Breakthrough: Quantum Teleportation, Every Single Time

Humanity may not be able to beam someone to and from a planet's surface like in Star Trek, but according to a new report in Nature Physics, we've just figured out how to perform quantum teleportation reliably - which is something that, dramatically, the crew of the Enterprise never seems to be capable of.

Researchers working at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have successfully teleported information between two clouds of gas atoms using a laser. Previously, they've succeeded at teleporting information between light and gas atoms. In fact, they've been doing that at the Niels Bohr Institute since 2006. But this is teleportation between two physical materials. And the kicker is that they've been able to do it successfully - every single time they try.

The experiments were conducted in the basement lab of the institute, where researchers placed two paraffin-coated glass containers about one and a half feet apart, each filled with a cloud of billions of caesium gas atoms. The containers were not connected to each other in any way, save for the laser that was sent through the containers.

When the light is sent through the first glass container, quantum entanglement takes place between the light and the gas, meaning that the states of the quantum particles in the light and gas become synchronized. The atoms react "like magnetic needles," according to the Niels Bohr Institute's release, or like bits in a computer that register either a 1 or 0. The atoms take up a state of either up or down direction: the quantum information that will be teleported.

The gas emits photons containing the quantum information, and as the light goes on to the second glass container, the quantum information is read and registered by a detector. The signal can be sent back to the first container and the direction of the atoms' electrons are adjusted again: there and back, using teleportation. Every time.

"It is a very important step for quantum information research to have achieved such stable results that every attempt will succeed," said Eugene Polzik, the head of the research center Quantop at the Niels Bohr Institute.

But don't expect a 26^th century lifestyle yet. The experiments were only conducted in a lab, and only teleported information. However, the lab was at room temperature, and the objects at either end of the teleportation were physical objects, so in the immediate future, this could be another step towards reliable quantum computing.