China makes quantum computing research breakthrough

Researchers in China showed in a study published Thursday in Science that tiny particles, acting in sync, could be sent over long distances from space to Earth. The team beamed roughly six million pairs per second to separate telescopes on Earth from a satellite, The Wall Street Journal reports. Although their practical use is still years away, these so-called entangled particles could one day be harnessed to develop new kinds of communication systems linking quantum computers and quantum sensors. These devices would exploit special properties of quantum physics. A traditional computer stores information in binary bits whose value can be either a 1 or a 0. Quantum machines store data in a more powerful system of information-storing known as a qubit, whose value can be 1 and 0 simultaneously. That special property allows for faster computation. Companies including IBM, Google and Microsoft are also working on quantum computing.