Page 34 - All About Space 68 - 2017 UK

Focus on

PARTICLES

TELEPORTED

INTO SPACE

Scientists in China have teleported photons from

Earth's surface and into orbit for the first time

The quantum era has begun, as Chinese scientists the satellite, and a third entangled photon was
have teleported a single object from Earth to space – introduced on the ground. When this third photon
onto a satellite roughly 500 kilometres (310.6 miles) interacted with one of the itinerant photons, their
away – for the very first time. This scientific triumph identities were revealed, thus defining the spin of
occurred when scientists transported a photon from the final photon in orbit. So essentially, as both
their observatory ground station in Ngari, Tibet to the third entangled photon on the ground and the
their satellite directly overhead, named Micius. photon in orbit adopt opposite spins to the particle
The satellite, named after an ancient Chinese left behind, they are clones of one another, meaning
philosopher and scientist, is a highly sensitive, state- that the third photon has effectively teleported to
of-the-art photon receiver. It is currently in an orbit another place instantly.
that causes it to pass over the same exact position at
Ngari frequently. So, when it reached this position, “ Space-scale
the scientists at the highest possible altitude in
Ngari fired millions of photons at the satellite’s teleportation can
position over more than 32 days. The results showed
that there were 911 cases of teleportation, bringing a be realised, and is
joyous step forward in practical quantum physics.
“This palpably indicates that the field isn’t expected to play
limited to scientists sitting in labs thinking about
weird things,” says Ian Walmsley, Hooke professor a key role in the
of experimental physics at Oxford University.
“Quantum phenomena actually have a future of distributed
utility, and can really deliver some significant
new technologies.” quantum internet”
Quantum teleportation is an interesting aspect
of physics, but it’s also an extremely confusing
one. To understand the physics of such a Even with this recent feat, it’s still not possible
perplexing scenario, the term ‘entanglement’ must to 'beam anyone up to Scotty' just yet, but the
be understood first. Entanglement is a physical scientists working on this project do hope to utilise
phenomenon which occurs when two quantum this as a more efficient, and safe, data transfer
objects, in this case, photons, are separated as system. “Space-scale teleportation can be realised, 2. Making the
they are emitted from a source and remain in and is expected to play a key role in the future of journey to Micius
superposition – a spooky property that means distributed quantum internet,” say the scientists While one photon
they’re occupying every possible spin state at once. from the University of Science and Technology of stays on Earth, the
We can think of this as both entangled particles China, led by Prof. Chao-Yang Lu. other travels 500 km,
being ‘undefined’, but once one particle adopts a This quantum internet network would have staying in its undefined
quantum state.
spin, the other, no matter the distance between many security advantages, as information could
them, will instantly adopt the opposite spin. be encoded within the entangled photons, and
To demonstrate this bizarre quantum relationship, teleported instantaneously. This would make an
the research team sent one of the entangled impossible task for eavesdroppers and hackers to get
particles vast distances in superposition to a hold of the information.

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