QuantumTeleportation Approaches Sci-Fi Level

Crewmembers aboard the starship Enterprise on the iconic TV series "Star Trek" could "beam up" from planets to starships, making travel between great distances look easy. While these capabilities are clearly fictional, researchers have now performed "quantum teleportation" of laser pulses over several miles within two city networks of fiber optics.

Although the method described in the research will not replace city subways or buses with transporter booths, it could help lead to hack-proof telecommunications networks, as well as a "quantum internet" to help extraordinarily powerful quantum computers talk to one another.

Teleporting an object from one point in the universe to another without it moving through the space in between may sound like science fiction, but quantum physicists have actually been experimenting with quantum teleportation since 1998. The current distance record for quantum teleportation — a feat announced in 2012 — is about 89 miles (143 kilometers), between the two Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife, off the northwest coast of Africa.