There are exactly 2 reasons we might want quantum networks.
1. 100% secure communication channels (even better we can detect any attempt at eavesdropping and whatever information is captured will be useless to the eavesdropper)
2. Building larger quantum computers. A high fidelity quantum network would allow you to compute simultaneously with multiple quantum chips by interfacing them.
The thing that makes quantum networking different from regular networking is that you have to be very careful to not disturb the state of the photons you are sending down the fiber optics.
Im currently doing my PhD building quantum networking devices so im a bit biased but I think it’s pretty cool :).
Now does it matter I’m not sure. Reason 1 isn’t really that useful because encryption is very secure. However if quantum computers start to scale up and some encryption methods get obsoleted this could be nice. Also having encryption that is provably secure would be nice regardless.
Reason 2 at the moment seems like the only path to building large scale quantum computing. Think a datacenter with many networked quantum chips.
> 100% secure communication channels (even better we can detect any attempt at eavesdropping and whatever information is captured will be useless to the eavesdropper) chips.
A few follow up questions:
1. What is it about quantum computers that can guarantee 100% secure communication channels?
2. If the communications are 100% secure, why are we worried about eavesdropping?
3. If it can detect eavesdropping, why do we need to concern ourselves with the information they might see/hear? Just respond to the detection.
4. What is it about quantum computing that would make an eavesdroppers’ overheard information useless to them, without also obviating said information to the intended recipients?
This is where the language used to discuss this topic turns into word salad for me. None of the things you said necessarily follow from the things that were said before them, but rather just levied as accepted fact.
1. Nothing. Quantum Key Distribution is what they're talking about, and it still requires P!=NP because there's a classical cryptographic step involved (several, actually). It just allows you to exchange symmetric keys with a party you've used classical cryptography to authenticate, it's vulnerable to MITM attacks otherwise. So you're dependent on classical signatures and PKI to authenticate the endpoints. And you're exchanging classical symmetric keys, so still dependent on the security of classical encryption like AES-GCM.
2. Because they're not 100% secure. Only the key exchange step with an authenticated endpoint is 100% secure.
3. Eavesdropping acts like a denial of service and breaks all communications on the channel.
4. It makes the information useless to everyone, both the eavesdropper and the recipients. Attempting to eavesdrop on a QKD channel randomizes the transmitted data. It's a DOS attack. The easier DOS attack is to break the fiber-optic cable transmitting the light pulses, since every endpoint needs a dedicated fiber to connect to every other endpoint.
> Only the key exchange step with an authenticated endpoint is 100% secure.
It's 100% secure in theory, assuming a model of the hardware (which is impossible to verify even if you could build it to "perfectly" satisfy all model assumptions, which of course you also can't).
Yeah, the key exchange portion is secure. The resulting shared secret in RAM, on the other hand, is only as secure as the computer it's on. The moment you're out of the quantum realm by measuring the exchanged quanta, you lose the 100% security guarantee of the quantum portion of the key exchange. The Q part of QKD is actually secure, it's just that it's also useless and QKD as a whole exists mostly to fleece investors. It's a nerdy party trick, not a serious security mechanism.
There is no such thing as a magical "quantum realm". Devices performing quantum state preparation or measurements are just devices. They aren't perfect and can never be made to "100%" satisfy any assumptions.
The Q part is secure in theory, assuming your devices satisfy a specific theoretical model. That's not a 100% guarantee. In fact, it's just the same kind of guarantee as we get for any other security system: "We carefully examined the system and it seems like it satisfies the assumptions of our theoretical model, thus promising security".
Not that this is a bad thing, it's just that "quantum" doesn't make anything "magically 100% secure". There's no such thing as "100% security".
Yeah, I should have specified "the photon packet in the fiber" instead of generic "quantum", but there isn't always actually a photon packet even when light is the medium, and there isn't always a fiber, and just mashing it all up as "quantum" was faster. Any interference with the actual stuff that's doing the information exchange will cause the communication to fail, so that one part of the system can't be eavesdropped on passively.
Sorry, but I think the way you're phrasing this implies a burden on them to explain well understood and widely accepted principles of quantum physics that you seem to be implying are pseudoscience.
> According to the laws of quantum physics, it is impossible to measure or copy an unknown state of a quantum particle without noticeably changing it.
That alone is a very clear description of how quantum mechanics is pseudoscience. Its based entirely on an untestable principle. When the initial state can't be measured because doing so changes the state we are left entirely unable to run a controlled study on it. You must know Tue state before and after an intervention to reliably and accurately deduce what happened or to begin to understand why it happened.
This is the one miracle that we must grant to allow the rest of quantum research to become possible.
No, it's all well-defined science. There's known mathematics for how the operations you do affect the probability distribution of the answer. The initial state can be prepared. It can't be measured after it's been prepared, because that would ruin it. But so what - that happens all the time in science. Your comment is like saying chemistry is a pseudoscience because if we put a pH indicator strip in before doing a certain reaction to prove it's an acid, the contamination by the indicator chemical stops the reaction from working.
