What to make of “flat Earthers” the week quantum teleportation reaches space

A milestone in quantum teleportation was reached by scientists in China who — for a lack of a better word — beamed photons from Earth to a satellite orbiting our spherical planet using quantum entanglement.

We readily admit we cannot prove that this happened. The Editorial Board is incapable of replicating this experiment or even fully comprehending the physics behind such a feat. But we trust the MIT Technology Review, which included the statement that “teleportation has become a standard operation in quantum optics labs around the world.” (Emphasis added). That’s the transfer of quantum state from one place to another, without the physical traveling of the information — it instantaneously arrives — in this case on a satellite circling the globe at a rate ensuring it passes overhead at the same place at the same time everyday.

Some of the most brilliant minds of our time are in the process of bridging the gap between this small feat — a photon’s “data” arriving in space instantaneously — to quantum computers that process multiple scenarios instantaneously, or as the researchers stated in their report, a “global-scale quantum internet.” The possibilities of such technology are a bit disorienting.

If someone from Cornell University were to question the controls and parameters of this experiment, calling into question the results, we’d be hard pressed to argue with them.

Not disorienting, or questionable, however, is the fact in this experiment that the Earth is a sphere. It’s a verifiable scientific fact, and one the editorial board could not only prove — but also provide a rough estimate of the circumference of the Earth — with two sticks of identical height in two cities a known distance from one another, and an ability to measure the shadow the sun casts at noon. That a group of Coloradans hold meetings asserting the Earth is flat in 2017, as reported by The Denver Post’s Graham Ambrose this month, is also disorienting.

Today we all rely on the scientific community to peer review each other’s work and tell us laymen what has really occurred. Their diligence has resulted in remarkable technological advancements, safe vaccinations, and an understanding of how greenhouse gases are impacting our climate. We should research and question, but also be a bit more trusting of their research when replication is beyond our means.

— The Denver Post, Digital First

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Their diligence has resulted in remarkable technological advancements, safe vaccinations, and an understanding of how greenhouse gases are impacting our climate.