China has become the first country in the world to establish photon entanglement at a distance of more than 1,200 kilometers, paving the way for ultra-secure, long-distance quantum communications. In July, Beijing and Vienna will try to conduct the world’s first cross-continental video call using Micius, the world’s first quantum communication satellite launched by China last year, but it would take more than a decade for such technologies to reach the public, scientists said. By beaming photons – individual particles of light – between Micius and two receiving ground stations – the Delingha station in Qinghai province and the Lijiang station in Yunnan province – Chinese scientists have shown that these photons could remain entangled despite the stations being more than 1,200 kilometers apart. This distance is 10 times greater than similar tests done on the ground, which are usually conducted using fiber optics or in open air, and are susceptible to interference. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more entangled particles can affect each other simultaneously regardless of the distance between them. Scientists are trying to use it to encrypt and send messages, which would be tamper-proof, the China Daily reports.