'Hack-proof' quantum internet networks closer to reality, studies say

A powerful quantum internetthat's impervious to hacking is a little closer to reality thanks to breakthroughs outlined in two new studies this week.

But an expertwarns thesuper-secure quantum-based network may still be at least adecade away.

Quantum physics and the pursuitof an "unhackable"internet rely on a phenomenon known as entanglement, a process where a pair of particles photons, for instance behavelike a single particle, even when separated by distance.

While physicists hope to use entanglement to create a sophisticated, more encrypted internet,the challenge to date has been making itwork over any significant distancewithout interference from the Earth's atmosphere.

The move to space

A group of Chinese researchers was the first to launch a quantum satellite last Augustto help establish "hack-proof" communications between space and the ground, circumventing that interference.

Led byquantum physicist Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China at Hefei, the grouppublished a report in the journal Science this week showing that it had managed a record-breaking data transmissionover a distance of 1,200 kilometres a dozen times farther than the previous record.

Amr Helmy, a photonics professorin the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, said the achievement of the Chinese group "takes us one step further toward a quantum internet."

"There are many other requirements on which this ispredicatedthat have not been fulfilledyet, but it is indeed an important start," said Helmy in an interview with CBC News.

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Those other requirements include issues like storage and processing,hardware powerful enough to make the promise ofinvincible communications a reality, he said.

Helmysaid he believes the quantum internet is still a decade or more away.

'Spooky action'

You'reforgiven if the idea of particles communicating over great distances brings Star Trek-like images to mind.

Nobel-prize winning physicist Albert Einstein referred to this particle entanglementas"spooky action at a distance."

The picture gets even moresci-fiwhen you consider the second of the two studies out this week from a group led by quantum physicistChristophMarquardtof theMax Planck Institute for the Science of LightinErlangen, Germany.

Using theAlphasatI-XLsatellite to communicate with theTeideObservatory in Tenerife, Spain, his team found it could measure the quantum properties of laser signals from a satellite38,600 kilometresaway, suggesting an alternate route to a secure quantum communications network.

Their findings, published in the journal Optica this week, were the first to measure the quantum features of lasers from so far away.

The German group suggests their work highlights the feasibility of a quantum communications network that doesn'trely on particle entanglement.

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