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China and Austria launched an experimental quantum satellite which will try to teleport information to the Earth.
China launched a quantum satellite that may be able to teleport data by crossing the barriers of space and time. The instruments had been developed together with the Austrian Academy of Science.
The device will create a secure quantum communication link back to Earth. Another feature is its capacity to conduct quantum experiments on highly disputed properties of matter, such as entanglement.
The equipment was launched from the Gobi desert, and the satellite is designed to teleport information through distances of over 746 miles away.
The classical physics discovered by Isaac Newton had been first challenged by the discovery of electricity, which then led to the invention of the computer.
However, Max Planck made another assumption that shattered the world of physics when his light experiments showed that microscopic particles do not behave like regular matter. The most famous applications of the theory are nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
The scientists have already tried to make connections between the classical laws of physics and the quantum theory. One example is the transistors from a silicon chip that rely on both types of approach.
The quantum teleportation is based on the properties of a particle of being in two states at the same time, both on and off, in a superposition that ends at the moment when its state is measured by an observer.
A second theoretical basis for quantum teleportation is the quantum entanglement, a situation when two particles form a superposition at the same time, having correlated physical properties. This means that when a particle is up, the other is down, and vice versa.
The rules of entanglement remain the same no matter what the distance between the two particles may be, and the correlation is instantaneous.
Light has a speed limit, and usually the information cannot travel faster than the light. However, the use of quantum teleportation might make data transfer to occur instantaneously.
Physicists already managed to exchange information at a great distance by using quantum teleportation, such as sending data through the 143 km between two places from the Canary Islands.
However, testing at large distances needs to be done out from space, and the Chinese satellite plans to set up a communication between the low Earth’s orbit and two stations back on the ground.
A similar project was designed in the US in 2014, but the rocket carrying the small satellite exploded before reaching the International Space Station.
Another interesting feature of the entanglement is the fact that the two particles can use a single code to encrypt the message, which would make the information completely secure. By using this type of coding, the interfering of a third party would be obstructed by the law of quantum physics that says the observer changes the state of a particle by the simple fact of measuring it while alerting the two original communicators.
The researchers are confident that the results of these experiments will be ultimately shared with the scientific community, and they will not be used to gain technological dominance.
Image Source: Pixabay
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