From The Globe and Mail
A record-breaking experiment by a Chinese satellite has taken the weird world of quantum physics to new heights and is likely to spur other nations, including Canada, in their efforts to develop an unhackable form of long-distance communication.https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/china-achieves-quantum-breakthrough-in-space/article35316922/“We have done something that was absolutely impossible using conventional approaches,” said Jian-Wei Pan, project leader and physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. Dr. Pan suggested his team’s achievement had “kick-started a new quantum space race.”
The tour de force experiment featured a device on the satellite beaming pairs of photons – individual particles of light – linked by a mysterious effect known as quantum entanglement to two separate receiving stations on Earth. The stations were located 1,203 kilometres apart, a tenfold increase in distance over ground-based tests. Because such quantum signals are effectively impervious to eavesdropping, the results have implications for efforts to create more secure communication networks.
“I believe this will lead to an increase of interest in other countries to follow up,” said Thomas Jennewein, a researcher at the University of Waterloo, who called the Chinese result the “first proof of concept” for satellite-based quantum communications.
Dr. Jennewein has long been working toward a Canadian ground-to-space version of the experiment, and last fall demonstrated that a system he built at the university’s Institute for Quantum Computing was able to establish a link with a passing aircraft. In March, the federal government allocated an additional $80.9-million to the Canadian Space Agency’s budget over the next five years, part of which is earmarked for the development of a quantum encryption satellite demonstration mission. Research groups in Germany, Singapore, the United States and Britain, among others, are also pursuing their own variants of quantum communications in space.
The results of the quantum experiment were reported Thursday in the journal Science, the same day that China successfully launched an X-ray telescope into orbit. Both are examples of the growing use of China’s space capabilities for scientific research, an emphasis that Dr. Pan has championed.
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