Nederlanders teleporteren informatie

[Anna @akrasko97]

Nederlanders teleporteren informatie

Bron: https://www.msn.com/nl-nl/nieuws/wetenschap/nederlanders-teleporteren-informatie/ar-AAXJKnK?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=adc5f0fe90a147438bfbecb78bb02652

Nederlandse wetenschappers zijn er als eersten ter wereld in geslaagd om informatie te sturen over een netwerk zonder gebruik van kabels of radiogolven. Ze hebben de informatie geteleporteerd via quantummechanica. Een mysterieus proces waarbij de staat van het ene stuk informatie de staat van andere informatie beïnvloedt.

Onderzoekers bij QuTech — een samenwerking tussen TU Delft en TNO — en anderen waren er eerder al in geslaagd om informatie te teleporteren tussen twee punten. Nu hebben ze hetzelfde gedaan via een tussenstation. Dat betekent dat de informatie veel verder kan reizen. Dat maakt in de toekomst bijvoorbeeld een quantum-internet mogelijk.

Het is een zeer complexe procedure, waarbij de Delftenaren supergekoelde diamanten gebruiken met daarop een laagje goud. Daarop staat informatie die via kwantumverstrengeling wordt verstuurd. Dat gaat via het tussenstation, dat de twee netwerkpunten ‘verstrengeld’ en zorgt dat informatie die op de ene aanwezig is, bij de andere terechtkomt.

Die verstrengeling is het hart van de quantummechanica. Natuurkundigen ontdekten al een eeuw geleden dat heel kleine deeltjes, zoals atomen, met elkaar in verbinding staan in een veld. Manipuleer je één deeltje in dat veld, dan heeft dat invloed op alle deeltjes in het veld.

Dit, zo schrijven de onderzoekers in het tijdschrift Nature, maakt het mogelijk om elke gewenste informatie tussen twee stations te sturen, ook al staan die ver uit elkaar. Bovendien is het uiterst vertrouwelijk, door de kwantumverbinding kan niemand anders de informatie aftappen. Het maakt een heel nieuwe vorm van internet mogelijk.

[Anna @akrasko97]

Chicago Quantum Exchange takes first steps toward a future that could revolutionize computing and medicine

(In dit stukje wordt benoemd welke principes van quantumwetenschappen intensief bestudeerd worden en welke “praktische applicaties” ze nu aan het betatesten zijn. Dit sluit een beetje bij de vorige post. Het lijkt wel een race om bij “betrouwbaar” (voorspelbaar) werkende quantum computing te komen. Mensen kunnen ook zonder computers met quantumveld (samen)werken. Het is waarschijnlijk heel belangrijk, dat wij dat beseffen en dat wij dat ook doen)

Source: https://phys.org/news/2022-06-chicago-quantum-exchange-future-revolutionize.html

Flashes of what may become a transformative new technology are coursing through a network of optic fibers under Chicago.

Researchers have created one of the world’s largest networks for sharing quantum information—a field of science that depends on paradoxes so strange that Albert Einstein didn’t believe them.

The network, which connects the University of Chicago with Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, is a rudimentary version of what scientists hope someday to become the internet of the future. For now, it’s opened up to businesses and researchers to test fundamentals of quantum information sharing.

The network was announced this week by the Chicago Quantum Exchange—which also involves Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin.

With a $500 million federal investment in recent years and $200 million from the state, Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, and Madison form a leading region for quantum information research.

Why does this matter to the average person? Because quantum information has the potential to help crack currently unsolvable problems, both threaten and protect private information, and lead to breakthroughs in agriculture, medicine and climate change.

While classical computing uses bits of information containing either a 1 or zero, quantum bits, or qubits, are like a coin flipped in the air—they contain both a 1 and zero, to be determined once it’s observed.

That quality of being in two or more states at once, called superposition, is one of the many paradoxes of quantum mechanics—how particles behave at the atomic and subatomic level. It’s also a potentially crucial advantage, because it can handle exponentially more complex problems.

Another key aspect is the property of entanglement, in which qubits separated by great distances can still be correlated, so a measurement in one place reveals a measurement far away.

The newly expanded Chicago network, created in collaboration with Toshiba, distributes particles of light, called photons. Trying to intercept the photons destroys them and the information they contain—making it far more difficult to hack.

The new network allows researchers to “push the boundaries” … read more …

 

[Anna @akrasko97]

Aliens Could Be Using Quantum Communications to Talk Across Interstellar Space

DAVID NIELD  8 JULY 2022
While we haven’t found any evidence of alien life yet, that doesn’t mean it’s not out there, beyond our reach. Now, a team of researchers has put together a mathematical model showing aliens could potentially be communicating across space – via quantum physics.

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/aliens-could-be-using-quantum-communications-to-talk-across-interstellar-space

Efforts are well underway to make quantum communications a reality here on Earth. The idea is that quantum mechanics provide certain properties that would make information transfer inherently faster and more secure than regular systems… if we can get it to work.

One of the major hurdles to overcome before quantum networks can be established is that they’re very fragile and susceptible to interference. According to this latest study, such networks could fly across space without breaking up.

“Quantum states you generally think of as very delicate, and if there’s any kind of external interaction, you kind of destroy that state,” lead author of the research, theoretical physicist Arjun Berera from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, told Science News.

Berera and his colleague Jaime Calderón-Figueroa, a fellow theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, ran calculations on the movement of X-rays across the emptiness of space to check for potential decoherence (the breaking up of the quantum state).

If photons – particles of light – were used as the quantum particles, the researchers determined, they could be beamed across hundreds of thousands of light-years at least, a greater stretch of distance than the entire Milky Way galaxy.

That’s partly because the average density of matter in space is much less than it is on Earth, and this ‘cleaner’ environment means less chance of interference. Even gravitational pulls wouldn’t be enough to knock a quantum communication network off course.

“It is plausible that quantum communication mediated by photons could be established across interstellar distances, in particular for photons in the X-ray region below the electron mass,” write the researchers in their published paper.

That alien life forms might be using quantum networks to speak to each other or to try and get in touch with us is, of course, pure speculation – but at the same time it gives astronomers another potential sign of life they can monitor for.

The “considerable information transfer” possible with a quantum signal would make it attractive to any extraterrestrial intelligence out there in the cosmos, the researchers say, though it may require a fully functioning quantum computer in order to decode it.

And even quantum communication isn’t magic: Information still can’t travel faster than the speed of light, so transmissions may take several years to reach their destinations.

Based on these findings, we can now add quantum communication as well as classical communication to the possible ways aliens might be chatting with each other – or perhaps might be trying to make themselves known to us.

“In principle, it should be possible to detect a quantum signal coming from an astrophysical body or even an intelligent signal from an extraterrestrial civilization,” write the researchers.

The research has been published in Physical Review D.

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