China Launches World's First Quantum Communications Satellite (theverge.com) 102
hackingbear quotes a report from The Verge: China's quantum network could soon span two continents, thanks to a satellite launched earlier today. Launched at 1:40pm ET, the Quantum Science Satellite is designed to distribute quantum-encrypted keys between relay stations in China and Europe. When working as planned, the result could enable unprecedented levels of security between parties on different continents. China's new satellite would put that same fiber-based quantum communication system to work over the air, utilizing high-speed coherent lasers to connect with base stations on two different continents. The experimental satellite's payload also includes controllers and emitters related to quantum entanglement. The satellite will be the first device of its kind if the quantum equipment works as planned. According to the Wall Street Journal, the project was first proposed to the European Space Agency in 2001 but was unable to gain funding.
Any military use? (Score:2)
I'm confused, by QM generally, and this in particular.
Is there any military application, or are those guys just going to keep using boring old physical key distribution, and one-time-pads for the serious stuff?
Re:Any military use? (Score:4, Informative)
The military application is there if the quantum technology is protecting secret communication to a level that makes it impossible for anyone external to view it.
I wonder if they have been able to also implement a way to detect if someone listens to the signal using entanglement. It would be quite the deal if it was possible to detect that on a wireless signal.
Re:Any military use? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been proven to work with fibre optic cable. You can't observe a photon without affecting it, and that observation is then detectable. The only difference is that now they are using lasers through the air rather than through fibre optic cables.
It's not perfect, it's still possible that ways will be found to observe the light in a way that the tamper detection doesn't pick up on, but turning that into something you can reasonably hide in a position to intercept those photons is a not insignificant challenge.
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"It's still possible..."
You're either referring to side-channel attacks, which exploit imperfections within specific implementations (see "qauntum hacking"), or you believe fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics (specifically the "no cloning theorem") are wrong. The former is legitimate, but not fundamental, and the latter is contrary to all current evidence.
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Yes, side-channel attacks based on weaknesses in the implementation.
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We have had optical sensors that can pick up a single photon reflected from a mirror on the moon for decades. While there will certainly be some losses, they are not insurmountable.
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Not very usefull. Part of the issue is, they send a stream, and detect a stream, but the actual results depend on both sendinder and detector choices. Only if they are aligned do they get a definite signal, if not, its probalistic.
So your data can't match their data, because you don't know what they are measuring on each measurement. Any one of them could be bunk for you or bunk for them, and you wont know which is which, or what measurement they got when you got it wrong and they didn't.
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This has been proven to work with fibre optic cable. You can't observe a photon without affecting it, and that observation is then detectable. The only difference is that now they are using lasers through the air rather than through fibre optic cables.
It's not perfect, it's still possible that ways will be found to observe the light in a way that the tamper detection doesn't pick up on, but turning that into something you can reasonably hide in a position to intercept those photons is a not insignificant challenge.
Suppose there were a 100 laser transmitter/receiver pairs on the satellite, set aside for keys. If you use one encrypted message to contain information about which of the 100 lasers would be used to transmit the true key, and when (in milliseconds of time from UTC), I think that there would be a pretty good secure system. One would have to monitor all 100 laser transmitters concurrently, and also know which one sent the message identifying which transmitter will transmit the true key.
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Suppose there were a 100 laser transmitter/receiver pairs on the satellite, set aside for keys...
Quantum encryption is not about obscurity. Also, I doubt there would be any transmitter/receiver, but rather it would use reflection. I don't think there would be any receiver/transmitters, as this would break the quantum channel and make reading the initial quantum signal impossible.
It my understanding that QE is about making sure that only one person/entity can "read" the signal and once the data is read, it cannot be resent in the exact same format. This is good for both sending a one-time-pad for sendin
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I wonder if they have been able to also implement a way to detect if someone listens to the signal using entanglement. It would be quite the deal if it was possible to detect that on a wireless signal.
Yes. That is entirely the point of using entanglement.
Really? You need to ask this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I would say that secure key distribution has a military application - secure communications.
