Now there’s headline I never thought I’d write. According to the BBC, physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Science were able to “teleport” information along a 2 km cable that spans the Danube river. This new variant of teleportation, which scientists have been mucking with for a while now, involves creating two particles that are “entangled” in the quantum sense. Once they’re entangled, any change to particle A is instantly reflected in particle B — even if they’re a galaxy apart, theoretically. This entanglement has been achieved experimentally in the lab, but never before in the real world:

Mr Ursin said a next step towards worldwide quantum communication would be to attempt the teleportation of quantum states between particles using a satellite link.

“The first thing you will need to do is find out whether you can have entanglement over such long distances. But teleportation will be one of the next goals,” he added.

The researchers were also able to double the efficiency of teleportation using linear optics.

I love it: “The researchers were also able to double the efficiency of teleportation”. Now that’s gotta be a fun thing to boast about when you hit the cocktail-party circuit. What’s next? “The researchers were able to greatly increase the output of the flux capacitors?”