16 June 2017
In "a major technical accomplishment" on quantum communication, Chinese scientists on 15 June reported a successful transmission of "entangled" photon pairs from space to the Earth in efforts to prove that a physical phenomenon once described by Albert Einstein as "spooky" exists at a large distance. A team of Chinese scientists have realized the satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs over 1,200 kilometers. The photon pairs were demonstrated to be still entangled after travelling long distances. This satellite-based technology opens up bright prospects for both practical quantum communications and fundamental quantum optics experiments at distances previously inaccessible on the ground, said Pan Jianwei, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The achievement was made based on the world' s first quantum satellite, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS), also dubbed Micius, launched by China on 16 August 2016.
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