Today’s internet is not the last frontier of communication. Physicists have created a new method of communication in which information can be sent on what’s called a “quantum internet,” a network of quantum devices delivering hyper-secure communications, ultra-accurate timekeeping, and dozens of other applications scientists can’t even begin to anticipate. To even try is like expecting Alan Turing to predict TikTok.
Scientists from QuTech — a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, which built the world's first quantum network last year — published the breakthrough in a paper in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The team successfully sent quantum information between two non-neighboring nodes (think: quantum routers) using a concept long-discussed by quantum physicists and Star Trek fans alike: teleportation.
“Teleportation is like what you know from science fiction,” the paper’s co-author, Ronald Hanson, tells Inverse. Hanson is an experimental physicist, co-founder of QuTech, and a Distinguished Professor at Delft University of Technology. “The information disappears on my side and appears on your side, but it doesn’t travel the space between us…It’s an extremely powerful method for sending information.”
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