The Quantum Internet: Yes, the concept is just as hard-hitting as the name suggests.

One of the many drawbacks of internet usage in this decade is the ease at which personal information is leaked and utilized with malicious intent. However, the increased vigilance of individuals online -regarding safety precautions- has led to fewer cases of identity thefts and scams. Unfortunately, no matter how cautious and meticulous you are in covering up your digital footprints, you will never be immune to an invasion of privacy and the theft of sensitive information. As people learn to build barriers, hackers (or more broadly, cybercriminals) will only find new ways to break them. It’s a vicious and chaotic cycle that we’ve grown accustomed to and have long accepted. We’ve learned to clutch our virtual belongings closer to our chests in hopes to be spared from this seemingly never-ending onslaught of digital crime.

At least, that’s what we thought, right?

Technology, at its core, is innovation- it never rests. There will always be a thirst for further advancement, a thrum under your skin, a sort of greed. That’s exactly what the technological researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory as well as the ones at the University of Chicago felt regarding internet safety. In February of 2020, quantum mechanics at their respective research centers revealed that they’d executed a concept called Quantum Entanglement -in which the behaviour of tiny particles is linked, causing them to be in similar states - over an 84.7 KM quantum loop network. And yes, I am completely aware you probably have no idea what this means, so allow me to break down the significance of this discovery.

This accomplishment facilitates the long-awaited concept of an unhackable internet. If all goes according to plan, the project, also known as ‘Quantum Internet’, will be available for use in a few decades. However, the Quantum Internet is not a replacement for the one currently in use. Instead, they should be used hand-in-hand. Where the regular falls short, the Quantum Internet will hopefully take over. Furthermore, when compared to the internet we’re familiar with today, the Quantum Internet will be significantly superior. While the traditional internet utilizes bits solely expressing values of either 1 or 0, the Quantum Internet would be able to further employ qubits of information that take on an infinite amount of values. Once again, so what? Well, this will allow the running of enormous applications that aren’t available for use when we’re exclusively making use of the regular internet.

As mentioned previously, the main advantage of the Quantum Internet is its ability to protect internet users and their safety, hence the name ‘Un-hackable Internet’. Due to the ease of interception, regular internet’s mediocre security is easily penetrated. When a message is transmitted, it begins to degrade and fix itself, allowing a ‘break-in’ and henceforth, information theft. Fortunately, the laws of quantum physics ensure that this will no longer serve as a problem. Quantum networks use light photon particles to send messages, eliminating the vulnerability of information to cyberattacks. The security of a message being transmitted across the Quantum Internet can be achieved through various methods. A promising concept would be the message being destroyed immediately if intercepted, leaving the cybercriminal and the initial recipient empty-handed.

This process is mostly built upon the concept of Quantum Teleportation. To clarify for those who are still confused, here is a quote from Sumeet Khatri, a researcher at Louisiana State University, from his email to “How Stuff Works”:

"Quantum teleportation is unlike what a non-scientist's mind might conjure up in terms of what they see in sci-fi movies, " Khatri says. "In quantum teleportation, two people who want to communicate share a pair of quantum particles that are entangled. Then, through a sequence of operations, the sender can send any quantum information to the receiver (although it can't be done faster than light speed, a common misconception). This collection of shared entanglement between pairs of people all over the world essentially constitutes the quantum internet. The central research question is how best to distribute these entangled pairs to people distributed all over the world.”

Quantum physics no longer looks like a disconnected and fancy concept, right? Soon, if all goes well, it’ll be the method behind our main form of communication! Understanding the physics behind it all is truly a stepping stone towards the further advancement of technology.