The quantum internet, which connects particles linked together by the principle of quantum entanglement, is like the early days of the classical internet – no one can yet imagine what uses it could have, according to Professor Ronald Hanson, from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, whose team was the first to prove that the phenomenon behind it was real.
You are famous for proving that quantum entanglement is real, when in 2015 you linked two particles that were 1.3 kilometres apart. But the main objective of your work has always been to connect entangled particles into a quantum internet. What could such a network enable us to do?
‘One of the things that we could do is to be able to generate a key to encode messages with. (Using the quantum internet) the security of that key would now be based on this property of entanglement, and this is basically the properties of the laws of physics. ‘You will get a means of communication whose security is guaranteed by physical laws instead of (by) assumptions that no one is able to hack your code…..more
