Mariner 10 discovered a vast array of large fault scarps, or cliffs, on Mercury, and MESSENGER revealed that the largest of these scarps are more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) long and more than 1.8 miles (3 km) high. 

Fault scarps form when rocks are pushed together and thrust upward along faults — or fractures — in a planet's crust. The most widely accepted model of the origin of the large fault scarps on Mercury is that they are essentially wrinkles that formed on the planet's surface as that world's heart cooled over time, leading Mercury to shrink in size. Previous research suggested that Mercury may have contracted by about 1.8 to 8.7 miles (3 to 14 km) in diameter.

During the last 18 months or so of the MESSENGER mission, the spacecraft descended closer to Mercury, helping it to snap pictures of its surface in greater detail. Now scientists have discovered small fault scarps that are less than 6 miles (10 km) long and only up to dozens of feet high.

The new analysis shows that the pristine appearance of these small fault scarps suggests that they are less than 50 million years old. Previous research suggests that older features would get pockmarked with craters from meteoroid impacts.

The young nature of these small fault scarps suggests that Mercury is still experiencing quakes that are likely driven by the continued cooling and shrinking of the planet, said study lead author Thomas Watters, a planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies in Washington.

"These faults on Mercury have got to be accompanied by seismic activity," Watters told Space.com.

Comparable scarps are seen on the moon, and four seismometers set up on the moon by the Apollo missions detected moonquakes reaching up to magnitude 5 on the Richter scale. 

"We might expect shallow seismic events of a comparable level on Mercury," Watters said. "We might even see events significantly greater than magnitude 5 with the older, larger scarps."

The seismometers on the moon detected 28 shallow moonquakes ranging from about magnitude 1.5 to 5 on the Richter scale between 1969 and 1977. 

"Mercury has the potential for many more earthquakes than the moon, since it's contracted a lot more than the moon has," Watters said.

It remains a mystery how a planet as small as Mercury has not already cooled down completely and lost all its heat. Instead, Mercury remains warm enough to keep shrinking and to have a molten outer core that has supported a magnetic field for billions of years. 

"The way that terrestrial bodies like Mercury, Earth and even the moon have evolved thermally is emerging as one of the puzzles that researchers need to solve in planetary science," Watters said.

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Sept. 26) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom,Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Baking the universe

Some things in the universe look different depending on where you're standing when you look at them, or from which direction you view them. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is a disk that rotates around a central axis like a record on a turntable. The galaxy looks different depending on where its viewed from, so observers in different places see different things.  But a galaxy is also anisotropic — that is, an observer in one location can look in different directions and will see something different. The stars  located far out in the disk move faster as they whip around the center, compared with stars close to the middle. (This is true for an observer inside the galaxy or outside it).

It's that latter kind of variation that's addressed in the new research paper. If the universe looks the same no matter what direction its viewed from, it's isotropic. If it does have a large-scale dependence on direction, it's anisotropic. 

If the large-scale structure of the universe is anisotropic — different depending on the direction it is viewed from — that feature would have been present from the get-go. 

A tiny fraction of a second after the universe sprang to life in the Big Bang, scientists think the cosmos underwent a period of rapid inflation, like a loaf of bread expanding in the oven. Very small, random "fluctuations" (like air bubbles in the dough) made it so the matter in the universe didn't spread out evenly, at least on small scales; It clumped together to form stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters, while leaving some areas mostly empty. (This clumping is also observed in dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about 80 percent of mass in the universe).

But what if the entire loaf of bread was warped, and not just on small scales? For example, what if space-time, the fabric of the universe, was spinning when inflation began? That would certainly affect how a loaf of bread looked when it finished baking, and it would certainly influence how the universe looks today.

For example, the universe is still expanding, albeit slower than it was during inflation. That means new space is being created between stars and galaxies, so these objects are all moving away from each other. If scientists measured the rate of expansion and found that things were moving a little faster in one direction and a little slower in another direction, that would indicate that something was lopsided in the universal fabric. That would be evidence of anisotropy.

The universe expanding at different rates in different directions is the simplest way that anisotropy might play out, according to Daniella Saadeh, a graduate student in physics and astronomy at University College London and the lead author of a new research paper that shows the large-scale universe is, in fact, isotropic.

