A new distance record has been set for entangled communications. Entanglement is what Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance.” When two quantum particles are entangled, their states are then paired. An action on one particle will immediately affect the other, regardless of how far they are separated. If it occurs to you that this can result in a violation of the speed of light, then you’ll understand why Einstein was so perplexed by it. Nevertheless, entanglement does exist and we have to deal with it.

Well a new article in Science demonstrates satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs to places on Earth separated by 1203 kilometers. This breaks the old record by an order of magnitude! This is especially interesting to me because my novel, The Last Butterfly, proposes a far-future consequence of entanglement over very large distances. I guess it just goes to show that…