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Teleportation is no longer science fiction, but it is not what you think it is. Imagine looking at your computer screen and seeing a message that seems to leap from one part of the globe to another in an instant. No lag, no delay and especially no packet loss. It feels like something out of science fiction, right? But scientists are now turning this vision into reality.
Now, a team of engineers at Northwestern University has achieved a historic scientific milestone by successfully demonstrating quantum teleportation over a standard fibre-optic cable that is simultaneously carrying live internet traffic. This experiment could change how the world thinks about data transfer and network communication.
🚨 Something Strange Just Happened Inside the Internet…
Scientists didn’t teleport people or open a sci-fi portal. Instead, something far more subtle — and real — just happened.
Using ordinary internet fiber cables, the same ones carrying everyday data, researchers… pic.twitter.com/wenCoewVay
— Night Sky Now (@NightSkyNow) January 1, 2026
To understand this, unlike the teleportation of matter portrayed in popular culture and those big sci-fi Hollywood movies, this breakthrough involves the teleportation of quantum information, which is the very essence of a particle’s state, across existing network infrastructure without physically sending the particle itself. It is a massive leap forward that brings us closer to a future quantum internet built on secure, high-speed communication channels.
Understanding the Theory Behind Quantum Teleportation in Cables
Now, in the leading theory, quantum teleportation relies on one of the most bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics: entanglement. When two particles are entangled, their properties become linked so that the state of one instantly influences the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are.
Albert Einstein famously described this phenomenon as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Moreover, in traditional telecommunications, information travels as bursts of light through fibre-optic cables, with millions of photons carrying data encoded in classical bits. Quantum teleportation, however, transfers the quantum state of a particle from one location to another without conveying the particle itself. Instead, the state of that particle is ‘imprinted’ on another entangled particle located elsewhere.
Furthermore, until recently, teleportation experiments were performed under highly controlled laboratory conditions using specialised fibres focused on quantum signals. The assumption was that quantum bits (qubits), which are fragile and susceptible to noise, would be entirely overwhelmed by the noise and signals present in conventional internet traffic.
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However, the new work by Prem Kumar and his colleagues at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering challenges this assumption.
The researchers found ways to send the fragile quantum signals through the same fibre that carries everyday internet traffic without them being lost among the millions of classical bits. Shockingly, they did this by placing the quantum photons in a less crowded wavelength and using exact filters to reduce interference. This clever method meant the teleportation protocol could operate alongside high-speed internet data rather than requiring separate, expensive infrastructure.
As per sources, in their experiment, the team set up a 30 kilometre fibre-optic link, and then injected entangled photons alongside regular data traffic, and then performed measurements at a midpoint to complete the teleportation process.
The result was that the quantum information successfully reached its destination even though the cable was busy with conventional internet traffic. Basically, they proved quantum information could be teleported through an active optical network.
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Possible Implications of Quantum Teleportation Over Internet Cables
Now comes the real caveats. The implications of this achievement go much beyond the laboratory. One of the most immediate implications is for secure communication. Quantum teleportation underpins quantum key distribution, which is a method of encryption that is theoretically impervious to eavesdropping. In such a system, any attempt to intercept the encryption keys would inevitably disturb the quantum state and be detected.
So, if quantum signals can coexist with classical internet traffic on the same fibre network, then super secure encryption services could be deployed much more cheaply and worldwide than previously thought.
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Furthermore, another giant implication is in the development of a quantum internet. Unlike the current internet, which relies on classical bits, a quantum internet would use qubits and entanglement to enable instantaneous, secure information exchange between distant nodes. This would allow distributed quantum computing, in which quantum processors at different locations work together seamlessly, massively expanding computational power for complex problems in science, medicine, and AI.
