QUANTUM LEAP

We like phat pipes, and we cannot lie. And over the past 20 years we’ve seen internet connections change from dial-up to ADSL over copper wire, to today’s fiber-optics. So what’s next for how we transfer data?

Imagine a network that, instead of using pulses of light to send signals, uses the properties of photons themselves. This is a quantum network, and it relies on something Einstein wasn’t very fond of: Quantum entanglement. Decried as ‘spooky action at a distance’ by the moustachioed relativity-theorizer, entanglement means creating a pair of photons in such a way that, when you measure the quantum state of one, you immediately