When you used to watch science fiction TV shows when you were a kid, teleportation to me always seemed like the one thing that would never actually be possible in reality.

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I mean we were already flying spaceships into space, there are multiple alien sighting stories, but teleportation just seemed so weird that it could never actually happen. How could you completely move someone halfway across the world in a second? Just didn’t seem feasible.

Turns out I was completely wrong though, as the first ever case of teleportation has apparently been recorded by Chinese scientists. A photon was teleported from inside the Gobi desert into a space station orbiting the Earth 500 km away.

The technique used to achieve this is called quantum entanglement – a process where two particles react as one with no physical connection between them. I have absolutely no idea what that means, so here’s Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics at Oxford University Ian Walmsle explaining it:

Yeah, I’m still not really any the wiser but if this is true then it’s an absolutely humongous technological breakthrough that may very well revolutionise the entire way that we live our lives. Of course, it’s probably going to be a very long time until we’re teleporting humans anywhere, but the fact that we’re on the way is monumental in itself. Here’s hoping it happens in our lifetime.

For more teleportation, check out this scientific breakthrough that laid the groundwork for it. Big.