Quantum Networking and Teleportation

In 2022, a team of scientists in China “teleported” qubits from a station on Earth to an Earth-orbiting satellite several hundred miles away. After putting each qubit in a superposition state, they used entanglement to “beam” the qubits’ states to a laboratory on the satellite. In the end, the original Earthly qubits had been measured and forced into state |0⟩ or |1⟩, but the satellite’s qubits were in the same superposition states that the team had prepared on Earth. In effect, the state of affairs on Earth had been moved to the lab on the satellite.

A century from now, we may be teleporting human beings. Alice disappears here on Earth and suddenly appears alongside Bob on an orbiting satellite. “Where am I?” asks Alice. “How did I get here?” And with a wry smile, Bob says, “It’s nice to meet you in person after our long-distance relationship in...