1. They confirm a prediction of quantum mechanics more strongly than has been done previously.
2. They have demonstrated improvements in technology that can hopefully be replicated by others to perform similar experiments.
Quantum teleportation is this cool property of nature that allows us to transfer the unknown properties of a quantum object onto another object far away [1]. Actually doing this for even the simplest system requires mastery of several sets of technologies and techniques: ability to create photons (or other quantum objects) in a state of our choice, ability to create entangled photons, good measurements. Therefore, till now teleportation has been demonstrated for only one degree of freedom (DoF) [2].
These guys put together technologies and techniques only recently created in physics labs and used them to teleport 2 DoF at the same time. This was not easy. On the other hand this was only done probabilistically, unlike 1 DoF teleportation which has been done deterministically. So there is definitely more work to be done.
Teleportation is cool. And a check on quantum mechanics. But it is also a quantum information primitive [3] that can be helpful in performing certain tasks such as linear optical quantum computing and implementing quantum communication networks etc.
[1] No, we won't get human teleportation for a gazillion years, if ever.
[2] Degrees of freedom are properties you can change independent of each other. For photons some of them consists of polarization, spin, orbital angular momentum, frequency spectrum, spatial profile etc.
[3] A primitive is a basic building block. e.g. In cryptography we have primitives like hash functions.
Isn't teleportation an incorrect word to describe what's happening? It seems synchronization would make more sense since it involves two distinct objects that are first entangled.
