Transcription
Quantum Communications on the other hand is not based on problems that are hard to solve. It's based on physical laws that are impossible to violate.
When we want to talk to other people, we do that often by sending light from one person to another. We blink when we want to signal something and then, for example, like in Morse code, we can agree on certain patterns of blinking that then need a message. Unfortunately, if we do that through a distance in the real world, there's plenty of opportunity for people to come and look at it.
When quantum physics comes in is when it's not a bright box of light that anyone can see. It's only a single particle, a single photon. And these single photons are governed by special laws that mean if you touch it, if you do anything to it, it changes. So Alice and Bob, who want to talk to each other, Alice could send a single photon to Bob. And Bob touches it, then it changes, but that's okay because he was the intended recipient to look at it. But if anyone in between touches it and changes it and then sends it on to Bob to pretend like nothing ever happened, Bob will know that because it's different from how it was before.
Quantum communication could become an integral part for any industry that values security in the communications. For example, in banking or in healthcare systems, in the government, and eventually, I believe, even the private consumer because everyone wants their messages to be potentially private and other people not to be able to look into them and eavesdrop on their conversations.
And it's mostly currently limited in terms of distance. We can't talk from York here to New York in the United States because that's too far away. We're only sending a single photon of light, and when that's lost, it's lost. We can't see it. So our job here at the Institute for Safe Autonomy, especially as well, is trying to push the limits of the distances that we can have these signals be measurable and be stable and be usable for Quantum Communications.