Good on them I say, pushing the limits further, real science..
Compare that with the reaction of the DNC to their hacked emails, by creating a board of lawyers
and politicos to fix their security problems. I can only assume by pushing for more spying and
monitoring laws, less encryption, and backdoors in everything, because that helps, right?
Face it, the Chinese are rapidly become world technology leaders, and denial wont stop it.
These days it looks like the Chinese are working hard to become the new Renaissance state, while
the west is rushing to emulate the worst of Maoist stats China through totalitarian control and monitoring
of their citizens..
Sad really, but inevitable with a western population that has become too focused on maximising their own
personal comfort, and running in fear at anything that is unfamiliar or uncomfortable - basically ceding total
control to a state that is more than happy to grab it and run. Those in power will be laughing all the way
to the collapse, with little thought to what happens after.
But dont worry, just keep supporting your liberal left, or your religious right, and ignore the fact that both
sides are playing the same gave of totalitarian control at any cost, while the east gets on with actual
production and development.
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EU isn't a country... also without the UK the entire rest of the EU is smaller than the US.
A group of countries can work together to become the dominant global power, both economically and militarily. A united Europe does have the potential to become the dominant global power, and when making strategic plans for the future you must take potentials into account. But as demonstrated by Brexit, Europe lacks the common will to do so.
Speaking of potentials, if Russia and Germany aligned together (like they did in the late 1930s) they could become a dominant global power. Germany with its high-tech ec
Re:Really? You need to ask this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The portion of its population that is still in poverty exceeds the entire population of the United States"
The Chinese cohort of anything exceeds the entire population of the United States. This is also true of the number of Chinese brains being applied to science/tech problems of every kind.
We fear what our lawyers cannot suppress.
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The Chinese cohort of anything exceeds the entire population of the United States. This is also true of the number of Chinese brains being applied to science/tech problems of every kind.
And yet they still haven't
I have yet to see original projects or even leading technology coming from China. This may be the first but I haven't researched it enough. I seem to recall quantum light communications via lasers being demo'd 5+ years ago.
People used to talk shit like this about the Japanese in the 50's and early 60's. They did also with the Taiwanese and South Koreans.
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Japan has like half the population of the US and half the GDP. China has like 4x the population of the US.
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Japan has like half the population of the US and half the GDP. China has like 4x the population of the US.
Don't waste your words. People in this country still think things will go back to the glory economic days of the 50's and 60's... all by prayers alone. The people who get it are getting ready for it through education and versatility. The ones who do not, we'll, I guess they are going to find out the hard way.
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People used to talk in the 80's about how the Japanese with their superior technology and management theories were going to displace the US as the number 1 economic power in the world, too. Didn't and won't happen. For China it remains to be seen but is not a sure thing by any stretch.
For the reasons I've mentioned in other places - a real estate crash followed by population decline, not because of an inherent American strength. As it stands Japan can still guarantee a high standard of life for its citizenship until the 2050s. We cannot make the same claim the US. Hell, 1/3 of our schools are dysfunctional and we cannot even guarantee lead-free water to our people.
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The portion of its population that is still in poverty exceeds the entire population of the United States
Where did you get this? All the sources I can find say that the poverty rate in china is below 15% (actually similar to the US) which is only something like 200 million people.
Somehow the US is still on top.
By what metric exactly? All measures of education, poverty, GDP per capita, health outcomes, etc. do not put us in first place. Far from it actually.
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By what metric exactly? All measures of education, poverty, GDP per capita, health outcomes, etc. do not put us in first place. Far from it actually.
Raw power.
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lol okay. Tell me how that matters to anyone that's not a megalomaniac. Does it put food on the table? Help people pay their hospital bills?
This is actually an interesting topic. Is it more beneficial for an individual to live in a country with more or less global power? Does global power translate to a better life for a country's citizens? An argument against this is that a global power has to spend resources outside of the country to maintain its power, like for the military, and for financial aid to weaker allies. But there are economic returns for those military expenditures--military dominance does lead to better access to different market
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military dominance does lead to better access to different markets and resources, whether gotten implicitly or explicitly.
