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China is developing drones that use quantum physics to send unhackable messages

  • Particles can carry information securely because intercepting them would alter the message and alert the receiver or sender
  • Researchers in Nanjing have condensed the quantum equipment and packed it into a drone

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Chinese researchers have developed a way for drones to share information securely. Photo: Nanjing University
Stephen Chenin Beijing
Chinese scientists say they have developed the world’s first fleet of drones equipped with quantum communication technology so that robots can share information securely with each other and human operators.

Researchers at Nanjing University, in eastern China, built drones able to generate pairs of “entangled” particles of light that could carry information in quantum states such as charges or polarisations representing 0 or 1, according to their paper published this month in the journal National Science Review.

Scientists test the alignment of the particle emitter and receiver, which need to face each other in a straight line. Photo: Nanjing University
Scientists test the alignment of the particle emitter and receiver, which need to face each other in a straight line. Photo: Nanjing University

By the laws of quantum physics, disturbing one entangled particle in a pair would affect the other, regardless of distance – meaning that information carried by such particles could not be intercepted without altering the message and alerting the receiver or sender.

Quantum communication devices, or quantum nodes, are usually set up in a laboratory with bulky, complex equipment including laser pumps, beam-splitting crystals, mirrors and ultra-sensitive detectors.

But Professor Zhu Shining and colleagues at the National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures significantly reduced the size of the quantum node and packed it into a drone weighing 35kg (77lbs).

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