Quantum Telecommunication, Not Teleportation

Can journalists ever get anything right? NASA scientists achieve long-distance quantum teleportation | Daily Mail Online

Click bait at its finest. Though I suppose NASA scientists have been known to go overboard with naming things in the past.

The qubits [quantum bits] were transferred faster than the speed of light over a distance of 27 miles, laying the foundations for a quantum internet service, which could one day revolutionise computing.

Quantum entanglement is what Einstein called "spooky action, at a distance."

Entanglement is a phenomenon whereby two particles are linked in such a way that information shared with one is shared with the other at exactly the same time.

Quantum entanglement is one of those things that you can demonstrate, without having any understanding of the mechanisms involved. Two entangeled particles can be separated by a great distance and yet when you impact one of them, the other reacts instantaneously. At least to the limits of our measurment capabilities. Which are surprisingly good.

The reason that they say such a network would be unhackable is because whatever mechanism it is that transfers the information from one entangled particle to the other, that information does not travel through the universe in a way that electrical signals do, or that photons do. Given the various side-channel attacks on commputing equipment, you might be able to snoop on the messages at the point-of-origin or at the destination.

And really, that isn't how a lot of hacking takes place anyway.

Still, what it will mean, if we can get it work in the long run, it to be able to communicate over very long distances. It doesn't matter to the entangled particles if they are separated by 27 miles, or 27 light-years, at least not according to my understanding.