I'm just saying, looking at outcomes this is apparently not helping us very much. Our quality of life is substantially lower than countries with little or no military power.
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How many of those countries are protected, even if only indirectly, by the US?
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"Raw power."
Not even that.
Military spending yes - three times as much as China (#2), more than the next 19 combined and more than everything from there down combined.
The USA has a higher percentage GDP spend on its military than the Soviet Union did at its peak - and it was overspending on the military which finally broke the USSR. That spending is coming at expense of infrastructure (you have bridges and highways rotting), education and healthcare.
How long until the USA breaks - and who will help keep the
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I'm old enough to remember talk of the Soviet Union destroying the American Empire,
I'm old enough (and lived right at the cold war front lines) to remember the USSR came close to it. The USSR lost because it fell for Papa Reagan's Star Wars arms-race trap. The USSR could have continue as-is if it had not attempted to expand. BTW, this should not be construed as an endorsement of the Soviets.
a united Europe destroying the American Empire,
I never heard of this one, though the EU is the largest market on the planet. It doesn't need to destroy the US, it simply needs to flourish. Economic dominance is not a zero-sum game.
OPEC taking over the world,
They almost did b
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They are going to screw you and I if Trump does not win, they will feel emboldened for the final strike. The one which will prove deadly.
Tin foil alert! Tin foil alert!
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"Good on them I say, pushing the limits further, real science..
Compare that with the reaction of the DNC to their hacked emails, by creating a board of lawyers
and politicos to fix their security problems."
Apples and oranges. One is a political-technical set of problems, the other is a purely technical problem. Although your level of thinking might be one reason why the Chinese would supplant the Americans.
China is anything but a Renaissance state. When they return Tibet to the Tibetans, when they stop their
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Good on them I say, pushing the limits further, real science..
This.
Meanwhile, our NSA, who should be supporting this sort of R&D, is busy peaking at our porn habits (under right wing administrations) or tracking down our offshore bank accounts (when the left is in power).
I find your naivety charming (Score:5, Interesting)
But I also am a bit amused that you seem to think that quantum encryption - if they even pull it off - won't be used for bad purposes for the state. Maybe you're not aware of this, but people in China are not allowed Twitter or Facebook accounts because - I kid you not kid - the government is terrified of their possible use to mobilize the masses against the Communist Party. Mark Zuckerburg can suck up to them all he wants and continue to learn Mandarin in his spare time but it's not going to get them to relax their paranoia against a street revolution.
I have a question not directed at you. Let's just say for example that they get this to work. Let's say that for now there is no way to break it. Is there a way to mess with the photons so that even if the encryption can't be broken, nobody on either end can use it for communication because it gets scrambled while going between the 2 sites?
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To answer your question: It's a beam of light. If you put an opaque object in the beam, it will henceforth not work for communication until that object is removed.
More practically, I would imagine a similar laser aimed at the same receptor, would introduce so many spurious photons that it would be unusable. Similar to radar/radio jamming.
and USA too (Score:2)
You do know that China simply steals or buys its way into a lot of technological progress, right?
and You do know that the USA simply stole or bought its way into a lot of technological progress too [bloomberg.com], right?
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"You do know that China simply steals or buys its way into a lot of technological progress"
Once upon a time the USA achieved its objectives by doing the same thing - and if you don't believe that it's still doing so now, you're somewhat blinkered. ALL countries are doing it, only not so blatently as china (now) or 19th century USA (which was extremely blatent. Ask the Lumiere Brothers how Thomas Edison stole the copyright for _their_ film and sucessfully sued them for exhibiting their own work in New York C
Re: Really? You need to ask this? (Score:2)
The issue that bothers me, is that asymmetrical encryption can utilize multiple keys for decrption, even when the keys are derived from quantum properties, by two parties, who is to know if there isn't a backdoor key thrown in the mix, on the satellite itself?
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...the Chinese are working hard to become the new Renaissance state, while the west is rushing to emulate the worst of Maoist stats China through totalitarian control and monitoring of their citizens.