We can simulate a quantum computer using a normal computer (in exponential time). Simulations of tiny quantum computers agree with the experiments using tiny quantum computers. We can also simulate less-tiny (but still pretty small because it takes exponential time) quantum computers. But we haven't built an actual one of those yet. It seems they're really hard to build But also no fundamental reason is known why it should be impossible to build one. Shouldn't it just be the same as a tiny one, but bigger? The tiny ones were hard enough to build, so maybe it's just really hard and we need better techniques.
Perhaps it will turn out to be a failed branch of science that leads to no practical applications, but it's certainly real science, studying real things and making testable predictions (which are true so far). I suppose your next objection will be that since we only have tiny quantum computers, non-tiny problems are pseudoscience, but that's like saying particle physics was pseudoscience before we built the Large Hadron Collider.
You're describing a field based on simulations and predictions. That is interesting, but it isn't scientific as you aren't actually testing anything when you only run simulations.
A simulation is an interesting indicator for future scientific research, but it is never scientific research in and of itself.
I feel like most of your answer was just re-stating the question. I’m happy to admit that’s almost certainly a mix of my ignorance on the topic at hand, and I have been primed to view the discussions surrounding quantum computing with suspicion, but either way, that’s the way it reads to this layperson.
Something about this new iteration of phrenology seems more insidious. It allows researchers to avoid having to make actual claims about relationships between structure and outcome. Instead the buck is passed to the models. The scientists are free to just report their model accuracy and leave the conclusion of the validity of the connection to the reader. This is very abuseable too as bad methods can easily create convincing results that support a desired narrative. Oh well just another thing to worry about in the future.
If I were to design a satire then it would be quite close to that. Company seems dead, but looks like it was around for a few years. Ridiculous such garbage was around in the first place and raised any amount of funds. I've seen plenty of garbage companies with garbage premises over the years, but this takes the cake.
Last year, i recognized a lady who also exits the same metro & bus at the same station sometimes, so i was looking forward that i will see her again one day. This happened:
I have to note im somewhat above the average body height, as she is: id say she was around 1.89m, my own size - apart from the fact that i found her beautiful, i thought it would be somehow a "higher chance" to get to known her, since for tall women its actually not easy (if you are ~1.89m and you want someone who is at least the same size, 90%+ men are out!) and i "projected" that she may notice this.
So when i saw her leaving the bus, i spoke to her and invited here to a coffee - she looked at me completely confused like i was trying to rob her. (it was a "daylight situation" short after lunch)
Not required to say that she never called back after handing her my number :-)))
Um, did you consider that this tall, beautiful woman might a) already have a partner despite being tall, b) not be interested in finding a partner right now, or c) since it was lunchtime, was thinking about something she needed to do for work and resented the interruption?
Your reaction is an example of why dating is so hard for guys. There is no way to approach women without risking a potentially reputation-ruining reaction.
Well, there's definitely no right way to do a cold approach and immediate invitation to a date to a stranger on the street; there are contexts where people are signalling they are open to dating approahces from strangers (dating apps, certain singles events—but even a certain amount of mutual sharing, facilitated by the app or event, is normal before an invitation, for both parties to do some assessment of compatibility beyond appearance), and there are relatively safe ways and contexts to inquire about the possibility of a date where there is a pre-existing non-dating relationship. But a cold approach on the street based on nothing but appearance (partially attraction, partially the paradoxical assessment that this attractive potential partner has an unusually limited set of potential partners of their own) has got to be the worst choice ever.
Not only do you have a mich higher chance of approaching someone who isn't available for dating in any context, you also signal that your only concern in dating in appearance and that you are incredibly socially inept and unaware of the contexts in which dating approaches are appropriate, neither of which are helpful to your cause, in most cases.
>>you also signal that your only concern in dating in appearance
a) first, i didnt tell her my assumption?!!!
b) you are sounding like: "do not do any of those assumptions because they are wrong and listen..." - in fact: EVERYBODY is doing those assumptions/calculations when approaching someone, regardless the environment - so there is absolutely no reason to point out that my "behaviour" is somehow any specific to someone else - this is just disguise from yours :-)
c) what about all this buff then: "why does nobody invites me on a date?" and "why do men do not speak to women openly" etc. and all this stuff that we can read everywhere, like: Men have to approch Women, so i did. And failed. And now you have your perspective, thats OK.
d) WHENEVER you are speaking to someone in a club/socialevent/etc. your primary signal is appearance, so do not try to wrap this otherwise since experiments & data show absolutely whats going on.
You approached her cold on the street knowing nothing about her but her appearance. You don't need to tell your assumption. Women have brains.
> you are sounding like: "do not do any of those assumptions because they are wrong and listen..."
