[LINK] To catch a fiber optic spy, look at a single photon

[Tony Barry]

At 1:54 PM +1000 6/6/2000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>My bullshit alarm went off while reading this. There is a strange mix of
>fibre and satellite technology and crypto-black magic in the piece.


It appears to be an application of quantum mechanical entanglement 
between particles which involves spooky action at a distance stuff 
which seems at first glance to involve travel faster that the speed 
of light. There is a good article in Scientific American June 2000 
"Quantum teleportation" (not on their web site) and in New Scientist 
20 May "Entangled web" 
http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22393

Don't dismiss this out of hand but the technical hurdles will be huge 
and the universe might just turn round and bite us by stopping it 
from working in a practical way

The same sort of thing is involved in quantum computing which is 
getting a lot of serious comment in New Scientist. eg 
http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/quantum/48.html

  Again promising stuff. This is not molecular computing though 
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0600issue/0600reed.html but something more 
fundamental.

Tony


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