this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
215 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
76992 readers
3064 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Pretty sure this was made clear in the article but... I'll outline the little I know on the subject as a complete layman.
Currently we have been able to use quantum effects to create single runs of fibre that cannot be intercepted. That is, if the data is intercepted by any known means the receiver will be able to detect this.
The shortcoming of this method, is that of course when you need to amplify the signal, that's generally a "store and forward" operation and thus would also break this system's detection. You could I guess perform the same operation wherever it is amplified, but it's then another point in which monitoring could happen. If you want 1 trusted sender, 1 trusted receiver and nothing in between, this is a problem.
What this article is saying, is they have found a way to amplify the information without ever "reading" it. Therefore keeping the data integrity showing as "unseen" (for want of a better word). As such this will allow "secure" (I guess?) fibre runs of greater distances in the future.
Now the article does go into some detail about how this works and why. But, for the basic aspect of why this is a good and useful thing. This is pretty much what you need to know.
Nar I get that. My point is what's the point of transferring quantum information. The only advantage I can see is doing a single quantum computation via decentralised nodes that are a significant distance from each other. But by the nature of quantum computations its not a useful thing to do.
This is for communication, not computation or even cryptography. The point in transferring it this way is so as to maintain the unseen property of the photon.
Bro, read. It's literally in his comment.
If the data is intercepted, the receiver knowns. It's a huge advantage.
Prevents MITM attacks. Stops em dead in the tracks.
Detect the compromise before transmission of the data.