- Aug 30, 2012
- 6,598
A Chinese research team, led by professor Chao-Yang Lu from the University of Science and Technology of China, have managed to teleport a piece of quantum information from the Gobi Desert to a satellite in space.
In a time of ever-increasing ransomware attacks and elusive hacker networks, what appears to be a major benefit to this type of information transfer is the minimization of the chances of interception, which means that quantum encryption may very well be the way forward for improved cybersecurity.
This is the first time information has been transferred into space using this method, known as quantum entanglement. It's not quite the same as the teleportation we see in science fiction; technically, no particle actually goes anywhere in the information transfer. What actually happens in quantum entanglement and in this teleportation is that two paired quantum photon particles react as if they were the same particle, without there being any physical connection between the two. So in essence, what you do or change in one particle will also change in the other particle, regardless of how far away the other particle is.
In a time of ever-increasing ransomware attacks and elusive hacker networks, what appears to be a major benefit to this type of information transfer is the minimization of the chances of interception, which means that quantum encryption may very well be the way forward for improved cybersecurity.