Scientists in China have just pulled off something absolutely incredible, a gigantic breakthrough that could pave the way to a futuristic dream of humanity that we call teleportation. Scientists were able to “telepore” a photon particle from the ground to a satellite 870 miles away, an amazing accomplishment that represents a big step forward in a very long road toward make the kind of teleportation you see in “Star Trek” a reality.

Teleportation is more about transmitting the state of the thing, rather than the thing itself, much like a fax machine simply prints a copy of a piece of paper that was scanned at another fax machine far away. That would be different from a Star Trek sort of teleportation, which involves transmitting actual matter.

This breakthrough involves something we call quantum entanglement, and it takes place when two particles are created at the same time and place, and basically have the same existence. When the photons are separated, if one of the photons changes, the other photon changes too.