What the actual fuck?! As I write this it is modded +5. This is probably the most bullshit I've ever seen crammed into one senctence and it's at +5. Again, Whisky Tango Foxtrot?!
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"Face it, the Chinese are rapidly become world technology leaders"
On put another way, they're resuming their position as world technology leaders. It's only something they lost since the industrial revolution and they didn't lag by much all along.
No, its borked by the real world (Score:2, Informative)
Here's a human readable primer on it:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/how-quantum-cryptography-works-and-by-the-way-its-breakable/
I've marked the backchannel of extra filtering information with a **** below. You will see this in all Quantum signal experiments. An extra channel of information used to fixup the result. Think about it for a second, you're exchanging KEYS not information, and the KEY exchange itself requires an exchange of a backchannel in a secure way!
How it works for light:
Alice u
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You have some misconceptions about quantum key distribution. Cheifly, though, is the misconception that Alice and Bob are trying to transmit a pre-existing key. No, with QKD, they are trying to generate new key. Alice doesn't stop when she thinks Bob has "the full key" - there is no full key - but rather when she thinks Bob has received enough photons in order to generate (after sifting, error-correction, and privacy amplification) a key long enough for their intended purpose. Fundamental is that each bit Alice transmits is chosen randomly, with no repetition, no retransmission. That also implies that photon loss isn't the issue you think it is.
I'm not sure that GP explanation is a misconception as you pointed out. First, pre-existing or randomly select on the fly has nothing to do with the GP explanation. The explanation omitted or disregard how each bit is from. To be honest, is the big picture (abstract) changed in the explanation to point out that each bit is randomly generated on the fly? It is only the detail bit and specification of QKD.
The meaning of "full key" and "stop when think it is enough" look similar to me from an abstract concept.
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Zero applications. This is a stunt. Even if it works (and that is a big "if"), it does not improve anything, but it may be less secure than traditional techniques.
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Basically, quantum communications like is is a communications channel that reveals when it is being tapped. The accuracy of this detection is very high.
Hence, I can trivially send you a one-time pad. If you detected a tap, we toss it out, I generate more numbers, and we try again. So, it vastly improves security and key-distribution.
It gets worse, of course, if I use that one time bad over a quantum encryption channel.
Now, the channel does have more noise than a standard channel, but that's fixable with
Political use (Score:2)
I suspect the satellite launch has more of political than military purpose. China's economy is going downhill and so it seems is its hopes of Olympic gold, its standing as number 2 (behind US) being threatened: http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
Who knows, maybe the propaganda bureau decided some good news is in order.
China Launches Ball of Buzzwords. (Score:1, Insightful)
FTFY.
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vai dar teu cuzinho até engravidar, pra ver se tu tem uma filha com merda na cabeça como você.
So have you been able to mug anyone's gold medal yet?
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So... (Score:2)
This is for Quantum Key Distribution, right?
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China really had a different policy against such expensive and total collection methods. Flood the local gov and mil with random electronic chatter about big projects, massive support needs that mi
basic science anyone? (Score:2)
utilizing high-speed coherent lasers to connect with base stations on two different continents
-from TFS
A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits light coherently.
- From Wikipedia
Lasers also operate at the speed of light (albeit the encoding is slower than that). Me wonders what a llow speed incoherent laser looks like? Maybe signal mirrors? What type of technology is China using? /sarcasm
It's just me or... (Score:2)
Not Viable (Score:2)
Laser communication between distant satellites is fraught with difficulties.
Lasers have a divergence greater than zero. Over huge distances, this results in a very weak signal at the receiving end.
Lasers exit through an aperture. Diffraction occurs. That spreads the beam, too.
Lasers have speckle, even if the ends of the chamber (gas or solid state) are polished to be atomically smooth. The lasing cavity, you see, is not one-dimensional, resulting in path-length variation for the lasing photons. So, asi
Entanglement? Wow - in my lifetime! (Score:1)
If it works (per theory), then there would be nearly zero delay, as communication would not be via EM waves (which travel at the slow speed of light).