China has made a significant step forward in its quest to create a communications network proof against hacker attacks.
According to Chinese researchers, they used a satellite in space to transmit tiny particles over a record distance article in the newest issue of the scientific journal Science.
The event underscores China’s position as a significant player in quantum technology, a field of science that goals to harness subatomic particles in areas comparable to secure communications and medical imaging.
China launched a $100 million satellite, often known as Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center within the Gobi Desert last August.
Less than a 12 months after launching the world’s only quantum communications satellite, Chinese researchers have sent entangled photons from space to ground stations on Earth for the primary time in history.
“This is the first step towards globally secure quantum communications and maybe even a quantum internet,” he says Antoni Zeilingerexpert in quantum physics on the University of Vienna in Austria.
Before launch, researchers placed a fancy system of lasers, mirrors and a special crystal on board. When a special laser shone on the crystal, it created pairs of sunshine particles called entangled photons.
The crystal produces 6 million pairs of photons at a time, but on the bottom, each ground stations could only detect one pair per second. “It’s a difficult task,” Lu says. “It’s as if you could clearly see a human hair from 300 meters away.”
This launch – and the actual experiment – was a protracted time coming. Jian-Wei Mr The physicist leading the project from the China University of Science and Technology proposed the satellite experiment back in 2003.
The reason they were capable of do it so quickly was because people at the very best levels of the Chinese government prioritized the project, says Denis Simon of Duke Kunshan University, an authority on Chinese science policy.
Because higher-ups wanted it, the group didn’t should undergo the standard bureaucratic financing steps, he says.
The government is especially concerned about this technology since it wants quantum-secured communications within the national interest. “The Chinese government wants to communicate with its warships,” he says.
Source : New scientist | Wire | CNN
