Skip to footer

China sees quantum leap in secure telecommunications technology

Will the citizens of the future connect through a ‘global quantum communication network?’ Time will tell, though China’s breakthrough in quantum satellite communication technology is a promising start. 

|
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Visitors look at a mockup of China's homegrown Beidou satellite navigation system at the China Beijing International High-Tech Expo in Beijing, Saturday, June 10, 2017. While the nation lags behind the US and Russia in space research and development, a Chinese team broke barriers in quantum communication technology when a quantum satellite transmitted a dozen times further than ever before.
  • By Christian Shepherd Reuters

| Beijing

A Chinese quantum satellite has dispatched transmissions over a distance of 746 miles, a dozen times further than the previous record, a breakthrough in a technology that could be used to deliver secure messages, state media said on Friday, June 16.

China launched the world's first quantum satellite last August, to help establish "hack proof" communications between space and the ground, state media said at the time.

The feat opens up "bright prospects" for quantum communications, said Pan Jianwei, the lead scientist of the Chinese team, Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS), according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The scientists exploited the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, in which a particle can affect a far-off twin instantly, somehow overcoming the long distance separating them, a situation termed "spooky action at a distance" by the Nobel-prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, Xinhua added.

The team had successfully distributed entangled photon pairs over 1,200 km, it said, outstripping the distance of up to 62 miles at which entanglement had previously been achieved.

The technology so far is "the only way to establish secure keys between two distant locations on earth without relying on trustful relay," Mr. Pan told Xinhua, referring to encrypted messages.

The new development "illustrates the possibility of a future global quantum communication network" the journal Science, which published the results of the Chinese team, said on its website.

China still lags behind the United States and Russia in space technology, although President Xi Jinping has prioritized advancing its space program, citing national security and defense.

China insists its space program is for peaceful purposes, but the US Defense Department has highlighted its increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.

China's launch of the first experimental quantum satellite was a "notable advance in cryptography research," the Pentagon said this month.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to China sees quantum leap in secure telecommunications technology
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2017/0620/China-sees-quantum-leap-in-secure-telecommunications-technology
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe