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Not long ago, in the early 1990s, scientists only speculated that teleportation using quantum physics could be possible.

Since then, the process has become a standard operation in quantum optics labs around the world. In fact, just last year, two teams conducted the world's first quantum teleportation outside a laboratory.

Now, researchers in China have taken the process a few steps further: They successfully teleported a photon from Earth to a satellite orbiting more than 311 miles away.

The satellite, called Micius, is a highly sensitive photo receiver capable of detecting the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. Micius was launched to allow scientists to test various technological building blocks for quantum feats including entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation.

This teleportation feat was announced as one of the first results of these experiments. The group not only teleported the first object from the ground to orbit but also created the first satellite-to-ground quantum network, smashing the record for the longest distance for which entanglement has been measured.

"Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation," the Chinese team told MIT Technology Review. "Previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometers, due to photon loss in optical fibers or terrestrial free-space channels."

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Defining teleportation

What comes to mind when you think of teleportation?

Your brain might conjure images of Scotty beaming up the Enterprise crew in "Star Trek," but it's actually quite a different process than sci-fi films present.

Quantum teleportation relies on quantum entanglement — a situation in which one set of quantum objects (such as photons) form at the same instant and point in space. In this way, they share the same existence. This shared existence continues even when the photons are separated — meaning a measurement on one immediately influences the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.

This link can be used to transmit quantum information by "downloading" the information associated with one photon over an entangled link to another photon. This second photon takes on the identity of the first.

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