Quantum Teleportation Can Go as Far as the Boundary of Space

Researchers set a new 62-mile quantum entanglement record.

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Let's get this out of the way now: Quantum teleportation will not bring us one step closer to the Star Trek transporter. But it will get you as far as the boundary of space now. Sort of.

The officially defined boundary of space is about 100 km up, or 62 miles. That just so happens to be the new record set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You just might need to hoist up 62 miles of fiber optic cables to the boundary to accomplish it. It's not the record for the farther quantum teleportation ever achieved—one method reached 89 miles. But the previous record for fiber optics was just 15 miles, set by NASA.

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Here's how quantum teleportation actually works, and it's a little less sexy than science fiction. Essentially, a photon at either of two receivers needs to be in the same quantum state—this means that you need two photons to spin in the right direction. If you entangle them, it causes one photon to move exactly like the other photon, and if you change one, the other changes automatically, even if they are separated by distance. Thus, if you can entangle the photons correctly, they act like an exact copy of one another.

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Teleportation involves sending the entanglement state at the speed of light. Here, the particles are constrained by two things: speed of transmission across a cable and the speed of light itself. Optical fiber can permit lightning-fast data transfer, but suffers from the potential for the signal weakening at the other end. 

The most important use for quantum teleportation (or entanglement) is in computing. There's the possibility of light-speed fast computing power to handle large volumes of data by breaking free of binary logic circuits (ones and zeroes) and into a number of potential states. But there's also ultra-encrypted information, in which entanglement can be used as a form of super-secure end-to-end encryption. 

The entangled particles, working across data transmission lines, could simply rearrange a message on the other side by entangling photons, atoms, or individual particles in way that can't be replicated by non-entangled particles. But to make an efficient system, the strength of the signal must be roughly the same at either end. That's why, while 62 miles may not sound like much, it is a long, long way for a relatively lossless transmission.

To beef up quantum teleportation, it would need to go all around the world. We're not there yet. But maybe some day, we can get to the moon and back losslessly, entangling across 238,000 miles while also eliminating the need optical cables altogether. 

Source: Motherboard

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