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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPhysicists Are Building an NSA-proof Internet
I'll blelieve it when I see it. Even if true, will us peons ever get access?
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/22986-physicists-are-building-an-nsa-proof-internet
Scientists say a solution for truly private, tamper-free digital communication is underway, and should be commercially viable within a decade.
For theoretical physicists, the solution has already existed for several decades, but the technology needs refining before its available on a mass scale across the internet. Still, the pieces of this ultra-secure, high-speed communications web are beginning to take shape in labs around the world.
The system is based on quantum physics, and more specifically on the concept of entanglement.
Entanglement is a topic that even hardened scientists discuss with a degree of wonder. Its quite mysterious, in fact, said Félix Bussières, a senior researcher in the Group of Applied Physics at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
Physicists have long struggled to come up with metaphors and analogies to describe entanglement, which is so hard to actually wrap the mind around that even Albert Einstein gave up and settled for calling it spooky. It involves creating two photons (particles of light) that, while independent of each other and free to travel long distances apart, are still tightly interrelated, almost as if they are not two separate photons but one indivisible photon pair. As photons travel, they spin; each part of the entangled photon pair spins in the exact opposite direction from the other. If something happens that causes either of the pair to change its spin, the other instantaneously changes its spin to compensate.
Entangled photons act like a tripwire for any outside tampering which is what makes a quantum internet so secure. In other terms, quantum mechanics tell us that if you look at a quantum state you perturb it, wrote Thomas Jennewein, an associate professor at theInstitute for Quantum Computing and in the physics and astronomy department of OntariosUniversity of Waterloo, in the institutes 2013 annual report. (If you want to read more on the science, start by looking up the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Schrödingers catthought experiment.)
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
--JBS Haldane
Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), 286
"The stream of human knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm."
Sir James Jeans
The Mysterious Universe (1930), 137.
seveneyes
(4,631 posts)But could never prove it.
Vashta Nerada
(3,922 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)You can't shut out one without shutting out the other...Am I right in saying that?
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's also been some research on non-destructively detecting the photons. If the entangled photon isn't destroyed by your detector, then you defeat quantum encryption.
randome
(34,845 posts)Including child porn. And then drug cartels. Same as Tor has been used. Same as Bitcoin has been used.
You want to free yourselves from the 'shackles' of the government? Sounds a lot like the Libertarian philosophy.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]
bananas
(27,509 posts)ladjf
(17,320 posts)traces of his work long before it becomes operational. If he doesn't watch out , he might find himself incarcerated.