While I may have an opinion on the assumptions you are making, I am not at all expressing that. What I am expressing is that you are failing to consider important factors in your calculation, namely, the social context, and the impapct of the social context on the way your actions are perceived by someone doing their own set of calculations.
> what about all this buff then: "why does nobody invites me on a date?
This is about what happens in social contexts where dating intent is signalled, not in those where it is not.
> and "why do men do not speak to women openly"
"Speaking" here is not code for "invite on dates", and, again, this still is sensitive to appropriate social contexts.
> Men have to approch Women, so i did. And failed.
You have confused a broad (though not universal) social expectation that men should be the party to approach women with the concept that it is equally beneficial to do so in any social context and all that matters is that there is a woman you think you might want to date present to make it appropriate. This is...incorrect.
You have managed to wrap your brain around (even if you may have overgeneralized it) a single social expectation. Your success may be improved when you increase your capacity for processing social expectations relevant to your task to a quantity greater than one.
If a guy sees an attractive woman out in real life somewhere, is there any action he can take that would be appropriate? What specifically should a guy do?
just approach... Aproach in public places, where it's bright best timeing is during the day near other people... If you think she is creeped out say goodbies, most of the interactions you will either click in first seconds or get shut down. Don't be intimidating, don't touch her, chat with her for few minutes then ask her to go for a date... If you seriously decide to do that you will be surprised how many women are available... Most of the receptive ones I found where single and not on dating apps for various reasons... So basically you literally have zero competition, as those girls are not actively dating (especially when out of university)
If you are not at a bar, club, church singles' mixer, or other environment where people go for the purpose of meeting strangers for dating, think to yourself, "oh, she's pretty," then move along. Seriously. This advice goes doubly at any even slightly professional event, like a conference or a technology meetup.
If you need encouragement to leave her be, remember that more likely than not, she's already in a relationship.
>But a cold approach on the street based on nothing but appearance has got to be the worst choice ever.
all of the dating apps are based purely on appearance. This is not by mistake, but because we people judge by appearance first of all.
>higher chance of approaching someone who isn't available
so what? 70% someone isn't available but the 30% that are available you still have higher chance of getting the date than on the dating apps.
> you also signal that ... you are incredibly socially inept...
right... because being charming and speaking to someone in real life with good body language and flirting skills is going to signal you are socially inept.
All I hear are bunch of excuses to be honest.
Approaching on the street has been a game changer for me, I know have a long term girlfriend from street approach
Good catch!
The days when i saw her some days in the metro, i checked explicitly if she has some signs of an existing relationship, like a ring or something specific that may indicate this.
Also i have to admit, she is a smoker; something i could deal with (teethgrindingly) since i was one for myself years ago, but honestly: Today most men wont partner up with a lady who is a smoker. And in case of men today, if you are smoking you are actually out forever for any women: Smoking _is_ just disgusting :-D
So, my "gut-statistics" is just telling me that she is/was single with a very very high probality.
EDIT:
before someone is coming with clothes or similar ideas: Im working in a decent office environment in which nice clothes are the standard (finance), so im not running around with jeans etc, also im in very good shape
Some background for the unfamiliar. This is a new type of quantum computing platform that Microsoft has been pursuing almost independently. Most major research groups focus on superconducting qubits (IBM, Google) or trapped atoms/ions, (or photonics, or a lot of other things) while Microsoft has been developing topological qubits. These qubits are particularly interesting because they exhibit a natural resilience to noise that all other qubit systems lack. However, creating them has been a major challenge.In the summer of 2022, Microsoft claimed for the first time to have created a such qubit, though their results were met with some skepticism.
Now, it seems there is no longer any debate. Microsoft has successfully created and controlled topological qubits. Is this a big deal? Yes but its a far cry from a million qubits. Fair warning, this is not my area of research, so I'm unsure what developments occurred between their 2022 results and now. The relevant papers from Microsoft can be found here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08445-2https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12252
edit:
I read the nature paper more carefully, it looks like it is still up for debate whether they have made a topological qubit, but the evidence today is considerably stronger than previous results. Anyways don't start worrying about microsoft hacking your bank account just yet.
Oh also to clarify: What exactly is the device they have made? Well it's pretty complicated but one handwavey explanation is that they have created a device that splits an electron into two quasiparticles and does computations by physically moving these quasiparticles around each other. This is what they refer to as braiding.
Quantum mechanics tells us that the qubit (coin) can exist in any linear superposition of heads and tails. To express this you write a|heads> + b|tails> the only constraint is that a^2 + b^2 must equal 1. Now why would that be the constraint? It is because a^2 and b^2 are the probabilities of measuring heads and tails respectively.
In this example the coin is put into the state where an and b equal 1/sqrt(2) to give an equal probability of each outcome. So there is exactly one state associated with the coin. Now this state does lead to two possible outcomes but the underlying state (that can not be directly observed) is exactly one thing.
