   not likeStar Trek . Reality   is a lot less glamorous . To teleport all the properties of a particle   –   its quantum state – some drastic measures are expect .

It ’s not possible to know a quantum land perfectly and it ’s not potential to re-create it . However ,   if you ’re willing to destroy the particle , you may easily transfer the quantum state on another speck . The new particle will , for all design and intention , be tantamount to the quondam corpuscle .

Quantum teleportation is a crucial demand to create a quantum Internet that allows quantum calculator to transmit between themselves . The overuse of the Son quantum in the previous sentence is not to make it sound complex . Quantum computersare computer that can use the laws of quantum mechanics to perform calculations faster than even the best supercomputer we can build – and at   a fraction of the size of it .

There are still many issues to clear to make quantum computing machine viable , but this research goes a farseeing way in make that long - distance quantum communicating is possible . The satellite was 1,400 kilometers ( 870 mile ) by from the ground station .

“ recollective - distance teleportation has been agnise as a key constituent in protocol such as big - scale quantum networks and distributed quantum reckoning , ” the research squad write in thepaper , which is yet to be peer - review .   “ However , the previous teleportation experimentation between distant locations were bound to a aloofness on the order of 100 kilometers , due to photon loss in optical fibers or terrestrial free - blank space communication channel . ”

Quantum communicating works with the precept of entanglement , where two corpuscle can influence each other instantaneously no matter the distance . This might at first seems a violation of particular Einstein’s theory of relativity since selective information can not journey at the speed of light , but it is n’t . If you have entangled particles , their quantum state is shared . It does n’t make sense ( at least in quantum mechanics ) to consider them as single entity .

Although web is very useful ( and somewhat principal - scrape ) , it is also very fragile . you may break the quantum state easily and then the particles go back to being individual . This is why it has been difficult to send these quantum states for more than 100 kilometers ( 62 miles ) over breeze or fiber eye .

As this enquiry shows , to produce a truly global net for quantum communication , we will need quantum satellites .