A map of the cosmos

Saadeh and colleagues looked for signs of anisotropy in data from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, collected between 2009 and 2013, which maps of the oldest light in the universe — the cosmic microwave background, or the light left over from the Big Bang. If the universe were warped or twisted in some way, that light would likely bear some sign of it, according to the authors.

Mathematicians have already pointed out ways in which the universe could have been warped or twisted or formed in some way as to create a directional dependence. Those variations can be deduced from Einstein's theory of relativity. Saadeh and her colleagues used computer models to simulate all the ways the universe could be anisotropic, and what each of how each of those outcomes would leave an imprint on the light collected by the Planck satellite. In order to pull this off, Saadeh and colleagues needed both the high-quality data provided by Planck, as well as computer programs that could run through all the possible ways those tweaks could influence how the CMB looks over the span of the entire universe.

"This is a serious challenge, as we found an enormous number of ways the universe can be anisotropic," said Stephen Feeney, a co-author on the paper, who at the time was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London. "It's extremely easy to become lost in this myriad of possible universes — we need to tune 32 dials to find the correct one."

Because the finding is based on statistical analysis, the conclusion is actually expressed as a likelihood: There is a 1 in 121,000 chance that the universe is not the same in all directions. Saadeh says if anyone wants to improve on that number, they'll likely have to wait for another CMB space observatory that is superior to Planck, and nothing of that nature is under construction.

In a statement from the University College London, Saadeh notes that "universes that spin and stretch are entirely possible, so it’s important that we've shown ours is fair to all its directions."

But in fact, the rule book that modern physics follows ― known as the standard model ― assumes that the universe is isotropic, and has no major variations on large scales.

The standard model describes everything scientists know about the world — all the particles that exist in it, the forces that influence those particles, the laws that govern it all. The model also makes predictions; the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 had been predicted by the standard model about four decades prior. If Saadeh and colleagues had found evidence that the universe was anisotropic, that would have thrown a wrench in the standard model.

In some ways, that would have been extremely exciting, but Saadeh said in the release:

 "We’re very glad that our work vindicates what most cosmologists assume. For now, cosmology is safe."

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

A team led by William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble to hunt for Europa plumes on 10 separate occasions over a 15-month span. They had success three times, spotting apparent plume activity in January, March and April of 2014.

"They appear to be real," Sparks said during a news conference today. "The statistical significance is pretty good, and I don’t know of any other natural alternative."

Still, Sparks stopped short of calling the repeat detection a definitive confirmation. The newly announced detections were made when Europapassed in front of Jupiter from Hubble's perspective, and plume material seemed to block ultraviolet light coming from the giant planet. The observations Hubble made are right on the edge of the iconic telescope's capabilities, Sparks said.

"We remain cautious," he said. "The problem is that there may be something we don't understand about the instrument, or about our model of the scene, or what Europa looks like in the ultraviolet light."

Analyzing the Hubble data is also a complex process, which explains why the team is revealing the detections now, more than two years after they were made, Sparks added.

The 2012 detection, which was actually announced in December 2013, was made by a different research group, one led by Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Roth and his colleagues used a different method to spot the apparent plume, but the two teams' observations dovetail nicely; both conclude that the plume is about 125 miles high and centered in Europa's southern reaches.

The plume's likely existence should influence the planning of NASA's Europa mission, which the agency aims to launch in the 2020s. This Jupiter-orbiting mission will make multiple flybys of the moon over the course of several years, in an attempt to learn more about Europa's ocean and its potential to support life as we know it.

"Today's results increase our confidence that water and other materials fromEuropa's ocean — Europa's hidden ocean, hidden under miles of ice — might be on the surface of Europa and available for us to study, without landing and digging through those unknown miles of ice,"said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The combined Hubble observations also show that the Europa geysers, if they exist, are intermittent phenomena. If scientists learn more about when and why the geysers erupt, it might even be possible for the as-yet-unnamed NASA mission to fly through a Europan plume.

