Cybersecurity future is almost for sure going to be quantum mechanics as this week researchers moved a step closer. They announced that they teleported or transmitted quantum encrypted data over 102 kilometers and exceeded the last record by a factor of four.

A research paper in Optica has reported the breakthrough on Wednesday. The stuff is exciting, but also has real-world implications. Digital media website Mashable had a word with Martin Stevens, National Institute of Standards and Technology staff scientist, who worked with visiting Japanese scientist and main author of the study, Hiroki Takesue. Stevens simultaneously explained quantum physics and the impact of their work in best way possible.

For broadband Internet, Fiber-optic networks are increasingly cable infrastructure of choice, but it has a key limitation that the light pulses used in it to ferry data diminish over distances. Fiber-optic networks use pulse boosters or repeaters to amplify the signal, countering this limitation.

Stevens explained, "In the normal fiber optic network, you're sending millions or billions of photons - really a classical light pulse".

Stevens told Mashable that with traditional fiber-optic networking, an individual could begin with a billion photons and, while travelling along the network, the number might drop to a million. Repeaters boost the light pulses, and add duplicate photons along the way.

Though, quantum physics function at the level of individual photons, the smallest light particles that can't be divided. A photon can have a state. The physical state of any object is known in standard mechanics.