http://gcn.com/articles/2012/04/19/air-force-quantum-communications-mass-effect-3.aspx By Greg Crowe GCN.com April 19, 2012 The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding a group of scientists from seven universities to investigate the best way to develop “quantum memories” for securing long-range communications. The team, led by scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology, will evaluate three ways of creating entangled quantum memories for enabling the secure transmission of information over great distances, according to an announcement from Georgia Tech. The five-year, $8.5 million project also includes scientists from Columbia, Harvard and Stanford universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin. The basic idea of all three methods is to use “entangled photons” — photons that are bound together and represent ones and zeroes according to their individual polarization. The difference in them is in the physical platforms that control the matter/light interaction used to generate them. The research group’s task is to figure out which method or combination of methods will have the best application. (Interestingly enough, this is exactly the same method of communication used in the “Mass Effect 3” computer game to talk securely from starships back to their home bases. One might wonder if that is where they got the idea, although Georgia Tech physics professor Alex Kuzmich said work in this field has been going on for the past 15 years.) [...] _______________________________________________ LayerOne Security Conference May 26-27, Clarion Hotel, Anaheim, CA http://www.layerone.orgReceived on Thu Apr 19 2012 - 23:26:34 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Thu Apr 19 2012 - 23:28:23 PDT