"One of the biggest unknowns we have with these putative plumes is understanding their timing," said Curt Niebur, the Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "And I think the more observations we can get with Hubble and with JWST [the James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA aims to launch in 2018] to better understand that, the better we can use that to construct a schedule for when we search for these plumes at close range from the Europa flyby mission."

Sparks and his team are publishing their results in the Sept. 29 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

"The way this mountain society was organized remains poorly understood," said study author Tesse Stek, a Mediterranean archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Previously, construction accidentally unearthed two ancient temples in the area. However, "there was no good knowledge about other sites, such as villages, farms, villas, graveyards and so on, that could tell us more about the ancient inhabitants in the area that visited the cult sites," Stek told Live Science. "They seemed to be cathedrals in the desert, so to say."  [5 Surprising Ways Drones Could Be Used in the Future]

One theory is that these temples served as road stations and places of commerce along routes where sheep, cattle, goods and information traveled. Another theory suggests that these temples marked the frontier of a large state, such as the territory of the ancient Samnites.

Looking for hidden ruins

Archaeologists might want to conduct aerial surveys to help discover anyruins hidden beneath the surface. These require slow, low-altitude flights where researchers can take pictures of sites from the right angles and with the right lighting reveal ancient complexes.

For instance, on farmland, ancient walls may present themselves "as stripes where the grain is lower," Stek said. "Sometimes this is hard to see from a distance, but it becomes especially visible when the sun is low, and shadow effects enhance the differences in corn height."

However, in rugged terrain, "flying low is very difficult, dangerous, and time-costly," Stek said. "In the mountainous, fragmented area where we work, previously normal aerial archaeology had not had success.

"Drones now change the picture completely," Stek said. "They offer a fast and entirely noninvasive method for discovering and mapping sites hidden in the ground." [Photos: Drones Explore Mysterious Plain of Jars Site]

In 2013, 2014 and 2015, the researchers investigated Le Pianelle using small commercial DJI Phantom quadcopter drones with cameras capable of taking photos both downward and from the side. The scientists remotely programmed the drones with flight plans to examine areas where researchers had discovered artifacts on foot.

The main advantage of using drones "is that you can choose very precisely which angle to take photos at the time you want," Stek said. "You can wait for the exact right moment in a specific field, make a flight of, say, 10 to 20 minutes' length, and take photos from all directions. With a normal airplane, you would need to be very lucky to catch the right moment, or you'll fly too high for good visibility or resolution, or the moment may not be right."

Revealing Le Pianelle

The elements made drone-flying difficult at times. "We actually lost one drone during a long, automated flight due to strong winds in a narrow valley," Stek said.

Despite such challenges, the drones helped reveal what appear to be the remains of several likely related archaeological complexes. "I could not believe it at first, but as they showed up on the computer screen at our base camp, the whole team started to yell, 'Wow!'" Stek said. [Incredible Drone Photos: Contest-Winning Images from Above]

Artifacts previously found in the area suggest these ruins date from the Classical to Late Roman period spanning from about the fifth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. The researchers found that settlements at Le Pianelle were "much more dense, organized and articulated than previously thought," Stek said.

 "We have a very complete overview of the internal organization of the settlement, including its disposition along the road, storage spaces, domestic areas and so on."

These new findings suggest the temples that were previously discovered in this area were not located away from civilization, but were rather "actually located at the center of dense, rural communities," Stek said.

Drones will not replace traditional archaeology, Stek emphasized. "If you do not see anything on drone footage, it does not mean that there is nothing underneath," he said. "There are many different factors influencing the detectability of sites by drones, so other types of research, such as field surveys, geophysics and excavations, remain fundamental, too."

The scientists are talking with local authorities to excavate these sites. "Protecting the site from damage from agricultural use and robbing is the first priority now," Stek said.

Stek added that in the spring, "I plan an aerial campaign in which we aim to investigate a large swath of territory in two weeks." In addition, the scientists are experimenting with near-infrared cameras to detect even more hidden details, "with very good results," Stek said.

