Quantum communication

China is catch up on a high technology application with Quantum mechanics. In fact, they are leading the world with its first quantum communication project. They are able to beam entangled photons from a satellite that make up a pair of cryptographic keys to distance of up to 7400 Km (Vienna to Beijing). These cryptographic keys are used to open encrypted messages to facilitate secured communication without any hacking risks between two locations. It is secured because any interference from hacking the communication lines would collapse the wave function of the entangled photons and alert security management. This technology is named entanglement based quantum key distribution.

An entangled pair of particles can be produced and separated in long distance, and when they are not being observed the pair would remain in superposition, for example, that is in both digital states of 0 and 1, but once interfered they would collapse into oppposite states of 0 or 1, just as quantum theory predicts.  



What is awesome about this technology is that they are able to focus a beam of entangled photons onto a receiver on the ground with a size of a 20-cent coin from a height of 600 km in the sky. Those people who are familiar with the technology would realise how difficult this can be to track the beam of photons precisely onto the tiny target on the ground given the background noise of trillions and trillions of photons in the sky.

There is a question on whether this quantum communication produce faster than light communication? the answer is no. The beams of entangled photons is just a pair of digital keys that are used to open encrypted messages, the messages would still travel within the limit of physics less than the speed of light.

This technology will have military implications because nowadays internet communication can be intercepted easily by the party who lay down the infra-structure which is mainly installed by the United States. Who controls the infra-structure would have the ability to intercept the communications. This technology will also bring us onto the era of secured communication.

Here is the news link if you want to read more about this technology’s development and details.

News link Source:
https://globelynews.com/asia/chinas-quantum-satellite-enables-first-totally-secure-long-range-messages/