PC
The latest techie buzz word seems to be the word Quantum. It is the end-all-be-all of computer technology, the savior of the computing universe. Right.
“Quantum” is used to define the momentum, state, and energy of the elementary particles of an atom, or basically any subatomic particle. It seems like every day someone comes out with a new quantum something that is supposed to solve all our problems. I saw an article wednesday on quantum cryptography now supposedly unbreakable. I read the article and it does seem that they have developed something that would be impossible to intercept in such a way that it could be deciphered simply due to the fact that an interception would be detected in the quantum state of the stream which could then be stopped. It is interesting stuff and reminded me of a bad book I once tried to read.
The book was Robert Ludlum’s The Paris Option (A Covert-One Novel), and please don’t buy it. This book was written after Robert Ludlum’s death. I don’t know why or how they were able to put his name on it, but it is an insult to the quality of books that he wrote. The book talks about a DNA computer, but really describes in many ways a quantum computer. Every time there is something that the book wants to accomplish that makes no sense or is completely implausible they attribute it to a DNA computer which has the ability to do just about whatever it wants. For example, they use it to take down many different systems within the United States without considering the network infrastructure that would have to exist in order to do this. In spite of us wanting everything to be perfectly connected, it just isn’t. It was a terrible book an I just couldn’t finish it, and I’m not the kind of person to leave a book half-read.
Image via Wikipedia
“Quantum” is the reason that it is highly unlikely that living matter teleportation will ever work in Star Trek fashion. The first problem you run into is the sheer quantity of data that a quantum state of a human being would take up. The second problem is capturing all that data at an exact instant in time so that it could be reassembled at the same exact instant. The third problem is sending that matter an energy to some remote location. The fourth problem is reassembling that information at the same exact instant with all quantum states intact. The final big problem that I want to talk about is the interception problem as described in the quantum cryptography article. Merely intercepting the quantum stream that is a human being would disrupt its state making it impossible to reassemble.
Quantum theory is some interesting stuff, and I’m no expert by any means. I do know that there is no such thing as unbreakable encryption. If I interpret what they are doing correctly, they are making the encryption unable to be intercepted long enough to be broken. If all the data were available to a cracker, it could be broken. Encryption has always been designed to be only strong enough to protect to the level needed by the system. For example, if you change your password every 90 days, then if it takes 91 days to decrypt your password using typical means, then your system is “unbreakable.” Your password is not. Again, if I interpret what these people are doing it is making a less likely to be broken system, not an unbreakable encryption.
I read a blog recently that had an article on quantum suicide and the large hadron collider. I highly recommend reading it if you are interested in strange theories. Go over to NestedUniverse to read. I think this is one of those subjects that you could spend the rest of your life researching and still end up knowing very little compared to what is all out there. For me, a sci-fi fan, it’s just fun to think about every so often.
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