![\"Scientists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/teleportation-6dbe.gif\")
\n\t\tIt\u2019s not quite \u2018Star Trek\u2019, one of the lead authors told Metro (Picture: Getty\/Metro)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tIt\u2019s not quite \u2018Star Trek\u2019, one of the lead authors told Metro (Picture: Getty\/Metro)<\/p>\n
With just a push of a button, you soon might be able to teleport from your home to the office (or the local pub). <\/p>\n
Well, you could do that if you were a piece of information being whizzed from one computer to another<\/a> two metres away rather than a human.<\/p>\n Researchers in Oxford<\/a> have managed to \u2018teleport\u2019 information without sending a traditional physical signal.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t mean there are actually experiments at the uni where students are being sent from lab to lecture without ever moving.<\/p>\n \t\t Instead, the teleportation of data shows that we could build an exponentially powerful computer<\/a> long thought to be the stuff of science fiction.<\/p>\n In the study, published in the journal Nature<\/a>, scientists linked up two separate processors to form a single quantum computer.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tWhat is a quantam computer?\t\t\t<\/p>\n A quantum computer isn\u2019t your average laptop. <\/p>\n Computers \u2013 like the one you might be using to read this \u2013 work by processing \u2018bits\u2019 of information that are either ones or zeroes. <\/p>\n A quantum computer, however, uses bits that are ones and zeroes simultaneously. These bits, called \u2018qubits\u2019, hold two values instead.<\/p>\n People want to build quantum computers because they would be so much faster than our current ones, which might look like an arthritic snail next to Usain Bolt once the field really gets going.<\/p>\n For perspective, last year, Google said its quantum chip Willow had managed to do a calculation in minutes which<\/a> would take the world\u2019s best conventional supercomputer 10 septillion years (that\u2019s 10 followed by 24 zeroes) to complete.<\/p>\n Given that this is longer than the universe has even existed, your basic processor wouldn\u2019t ever come close to solving it before Earth got swallowed up by the Sun dying.<\/p>\n The technology is very experimental and won\u2019t be sold at your local Curry\u2019s anytime soon, as they rely on the mind-bending ways some objects act at the subatomic level, called quantum mechanics. <\/p>\n These modules, nicknamed Alice and Bob, sat about two metres apart. Inside both were two tiny molecules called ions, one which sent and received light particles (photons) and another that processed data.<\/p>\n After connecting the modules, researchers had each zap a photon through a Bell-state analyser, a machine that \u2018entangles\u2019 them, so whatever happens to one, happens to the other. <\/p>\n This process, called \u2018quantum gate teleportation\u2019 made two qubits sitting in different quantum computers behave as if they were next to each other.<\/p>\n This is thought to be the first time logical gates were \u2018teleported\u2019, even though data has previously been \u2018teleported\u2019 without moving qubits.<\/p>\n It suggests that a powerful quantum computer might not necessarily have to be a single, massive device. <\/p>\n Still, it could be composed of multiple smaller ones working together, making it easier to build and use, Dougal Main<\/a>, a researcher at Oxford Physics and study lead, told Metro<\/p>\n \t\t \u2018In the long run, it could enable much more powerful systems capable of solving problems that are far beyond the reach of today\u2019s best supercomputers, such as in areas like drug discovery, materials design, and encryption,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n Sadly, Main said that while the word \u2018teleportation\u2019 is used, \u2018it\u2019s not quite Star Trek<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018Nothing physical is being moved from one place to another,\u2019 he said. <\/p>\n \u2018What we\u2019re \u201cteleporting\u201d is information by allowing two arbitrarily separated systems to talk to one-another as if they were directly next to each other.<\/p>\n \u2018In simple terms, we made it possible for two distant quantum computers to run a joint operation as if they were a single machine \u2013 something that\u2019s never been done between processors like this before.\u2019<\/p>\n For Main, his team\u2019s findings are an important leap \u2013 a quantum leap \u2013 towards building large-scale quantum computers.<\/p>\n This could be used to power advances in artificial intelligence, create new medicine and solve mathematical head-scratchers in a flash. <\/p>\n \u2018Right now, we\u2019re still in the early stages of this technology,\u2019 added Main, \u2018but each advance \u2013 like linking two quantum processors \u2013 brings us closer to truly large and powerful quantum systems.\u2019<\/p>\n A version of this article was originally published on February 11, 2025.<\/p>\n Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more stories like this, check our news page<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Oxford](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SEI_239457858-d8ce.jpg\")
\n\t\tDougal Main and Beth Nichol working on their quantum computer (Picture: John Cairns)<\/p>\n![\"Schematic](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SEI_271050083-e507.jpg\")
\n\t\tWhat the study means by \u2018teleporation\u2019 isn\u2019t quite the same as being beamed up (Picture: Nature)<\/p>\n