You’ve seen Teleportation in sci-fi flicks and in several cartoons. Most of us imagine that moving from one place to another immediately, regardless how distant the two points are can never be possible and it can’t become real. But you will get shocked after knowing that teleportation is now really possible.
China announced that they had made a breakthrough in this regard on 10th July 2017. Finally they had succeeded in “teleporting” a photon (a tiny element found in an atom) to Earth’s orbit and back by teleportation.
It was possible due to the phenomenon called ‘quantum entanglement’. The photon effectively traveled 310 miles which were a great achievement.
This isn’t the earliest time that the Chinese had succeeded in beaming things to and fro. In 2010, a squad based in Shanghai, China had made the record of teleporting the photon for up to 60 miles. But this moment in time they broke all the records.
What does mean by quantum entanglement?
Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon that takes place when two quantum objects, such as photons, arrive in life at the same time and place, giving them a tangled life and individuality.
Hypothetically, this entanglement has no boundary on the distance it works at. This is how the changes made on single photon are directly proportional to the changes on the other photon even if both objects are accessible and living in different galaxies. The time when the second photon takes the identity of the initial photon then fundamentally, teleportation has occurred.
How was it done?
A quantum satellite is used in this process which was named after an old Chinese philosopher, Mencius. It was released into the Sun-synchronous orbit by a team of Chinese scientists a previous year. Micius has the ability to spot the quantum status of a single-photon which has extremely advanced photon recipient.
This allowed the group to verify that the teleportation has occurred. Entangled pairs of photons were formed and one of them was then beamed up to the satellite from a position of high-altitude located in Tibet.
Following that, Chinese scientists examined the photon on the earth and contrasted it to its pair in the orbit to confirm that teleportation had occurred.
Why was it a top accomplishment this time?
It is an achievement because the space traveled by the photon was about 5 times the distance it traveled the last time. Distance is not the merely progress this time round. It is the primary object to be ever teleported into space. The photon not simply traveled to space but also journey back to ground making it a heroic triumph and proving that “quantum entanglement” is achievable.
The achievement is amazing. It opens innovative paths for unhackable internet which can be put up on quantum communications. A physicist Nicolas Gisin, at the University of Geneva, said,
“This exhibits that worldwide quantum communication is achievable and will be accomplished in the near future.”
