Teleportation News: Has There Been a Breakthrough With Quantum Communication?

For years, teleportation has been just one of the many things that only exist in science fiction. However, this hasn't stopped scientists from trying to recreate the phenomenon and now they have achieved a major breakthrough.

Chinese scientists, for the first time, successfully transmitted entangled photons underwater. Theoretically, particles of light that are sent down can maintain their link across any distance which has the potential to drastically change secure communications.

The process is known as "quantum communication" in which the scientists at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China transmitted information across a 3.3-meter tank of water. The researchers behind the test also said that they could eventually increase the distance to more than half a mile.

"Our results confirm the feasibility of a seawater quantum channel, representing the first step towards underwater quantum communication," researchers wrote in The Optical Society journal.

In recent months, Chinese scientists have been using the technology to transmit information to satellites over a distance of more than 745 miles. This latest breakthrough is the first step in using lasers to send unhackable internet data across the world's oceans.

This has a huge impact on secure communication as it makes interception nearly impossible. This means that a vessel at sea can transmit information to another without the risk of it falling into the wrong hands.

While this huge breakthrough is certainly far from what the average person thinks of teleportation, keep in mind that this is essentially doing the impossible. To transmit something from one point to another as it is exactly was the stuff of fiction only a few years ago — but now, it is all too real.

The world of quantum physics is notoriously complex; so much so that even the world's top physicists struggle to grasp it. To be able to successfully do something as outlandish as teleportation just shows how humanity has advanced in terms of science.