These two incredible developments have not only changed the path of scientific
research, but above all, they have become two revolutionary tools for dominating
the world. The atomic bomb was made for the first time in the US thanks to the
work of nuclear physicists who studied quantum phenomena. Without the efforts
of Teller, Oppenheimer, Einstein and Enrico Fermi among others, the US would
not have achieved its global supremacy. America then built missiles not to explore
space, but to launch such bombs across the planet. Science has always struggled
to remain neutral with respect to politics; nowadays, one could hardly exist without the other.
In 2017, the Chinese Quantum Space Satellite (QUESS)
2
tested quantum communications technology in space for the first time. This is a futuristic signal transmission technique whose cryptographic keys could be unattainable for hackers.
The new technology is based on a still-enigmatic phenomenon discovered by
Albert Einstein in the thirties when he was demonstrating that light was made up
of photons, or light quanta. In his calculations, he encountered an inexplicable
event that defined with great perplexity “spooky action at a distance”.
3
He observed
that two conjugated particles in complementary quantum states behave as a single
entity, even though they are located in different places of the Universe. The nuclear
physicists named this inexplicable phenomenon entanglement, which clashes with
our common sense vision of nature.
In 1968, Stephen Wiesner, a physicist at Columbia University, came up with the
idea of exploiting entanglement to encode digital data in a quantum way and
developed a theory for transmitting a message encoded on two conjugated and
observable particles. The idea was that if one of them had been hacked, its quantum state would have changed and its twin would have done the same even if it
was on the opposite side of the Universe. So, any hacker trying to access the data
stream could have been immediately identified by observing the status of the twin.
Translating the theory into practice, the QUESS satellite sent more than 6 million pairs of entangled photons every second from Earth's orbit to two stations in
Tibet 1,200 miles apart, demonstrating the feasibility of quantum transmission.
Nowadays in optical fiber communications, billions of photons travel each second, and a smart hacker can steal some of them to read the encoded information.
But in the future, quantum communication will be able to send a single photon per
each bit, and no one will be able to steal or hack that information without the
recipient noticing.
Telecommunications, medicine, materials, chemistry, computer science and
cloud computing are just a few of the sectors that are about to be revolutionized
2
https://www.space.com/quantum-communication-major-leap-satellite-experiment.html.
3
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/einstein-s-spooky-action-distance-spottedobjects-almost-big-enough-see#:~:text=Albert%20Einstein%20colorfully%20dismissed%20
quantum,to%20a%20satellite%20in%20space.
136 Conclusions
research, but above all, they have become two revolutionary tools for dominating
the world. The atomic bomb was made for the first time in the US thanks to the
work of nuclear physicists who studied quantum phenomena. Without the efforts
of Teller, Oppenheimer, Einstein and Enrico Fermi among others, the US would
not have achieved its global supremacy. America then built missiles not to explore
space, but to launch such bombs across the planet. Science has always struggled
to remain neutral with respect to politics; nowadays, one could hardly exist without the other.
In 2017, the Chinese Quantum Space Satellite (QUESS)
2
tested quantum communications technology in space for the first time. This is a futuristic signal transmission technique whose cryptographic keys could be unattainable for hackers.
The new technology is based on a still-enigmatic phenomenon discovered by
Albert Einstein in the thirties when he was demonstrating that light was made up
of photons, or light quanta. In his calculations, he encountered an inexplicable
event that defined with great perplexity “spooky action at a distance”.
3
He observed
that two conjugated particles in complementary quantum states behave as a single
entity, even though they are located in different places of the Universe. The nuclear
physicists named this inexplicable phenomenon entanglement, which clashes with
our common sense vision of nature.
In 1968, Stephen Wiesner, a physicist at Columbia University, came up with the
idea of exploiting entanglement to encode digital data in a quantum way and
developed a theory for transmitting a message encoded on two conjugated and
observable particles. The idea was that if one of them had been hacked, its quantum state would have changed and its twin would have done the same even if it
was on the opposite side of the Universe. So, any hacker trying to access the data
stream could have been immediately identified by observing the status of the twin.
Translating the theory into practice, the QUESS satellite sent more than 6 million pairs of entangled photons every second from Earth's orbit to two stations in
Tibet 1,200 miles apart, demonstrating the feasibility of quantum transmission.
Nowadays in optical fiber communications, billions of photons travel each second, and a smart hacker can steal some of them to read the encoded information.
But in the future, quantum communication will be able to send a single photon per
each bit, and no one will be able to steal or hack that information without the
recipient noticing.
Telecommunications, medicine, materials, chemistry, computer science and
cloud computing are just a few of the sectors that are about to be revolutionized
2
https://www.space.com/quantum-communication-major-leap-satellite-experiment.html.
3
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/einstein-s-spooky-action-distance-spottedobjects-almost-big-enough-see#:~:text=Albert%20Einstein%20colorfully%20dismissed%20
quantum,to%20a%20satellite%20in%20space.
136 Conclusions