From The Science is Cool Department:

Even when practiced by the communist Chinese. (Worry not. In a couple of years, these guys will be teaching at Cal Tech.)


THE Great Wall of China is poised to play its part in pushing back the boundaries of quantum cryptography. Later this year a Chinese team, which has just broken the record for transmitting entangled particles, will test the feasibility of satellite-based quantum communication using the wall.
The Great Wall's new role was revealed after Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and his colleagues successfully transmitted "entangled" photons through more than 7 kilometres of the Earth's turbulent lower atmosphere without losing the photons' fragile quantum properties.
Quantum entanglement allows two particles to behave as one even if they are very far apart. Measure the property of one particle and you instantly know the property of the other. Entanglement allows you to transmit secure encryption keys over a public channel, but until now the furthest anyone had transmitted entangled particles through air was about 600 metres. This was achieved by researchers at the University of Vienna, who sent entangled photons across the river Danube (New Scientist, 28 June 2003, p 15). (Thanks to New Scientist)