Now, scientists from Austria and China have managed to create photons that exist as 0,1 and 2 simultaneously, and teleported these complex quantum states.

Quantum computers are poised to leave traditional computers and even supercomputers in the dust, and they owe their exponential increase in power to the fact that they go beyond binary. One "bit" of information isn't limited to a 0 or a 1 – it can be either or both at the same time, much like Schrödinger's infamous cat.

In theory, adding extra states boosts the power even more: throw in a 2, for example, and the range of possible states goes up exponentially. One qubit can be any individual value, or any pairing of two, or all three at once.

And now these theoretical higher-dimension quantum states have not only been demonstrated in lab experiments, but teleported as well. The team includes scientists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna, and the University of Science and Technology of China.