IT’S NOT HYPERBOLE to say that a quantum-powered internet would be revolutionary. It would allow quantum devices to deliver astonishing levels of privacy and security, and the computational clout to solve the kinds of complex problems that would fry a classical computer.

The countries and companies that have been busily laying the groundwork for a quantum internet have so far only been able to connect two quantum devices. But now, physicists at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have successfully connected three quantum devices.

This may not sound like much, but in quantum computing terms it’s huge.

“This is the first time a network has been constructed from quantum processors,” lead study author Ronald Hanson tells Inverse. Hanson is an experimental physicist, Distinguished Professor at Delft University of Technology, and principal investigator at QuTech, a research center devoted to quantum computing and quantum internet.

“A single direct link between two processors has been shown on many platforms in the past decade, but no network had been achieved.”

These findings were published on Thursday in the journal Science.