Stekdetailed his findings online July 4 in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Original article on Live Science. }

And at this point I pull out my wallet. Instead of smiling kids or cozy family group shots, I've got the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It's about the right age: it's a photograph of the universe when it was only 380,000 years old, which is equivalent to a picture taken of a baby at the end of its first day. [Cosmic Microwave Background: Big Bang Relic Explained (Infographic)]

That image is solid evidence, a smoking microwave gun, in favor of the Big Bang theory. Scientists are some of the most critical people you'll ever meet, forever reluctant to accept a new idea. It took decades of developing theories and accumulating evidence before the Big Bang was even warmly thought of, but the detection of the cosmic microwave background forced even the most truculent astronomers to grudgingly accept it.

Free the light

The early universe was a hot and sweaty place, a seething mosh pit of electrons, protons and high-energy photons. The CMB was released when the universe cooled off juuuust enough that stable atoms could form, turning the entire universe transparent and letting that high-energy light go free. Over the eons that radiation has traveled the cosmos, stretching along with the expansion of the universe, shifting down from white-hot intensity to a feeble few Kelvin above absolute zero. 

That leftover light is in the form of microwaves, and is incredibly, fantastically … boring. To one part in 10,000, it's exactly the same, from one end of the sky to the other.

But if you examine those minute differences, strange features appear. Some parts of the CMB sky are 0.0001 Kelvin hotter or cooler than others. There are big patches twice the width of the full moon, and many small bumps and wiggles overlying them. What's going on?

Seeing what the universe is saying

Those larger patches in the CMB are the early universe rocking out. In that hot dense plasma of the infant cosmos, gravitational pressures pulled gases in, and radiation pressure pushed those gases back out. This constant seesaw reverberated throughout the volume of the universe, echoing from one end to the other.

What we see in the CMB is a frozen moment in time, the drums in mid-beat, the cymbals in mid-crash, the guitar in mid-note. Once the radiation disconnected from the protons and electrons, the music couldn't go on, but an image of it remained. Caught in the act, some parts of the universe were slightly denser and hotter than others, and these patterns imprinted themselves on the radiation left behind.

So when we examine those 1-in-10,000 differences, we're really mapping out the state of the universe as it was just 380,000 years into the cosmic concert.

The beautiful technical term for this process is "baryon acoustic oscillations." Baryon = stuff. You and me are made of baryons. Acoustic: something to do with sound. Oscillations: something to do with waves. It's really a fancy way of saying "sound waves," but hey, what's the point of getting a Ph.D. if you can't say fancy things every once in a while?

[Watch this video to learn more about sound waves in the early universe.]

A lesson in flatness

Those bumps and wiggles in the CMB — those echoes of the crashing chaotic cosmic symphony — are a treasure trove of information. By studying the CMB, we are looking directly at the early universe, and we can use those glorious photons to deduce all sorts of juicy cosmological information.

For example, the global shape of the universe. The big patches in the CMB give us a very handy ruler for measuring shapes. It turns out it's really, really easy (well, OK, only sort-of easy) to figure out how big the patches ought to be. Sure, the universe back then was a crazy-hot plasma, but we're pretty good at figuring out how crazy-hot plasmas operate, especially when the universe was still young and hadn't developed complex structures yet.

We can compare how big those patches ought to be to how they look. If the universe was curved on a global scale (like, say, the surface of a sphere), light from the CMB would bend on its way to Earth, either converging or diverging — making the patches look bigger or smaller than they should.

The result: the scale of the largest patches is precisely what we would expect for a perfectly flat universe. Parallel light rays in our cosmos stay parallel. No hints of exotic geometry to report.

[Watch more about cosmic flatness in this video.]

The cosmic time capsule

That's not all. The CMB teaches us about the composition of the early universe. Neutrinos zooming around? Dark matter lurking mysteriously? Exotic relics of even earlier epochs wreaking havoc? All those things affect the statistics of the bumps and wiggles in the CMB: how large the largest patches are, how many large versus small patches, the maximum or minimum temperatures, etc. We can toss in any ingredient we want and see how it affects the detailed structure in that ancient light pattern.

The result from decades of analysis of the CMB: We live in a flat universe, dominated by dark energy, with a healthy dose of dark matter, and a few floating bits of normal everyday matter to lighten things up.

We're still not exactly sure what dark matter and dark energy are, but no matter what, the overall picture of the Big Bang remains unchanged: At one time, the universe was small, hot, and dense, and it left us a postcard.

