China has been taking a beating in the U.S. press lately. the Chinese company Foxxconn has experienced problems with employees committing suicide, the country has not warmed up toU.S. greenhouse gas cut initiatives and has placed a ban on internet maps and satellite imaging. However, the country can be commended for its latest effort -- achieving quantum teleportation.

Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University were able to stream quantum information over 16 km of free space, approximately 10 miles. It's called teleportation, but the matter is not actually moved, instead the quantum state of an object is transferred to another (when something is done to the first object, it immediately happens to the second one). 

According to the Shanghaiist website, "It's connecting two photons in a way that when one photon is changed, the other changes simultaneously, allowing for information to be transported between the two without using signals or networks. The protons in this case interacted with '89% fidelity,' meaning that there's a few more tests necessarily before anything can seriously be 'beamed' anywhere."

While we can't "beam" anything up, exactly -- this achievement by China has brought the world the closest that it has ever come to attempting matter teleportation.  Because of this advancement we are closing in on the ability to one day send and connect information from long distance without signal interference.

The U.S. and European Union have also conducted teleportation experiments.  However, the longest distance they have claimed thus far is quantum teleportation over 600 m, which achieved across the Danube River in 2004.  The Chinese claim would be over 25 times as long a teleportation event