Chinese Scientists Achieve Data Transfer via Underwater Teleportation

A Shanghai-based team of researchers has published new research claiming that they’ve teleported particles through seawater as a method of creating secure communication.

The researchers from Jiao Tong University recently published a paper containing their studies, detailing a method for sending entangled light particles to another location. According to the study, the team was able to transmit the particles in three meters of seawater via quantum entanglement. While quantum communication is feasible over fiber networks or through the air, transmitting data via quantum channels has never been done in seawater.

The applications of the specific method seem to focus on communication. Quantum-based communication is not only unhackable, but carries a wide range of other benefits over traditional solutions. In context, underwater communication would not only be important for deep sea research, but for all modern communication systems (our globe is mostly water, of course). That includes the internet.

Quantum entanglement is as close as we currently are to teleportation. Of course, it’s an incredibly complicated phenomenon, but basically, occurs when two particles are “entangled” by shooting a laser through crystal optics. This means that they are inextricably connected, and have a shared existence or identity, even if they are in two completely different places.

The Jiao Tong study is not the only quantum breakthrough in recent months, either. In July, Chinese scientists reached another breakthrough in quantum entanglement. That team was reportedly able to send a light particle to a satellite in orbit, more than 310 miles away. It marked the first time that scientists anywhere were able to teleport an object from Earth into space.

But quantum research stretches far beyond secure communications. In fact, many experts think that quantum networking is the future of computing and technology, and will eventually change the world. At the very least, the tech will allow for a range of possibilities that we’re only now beginning to understand.