Learn more by listening to the episode "What is the Cosmic Microwave Background? (Part 2)" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunesand on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Arlington T., Jeffrey B., Edward J., Jason A., Ernie J., Rea N., Chris L., and Randy B. for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul@PaulMattSutter andfacebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

Clouds are usually formed via condensation; a gas will rise to a certain height before cooling enough to turn to liquid vapor. This is what water does on Earth, forming clouds, and what methane does on Titan.

In the upper atmosphere, the process differs slightly; in that case, warm air is pushed to the poles and then sinks, where it condenses into clouds. 

Carrie Anderson, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led a team at Goddard and the California Institute of Technology that proposed a different model for those clouds' formation: reactions among solid ice particles. 

Under this process, crystals of another hydrocarbon, cyanoacetylene (HC₃N), would condense as the gas moves downward through Titan's upper atmosphere. On the way, the crystals get coated by hydrogen cyanide (HCN). The little coated particles get hit with ultraviolet light from the sun, and the result is a reaction that forms dicyanoacetylene ice and hydrogen. 

This process is similar to one on Earth involving clouds that sometimes form in the stratosphere and chlorine-bearing chemical pollutants. The chlorine chemicals stick to the ice crystals, react when hit with UV light and create ozone-destroying chemicals. 

The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

You can follow Space.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook & Google+. Original story on Space.com. 

"This is the first time we have clearly seen the infrared-light echoes from multiple tidal disruption events," Sjoert van Velzen, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of one study, said in the statement. 

The new studies use data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The NASA study led by van Velzen used these "echoes" to identify three black holes in the act of devouring stars. The second study, led by Ning Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China, identified a potential fourth light echo. 

Flares emitted from stellar tidal disruptions are extremely energetic and "destroy any dust" that is within the immediate neighborhood, according to NASA. However, a patchy, spherical web of dust that resides a few trillion miles (half a light-year) from the black hole can survive the flare and absorb light released from the star being gobbled up. 

"The black hole has destroyed everything between itself and this dust shell," van Velzen said in the statement. "It's as though the black hole has cleaned its room by throwing flames."

The absorbed light heats the more distant dust, which in turn gives off infrared radiation that the WISE instrument can measure. These emissions can be detected for up to a year after the flare is at its brightest, the statement said. Scientists are able to characterize and locate the dust by measuring the delay between the original light flare and the subsequent echoes, according to the NASA study, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"Our study confirms that the dust is there, and that we can use it to determine how much energy was generated in the destruction of the star," Varoujan Gorjian, an astronomer at JPL and co-author of the paper led by van Velzen, said in the statement. 

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom,Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Further observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii revealed the swarm of small, faint galaxies surrounding the bigger two in the heart of the blob. Here, galaxies are forming stars at 100 times the rate of the Milky Way.

"For a long time, the origin of the extended Lyman-alpha light has been controversial," Jim Geach, the study's lead author, said in a statement. "But with the combination of new observations and cutting-edge simulations, we think we have solved a 15-year-old mystery."

Lyman-alpha blobs

So-called "Lyman-alpha blobs" are some of the biggest things in space. This particular space blob, named SSA22-Lyman-alpha Blob 1 (LAB-1), is the largest of its kind. It measures about 300,000 light-years across, or three times the size of the Milky Way galaxy.

LAB-1 is located 11.5 billion light-years from Earth, so the light we observe from it is almost as old as the universe (13.8 billion years). This means that looking at LAB-1 provides a window into the early history of the universe.

Lyman-alpha blobs consist mainly of hydrogen gas and emit a particular wavelength of ultraviolet light called Lyman-alpha radiation. The light looks green to viewers on Earth, because its wavelength is stretched by the expanding universe during its long trip here.

Simulating the blob

Once they had observed the sources of light from within the blob, the researchers created simulations of galaxy formation using NASA's Pleiades supercomputer. They wanted to show that ultraviolet light — a byproduct ofstar formation — scatters off hydrogen gas to create a bright, glowing mega-blob like LAB-1.

