By exploiting the quantum phenomenon known as particle entanglement, the team says it transferred information across a 3 m (10 ft) distance, without the information actually traveling through the intervening space.

"Entanglement is arguably the strangest and most intriguing consequence of the laws of quantum mechanics," said the head of the research project, Professor Ronald Hanson. "When two particles become entangled, their identities merge: their collective state is precisely determined, but the individual identity of each of the particles has disappeared. The entangled particles behave as one, even when separated by a large distance."

As electrons in an atom exist in orbits around a nucleus – like the way that the Earth spins on its axis – electrons also have "spin."