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New experiments in Calgary tested quantum teleportation in actual infrastructure, representing a major step forward for the technology.

Quantum physics is a field that appears to give scientists superpowers. Those who understand the world of extremely small or cold particles can perform amazing feats with them — including teleportation — that appear to bend reality.

The science behind these feats is complicated, and until recently, didn’t exist outside of lab settings. But that’s changing: researchers have begun to implement quantum teleportation in real-world contexts. Being able to do so just might revolutionize modern phone and Internet communications, leading to highly secure, encrypted messaging.

Continue reading “Teleporting Toward a Quantum Internet” »

BT and Toshiba have showcased the UK’s first use of secure quantum communication at the telecoms company’s research and development centre in Ipswich.

The showcase demonstrates the use of quantum cryptography for communications over fibre optic cabling. By exploiting the quantum states of photons, the most visible elementary particles in the electromagnetic spectrum, the cryptographic technique can be used to communicate securely over normal fibre cables.

Since they were first theorized by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, quantum computers have promised to bring about a new era of computing. It is only relatively recently that theory has translated into significant real-world advances, with the likes of Google, NASA and the CIA working towards building a quantum computer. Computer scientists are now warning that the arrival of the ultra-powerful machines will cripple current encryption methods and as a result bring a close to the great bitcoin experiment—collapsing the technological foundations that bitcoin is built upon.

“Bitcoin is definitely not quantum computer proof,” Andersen Cheng, co-founder of U.K. cybersecurity firm Post Quantum, tells Newsweek. “Bitcoin will expire the very day the first quantum computer appears.”

The danger quantum computers pose to bitcoin, Cheng explains, is in the cryptography surrounding what is known as the public and private keys—a set of numbers used to facilitate transactions. Users of bitcoin have a public key and a private key. In order to receive bitcoin, the recipient shares the public key with the sender, but in order to spend it they need their private key, which only they know. If somebody else is able to learn the private key, they can spend all the bitcoin.

Continue reading “Will Quantum Computers Kill Bitcoin?” »

Earlier this week, Canada’s electronic spy agency the Communications Security Establishment warned government agencies and businesses against quantum mechanics, which could cripple the majority of encryption methods implemented by leading corporations and agencies globally.

Governments and private companies employ a variety of cryptographic security systems and protocols to protect and store important data. Amongst these encryption methods, the most popular system is public key cryptography (PKC), which can be integrated onto a wide range of software, platforms, and applications to encrypt data.

The Communications Security Establishment and its chief Greta Bossenmaier believes that quantum computing is technically capable of targeting PKC-based encryption methods, making data vulnerable to security breaches and hacking attempts from foreign state spies and anonymous hacking groups.

Continue reading “Quantum Computing Could Cripple Encryption; Bitcoin’s Role” »

Quantum computers pose a major threat to the security of our data. So what can be done to keep it safe?

Nice article; however, not sure if the author is aware Los Alamos already has a quantum net as well as some Europe banks have the capabilities and 4 months ago it was announced that a joint effort by various countries from Europe, Asia, etc. have come together to re-engineer the Net infrastructure with QC technology…

Maybe the quantum will giveth what the quantum taketh away… at least when it comes to secure transmissions.

There’s been much speculation that emerging quantum computers will become capable of breaking advanced public key cryptography systems, such as 2048-bit RSA. This might leave encrypted data transmissions exposed to anyone who happens to own such a quantum computer.

Continue reading “Will quantum teleportation defeat quantum decryption?” »

Whether for use in safe data encryption, ultrafast calculation of huge data volumes or so-called quantum simulation of highly complex systems: Optical quantum computers are a source of hope for tomorrow’s computer technology. For the first time, scientists now have succeeded in placing a complete quantum optical structure on a chip, as outlined Nature Photonics. This fulfills one condition for the use of photonic circuits in optical quantum computers.

“Experiments investigating the applicability of optical quantum technology so far have often claimed whole laboratory spaces,” explains Professor Ralph Krupke of the KIT. “However, if this technology is to be employed meaningfully, it must be accommodated on a minimum of space.” Participants in the study were scientists from Germany, Poland, and Russia under the leadership of Professors Wolfram Pernice of the Westphalian Wilhelm University of Münster (WWU) and Ralph Krupke, Manfred Kappes, and Carsten Rockstuhl of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

The light source for the quantum photonic circuit used by the scientists for the first time were special nanotubes made of carbon. They have a diameter 100,000 times smaller than a human hair, and they emit single light particles when excited by laser light. Light particles (photons) are also referred to as light quanta. Hence the term “quantum photonics.”

Continue reading “First quantum photonic circuit with an electrically driven light source” »

The University of Rochester has begun work on what they call a Quantum Enigma Machine. This new machine is said to be responsible for unbreakable encryption. It will also shorten encryption keys, and make data interception much more difficult than it already is.

American Mathematician Claude Shannon came up with a binary system that would allow him to transmit messages under three stipulations: the key is random, only used once, and it has to be as long as the message itself is.

Recent studies show that scientists are theorizing that they could send a message with unbreakable encryption with a key that is much shorter than the message itself. Their theory may soon become fact as researchers have developed the quantum enigma machine.

Continue reading “Unbreakable Encryption is One Step Closer to Becoming Usable Technology” »

Quantum encryption uses the principle of “quantum entanglement” to foster communication that’s totally safe against eavesdropping and decryption by others.

The satellite’s true military nature is being disguised under the civilian name, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, or QUESS. Publicly, QUESS is being billed as an international research project in the field of quantum physics.

Micius or Mozi is operated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) while the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences run the satellite’s European receiving stations. The quantum satellite was launched last Aug. 16 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.

Continue reading “China’s Micius Military Quantum Satellite Reports Important Progress” »