14 DAY TRIAL // Brainiacs have been dabbling in teleportation for years now. The bad news - especially for sci-fi enthusiasts - is they're not trying to beam up people or at least lab rats to Mars or even from one continent to another.
What they're poking around is quantum teleportation. In a nutshell, they're working on ways to transfer quantum information. What this means is that what they're trying to teleport is not objects per se, but rather the properties of objects.
Here's a run-through of how quantum teleportation works: imagine you own a grey hamster and somebody else owns a black one. Somehow, without getting anywhere near you, this other person makes your hamster black too.
What they essentially did was teleport one of the properties of their pet - the color - to your rodent. OK, so this is a very simplified account, but this kind of sums up what scientists are trying to do with quantum teleportation.
The difference is they're not playing around with furry animals. Rather, they're toying with elementary particles like photons or maybe atoms.
Quantum teleportation has come a long way in recent years
It was back in last year's September that a team of researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland announced that they had succeeded in teleporting the quantum state of a photon over a distance of 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) and set a new record.
Now, a study published in the science journal Optica this September 22 describes an even more impressive feat. Not to prolong the suspense, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology claim to have done the same, albeit over 100 kilometers (62 miles).
The quantum information that was transferred via optical fiber was the specific time slot of a photon in a sequence. This was achieved relying on what scientists call quantum entanglement, i.e. having two particles inextricably linked and responding to outside influences like joined twins.
“The state of one is duplicated in the state of the other,” the research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology explains the behavior of particles in quantum entanglement.
Because they are inextricably linked and respond to influences like twins, entangled particles can be used to instantly transmit information from one place to another. Well, better said, this information isn't so much transmitted as it is recreated, scientists explain.
Translating the properties of one particle to another that it is entangled with over the largest possible distance is a major drive in the scientific community today. Having done so over 100 kilometers (62 miles), the National Institute of Standards and Technology brainiacs are now the record holders.
They're not experimenting with teleportation just for kicks
When transferring quantum information to a record distance via optical fiber, the National Institute of Standards and Technology research team confirmed that quantum communication is possible over long distance in fiber.
The scientists expect the achievement to pave the way for the development of a so-called quantum Internet that would allow messages to be sent more securely.
“Teleportation is useful in both quantum communications and quantum computing, which offer prospects for novel capabilities such as unbreakable encryption and advanced code-breaking, respectively,” they say.
