Best of 2013: Government Lab Reveals It Has Operated Quantum Internet for Over Two Years

In May, the blog revealed that for more than two years, Los Alamos National Labs has been running a quantum Internet capable of sending perfectly secure messages.

Emerging Technology from the arXivarchive page

December 23, 2013

One of the dreams for security experts is the creation of a quantum Internet that allows perfectly secure communication based on the powerful laws of quantum mechanics.

The basic idea here is that the act of measuring a quantum object, such as a photon, always changes it. So any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect. That allows anybody to send a “one-time pad” over a quantum network which can then be used for secure communication using conventional classical communication.

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