"Think of a streetlight on a foggy night — you see the diffuse glow because light is scattering off the tiny water droplets," Geach said in the same statement. "A similar thing is happening here, except the streetlight is an intensely star-forming galaxy and the fog is a huge cloud of intergalactic gas. The galaxies are illuminating their surroundings."

The simulations also track gas and dark matter in the blob as it evolves into a galaxy. "Lyman-alpha Blob-1 is the site of formation of a massive elliptical galaxy that will one day be the heart of a giant cluster," Geach added.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her@hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Spooky action

Quantum teleportation relies on the bizarre nature of quantum physics, which finds that the fundamental building blocks of the universe, such as subatomic particles, can essentially exist in two or more places at once. Specifically, quantum teleportation depends on a strange phenomenon known as "quantum entanglement," in which objects can become linked and influence each other instantaneously, no matter how far apart they are.

Currently, researchers cannot teleport matter (say, a human) across space, but they can use quantum teleportation to beam information from one place to another. The quantum teleportation of an electron, for example, would first involve entangling a pair of electrons. Next, one of the two electrons — the one to be teleported — would stay in one place while the other electron would be physically transported to whatever destination is desired.

Then, the fundamental details or "quantum state" of the electron to be teleported are analyzed — an act that also destroys its quantum state. Finally, that data is sent to the destination, where it can be used on the other electron to recreate the first one, so that it is indistinguishable from the original. For all intents and purposes, that electron has teleported. (Because the data is sent using regular signals such as light pulses or electrons, quantum teleportation can proceed no faster than the speed of light.)

Now, two research groups independently report quantum teleportation over several miles of fiber-optic networks in the cities of Hefei, China, and Calgary, Alberta. The scientists detailed their findings online Sept. 19 in two independent papers in the journal Nature Photonics.

Futuristic tech

Quantum teleportation is the key to many potential future technologies. For instance, quantum cryptography could use quantum teleportation to transmit data securely between two points in a way that can automatically detect any intrusion. In addition, people could use quantum teleportation in a "quantum internet" to share data with quantum computers, which previous research suggested could run more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the universe. [8 Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life]

"In the future, if you have a quantum computer, if users wanted to use it, they could send data to the quantum computer and get results, just like with modern cloud computation," Qiang Zhang, a quantum engineer at the University of Science and Technology of China and co-senior author of the Hefei work, told Live Science.

Each of the two quantum-teleportation experiments involved communication across up to 7.7 miles (12.5 km) between three distinct locations to mimic the structure of future quantum networks. The only previous experiment with such a three-lab setup involved distances of less than 0.6 miles (1 km).

Previous experiments involving a three-lab setup used pulses of visible light, which cannot travel great distances within optical fibers. In contrast, the new studies employed the kind of infrared light often used in everyday telecommunications networks, which can travel farther. They also used pre-existing fiber-optic networks in each city.

Long-distance quantum teleportation involves laser beams that are synchronized until they are indistinguishable from each other down to the level of single photons, even after zipping through several miles of fiber optics laid within changing environments. Both research teams benefited from recent improvements in single-photon detectors made by the telecommunications industry, the researchers said.

"We are proud that the results observed in field tests have not degraded compared with those observed in laboratory tests," Qi-Chao Sun, a quantum engineer at the University of Science and Technology of China and lead author of the Hefei study, told Live Science. "This means that our system is robust against noises arising from complex environments in the real world."

The Calgary experiment had a faster teleportation rate of about 17 photons per minute (or 1,020 per hour), compared to about two photons per hour for the Hefei experiment. However, the procedures the Calgary researchers carried out to accomplish these teleportation speeds limit its immediate practical applications, Frédéric Grosshans, a quantum information researcher at the University of Paris-Sud in France, said in a review of both teams' studies.

Both research teams also used a variety of methods to keep lasers synchronized with one another. Each group used a different technique, which suggests that elements from both strategies could be combined for even better results, Grosshans wrote in his review.

One future direction will be to extend quantum teleportation networks "to 100-kilometer [60 miles] scales, which will allow intercity quantum teleportation," Sun said. This will involve improving detector efficiency and suppressing sources of interference, Sun added.

Original article on Live Science.