Engineers Send Quantum Signals With Standard Internet Protocol (phys.org) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today's web. Reported in Science, the work shows that fragile quantum signals can run on the same infrastructure that carries everyday online traffic. The team tested their approach on Verizon's campus fiber-optic network. The Penn team's tiny "Q-chip" coordinates quantum and classical data and, crucially, speaks the same language as the modern web. That approach could pave the way for a future "quantum internet," which scientists believe may one day be as transformative as the dawn of the online era.
Quantum signals rely on pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other. Harnessing that property could allow quantum computers to link up and pool their processing power, enabling advances like faster, more energy-efficient AI or designing new drugs and materials beyond the reach of today's supercomputers. Penn's work shows, for the first time on live commercial fiber, that a chip can not only send quantum signals but also automatically correct for noise, bundle quantum and classical data into standard internet-style packets, and route them using the same addressing system and management tools that connect everyday devices online. "By showing an integrated chip can manage quantum signals on a live commercial network like Verizon's, and do so using the same protocols that run the classical internet, we've taken a key step toward larger-scale experiments and a practical quantum internet," says Liang Feng, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and the Science paper's senior author.
"This feels like the early days of the classical internet in the 1990s, when universities first connected their networks," added Robert Broberg, a doctoral student in ESE and co-author of the paper. "That opened the door to transformations no one could have predicted. A quantum internet has the same potential."
Quantum signals rely on pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other. Harnessing that property could allow quantum computers to link up and pool their processing power, enabling advances like faster, more energy-efficient AI or designing new drugs and materials beyond the reach of today's supercomputers. Penn's work shows, for the first time on live commercial fiber, that a chip can not only send quantum signals but also automatically correct for noise, bundle quantum and classical data into standard internet-style packets, and route them using the same addressing system and management tools that connect everyday devices online. "By showing an integrated chip can manage quantum signals on a live commercial network like Verizon's, and do so using the same protocols that run the classical internet, we've taken a key step toward larger-scale experiments and a practical quantum internet," says Liang Feng, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and the Science paper's senior author.
"This feels like the early days of the classical internet in the 1990s, when universities first connected their networks," added Robert Broberg, a doctoral student in ESE and co-author of the paper. "That opened the door to transformations no one could have predicted. A quantum internet has the same potential."
Cable companies are dinosaurs (Score:3)
Re:Why does it matter? (Score:4, Funny)
Given quantum bandwidth decays exponentially with distance I don't know what people think this technology is ever going to do for anyone. There will never be geographically scalable interconnection of quantum computers and the only other use of this technology is an extremely niche market to improve forward security of high security crypto.
You're not thinking big enough. Once AI takes over all the jobs and the owner class can kill most of us off, we'll cover most of the planet with quantum devices that are interconnected and finally have enough processing power available to the AIs to make a non-shitty cat video.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you overestimate what this tech can do.
Re: Why does it matter? (Score:2)
Awk look someone made a joke
packet loss (Score:3)
> Quantum signals rely on pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other
Packet loss says hello. Turns out the Verizon's campus fiber network is nothing like the actual internet.
Quantum encryption is no panacea. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no "Quantum Encryption". The whole term is a lie. All there is is "Quantum Key Exchange" (which does not qualify as cryptography) and after you have done that slowly, with high cost and probably insecure due to implementation flaws, you need to go to conventional encryption anyways. Far easier, more secure and far cheaper to courier a storage device with one-time keys. Oh, and "Quantum Links" are always point-to-point. That alone makes them almost worthless.
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Hmmm... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No fair! You altered the link by clicking on it!
No spooky action at a distance! (Score:5, Interesting)
so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other
Not true. QM is weird, but has yet to demonstrate superluminal causality.
More accurately, a measurement of one tells us something about the other that we did not know before.
Why is that weird? Its a long story, yadda yadda Bell's inequality, blah blah
So ok, the wave equation instantly changes at a distance, but that is not a real thing, it cannot be observed. In the words of Monty Python, "It's just a model".
Poor journalism (Score:2)
"pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other."
That's not how entanglement works. But I see now why so many people expect quantum mechanics to give us faster-than-light communication networks.
Re: (Score:2)
See, if it works as they want the layman to think entanglement works - you could just put two pairs in a set of radios and communicate at any distance without interference or intrusion. Obviously that's not how it works, but they want investors to dream that it could. one. day.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. The whole field of "Quantum Communication" is one big fat scam, same as "Quantum Computing". Apparently, after 50 years of intense research, the latter can today factor the number 35, if you are not faking things. Yes, in theory possible, but in practice just a very broken idea that refuses to die and that will likely never be useful for anything.
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is one big fat scam, same as "Quantum Computing". Apparently, after 50 years of intense research,
50 years to implement a theoretical device is not much. Space rockets were first described in 1903. It took a century for Einsteins gravity waves to be detected. Artificial intelligence was predicted with some accuracy in Victorian times.
And atoms were proposed two thousand years before Rutherford discovered the proton. "Atoms", or "elementary particles" as we now call them, are not a scam.
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No, this is 50 year is engineering and applied research to get it to work, after the basic observations about the mechanisms were pretty complete. Quantum mechanics is about 100 years old. The scalability in QCs is simply not there and that is really no surprise. We do not even know whether the scaling is linear with time or worse because it is so abysmally bad.
Rockets are about 750 years old. Detecting gravity waves is a completely different type of problem. AI was not predicted in Victoria times in any me
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Yep. In a sane world people with no understanding of Quantum Mechanics would not write stories about it. Instead we get this bullshit.
FTL communication is probably possible by quantum-tunneling, but that is completely impractical. Like pumping in a few kW of RF into an 1m pipe to get a few microwatt of FTL signal on the other side. Or going though the event horizon of a black hole, via Hawking radiation.
There are no practical applications from that.
IPoAC versus IPoSC (Score:4, Funny)
Which internet protocol? (Score:2)
I am getting really tired of this nonsense (Score:2)
I am sure there is at least one big, fat lie buried in this "success" story. I do not even care enough anymore to find it.
Not qute what the headlne says (Score:2)
When they describe routing quantum signals over the same "infrastructure" as standard IP, they are just talking about the physical fibers, of course all the switching has to be new. Basically they are using classical IP data to control fiber switches that route the quantum signals. Then they run the classical and quantum signals on the same fibers.
So its OK, but not exactly surprising - once an optical switch with sufficiently low noise for quantum links exists, this is pretty straightforward. In the simple
Already done in 1982 (Score:2)
In my day, we called this "UDP".
Your message both gets there and doesn't get there.
There's no way to tell until you look and see!
(UDP/IP is a deliberately unreliable protocol: packets may be transmitted once or any number of times, and may be dropped anywhere.)
Re: (Score:1)
Came here for a UDP reference, leaving happy.
Worst Slashdot story in a long time (Score:2)